Ukraine War Transforming Russian Nation Just as Profoundly as It is the Ukrainian One, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 9 – Since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine in 2022, many commentators have focused on the way that war has become an important part of the genesis of a new Ukrainian nation; but almost none have focused on how it is playing an analogous function for the Russian nation, Vladimir Pastukhov says.
    “I am deeply convinced that a completely different Russian society will emerge from the war than the one which entered it,” the London-based Russian analyst says (t.me/v_pastukhov/1384 reposted at  echofm.online/opinions/ot-novyh-russkih-k-drugim-russkim).
    That is because the war in Ukraine marks “the end of the history of post-communism with its ‘new Russians’ and the beginning of a fundamentally different era … the main character of which will be ‘the other Russian,’” a completely different person “not having a direct historical and cultural connection with its predecessors.”
    The New Russian of the last 40 years “remained a ‘recast’ Soviet and therefore imperial man, Pastukhov says. Indeed, he says he is “beginning to think that the USSR was really the highest and final form of Russian imperialism,” while “’the other Russian’ is an emasculated and distilled product of the new era in which everything Soviet has been washed away.”
    The other Russian, he continues, “actively imitates an ‘imperial’ one, but in fact he isn’t one. Instead, ‘the other Russian’ of today has the same relationship to the Russian and Soviet empires as the modern Egyptian does to the empire of the pharaohs: He simply lives on the territory of the former empire” but lacks direct connection with it or its symbols.
    “In this sense,” the London-based analyst says, “Putin’s ‘illiberal empire’ is an oxymoron: It may be anti-liberal, although that is doubtful; but it is certainly not an empire.” The other Russians who form it are “no longer” part of an empire but they are not yet a nation,” although the war in Ukraine may yet make them one.
    According to Pastukhov, the Kremlin has a clearer understanding of this than do its opponents and is working to institutionalize itself by shaping the youngest members of society, hoping to “mold golems from ‘the inhabitants’ in the hope of sitting out ‘behind the battlements’ for the time required for the golems to speak.”