Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 23 – Putin’s
Russia is “a land of imitations,” one that is neither imperial nor clerical nor
traditionalist nor national but rather a “privatized” version of the Soviet
system whose goal – the enrichment of the elite – is something that precludes
any of those things and that it cannot admit openly, according to Dimitry
Savvin.
The editor of the Riga-based Harbin portal says that Russia today is “not
a living political thing but a collection of manikins, cadavers and imitations”
whose supporters and opponents are both willing to take for something else
because doing so is useful for both of them (harbin.lv/strana-imitatsiy).
“We hear so often that Putin’s
Russian Federation is conducting ‘an imperial policy’ and has ‘imperial
ambitions’ that we somehow even forget to ask: what in fact is an Empire?” Or
we are told that it is a budding nation state without enquiring as to what that
would require it to become, Savvin says.
Those who view Russia today as an
empire assume that centralization and the suppression of national and religious
minorities makes it one, forgetting that empires are universalistic in their
goals. And those who say it is a nation state in waiting ignore the fact that
nation states in contrast are always specifically local rather than universal
in orientation.
“If for an Empire, striving for the synthesis
of various traditions, cultures and even religions is natural,” the Riga-based
Russian analyst continues, “then a nation state is directed at the opposite, at
the defense and development of its own ethnic, cultural and religious identity.”
But Russia now is not the one or the other.
“The Soviet Union was an empire …
filled with anti-human and unnatural content. Its demise theoretically should
have led to the formation of new nation states – and this occurred for example
in the Baltic countries,” Savvin says. “However, for most of the former USSR,
it didn’t happen.”
The reason is simple and was
predicted in 1935 by émigré philosopher Ivan Solonevich in his book, Russia in a Concentration Camp. In that work, Solonevich argued that the Soviet
system had created in the Soviet nomenklatura “a quasi-elite” that, in the
event the USSR collapsed, would nonetheless have enough power to maintain
control for itself.
That is exactly what happened in the
Russian Federation after 1991. “The nomenklatura quasi elite and state
apparatus, not having suffered serious losses and maintaining control in the
political system and economy,” remained true to their Soviet origins in terms
of methods but changed their goals for imperial outreach to personal
enrichment.
They began sometimes consciously and sometimes
not “but always consistently” to restore the practice and institutions” of the USSR
which “in the end led to the final formation of the neo-Soviet system under
Putin,” one in which power was deployed in much the same way but to new ends.
This development created serious ideological
problems for the regime. Under the
Soviets, the quasi-elite extracted resources from the population to promote
world revolution. But after 1991, this same elite continued to extract resources
but not for a new empire but for their own wealth.
“In essence,” Savvin says, “this
nomenklatura-oligarchic corporation was transformed into internal colonizers
like the British East India company,” but with this difference: “The latter
never concealed that it was a private commercial enterprise involved in making
money” for its owners.
“For understandable reasons,” he
continues, “the neo-Soviet regime of the Russian Federation could not openly
acknowledge that. But it also couldn’t and didn’t want to return to classical
bolshevism with its struggle for world rule;” and it was equally incapable of
promoting Russian nationalism because that “obviously contradicted the interests
of the quasi-elite.”
But the vacuum had to be filled, and
it has been, not with something real but rather with “virtual” things which have
taken the form of “a parade of imitations.” Putin promoted the cult of victory
in World War II as the basis of state ideology, something that suggested he was
in fact interested in Soviet-type goals.
However, he wasn’t able to
articulate an imperial ideology and so put out “various imitations” of that. “Why
imitations?” Savvin asks rhetorically. Because such an ideology would require
the quasi-elite to make sacrifices it was and is not prepared to make. Fake
imperialism for this elite is fine; real imperialism is not.
But this imperialism fooled many in
the West or, worse, led them to act as if they took it seriously, the Russian
analyst says. For Russians, it gave them
a feeling of renewed power; and for many in the West, it provided the
comforting notion that Russia hadn’t changed, something some were pleased and
others horrified by.
This would all be very amusing were
it not for one thing, Savvin says. It
means that the West is not aware of what is actually happening and that it will
not respond correctly when the Putin system weakens. Instead, it will assume it
is fighting imperialism or nationalism rather than the nomenklatura-oligarchic-quasi-elite.
And it will again as was the case in
the early 1990s accept the reassurance of this elite that it is against both
these things and thus end by supporting the same old rulers and attacking
everyone else rather than recognizing that these rulers themselves are the
problem that must be addressed and removed.
But even before the Moscow-centered
state fails, this lack of understanding in the West will have extremely
negative consequences for Russia by allowing this elite to continue its thievery
and for “many neighboring countries” who will suffer attack as the Moscow
quasi-elite tries to put on a virtual show for both its own people and the West
– while hiding its own crimes.
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