Marching in a Circle Back to Soviet Patterns is Russia’s True Special Path, Vardul Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 4 – Nikolay Vardul says that Russia’s true special path involves marching in circles back to the past rather than moving forward, a pattern that has resulted in characteristics typical of Soviet times becoming “not less but more” frequent in Russia nearly three decades after the USSR disappeared.

            Writing in Moskovsky komsomolets, the Kommersant financial commentator says that he does not feel anything especially positive when he observers these revenants from the Soviet past returning to dominate Russian life now (mk.ru/politics/2019/12/04/cheburashke-na-radost-pochemu-sovremennaya-rossiya-vybrala-cennosti-rukhnuvshego-sssr.html).

            Part but only part of the reason for their return, Vardul says, is related to geopolitics.  “Vladimir Putin has called the collapse of the USSR ‘the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century,’” and he has contributed to the return of anti-Americanism and more broadly anti-Westernism, attitudes that recall those of Soviet times.

            To be sure, there are essential differences, he continues. The USSR was “an ideological state.” It was about the construction of a society without capitalism, and it was that, more than the victory in World War II, the atomic bomb,and Yury Gagarin which was at the basis of the USSR’s authority.”

            That defined the values of the Soviet Union. “But what does today’s Russia oppose to Western values? Nothing, except the verbose and undeveloped assertion that our ‘historical values and traditions’ are higher and cleaner.’” The last time Russia offered that was in the time of Nicholas I—and everyone knows how that ended with the Crimean War.

            “Everyone should think about that.”

            When the USSR struggled with the West, it did so on a more or less commensurate level, Vardul says; but now, Russia isn’t in a position to do so. The US economy alone is “almost ten times larger” than Russia’s.  This doesn’t mean that Russia can’t pursue its dreams, but it does mean that it needs to do so “without allowing an open confrontation.”

            What is required, the economic analyst continues, is “an entirely different foreign policy compared to the one which Maria Zakharova [of the Russian foreign ministry] never ceases talking about.” A much better and more effective approach is the one China has adopted: it has focused not on strategic competition but rather on building up its own capacities.

            Russia has been doing exactly the opposite, allowing geopolitical concerns to eclipse all others. That is hardly the way forward. Instead, it is a path to the past. For most Russians, Vardul continues, geopolitics is not the primary concern.  Instead, what they are interested in is an improvement in their standard of living.

            “Generally speaking,” Vardul says, he “tries to keep his distance from the state. This hardly means that he opposes himself to the state. Not at all. I simply remain attached to the Russian Constitution in which it is clearly written that the interests of the individual have priority over the interests of the state.”

            Under its terms, the state needs to keep its distance from me, but “alas, that is not always what happens.” And indeed, this gutting of a constitutional provision is just one more way in which Russia increasingly resembles the USSR. But that is only one of the ways in which life in Russia is increasingly coming to be like life in the Soviet Union.

            “As was the case in the USSR, we are told one thing but it is clear to everyone that in fact things are going in a completely different way.” State programs are announced with much pomp and then forgotten about, again just like in the USSR.  And corruption too is similar not in size – it was much less in the USSR than now – but in its all-pervasive character.

            The current decline in the real incomes of Russians “also is something resembling Soviet times.” And that shouldn’t be surprising because despite claims that Russia has become a market economy, in fact it is far from being one.  Again, managers fear boosting productivity less they lose out in the process.

            And Russian billionaires aren’t capitalists as they would be if Russia were a market economy. Instead, they have built their success “exclusively on state contracts,” one more indication that despite all the changes, “by marching in circles, we have found our own ‘special path,’” Vardul concludes.