The world would benefit if ideas of ‘greatness’ were consigned to the past. Russia in particular would gain from an acceptance that the Soviet superpower is no more and that Russia needs to find a new place in the world, a role that corresponds to the real interests of her citizens who, like citizens across the globe, yearn for freedom, security and economic prosperity. Britain in the 1950s and 1960s went through the painful process of relinquishing its great power status and its old imperial dreams, finding itself a new role in global politics. If the Kremlin were to make the same leap, it would strengthen global peace and stability and would permit a new focus on the civilian economy to the immense benefit of the Russian people. Sadly, such a transformation is unlikely to happen under the current Kremlin administration.
Putin’s imperial thinking is in part explained by Russia’s history. For the last five centuries, Russia has been an empire, an agglomeration of territory invaded and swallowed up by successive tsars, then by the Bolsheviks. Empire has become Russia’s default mode; Russian people have grown used to it and come to regard it as a safeguard for national security. In the twentieth century, it encompassed the satellite states in Eastern Europe, which were seen as protection against invasion from the West.
But the world has moved on; empires are a thing of the past. Russia finds herself in thrall to an outdated system and now she must choose between the discredited past and the way of the future. To me, it seems evident that Russia must plump for the latter, for a unified nation of people of different ethnic origins, whose commonalities are more important than their differences. Such a state can exist only as a result of freedom, self-determination and the rule of law, not through compulsion and the force of arms.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a lot of ill-considered enthusiasm in the West about the rapid and trouble- free transformation of Russia into a ‘junior partner’. The West gave Russia lots of advice, but much less in terms of investment or technology. After the crisis of 1998 and the progressive disintegration of the Yeltsin regime, Western enthusiasm for helping Russia move into the twenty-first century quickly faded and was largely replaced by scepticism. Russia was seen as the new ‘sick man of Europe’, no longer worthy of interest or attention. It was an attitude that bore real-world consequences. In the early 2000s, Western governmental and quasi-governmental programmes such as the UK’s Know How Fund were shut down or refocused on Africa and the Far East. Some Western academics who had previously studied the USSR retrained as sinologists. Only those who really understood Russian history warned against writing Russia off: the Russian bear may spend long periods asleep in its den, but the longer it sleeps, the more serious the consequences.
Even those who recognised that Russia was not about to fall apart lost interest in the idea of Russian democracy. There were two streams of Western rhetoric about Russia: the ritualised speeches about the importance of Russia’s transition from authoritarianism and totalitarianism to democracy; and the informal consensus that formed at the end of the 1990s that however much you feed the Russian bear, it will always scurry back to the authoritarian forest. Even worse, there was a growing feeling behind the scenes that, actually, a bit of ‘moderate’ authoritarianism in Russia is both good for the Russian people and for the West; that a ‘moderately’ evil ruler is the best way – perhaps the only way – to keep a very evil and unruly nation under some sort of control. Such a ruler, the reasoning went, would keep Russia from rivalling the West in the struggle for the economic future; and since Russians are not suited to living in a democracy anyway, it would be useful for them to have a moderately authoritarian regime that would not frighten the West with Russia’s social abominations or provoke mass waves of emigration. Such thoughts, together with simple self-interest, played a part in the rise of Trumpism in America and Schröderism in Europe over the past two decades. If Russia isn’t going to fall apart, they suggest, then such an outcome – a sort of enlightened monarchical repression – is not a bad outcome.
