Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 17 – “Madness,”
Aleksandr Tsipko says, “is [Russia’s] chief national privilege, its only
national idea so far” and “without it we cannot live.” And while that has been true at many points
in the country’s history, it has never been more obvious or more dangerous than
right now.
In a lengthy essay for Nezavisimaya gazeta today, the
sociologist and commentator argues that “the stronger the love of the Russian
people for Putin and the more our president feels himself to be a tsar … the
more the new ‘Crimea is Ours’ Russia displays open insanity” (ng.ru/ideas/2018-05-17/5_7226_madness.html).
This is the insanity of a government
that threatens the West with new weapons even while it cannot support its own
population, Tsipko says. It is the insanity of Duma deputies who celebrate the
election of Donald Trump and thus ensure that the new US president will never
have the chance to do anything good for Russia.
While it is true that regardless of
the period of Russian history you examine “the passion for self-destruction …
gains the upper hand” over good sense, it is certainly true that “the clearest
example of this is the transition of Putin’s Russia of the first decade of this
century to the era of ‘Crimea is Ours’ victories.”
“For us,” the Moscow commentator
says, “freedom is above all the right to the unthinkable, the impossible, the
absurd, the unnatural and the desruciton of conditions not only for development
but for life in general.” Russia now behaves in such a way that the West is “in
shock” because Moscow is undercutting its own development and even military
security.
According to Tsipko, “Russians today
are happy that Russia for the first time in history has become a country
isolated from all others, that the ring of enemies of Russia is tightening with
each day, and that forever has died the possibility of the reuninficaiton of
the Great Russians, the Little Russians and the Belarusians.”
All nations go through peeriods of
madness, the sociologist says; but “the distinguishing characteristic of our
Russian insanity consists not only that it is permanent but also that it is
given sacred meaning.” It has become “a national value,” evidence that Russia
has something special to teach the world.
There is one sense in which this is
correct, Tsipko says. He cites the observation of Petr Chaadayev who argued
that “the meaning of Russian history consists in ‘giving the world some
important lesson,’ to show it how people who are intelligent and have good
sense should never under any circumstances act.”
Consequently, “if someone were to
write a book about madness in the history of humanity, he would have to devote
an entire chapter to the analysis of madness of Russians in the 20th
century.” And he would soon recognize
that “Russian madness of the post-commnist era is even more dangerous than the
earlier version because it reflects “a dark death instinct.”
Tsipko gives an example views about
the sovereignty of the RSFSR. That sovereignt arose “not only from the heritage
of Russian history but also from the results of the May 9 victory. It marked
the death of the Russian world. The present-day Russian Federation doesn’t have
the moral right to be the legal successof of the USSR beccuase precisely it was
the initiator of the murder of historical Russia.”
“But neither our people nor our
politicians understand this. And clearly
it is insanity to first do everything possible and impossible so that Crimea
will become ‘not ours’ and after only a quarter of a century, these very same
people kill the future of the country so that at a terrible price they get back
what they in 1991 voluntarily threw into the ashheap of geopolitics.”
“Practically all current bright
‘Crimea is ours’ people, except for Aleksandr Prokhanov were supporters of the
disintegration of the USSR; more than that, they made their political careers
thanks to its collapse. Many current politicians and military figures ran from
Gorbachev to Yeltsin” despite “the openly anti-Russian policy” of the latter
which “destroyed the USSR.”
The liberals are to blame as well,
he continues. “They were consistent in
their struggle with what they called ‘the imperial heritage of Russia.’” But
“they too bear direct responsibility for the insanity of the new Russian autocracy
… [because] on the blood of the defenders of the parliament it was not possible
to create anything besides a new variant of Russian autocracy.”
Thus, Tsipko concludes, “the break
with good sense is characteristic not only for all Russian eras, each of which
gives us examples of its own insanity but also for absolutely all political
parties of Russia.” And thus “our tragedy is that neither our politicians nor
out people can peacefully coexistence with good sense or the truth.”
Historically, he continues, “the
stronger the traditional Russian autocracy and the more subservient the Russian
people deifies its leader, the less the leader of the country thinks about the
negative consequences of the decisions he takes and the less he is capable of
controlling himself, the easier it is for him to act irrationally.”
According to Tsipko, “many say that
without a super powerful state, there will not be any order or stability in Russia.
I don’t know,” he says; “but one must see that in post-Crimea Russia, the
autocracy of the ruler has crippled the souls of the people. Autocracy and a
feeling of personal responsibility for the fate of one’s country are
incompatible.”
Conversely, “the
weaker Russian autocracy is, the more harmless Russian madness is in human
terms … The de-humanization of today’s Russian man is manifested not only in
that the values of freedom and truth have become alien to him but also in that –
and this is especially horrific, the more the value of human life becomes alien
as well.”
“It is impossible to combine good
sense and today’s ‘While there is Putin, there will be Russia’ because behind
this phrase is the conviction that Russia in and of itself is worth nothing and
that you and your children are condemned to die after the inevitable death of
Putin.” Tsipko says he has never before
in his life “encountered such insanity among the people around” him.
Indeed, he says, “there is an
essential difference between the fatalism and slavish abasement of the Soviet
man and the fatalism of those who today consider what they should take into a
bomb shelter in the case of the beginning of a third world war.” Soviet people had their limitations, but that
was not one of them.
It is undoubtedly the case, Tsipko
continues, that “the super-power of Putin has removed from t eh agenda the
issue about the future of Russia. There remain only murky conversations about
passing through the bottom of the crisis and about some breakthrough or other.”
If the current “by Russian standards
all-powerful nature of Putin – compare the all-powerfulness of Putin with that
of Stalin and you will understand what I’m talking about – further spiritual
degradation awaits us,” the commentator says. And it will involve “fear of the
truth, of having one’s own opinion ... [and] of apathy.”
Any revolution given Russia’s
current state, Tsipko argues, would be disastrous “because we are not a
consolidated nation like the Armenians who think about how a crisis will lead
to the deaths of their fellow citizens.” Instead, Russians are more like Ukrainians
and any Maidan “will inevitably lead to bloodshed, to revenge over those who
had been in power, to the dividing up of property, and to a new edition of
Russian anarchy.”
People must understand that in Russia
then, “a revolution of the Armenian type would inevitably lead to the final disintegration
of everything in the Russian Federation that remains from the USSR.” And as a
result, as long as Putin remains in power, “there are no real paths for
overcoming his power by means of the development of democracy.”
Instead, he says, such an effort would
collapse into “a new edition of Russian autocracy” just as happened with
Russian democracy in the 1990s. And that means there is no clear road forward
that doesn’t lead the country into yet another dead end.
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