Сергей Медведев - The Return of the Russian Leviathan

Russian politics has passed through a Jungian revolution in which the collective unconscious, the archetype and the myth have triumphed once and for all. Having begun as trolling and political technology, the irrational has gradually burrowed its way to the very core of politics and has itself become the policy, the lens through which the Kremlin sees the world. This discourse has taken hold of the subject and brought to life a new ideological and messianic form of politics. As the political scientist Alexander Morozov writes, ‘the ideas of profit, trade, exchange, cooperation, institutional and traditional “politics of interests” – indeed, the whole discourse of Realpolitik , has given way to risk, heroism, heroic suicide and “fate”. No sacrifice, nor even the final catastrophe, will convince the initiators of such a policy of how absurd it is.’ [11] https://www.colta.ru/articles/society/2477-konservativnaya-revolyutsiya-smysl-kryma . ‘The Conservative Revolution. The Meaning of Crimea’ (in Russian), 17 March 2014.

Crimea became that very ‘fate’: the moment of truth; the focal point for all the grudges of recent years; the post-imperial resentment and the wounded pride, like in Alexei Balabanov’s film Brother 2 (‘You bastards still have to answer to me for Sevastopol!’, screams the hero at a group of Ukrainians); the thirst for revenge and the search for ‘fascists’ in the neighbouring countries; the inferiority complex (‘America can, so why can’t we?’); and the global ambitions. Crimea was where the mix of complexes and fears was satiated and proved to be the crystallization of the new Russian regime. And at one and the same time, the territorialization of the collective subconscious, which found a launchpad for itself, deep in the heroic myth of Sevastopol.

Today in the hero-city [12] A number of cities in the USSR were given the title of ‘hero-city’ because of the battles that took place there during the Second World War (or ‘Great Patriotic War’, as Russians call that part which involved the Soviet Union). Sevastopol is one such city. there’s a carnival: the main figures of this new Russian discourse strut their stuff, such as Duma deputy Vitaly Milonov, and the leader of the patriotic bikers, Alexander ‘the Surgeon’ Zaldostanov, along with Cossacks and war veterans. Alexander Prokhanov praises the Russian President to the skies as ‘Putin Taurida’, [13] The favourite of Empress Catherine the Great, Grigory Potemkin, is credited with conquering the southern territories and incorporating them into the Russian Empire, including Crimea and a region therein called Taurida. As a result, he was given the name ‘Potemkin-Taurida’. Prokhanov believes that Putin should have similar recognition for seizing back Crimea from Ukraine. and ecstatic commentators talk about ‘the beginning of new Russian conquests’. Inspired by the success of the Sochi Olympics and charged with a messianic role, Russia decided to rewrite the global rules of the game and reconsider the whole global architecture built after 1991 – and even what came out of Yalta in 1945. Sensing the West’s impotency and disunity, the crisis of leadership in America and the weakness of the European Union, Moscow decided to stake everything and throw down the gauntlet to the modern world order. At first, Russia simply criticized the West for its moral degradation, and built up its own protective barrier against homosexuals and liberals. Now, Russia has decided to spread the borders of the empire, doing so, what’s more, on the same conservative and moralistic foundations it has used to create order at home.

Will this new Russian crusade be successful? In the final analysis, it is based on a romantic myth, not on sober calculations. At its root is an irrational impulse, just like the German Blut und Boden , ‘blood and soil’, which today has brought millions of Russians out in solidarity with Crimea, but which has very few resources or institutional foundations. In contrast to Stalin’s USSR, today’s Russia does not have the army, nor the technology, nor – and this is crucial – an attractive ideology to present to the outside world, which was the case with socialism. Analogies with Iran in 1979 don’t hold water, either. Putin is not Khomeini, Patriarch Kirill is not Khamenei, and Moscow’s Orthodoxy does not have the mobilizing potential of Shiite Islam. It’s just as impossible to create Holy Rus’ in secularized, urban Russia as it is to create ‘the Russian world’ on bayonets, or to unite Orthodox civilization according to Samuel Huntington’s principle [14] Samuel Huntington was an American political scientist, best known for his 1993 theory, the ‘Clash of Civilizations’. He argued that post-Cold War, future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, and that Islamic extremism would become the biggest threat to world peace. – if, of course, you don’t count as such the gathering of the ‘age-old Russian lands’ of Crimea, Trans-Dniester, Abkhazia and Ossetia.

History repeats itself twice. What is happening today in Crimea is the final act of Russia’s imperial drama, which in a tragi-comic way is eliminating its Soviet legacy. It is somewhat frightening to observe this exorcism, when the Kremlin has breathed the cold of the grave and the spirit of the past has arisen. But this is just a wild and unrealistic chimera, shadows, a superficial simulacrum, be it of rusty Cossacks or Orthodox bikers. Right now in Russia it is nighttime; we simply have to wait for the cock to crow for the third time.

In my Moscow childhood long ago, there was a map of the world hanging in the kitchen of our flat. It hung there partly to educate me, but partly to cover up the paint that was peeling off the walls. In the upper right-hand corner, the most beautiful country in the world stood out in red. As I ate my porridge and listened to the children’s radio programme, Pioneer Dawn , [15] The Young Pioneers organization educated children between the ages of nine and fifteen to be loyal to the dictates of the Communist Party and the Soviet motherland. Most children belonged to the Pioneers. I thought how unspeakably lucky I was to have been born in the happiest and biggest country in the world; what’s more, in its capital city! And I dreamt about the future, when we would grow even bigger and stronger, and we’d probably incorporate Mongolia, Bulgaria, perhaps Romania and Hungary as well (after all, they were brotherly countries); then we could take in Afghanistan, and Alaska… Outside the window dawn had not yet broken, and huge snowflakes were falling, the kind you get only in childhood; clear children’s voices were delivering a Pioneer song on the radio, and the future looked wonderful.

Forty years have passed since then. The country creaked when it made a final imperial charge to the south, [16] The euphemism, ‘the final charge to the south’, was used by the nationalist politician, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, as the title of his book on the invasion of Afghanistan, which began at the end of 1979, and which he foresaw as ending with Soviet soldiers ‘washing their boots in the Indian Ocean’. In fact, it ended with the Soviet Army pulling out of Afghanistan in February 1989 with its tail between its legs and a legacy of disillusion and discontent, which contributed to the collapse of the USSR a little over two years later. See note 17 for a reference to Zhirinovsky. began to crack up on the Berlin Wall and finally crumbled in a cloud of dust. We Soviet citizens became used to living with new borders; we built our own states and began to visit each other. We learnt the new global rules of the game, engaged in talks about disarmament, set up new rules and institutions for ourselves, gained access to new countries and joined new markets, and opened up for ourselves a world that was much more complicated, colourful and interdependent. It seemed that we had begun to appreciate that great powers are determined not by their size, not by having hundreds of warheads and millions of square kilometres of territory, but by their GDP per capita, the openness of their society and the attractiveness of the country. It seemed as if we had cast aside our childish geopolitical romanticism and messianic dreams and were becoming a grown-up country.