A New Russian Empire would be a Disaster Above All for Russians, Olshansky Says

 Paul Goble

             Staunton, Nov. 11 – Empires like the British and American which were built around fully consolidated nations benefitted those in the metropolitan countries, but an empire like the Russian based on a less than fully consolidated Russian nation had the opposite effect, benefiting the colonies and imposing enormous burdens on the core community.

             For that reason among other, Russian commentator Dmitry Olshansky says, restoring a Russian empire would be to create a new “anti-empire” in which ethnic Russians would be the first victims and thus a disaster in that “we would be required to love everyone, give money and celebrate ‘friendship’” (kp.ru/daily/28355/4501831/).

             If Russia is going to have a real future, he continues, then it must be first and foremost as a nation state rather than as an empire. Otherwise, Russians will be bled try and find themselves in the position of second-class citizens rather than as masters of the situation, however much their leaders tell them otherwise. 

            “Real empires,” like the British and American, Olshansky says, were “nation states, often very strong and able to play at hegemony over others.”  But that wasn’t the case with Russia in the past and wouldn’t be in the future unless Russia itself and Russians themselves changed before entering into such arrangements.

             Unfortunately, he continues, “Russia was a state where cheap peasant labor and soldier’s blood of the lowest rank Russian majority bought the loyalty of various kinds of borderlands who had better lives and many more rights and possibilities in comparison with the Great Russian core.” In short, it was an empire that worked exactly the reverse of how it should have.

             “Until 1917, this was partially compensated for by the great culture established by the urban and educated Russian minority,” Olshansky suggests; but after 1917, the inherent tendencies of the Russian anti-empire became “absurd and catastrophic, with a headache transformed into a guillotine” for those who created it.

             “Russians became still poorer and rightless since the educated national minority simply disappeared via repression and emigration,” he says. When the Russians ceased to be able to afford the Soviet imperial arrangement, that arrangement simply collapsed. And it must not be restored.

             There is no way Russia can become an empire like those in the Wests. Military conquest might have been effective in past centuries but now it simply intensifies the burdens on the center without providing the population of that center with any benefits. And as a result, other empires have moved on to other means, but Moscow wants to restore its old anti-empire.

             But it should be clear that such a new empire and the interests of Russians are incompatible and that efforts to create the former will require the sacrifice of the latter.