What—in the end—remains as a justification for a renewed Russian imperialism vis-à-vis
the former Soviet republics is not much more than the naked Russian state interest. I am referring here deliberately to the Russian state interest and not to the Russian national interest, because the new Russian imperialism is clearly in the interest of Russia’s
ruling political and military elite, whose positions are strengthened and consolidated
by a neoimperialist policy. However, this policy is not in the interest of the average
Russian citizen. And this is a forteriori the case for the citizens of the other former Soviet republics. Mongrenier spoke
in this context of an “ideology of power for the sake of power.”[32] Another French geopolitician wrote that “Pragmatism is one of the characteristics
of the Russian foreign policy of our early twenty-first century: a pragmatic quest
for power characterized by coercive methods and an absence of morals.”[33] “Power for the sake of power,” “absence of morals”: it is clear that we have here a legitimation theory: it is the old social Darwinism of the end of the nineteenth
century, the right claimed by the strong to dominate the weak for the sole reason
that he is stronger.
A New Ideological Triad: Orthodoxy, the Power Vertical, Sovereign Democracy
Russia’s return to power politics had already started under Yeltsin, who demanded
from the West a droit de regard in its “Near Abroad,” which came close to reestablishing the old Brezhnev doctrine
of “limited sovereignty.” The West, however, did not give in to these demands. An
overt neoimperial policy would also contradict the liberal democratic principles that
Russia at that time still claimed to share with the West. Under Putin the principles
of Russian democracy have been fundamentally changed. Russia no longer adheres to
a Western-style liberal democracy with fair elections and the alternation of power.
It has introduced “sovereign” democracy. This concept, forged by Vladislav Surkov,
Putin’s former deputy head of the presidential administration, means that “democracy”
is no longer a universal concept, the reality of which can be measured by applying
universal criteria that are valid in different countries. On the contrary, “sovereign”
democracy means that Russia (i.e., the leadership) itself can determine whether its
system fulfills the democratic criteria. The regime is, therefore, immune against
criticism from international organizations, foreign governments, or human rights organizations.
We are here back at the “Russian specificity,” proclaimed in the nineteenth century
by Russian Slavophiles, for whom Russia was a special and incomparable country with
its own, unique nationhood (narodnost). Initially, Putin’s “sovereign democracy” was only conceived as a defensive concept against the universalist, Western interpretations of democracy, which made
the Russian democratic praxis vulnerable to criticism. Recently, however, sovereign
democracy has become an offensive concept in the ideological war with the West. Russia considers itself the vanguard
of an anti-Western alliance of sovereign democracies (read: autocracies with pseudo-democratic
façades). A second pillar of the new Kremlin ideology is the “power vertical,” a euphemism
for an authoritarian top-down government. These two pillars are complemented by a
third ideological pillar, which is the Orthodox religion, which has been given a prominent
place by the regime in recent years. Surprisingly, this new ideological triad closely
resembles the famous nineteenth-century triad Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Narodnost of Sergey
Uvarov, the Minister of Education of the reactionary tsar Nicholas I. Orthodoxy has
regained its former status of semistate ideology. Autocracy has found its modern translation
in the “power vertical,” and Narodnost, expressing a unique Russian specificity, has
become “sovereign democracy.” These have become the three ideological pillars of Russia’s
internal policy. They combine seamlessly with the renewed social Darwinism of Russia’s
foreign policy. Yury Luzhkov, the former mayor of Moscow, wrote:
