To Russia, with scepticism

Fifteen years after the demise of the Soviet Union and the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet-style communist regimes in Eastern Central Europe, there exists a sufficient time perspective to assess some of the more complex consequences of the end of the Cold War.

While most post-communist countries in Eastern Central Europe were able to undergo a more or less successful transformation to democracy and market economy, this is not the case of Russia. Much of the current commentary on Russia is focussed on the personality of Putin, sometimes juxtaposed to that of Yeltsin: but this is superficial and overlooks some of the systemic challenges facing Russia.

Coming out of communism, Russia had to undergo a four-fold transformation, and the ability to carry out these changes simultaneously was obviously difficult, especially as the steps to be undertaken for one facet of transformation were sometimes opposed to those necessary for some of the others. These were: a political transformation, an economic one, a dismantling of an empire and the creation of a nation-state. Other post-communist countries had to undergo only the first two.

Let us start with the two last items - the end of an empire and the creation of a nation-state.

The imperial nature of the Soviet Union was not an outcome of its ideology, but of the heritage left by the Czarist Empire.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, one of the institutional expressions of its political disintegration were the national movements in several of its republics - primarily the Baltic republics as well as Georgia - which used the relative liberalisation and electoral opportunities offered by Perestroika to bring to power national movements ultimately aimed at independence.

The quasi-federal structure of the Soviet Union, mostly a sham under communism, became an effective vehicle at the hand of these "National Fronts", and under these conditions, democratisation led almost necessarily to secession. When the Soviet Union ultimately collapsed, it was not only the one-party state which collapsed - but the country itself: hence the 15 successor states to the one Soviet Union.

But this was not the end of the story, as various ethnic and religious minorities exist also within the boundaries of Russia proper, or more accurately, the Russian Federation.

The national liberation war of the Chechens - which has deteriorated into a ghoulish mixture of nationalism, violent terrorism, Islamic fundamentalism and sheer banditry - is a legacy of both the Czarist imperial project in the Caucasus and the Soviet system which granted the Chechens an autonomous republic within the Russia Federation.

Similar secessionist potentialities, based on ethnic and religious identities, exist in other regions of Russia, and the brutality with which Moscow is trying to suppress the Chechen insurrection is obviously grounded in the understanding that if the Chechens secede, then Russia's territorial integrity will be threatened in other autonomous republics: the first signs are already evident in neighbouring Ingushetia and in Daghestan.

The war in Chechnya has obviously had far-reaching consequences for the chances of internal democratisation and political liberalisation in Russia, and so much of the (weak) liberal voices opposing Putin see the war in Chechnya as a litmus test for the future of a liberal Russia. On the other hand, it is the war which helps mobilise support for a "strong leader" among the majority Russian ethnic population.

The reverse of this coin is the fact that Russia has never been a nation-state: unlike countries like Poland or Hungary, which, in the absence of Soviet rule, could revert to the historical heritage - real or imagined - of their national state traditions. Such a tradition does not exist in Russia.

While both in Czarist Russia and the Soviet Union ethnic Russians were dominant, the multi-national imperial nature of both systems was evident: in the Czarist period much of the bureaucracy was run by ethnic Germans from the Baltic, and the Soviet system was - at least at its inception - run by an elite in which non-ethnic Russians (Georgians, Jews, Poles, Armenians) were predominant.

Today, Russia still has to find its own identity - something complicated by the fact that the Russian language has two terms which are then loosely translated as "Russian" in other languages: "Russki", which means ethnic Russians, and "Rossisski" which means those who live within, or under, the Russian state.

The last few years have seen extremely fierce debates about such questions as: can Russian writers of Jewish origin "really" be viewed as Russians, i.e. Russki? Recent remarks by Putin about "immigrants", mainly non-ethnic Russians from the other republics of the former Soviet Union, play up to this xenophobic strain in Russian public opinion, which is still groping for a definition of the identity of the state.

To this specific Russian problem are added the fundamental differences in both the political and economic traditions of Russia as compared to other post-communist countries in Eastern Central Europe.

While none of the post-communist countries, with the exception of Czechoslovakia, had been a consolidated democracy prior to 1939 or 1945, they all had representative and liberal traditions embedded in their institutions, social structures and self-understanding. Russia lacked these structures. There was very little in Russian historical traditions and memory (again: both real and constructed) on which a Russian liberal and democratic state could be built: no historical representative institutions, no ingrained traditions of tolerance or pluralism.

Part of Yeltsin's failure had to do with the fact that parliamentary traditions, a multi-party system, a free press - in other words: the ingredients of civil society - were totally lacking in Russia.

Yes, there were Russian liberal intellectuals in the 19th century (the "Westernises"), but they were weak and sometimes tainted with the foreign provenance of their ideas - and successfully confronted by the "nativists" or populist Slavophiles. And when "Westernises" looked for role models, they could come up only with Czar Peter I, whose modernisation meant an attempt to bring Russia up to the standards of European absolutist monarchies.

No wonder that the picture which adorns Putin’s presidential office is that of Peter "The Great". The chaos into which Yeltsin's regime disintegrated was not just due to his personal inadequacies, but had deep roots in the lack of a legitimate institutional memory ("a usuable past"), which was so helpful in the historical nation-states of Central Eastern Europe.

A quick word about the economic aspect: while Central Eastern European countries had an independent peasantry and some burgher traditions, this too was lacking in Russia.

The emancipation of the serfs in the l860s did not really create a robust land-owning peasantry, and brutal Soviet collectivisation put an end to whatever independent peasantry managed to emerge before 1917.

Poland and Hungary under communism did try collectivisation after 1947, but this was quickly abandoned: so when they emerged from communism, these societies already possessed a private sector.

Likewise, petty commerce and manufacture were allowed under "goulash communism" in Hungary and similar arrangements in Poland and Czechoslovakia, greatly facilitating the transition to a market economy. As one Russian entrepreneur said: for capitalism you need capitalists. Eventually, the only ones to emerge in Russia were the so-called oligarchs, i.e., former apparatchiks who managed to rob the public ownership system by turning it into their own fiefdoms

Last and not least: while there were dissidents in the Soviet Union, the transformation initiated by Gorbachev was ultimately a bureaucratic reform from above: there was no Russian Solidarnoœæ, no Carta-77, no Magyar Democratic Forum - nor did there appear a Russian Lech Wa³êca or Vaclav Havel.

It was into this vacuum that Putin - and the whole military-cum-security-services bureaucracy - moved. The catch-word of "saving Russia" was not a hollow claim. But the system which they consolidated - “authoritarianism with human face”, if one may be allowed that simile - may help keep Russia together and emancipate its economy from the robber barons: but it will not create a liberal, democratic country, nor will it give rise to a market economy.

The system's hallmarks: a mild authoritarian system - more manipulative than oppressive - coupled with a state-controlled, though not necessarily state-owned, economy seem to be the only feasible alternatives to the chaos, corruption and disintegration which characterised the 1990s in Russia.

On the international arena, we have witnessed in the last few years a reassertion of Russian power: critical towards the United States on Iraq, often playing the European Union against the US, unwilling to go along with the US and EU on Iran, reaching rapprochement with China and attempting to regain some influence in the Middle East.

These moves, coming after almost a decade of pliant and self-effacing foreign policy, have sometimes given rise to the notion that under Putin, Russia is trying to re-build the role the Soviet Union held during the Cold War: "Is the Cold War Coming Back?"

This is the wrong-heading. The Soviet Union is dead, and so is Soviet foreign policy, and neither can be resuscitated. But Russia as a major player is back - yet the two are fundamentally different.

The Soviet Union was a unique phenomenon in international relations. It was on one hand a super power, endowed with the usual characteristics that go with that status: extensive territorial expanse, preponderant military power, a nuclear arsenal and a ring of client states. Yet beyond this, it was also a bearer of a revolutionary and transformative ideology which provided it with agents and supporters in virtually every continent and almost every country in the world.

Communist and other revolutionary movements, especially in developing countries, looked to Moscow as their model and supporter, and Moscow viewed them as allies. This combination of a Great Power and a revolutionary ideology has not been seen on the international scene since the French Revolution: but then it was short-lived and soon to disappear, and in any case was basically a European, and not a global phenomenon.

In the case of the Soviet Union, in Africa and Latin America, in South-East Asia and the Middle East (even in Western Europe, but less so), the Soviet Union had internal ideological allies, sometimes involved in guerilla warfare, sometimes in all-out wars. It was this which then motivated the Cold War ideology and made the slogan of "defending democracy" such a powerful vehicle in the West. The Cold War was not only a strategic struggle but also a war of ideas.

Nothing of the sort comes out of Russia now. Putin has succeeded in projecting an independent and robust foreign policy, currently also underpinned by the role of Russia as a major energy supplier.

But this newly re-asserted Russian stance is pure old-fashioned power politics. There are no dreamers in South American or African jungles hoping to establish a New Jerusalem, modelled on Moscow, in their own societies; there are no Arab or Turkish intellectuals hoping to establish in their countries a Putinesque regime, nor are there oppressed peasants anywhere trying to establish a local utopia based on the way Russia handles its social problems.

For all the critique one occasionally hears in the West of Russian brutality in Chechnya, no one is arguing that this jeopardises the purity of its ideological credentials or diminishes the belief of anyone anywhere in the justice and redemptive power of the Russian political system.

By the same token, nobody in Moscow is plotting a worldwide movement to topple Western regimes and replace them by governments more friendly to the ideas of Putin and Co. And no economists anywhere are arguing that the economic policies of Russia are the key to the salvation of world poverty or injustice.

In other words: yes, Russia is re-asserting its power, but as a net Great Power. It is a large country, whose geographical expanse gives it legitimate interest in what is happening in quite a number of neighbouring countries; it is a major nuclear power; it is a veto-wielding member of the UN Security Council; it is using the energy market as a vehicle for enhancing its international clout - but as this happens, it becomes more and more intertwined into the global economic system, and does not even dream of suggesting an alternative one.

Yet while Russia is a strong state, and should be treated with the respect this brings about, it is also a weak and underdeveloped society, with an economy which is dependent on extraction, not production. This puts it again in a unique position - so different not only from the US, but also from China and Japan.

The ten-year period of the eclipse of Russia as an international power is over. But there is no return, nor will there be, to the unique nature of Soviet power. Neither will there be an upswing in the democratisation chances of Russian society. It is a new Russia - totally different from the Soviet Union, but also totally different from those who hoped to discern in it the proof for their triumphalist ideology of the End of History.