Russian and Chinese Aggressiveness an Objective Requirement of Their Rulers and ‘a Kind of Rebirth of Leninist Idea of World Revolution,’ Savvin Says

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Dimitry Savvin, the editor of the Riga-based conservative Russian portal, Harbin, says that the aggressiveness of Moscow and Beijing are the product of the objective requirements of their rulers and represent “a kind of rebirth of the Leninist idea of world revolution.”

    According to him, “in the early 1990s, it seemed that totalitarian regimes were becoming a thing of the past” and that “the communist system was either collapsing or undergoing a liberal market transformation.” But “as very sad historical experience has shown,” that was not the case (harbin.lv/prichiny-vneshney-ekspansii-neokommunisticheskikh-i-neosovetskikh-rezhimov).

    What happened then was “not a fall at all” of communism but rather “just another mutation,” Savvin says; and “the neo-communist and neo-Soviet systems have not only survived and stabilized but also beginning their external expansion” to meet the need of their elites to remain in power by destroying those forces abroad that would otherwise defeat and oust them.

    Lenin believed in a world revolution because he recognized that if he did not defeat the forces of liberalism and the free market, he would never be able to construct socialism, a position that those who followed him continued, despite some twists and turns including a belief that socialist countries would win out during an extended period of peaceful competition.

    But it became obvious that an arrangement of unlimited dictatorship with a relatively free market could not last for long; and for a brief time in both Russia and China it appeared that those holding dictatorial power would cede it in order to take advantage of free markets and not be pushed into the dustbin of history.

    In the 1990s, Savvin continues, it looked like that was happening: “The Russian Federation officially rejected Marxist-Leninist ideology and the in the Chinese Peoples Republic was confirmed ‘wild capitalism under a red flag.’” But in both, “the previous ruling stratum and previous apparatus of power was retained.”

    Rulers in both places know,” the conservative writer says, that “the neo-NEP of Bukharin and Deng Xiaoping can’t compete peacefully with liberal democracy and the market system. Sooner of later, the neo-NEP will lose.” Moreover, “isolationism is not an option: it can only delay the catastrophe for a few decades.”

    That confronts the two elites with a choice: “either to accept the obvious and natural, beginning the smooth dismantling of the neo-Soviet and neo-communist system to quietly and peacefully "leave history;" or to continue the struggle with military methods - on a global scale with the goal of destroying liberal democracy and the market economy on the planet as a whole.

    Given that the odds the leaders in Moscow and Beijing will chose to give up power and leave the scene on their on volition is vanishingly small, Savvin continues, what the world is confronted with is almost certainly “a second edition of the concept of a world revolution” carried out by leaders who are prepared to do anything to maintain their power.

    “If the Free World, in the person of its elites and its intelligentsia does not recognize this danger,” Savvin concludes, “then in the course of several decades it may simply cease to exist.”

‘Yes, There was Sex in the USSR’ Focus of New Book-Length Study

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – One of the most famous and widely repeated statement to come out of the USSR was the declaration by Ludmila Ivanova who declared in the course of a Soviet-American telebridge in July 1986 that “we have no sex [in the USSR] and we are strictly opposed to it.”

    That immediately became both the subject of mirth because everyone including presumably Ivanova herself knew that wasn’t true but also evidence in the minds of many Russians and others of just how out of touch with reality the Soviet leadership was at least in words if not, of course, in action.

    Now, Rustam Aleksandr, a Russian scholar at the University of Melbourne, demonstrates just how out of touch the Soviet government was in a new book entitled There was Sex: Intimate Life in the Soviet Union (https://individuum.ru/books/seks-byl-intimnaya-zhizn-sovetskogo-soyuza/; reviewed by Semyon Vladimirov at meduza.io/feature/2025/04/08/seks-byl-novaya-kniga-rustama-aleksandera-ob-intimnoy-zhizni-v-sovetskom-soyuze).

     Aleksandr attracted widespread attention for 2022 study of homosexuality in the USSR, a book entitled The Closeted: The Life of Homosexuals in the Soviet Union, which has now been translated into English (meduza.io/episodes/2023/03/14/govorim-ob-istorii-lgbt-v-sssr-snachala-bolsheviki-dali-soobschestvu-polnuyu-svobodu-a-potom-uvideli-v-nem-shpionov-i-rastliteley-armii-i-flota and books.google.com/books/about/Red_Closet.html).

    According to Vladimirov, Aleksandr’s three most important conclusions are that Soviet society was puritanical except at the beginning and the end, that Soviet law enforcement was less obsessed with sex than were party officials, and that there were a large number of Soviet academics who tried to pull back the veil of secrecy on sex the Kremlin wanted maintained.

    His new book helps to explain why the Putin regime has moved in the directions it has, simultaneously allowing more sexual activity of various kinds than was the case earlier but presenting itself as a defender of traditional values, including hostility to the very kinds of behaviors its members likely favor and participate in.

With Talk of Peace, Russians Massively Signing Up for Military Service Apparently Hoping to Get Big Bonuses and Credit for Volunteering at Less Risk of Having to Fight

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Since talks about an end to the fighting in Ukraine began earlier this year, Russians are signing up in unprecedented numbers, apparently in the hopes of getting the sign-up bonuses still being offered and credit for doing so without the risk of actually going into battle.

    That conclusion is suggested by two new articles which report that both in the regions and in Moscow, the number of men signing up has gone from a few dozen a day to more than a hundred since talk of peace in Ukraine has become more frequent (verstka.media/v-moskve-rezko-vyroslo-chislo-zhelayushhih-podpisat-kontrakt-s-minoborony and sibreal.org/a/na-fone-peregovorov-o-mire-v-regionah-naraschivayut-kampaniyu-po-naboru-kontraktnikov-/33362214.html).

    As both report, Russian officials are celebrating these increases as evidence of growing patriotism and the impact of the government’s propaganda machine; but in fact, they point to just the reverse, the way in which Russians are asking what’s in it for them and seeking to game the system to their individual benefit.

    There are likely at least a few in the Kremlin who understand that and who recognize that this does not bode well if Putin does not end the fighting in Ukraine soon or tries to launch another war without better justification – and there should be some in Western governments who realize what this means in terms of Putin’s negotiating position.

Conflict between Estonian Government and Moscow Church Intensifies

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – The Estonian parliament has adopted a law that requires that what had been the Estonian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate not only change its name and end its financial and administrative ties to the Moscow Patriarchate but sever its canonical ones to that church and subordinate itself to the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

    Both the Estonian Orthodox Christian Church as the EOC MP is now known as a result of earlier Tallinn actions and the Moscow Patriarchate are outraged at what they both see as unwarranted and illegal state intervention in the religious life of the church and say they cannot and will not agree (ru/faith/2025-04-10/1_9232_lawabiding.html).

    Once the measure is signed into law, the EOCC will have two months to comply. If it doesn’t, its parishes and religious establishment will lose their status as legal persons in Estonia, cease to be able to own property or maintain bank accounts, and the church will be “liquidated” by the Estonian government.

    That will be the definitive end of what had been the Estonian “compromises” under which there have been two Orthodox churches in Estonia since the 1990s, one subordinate to Moscow and one to Constantinople. Many hope that the  EOCC will fuse with the Constantinople church.

    That is possible, but it is also possible that EOCC parishes and bishoprics will go .underground and become a source of new tensions between Moscow and Estonia, with the Moscow Patriarchate leading demands that the Kremlin do something to protect what the Patriarchate believes is part of “the Russian world.”

    On the complex history of Orthodoxy in recent years, a history whose tensions have been exacerbated by Putin’s war in Ukraine, see windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2025/01/tallinn-set-to-demand-moscow-church-in.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/tallinn-pushes-hard-to-end-estonian.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/04/estonian-orthodox-church-of-moscow.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/01/moscow-patriarchs-policies-making.html.

Russians as Old as 60 May Soon Be Counted as ‘Young,’ Possibly Presaging Radical Increase in Retirement Ages

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 10 – Over the last several weeks, senior Russian officials have proposed changing the definition of young people in their country to include people as old as 60, a move that could presage a radical increase in retirement ages, easing Russia’s worker shortage and reducing the amount the government must spend in support of retirees.

    Gennady Onishchenko, vice president of the Russian Academy of Education, favors boosting the upper limit of the young to 40. Healthcare minister Mikhail Murashko wants to boost it to 44; and Veronika Skvortsova, head of the Federal Medical-Biological Agency, seeks to raise it to 60 (nakanune.ru/articles/123373/).

    Their proposals come after the World Health Organization suggested raising the upper limit of the young to 44 and after the Russian government boosted the age from 30 to 35 in 2020 and has been talking about shifting it upwards again to 40 or even higher because people are living longer and are healthier for more years than ever before.  

    While some may dismiss these ideas as ridiculous, some experts are suggesting that the Kremlin is behind them and wants to use an increase in the upper limit of the young as the basis for increasing retirement ages in Russia, thus solving many of its labor shortage problems and reducing the pension burden on the state.

    Among those is Yury Krupnov of the Moscow Institute of Demography, Migration and Regional Development. He suggests that the Russian government might use such an increase to boost retirement ages to as much as 75 or even more in its pursuit of expanding the workforce and limiting the growth in the number of pensioners.

    Given how angry Russians have been about any increase in pension ages in the past, that possibility is likely to spark for anger, dissent and even open protests if the boost in the upper age limit of the young goes through – and if it becomes obvious that Moscow is doing this not to come into line with the WHO but to make Russians work more years before getting pensions.  

Russia Launches First Super Icebreaker with No Foreign Components

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Russia has launched the Yakutiya, the fourth super icebreaker in its new class of such ships – the Artika, Ural and Sibir are already underway, the Chukotka and Leningrad are under construction, and the keel of the Stalingrad is to be laid later this year – but the first to be assembled without any foreign-produced components.

    That fact may be of particular importance to Vladimir Putin who has declared that the Northern Sea Route, which requires icebreakers to operate, is equivalent to the Trans-Siberian Railway as far as Russia’s economic and geopolitical future are concerned (thebarentsobserver.com/news/latest-nuclearpowered-icebreaker-steams-north/428022).

    What if any constraints the lack of foreign components will place on the new ship is as yet unknown, despite Russian suggestions that Moscow can do without such systems; but the electronics on a ship like the avionics on an airplane are seldom visible at first but may become the most important in operations.

    But it seems clear that these limitations may be important after all, given Russia’s troubled history of building ships and Putin’s own call this week for opening Arctic shipping to international cooperation (windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/07/moscow-facing-growing-problems-with-itshtml and thebarentsobserver.com/news/belligerent-putin-raises-his-bets-in-the-arctic/427497).

Kyiv Views Middle Volga and North Caucasus as Likely to Be First Regions to Become Independent of Moscow

Paul Goble

    Staunton, Apr. 11 – Yaroslav Yurchyshyn, a senior member of the Verkhovna Rada, says that he and others in Kyiv view the peoples of the Middle Volga and the North Caucasus as the nations most likely to be the first to secure independence from Moscow and thus must be the focus of Ukrainian efforts to speed that process.

    He says that the independence of the peoples now within the borders of the Russian Federation is critical for Ukraine because once Kyiv recovers its land up to the 1991 border, it must have relations with partners committed to independence rather than face a totalitarian state opposed to its existence (ukr.radio/news.html?newsID=107066 reposed and translated at abn.org.ua/en/liberation-movements/ukraine-is-trying-to-prepare-the-elite-of-the-enslaved-nations-of-russia-yurchyshyn/).

    Yurchyshyn says Kyiv has two other tasks in this area: providing Ukrainians with more information about the peoples within the borders of the Russian Federation and convincing Western countries that Russia’s disintegration won’t lead to nuclear war but rather become the very best course to achieving lasting peace.

    That Yurchyshyn should talk about the importance of transforming what is now the Russian Federation, about the significance of improving the understanding of the Ukrainian people about the peoples within the borders of that country, and about the requirement that Kyiv help convince the West that the demise of Russia as a requirement for peace is no surprise.

    But one thing that he did say may come as a surprise: his belief that Tatarstan and the other peoples of the Middle Volga will be among the first to leave the Russian Federation and gain independence given that they are surrounded by what Moscow has proclaimed “Russian” regions and thus do not have direct access to other countries.

    Yurchyshyn’s mention of the Middle Volga region and Tatarstan in particular suggests that Kyiv is increasing its focus on what some have called the Orenburg corridor, the land between Bashkortostan and Idel Ural in the north and Kazakhstan in the south, a narrow strip of land that represents the land bridge that would make independence possible.

    Kyiv has talked about this in the past. That it is returning to this issue now is something worth watching. (For background on this issue, see jamestown.org/program/kazakh-nationalists-call-for-astana-to-absorb-orenburg-outraging-moscow/, jamestown.org/program/the-orenburg-corridor-and-the-future-of-the-middle-volga/, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2023/02/tatars-and-bashkirs-must-recover.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/01/ukrainian-interest-in-orenburg-corridor.html.) 

   That the Ukrainian parliamentarian did not mention the Ukrainian regions inside the Russian Federation known as "wedges" does not mean that they are not on Kyiv's radar screen but only that raising that issue in the current environment would allow Moscow to denounce Kyiv as "imperialist." (On these regions, see jamestown.org/program/moscow-worried-about-ukrainian-wedges-in-russia-and-their-growing-support-from-abroad/, jamestown.org/program/kyiv-raises-stakes-by-expanding-appeals-to-ukrainian-wedges-inside-russia/ and jamestown.org/program/the-kuban-a-real-wedge-between-russia-and-ukraine/.)