Сергей Медведев - The Return of the Russian Leviathan

The problem for the Russian political class is that it lives exclusively in the past. It sees international policy wistfully within the framework of some sort of ‘Yalta Agreement’, or even ‘the Congress of Vienna’; and internal policy in an even more ancient way – within the framework of the Peace of Westphalia of 1648, which brought an end to the Thirty Years’ War, and for the first time recognized the state as sovereign within its own borders. The Russian elite does not want to acknowledge that ‘Westphalia’ ended long ago. States no longer control global flows; they share their authority with transnational organizations. It is no wonder that Krasner calls absolute sovereignty ‘hypocrisy’ and compares it to a Swiss cheese: full of holes.

If we take even the most basic meaning of the word ‘sovereignty’ from any political dictionary, it means the independence of the state in domestic and foreign policy. But what sort of independence can we talk about when Russia is dependent on Siemens to provide electricity to Crimea; on Romania for the Deputy Prime Minister to fly over Moldova; on America for all of its foreign policy; and on Ukraine for its domestic agenda? In actual fact, Russia’s foreign policy is nothing more than an agonizing and deep dialogue (with overtones of Freud or Dostoevsky) with America about spheres of influence, great power status and ambitions. And it is a dialogue that turns into a monologue about wounded pride. The obsession of the Russian authorities with the US elections; the childishly naive battles with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton; the vaudeville romance with Donald Trump; the attempts to interfere like an awkward bear in the American elections: these are all signs of the hopeless, pathological and psychological dependence of Moscow on Washington.

In the same way, Russia is dependent on a fragment of its empire, which has broken away: Ukraine. Russia has built its whole external and internal agenda on the demonizing of the Ukrainian Maidan, filling the air time on television and radio with endless talk shows about Ukraine, turning the Ukrainian agenda into an internal Russian one in such a way that, if Ukraine suddenly disappeared, Russia would be left hanging in the air and would crash to the ground. All this indicates that Russia simply does not have its own agenda or its own policy. These are just sporadic reactions to external irritating factors, an inability and a lack of desire to accept the world as it is and acknowledge its own dependence on this fact.

To understand its situation better, the Kremlin should look at those who have gone even further down the road of ‘sovereignty’: Iran, for example, or, even better, North Korea. Boasting about its absolute independence, North Korea finds itself in a state of total vulnerability. It lives under sanctions and under the permanent threat of a nuclear strike. The only way it can survive is by raising the stakes in a deadly game of poker; its sovereignty hangs by the narrow thread of nuclear bluff and mutual threats.

The irony of the situation is that at the root of Russia’s problems today lies this very striving for sovereignty that became the basis for Putin’s conservative about-turn. First, there was the YUKOS affair in 2003: the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the state’s capture of the largest oil company. Then there was the Beslan tragedy in 2004, when Chechen fighters seized a school and, thanks to the incompetence of the operation to free the hostages, more than three hundred children died. Putin suddenly blamed this terrorist act on the West, accusing them of trying to destroy Russia. Next there was Putin’s famous speech in Munich in 2007, in which he effectively declared a new cold war; then the war with Georgia in 2008; and after that came Crimea, the Donbass, the battle with separatism and ‘foreign agents’ in Russia, the destruction of Western sanctioned goods and the construction of a sovereign Internet. But the deeper Russia dug itself into the mud of an imagined Westphalian sovereignty, the more it lost its actual sovereignty, the independence of its foreign policy, control over its economy and society and the ability to adapt to globalization.

The key mistake in all of this was the annexation of Crimea (just like the saying: ‘This is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake’). It seemed as if Russia was strengthening its territorial sovereignty, beginning to gather in its lands; but by this action it radically blew up the nation’s independence. Four years on it is clear that Russia has lost its technological sovereignty (ask the oil men who cannot drill on the sovereign Arctic Shelf without Western technology); its sovereignty in foreign policy (by going over to a regime of confrontation with the West, every subsequent step taken by Russia narrowed down its room for manoeuvre until it hit the wall of sanctions); and even its internal sovereignty. As Krasner writes, rulers often confuse authority with control; and in Russia, while there has been a formal strengthening of the vertical of power, actual control over the economic and social situation grows weaker by the day. On closer inspection, one of the main achievements of Putin’s rule, which the propaganda constantly trumpets – the strengthening of sovereignty – is a myth.

The result of all this is the usual Russian story: however much you battle for sovereignty, you simply strengthen the authorities. Perhaps all the Kremlin was after was the strengthening of the authorities, and this striving for sovereignty was a mere ideological smokescreen to give the appearance of legitimacy? But this has the reverse effect: the more power the Kremlin holds, the less sovereignty Russia has. In the end we could have the situation where power lies just in the Kremlin, the Forbidden City, the emperor’s palace – and the country will be left to the dictates of fate. Such a situation has already occurred in Russian history. In December 1565, Ivan the Terrible left with his court, treasury, icons and tsarist regalia for the village of Kolomenskoye, and from there for the settlement of Alexandrovsk, about one hundred kilometres from Moscow. Here he founded the Oprichnina , a state within a state. In reality, the Tsar took with him his authority, leaving Russia at the mercy of the Tatars and then his own oprichniki . And when he died, the Polish-Lithuanian forces took over, as a result of which the country’s sovereignty was lost for many years, right up to the Zemsky Sobor of 1613, when the House of Romanov came to the throne. [43] The Zemsky Sobor was a type of feudal parliament, first called by Ivan the Terrible in 1549. In 1613 it elected Mikhail Romanov to the throne, beginning a dynasty which lasted until Nicholas II was removed by the Revolution of February 1917.

Sovereignty is not the tsar’s wagon train laden with icons or the president’s cortège; it is not Russian special forces, spetsnaz , in Crimea, nor military bases in the Arctic, nor a parade of Topol-M ballistic missiles on Red Square, nor a defile of ships on Navy Day in St Petersburg. It is the constant work of the authorities to improve the country, to integrate it into the wider world and have the rest of the world acknowledge this. And in this sense, the Siemens case is a warning sign for Russia: you can take over territory, clear it of undesirables, stuff it with weaponry and hold a military parade; but without turbines and international recognition, sovereignty doesn’t work. At the end of the day, Crimea ends up as that hole in the cheese which Stephen Krasner wrote about in his book.

I remember well my school-leaving ‘do’. It was in Moscow in June, in the early 1980s. My classmates and I were standing on the bank of the river, opposite where they have since built Moscow-City. [1] Moscow-City is the business district of the Russian capital, where the skyscrapers have gone up since the collapse of the USSR. The name was chosen as a direct reference to ‘the City of London’, the British capital’s business district. Back then it was a run-down industrial area, with a few small factories, warehouses and chimneys. Behind them, some distance away, you could see Stalin’s ‘wedding cakes’. [2] Stalin ordered the building of seven imposing skyscrapers of similar design, nicknamed ‘wedding cakes’, including Moscow State University, the Ukraina Hotel and the Foreign Ministry. In the post-Soviet period an eighth has been built. We were gazing on this huge, sleeping city. The early dawn had begun to creep over this vast expanse. Everything had already been said; all the promises had been made; everything had been drunk; we stood and watched in silence as the morning broke on our new life.