Vladimir Yakunin - The Treacherous Path - An Insider's Account of Modern Russia

What is terrifying to me is that, while the world order – where capitalism faced communism – as we once knew it has broken into pieces, nothing has emerged in the time since that is capable of restoring any kind of stability and balance. The West wants to draw a new world map, but it does not recognise that, by doing so, it has created a set of circumstances that is already turning against it. This is partly due to the dubious relationships it has entered into. Nobody would claim that Saudi Arabia is a paragon of democracy or human rights, and yet silence prevails because the country is an important ally of the West. To my mind, that is a very dangerous precedent – a return to the kind of policy encapsulated by the comment Franklin Delano Roosevelt allegedly made about the murderous Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo: ‘He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.’

I feel a genuine sense of responsibility – to my children, to my grandchildren, to everyone I care for – to try to do what I can to de-escalate the tensions that threaten to plunge our world into chaos, but no matter how strongly one feels, it is hard for a lone voice to make itself heard. Harder still when you know that your arguments will be struck away by people who take one look at you, raise their noses into the air, and say, ‘He is Russian, he used to be in the KGB, he used to occupy a high-ranking position in Russia; whatever he is saying is just propaganda bullshit.’ This is primitive, and I cannot accept it. I can only hope that one day we will be able to change this attitude.

I cofounded the Dialogue of Civilizations, an independent NGO, in early 2002. I wanted to help create an independent organisation – one that did not belong to any country, any government, or even any single individual, and which did not have to wait for good fortune or a disaster in order to be able to encourage meaningful communication between nations. It was also, at least in part, a response to Professor Samuel Huntington’s influential book The Clash of Civilizations , which had been published six years previously. He suggested that increased contact between Western nations and the Islamic world would lead only to increased tension and confrontation. We felt as if we wanted to propose a different kind of programme for the future of human interaction. We wanted to use the Dialogue of Civilizations as an instrument to replace the harsh words that have become diplomacy’s currency, to replace conflict with conversation.

Too much is made of difference, and not enough of the many values we share. It is bizarre that people draw a fault line between Orthodoxy and the other Christian confessions, when in fact they have far greater cause to be united than divided. That is the emphasis we wanted to find in the Dialogue of Civilizations: communication founded on what we have in common rather than on what sets us apart.

Our aim is that every civilisation, whether large or small, is represented, and that they should all have an equal voice. Although we aim to identify and foster common values, we know that standardisation is not possible, nor is it desirable. We know that it is important to view world events without prejudice and to acknowledge that we are different: we have different cultures, different histories, different tastes. This is why I cannot accept the term ‘universal values’. (Who gets to set them? Who should police them?) Human diversity is something we should celebrate if the aggressive propaganda that seeks to set neighbour against neighbour is to be resisted.

The people with whom I created the Dialogue of Civilizations – the former Prime Minister of India, I. K. Gujral, as well as the social scientist and entrepreneur Jagdish Kapur, and Nicholas Papanicolaou, an American of Greek origin who had long been an advocate of the ecumenical movement – were an early indication of the plurality of voices we wanted to encourage; our very first conference in Delhi was attended by scholars, activists and politicians from many other countries.

Others who played a significant role in the early years were the Iranian Mohammad Khatami and the Lithuanian Valdas Adamkus, both of whom were former presidents of their countries. (My friendship with Adamkus, who fought against the Soviet Union before his family fled to the United States, and then spent the next fifty years on the other side of the cold war to myself, is a good example of the virtues of concentrating on what can be achieved by working together for a better future, rather than allowing oneself to become trapped by the battles and resentments of the past.) It has evolved now into an institution that is as cosmopolitan as the United Nations, with representatives from countries including India, China, Czech Republic, Poland, Cyprus, Austria and Greece.

After the attack on the Twin Towers in September 2001, our task suddenly felt more urgent. The atrocity itself and also the dangerous overreaction that followed were visceral examples of exactly what we wanted to avoid. They showed the extent to which empty rhetoric can be transformed into lethal action. The atrocity was not in itself an example of the clash of civilisations; it was an attack by a specific terrorist group, against a specific object, in a specific society. But the Western media, and many politicians, depicted these isolated events in far grander, more sweeping terms: as the embodiment of the profound antagonism that existed between two irreconcilable ways of life. Their arguments were so persuasive that they effectively became that oldest of clichés: a self-fulfilling prophecy. In this case, though, it was a cliché that has had disastrous consequences. The most tangible result of the ‘War Against Terror’ was a great flourishing of terrorism across the globe.

In the years since then, we have formed a close working relationship with the Alliance of Civilizations, a body created by the United Nations, which shares many of the same ambitions as the DOC. Like us, they recognise the benefits of offering people from different countries a way to communicate that is not mediated by the agendas of diplomats or media conglomerates.

We took another step forward in 2016 when we opened the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute in Berlin. It was, as much as anything, a recognition of the complexity of the issues facing us. Good sentiments and fine words have their place, but we wanted to ensure they were buttressed by cutting-edge research into the political, social and economic aspects of contemporary life. It has been designed as an independent body, supported by representatives from the worlds of business, politics and academia, that offers intellectual alternatives to some aspects of what one might term mainstream ideology. I would like to think that within the next few years the DOC Research Institute will be considered one of the ten or fifteen top think tanks in the world, joining the ranks of the centres of expertise whose work has a genuine influence on policy formation and academic debate. Our other central aim, one which governs every element of the DOC’s activity, remains the same: to promote dialogue among people and societies, and to try and influence states and global powers, Russia included. It is a diffuse ambition, the success of which is nearly impossible to measure, but who could honestly say that it is not a worthwhile one?

We are not against the idea of development and economic growth, or people becoming richer, but we do not subscribe to the spiritually impoverished vision that reduces man to a consumer rather than a citizen – we want to foster programmes that place morality not materialism at the centre of human identity. Over four million babies died in 2016 – most could have been saved with the right kind of medication or care. Millions of people are starving in Africa every year. How can we not stop this when the world’s GDP is worth over $75 trillion annually?