Many of Russia’s Current Leaders Act as If They’re Great Successes when They Aren’t, Kiva Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 8 – In one of the most devastating critiques of the Putin regime’s self-conception ever published in the Moscow media, historian Aleksey Kiva says that the many Russian leaders who today act as if they have led the country to great success should look around as “in the last decades we have lost more than we have gained.”

            While they have contributed to Russia’s relative and in some cases absolute decline, the senior scholar at the Institute of Oriental Studies says, other countries including China, South Korea and Singapore have advanced rapidly and now rank far higher than they did just a few years ago (ng.ru/ideas/2020-04-08/7_7838_history.html).

            The Putin regime, more than any of its Russian predecessors, is a one-man dictatorship based on the siloviki. The force structures have in fact done “a good thing” by putting an end to the disintegration of the country and undermining the criminal classes. “But they are taught to fight and not to develop the economy and develop normal relations with civilized countries.”

            And that makes the actions of the deputies in the Federal Assembly to approve constitutional amendments which open the way for Putin to remain as president until the age of 84, something that would be “a record for our first persons,” Kiva says, all the more surprising and disturbing.

            He concludes with a warning: “History teaches that a country whose elite thinks only about itself is condemned.”

            Kiva’s judgment comes at the end of an analysis as to why the continuity of Russian history Putin insists upon is simply nonsense. He accepts Nicholas Berdyaev’s observation that there were “five different Russias” when the USSR exists. And he says that now there is a sixth, one affected by but very different from the others.

            “What is today’s Russian Federation?” he asks rhetorically. “It is one of 15 union republics of the former USSR, albeit the largest and richest in natural resources. But its population is approximately half of that of the former USSR which was an industrially developed country and in which the export of energy resources played an important but not key role.”

             Kiva continues: “In the 1990s, as a result of the realization of the shock therapy model, post-Soviet Russia lost its industry, an enormous army of engineering and technical workers and significantly undermined its scientific and technical potential,” as a result of massive emigration of the most highly trained people.

            And as a result, “over the 30 years of the existence of post-Soviet Russia, we have not given the world a single revolutionary innovation. It is possible this is because we have lost the applied science without which innovations can’t be brought to market. And Russia has become a raw materials supplier, with enclaves of industry and high technology.”

            The country’s GDP is now “ten times less than America’s.” Some evaluations suggest that “in the course of the radical liberal reforms, we lost 40 percent of GDP, which is ten percent more than the US lost during the period of the Great Depression.” At the same time, the difference between rich and poor has increased to a level even greater than in the US.

            “The political system which has taken shape during the years of the existence of the Russian Federation is one that neither the old nor the new Russia had ever known,” Kiva says. “The siloviki define our policies. That was not the case under the tsars or the general secretaries.”

            “However personified power was in the USSR, all major decisions were taken by the Politburo of the Central Committee on the principle of consensus. Yes, often this was a formality, but this depended on the human factor,” the historian says.

            “Now, however, the president of the Russian Federation can unilaterally decide the most vitally important issues of the state.” The Politburo could remove Nikita Khrushchev; but today, Kiva points out, “it is practically impossible for us to remove from office a failed president.”

            On a related issue, the Russian Federation “having declared itself the legal success of the USSR, automatically takes on itself responsibility for the crimes of Stalin and his comrades in arms for domestic and foreign policy.” Those in Russia like Kiva who suffered because of the dictator and know what he did can’t accept that the Russian Federation is uniquely responsible.

            Why then must Russia be responsible given that it was only “one of 15 union republics?!” Especially given that “in the Bolshevik movement and in the October Revolution, the tone was given by people from the national borderlands, including from Poland and the Baltics.”

            “In my view,” he continues, “one can speak about the legal succession only in the sense that the Russian Federation with the complete approval of the leading countries of the West (emphasis added) assumed control of the nuclear arsenal on the territory of several former Soviet republics and occupied the USSR’s place as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.”

            And as for speaking of “our victory” in World War II: no one questions that Russia played a key role but so too did the other union republics and so too did the Western allies. Forgetting that because of short-term political developments as now is to falsify history in the worst possible and self-deceiving way, the historian suggests.