Moscow has Never Understood that Ukrainian Maidans are Above All an Anti-Colonial Movement, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 28 – Moscow has not yet understood that what has taken place in Ukraine over the last generation is a national liberation movement characteristic of all former colonies rather than a drive for democracy, although that has happened and Ukraine has achieved more than Russia in that regard, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            As a result, the London-based Russian scholar says, Vladimir Putin not only has come down on Stalin’s side in the debate of that Bolshevik leader with Lenin but also put himself in a position where he is unable to engage in the kind of strategic planning that the founder of the Bolshevik state engaged in (echo.msk.ru/programs/personalnovash/2877932-echo/).

            Moscow has thus not recognized that “the processes which we now observe in the countries of the former USSR were historically inevitable” and that they proceed along a predictable course, with the first generation of those who were in colonies, as were all those in the non-Russian republics, concerned about self-identification but the second about other issues.

            Among the latter is cooperation with the former metropolitan center, something those worried first and foremost about identity could not. Finland shows the way in which this occurs, and it is taking place in the former Soviet empire. But because Putin takes such a short-term approach, he doesn’t see that aggression on his part delays this return to earlier relations.

            Even Ukrainians are following this trajectory, Pastukhov says, as shown by the 41 percent who agree with Putin that Ukrainians and Russians are one people. But they do so because they are in an independent country. Putin fails to understand that or that conflicts between closely related peoples are invariably the most difficult.

            That truth is demonstrated in divorce courts on a daily basis, the Russian scholar suggests.

            In the course of a wide-ranging interview, Pastukhov makes a number of other points, three of which are especially noteworthy. First, he says that Putin increasingly is the prisoner of the general staff because he has set in motion a war against the West and now doesn’t know how to exit from it.

            Second, the scholar observes that Putin’s increasing obsession with himself and his remaining time have left  him with the kind of short-term perspective that blocks him from considering all the options available to him, including diplomatic ones, that could benefit Russia even if they will come to fruition after  his time.

            And third, he stresses that Putin and the Russians are not the only ones making mistakes in this case. Western leaders, Pastukhov argues, have failed to recognize how many different Putins there have been and how much his regime has evolved. They tend to assume that both the current aggressiveness and the current problems of Russia will simply continue without change.

            History suggests that Russia will always be a competitor of the West, the scholar underscores. But it also suggests that the shape of this competition and its meaning both for the international community and Russia domestically almost certainly will change, possibly dramatically and quickly, a possibility the West is insufficiently alive to.