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

It feels to me now as if all the black spots on the face of human existence are laid at Russia’s door. I can understand why. There is after all something seductive about the idea that one nation alone is responsible for the world’s problems. It allows people to forget for a moment how phenomenally complex a planet we live on and to convince themselves that if only this one nation could be brought to heel, its leader muzzled, then all would be well. It also enables them to overlook how comparatively weakened Russia really is. Sometimes I wish we really were the omnipresent, omnipotent force we are sometimes painted as being!

But this situation also means that people are afraid. A climate has emerged which means that they do not feel comfortable any more making the connections that are so sorely needed if we are to diffuse the tensions that are growing around us all the time. In 2017, we invited three prominent German writers to attend an event at the Dialogue of Civilizations in Berlin, a contemporary cultural interaction and exchange between Europe and the East under the title ‘European Comedy’. Initially they were all eager to come, but when news of their potential participation became known, a couple were summoned to the institutions they worked for and were warned against involving themselves with a ‘Kremlin propaganda organisation’. To attend, it was suggested, would prejudice their career prospects. It is an unpleasant paradox: without dialogue, the situation we are in will become ever more severe; and yet any attempts by people from the West to forge meaningful links with their Russian counterparts are treated with suspicion. Even in the US, Congressmen are afraid of talking with the Russian ambassador in case they find themselves embroiled in accusations of collusion and conspiracy.

I hate the idea that we have allowed ourselves to become so frozen by the new chill in relations between Russia and the West. Our ability to think for ourselves is under threat. It sometimes feels to me as if there are people on both sides of the divide trying to get into our brains in order to reshuffle the ideas and emotions they find there – manipulating information and filling us with propaganda in order to try and turn us into zombies who will do whatever we are ordered.

And we should never underestimate how profound an impact the messages that children are absorbing now will have on their outlook on the future. I do not want them to internalise the propaganda and the lies that have once again become common currency. If Russian children see only criticism of the West in their parents’ newspapers, if English children only hear how evil Russians are when they turn on the television, it will entrench mentalities that will take years to overcome. There is no word spoken today that will not stay lodged inside the souls of those who will lead the world of tomorrow.

There is, in my opinion, a substantial discrepancy between the beliefs of the vast majority of most countries’ populations, and those espoused by the cultural and political elites who govern them. Much of the information we have access to is controlled by a small number of people – the politicians, businessmen and newspaper editors who all frequent the same clubs, who all eat at the same restaurants – and so it tends to reflect a narrow perspective: it is rare that in either Russia or the West you will see any positive reflections on the other camp. The tone on both sides is overwhelmingly negative. And yet if you talk to men and women in the streets of the West, or of Russia, then the opinions they hold of each other’s nations diverge greatly from those articulated by the people who claim to speak in their name. This, though, is of little use if they are consistently presented with a narrative of hostility and otherness.

To me, to be able to think, to feel compassion for another, is the essential element in what it is to be human. If your interests do not extend beyond filling your belly or satisfying your lust, then you may as well be a robot or an animal – and yet I fear that our capacity to empathise is being degraded.

If I met a younger incarnation of myself in the street tomorrow I would urge him to remember always that other people inhabit very different perspectives. People’s refusal to take this into account, to ignore the fact that others possess an outlook quite different to theirs, is the source of much of the discontent and friction in the world today, and prejudices our chances of emerging unscathed from the tensions that are enveloping us.

One salient example might be the consequences of NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe. In the West this is seen as an important element in establishing collective security, but in Russia it feels like a threat.

You need to remember that in Russia we have a different relationship with history: I think perhaps we have longer memories, so we are more easily affected when current events come to resemble the past. Though our nation has been turned upside down more than once in the past century, though the Bolsheviks implemented a systematic assault on its culture and traditions, still the connection we have with the experiences of previous generations is far stronger. The West has experienced successive waves of societal and political change, with each development replacing much of what had gone before – the cord is broken. (At times this might be the result of inattention, though at others – as in the case of the Japanese government’s proposal to shut humanities departments in favour of ‘more practical’ subjects – it can be caused by a wilful impulse.)

So in England, for instance, I get the feeling that the Great Patriotic War is considered, when it is considered at all, as a long-distant triumph, like the Queen’s Jubilee or the 1966 World Cup. These events have not been forgotten, but the passage of time has rubbed them smooth. They regard them as one might a fondly remembered film. By contrast, in Russia we are still haunted by the atrocities that followed the Nazi invasion in 1941. Our territory was ravaged, towns were burnt, immeasurable cruelty meted out to those unfortunate enough to fall into German hands. The memory of these crimes still flows in our veins – it cannot be reduced to an exercise in nostalgia – so perhaps it is not so strange that we are alarmed when we see foreign tanks and soldiers ranged along our borders. (Fears that have been stoked again by the recent publication of classified documents, which reveal how little the US Secretary of State James Baker’s famous ‘not one inch eastward’ assurance about NATO expansion, which he made in a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990, was really worth.)

I do not mention this because I wish to suggest one side is worse than another – I am sure that an American could point to instances where Russia’s actions have touched deep-rooted historical anxieties – but simply to illustrate the consequences of mutual incomprehension and the failure of empathy. [24] You could argue that Russia’s adverse geography has also had its own role in shaping the Russian mentality, far more so than in other countries. The harsh conditions, the sheer remoteness of so many communities, implanted a sense of solidarity in the Russian soul. It is the distinguishing element in our psychological make-up. Without this emphasis on the welfare of the man next door to you, without this acknowledgement of the extent to which we depend on others, and thus have corresponding responsibility for them ourselves, people would simply not have survived.

In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted in his essay ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’ that, in the future, living standards in what he called progressive countries would advance to the stage where most people would have to work no more than fifteen hours a week. He believed that the population’s material desires would be met so easily that the desire to earn more money would be regarded almost as a pathological illness. Freed from the battle for survival, they would be able to devote much of their time to pleasure and self-development. He was right in some respects – we live in what people in the ’30s would have regarded as almost unimaginable luxury – and mistaken in many others.