It is these five historical characteristics of Russian colonization and decolonization
that one has to bear in mind when analyzing the behavior of the Russian leadership.
The thesis of this book is that—unlike in Western Europe, where the process of decolonization
was definitive—the same is not necessarily true for Russia. For the Russian state
colonizing neighboring territories and subduing neighboring peoples has been a continuous
process. It is, one could almost say, part of Russia’s genetic makeup. The central
question with which we are confronted after the demise of the Soviet Union is whether
this centuries-old urge to subdue and incorporate neighboring peoples has disappeared
or if this imperial reflex might be making a comeback.
Russia: A Post-Imperium?
According to some authors the end of the Soviet Union sounded the death knell of Russian
colonialism and imperialism. One of these authors is Dmitri Trenin, a Russian analyst
and the head of the Moscow bureau of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
In his book, with the telling title Post-Imperium, he tries to reassure the reader that “Russia has abandoned the age-old pattern of
territorial growth. A merger with Belarus was not pursued as a priority. Abkhazia
and South Ossetia were turned into military buffers, but only in extremis.”[1] In his book Trenin repeats this reassuring mantra again and again. He writes: “The
days of the Russian empire are gone; Russia has entered a post-imperial world;”[2] or: “Russia will never again be an empire;”[3] and again: “The Russian empire is over, never to return. The enterprise that had
lasted for hundreds of years simply lost the drive. The élan is gone. In the two decades
since the collapse, imperial restoration was never considered seriously by the leaders,
nor demanded by a wider public.”[4] Trenin gives several arguments for his thesis. The first of these is the presence
in Russia of an empire fatigue. Russians, he argues, are no longer willing to pay for an empire: “At the top, there
was neither money nor strong will for irredentism.”[5] Instead of an empire, he continues, Russia has only the desire to become a “great
power.” The difference between the two is, in his opinion, that great powers are selfish.
They don’t want to spend money on behalf of other nations. “Empires,” writes the author,
“for all the coercion they necessarily entail, do produce some public goods, in the
name of a special mission. Great powers can be at least equally brutish and oppressive,
but they are essentially selfish creatures.”
However, the sudden eclipse of Russia’s eternal imperial drive cannot be explained
exclusively by “selfishness.” Trenin gives a second reason, which is the growing xenophobia in the Russian population. Although xenophobia may be an ugly, anti-humanist attitude,
in Russia’s case, it would have some positive effects. “What the rise in xenophobia,
the upsurge of chauvinism, and the spread of anti-government violence also tell,”
writes the author, “is that there is no appetite whatsoever for a new edition of empire,
only residual nostalgia for the old days.”[6] Like Bernard Mandeville, who in his Fable of the Bees explained how public benefits could emerge from private vices, Dmitri Trenin explains
how in contemporary Russia private vices, such as xenophobia and egoism, result in
a public benefit: the lack of appetite in the Russian population for the restoration
of the lost empire.
