Like Stalin’s Soviet Union, Putin’s Russia is an Empire but Not an Ethnic One, Savvin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 18 – The neo-Soviet system Putin has put in place, like its Soviet predecessor, is an empire but not of one nation against others but rather one in which a clique of imperial rulers consist of an apparatus of loyalists prepared to support now one and now another to achieve their goals, Dimitry Savvin says.

            The editor of the conservative Russian Harbin portal based in Riga suggests that far too many are confused about this because of the clique’s commitment to centralization and do not see that it will turn on the ethnic Russian majority when it assumes that they are a threat to the achievement of its goals argues (harbin.lv/million-indusov-dlya-putina).

            At present, he continues, Moscow is far more obsessed with the fissiparousness of non-Russian nations than it is with the power of the ethnic Russian majority; but if the reverse becomes true, the center will have no qualms about turning on the Russians and even relying on the non-Russians to rule.

            Like their Soviet predecessors, the Putinists don’t think in ethnic categories but rather in terms of those who support their goals and those who don’t, Savvin continues. Sometimes in the past and again now, this imperial apparatus supports one or the other; but it remains uncommitted to either. 

            Stalin was very clear about this; and although Putin has not been so explicit, he shares his predecessor’s approach. According to Savvin, Stalin divided all nationalisms into “the defensive” which is tolerated as a reaction to threats and “the offensive” which the Soviet dictator defined as “an absolute evil” that must be eradicated.

            In Stalin’s system, “the communist apparatus fought not for and not against ethic Russians but instead considered both ethnic Russians and non-Russians as fuel for its needs and saw as its final goal the strengthening of its own totalitarian system.” Putin views the two in exactly the same way.

            “As a result,” Savvin says, “the neo-Soviet apparatus remains essential an internal colonizer, with the Russian Federation viewed as a state continuation of the Soviet Union and the former Soviet republics as a natural zone of influence which must also be run by neo-Soviet regimes” lest they inspire resistance inside of the Russian Federation.

“There really is a colonial regime in Russia – or rather, it can be described that way. But the colonizers are not somet abstract Russians (or abstract non-Russians) but rather the neo-Soviet ruling class and the apparatus of power. If that isn’t taken into account, any analysis will turn into the cheapest and most false propaganda.”

“Alas, we all too often see that.”