IRRI-KIIB  - Seminar Address

The notion of security – the subject of this seminar – has many aspects: political, military, economic, and now people speak more and more of the energy aspect. However, the entire range of security-related issues rests on the psychological state of society and its elite. It is this state that determines the perception of threats and dangers, while the perception determines, in turn, the country’s policy. Therefore it is very important to know the peculiarities of the present stage in Russia’s historical development.

When Vladimir Putin described the collapse of the Soviet Union as the biggest geopolitical disaster of the 20th century, the reaction of the West was very indignant. I think the West misinterpreted Putin’s words as a wish to revive the fallen empire. In fact, the president only stated that the disappearance of the once-single state had brought about geopolitical and mental changes of a scale that we are yet to realize and assess. This refers, above all, to the former metropolitan country – Russia.

Fifteen years ago, the world in which the Russian citizens lived experienced a double shock.

First, there collapsed the paternalist social system which had for decades instilled total collectivism in Russian society and eradicated private initiative, offering instead a low yet guaranteed standard of living. Such problems are not unique to Russia; other states, too, have had to overcome consequences of Communism. Yet it was in Russia that the principles of the planned organization of society were rooted the deepest.

Second, which was an even more important change, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, which was the successor to the 300-year-old Russian Empire, Russia – actually for the first time in its history – began to build a nation-state. In the previous centuries, since the end of the 18th century, when nation-states emerged and strengthened in Western Europe, Russia had been following a different path – it consolidated its multinational and multicultural empire. The empire’s collapse in 1917 did not result in a change of the paradigm, as those were the times of rampant colonialism throughout the world.

The Russian democratic movement of the 1980s-early 1990s, led by Boris Yeltsin, followed the slogans that were adopted by national democratic movements in Eastern Europe and other Soviet republics. They proclaimed their wish to free themselves from the Communist empire. But whereas for those countries and republics the anti-imperial claims were essentially their goal, for Russian politicians they were only a means: they sought not to destroy the great power, but to get rid of the Communist government. However, when they achieved the desired result, they found that their familiar and natural country no longer existed. It is not accidental that my fellow compatriots still view June 12, Day of Russia’s Independence, as a most weird holiday. On that day, in 1990, the Supreme Soviet of the Russian Federation adopted a declaration of state sovereignty. Sovereign from what? From itself? From the Soviet Union, where the Russian Federative Republic had always felt sovereign?

According to public opinion polls, conducted by the Yuri Levada Center, sixty-two percent of the Russians regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, while 50 percent are confident that the collapse could have been avoided. Only 29 percent are happy about the present borders of the Russian Federation; 20 percent would like their country to be restored within the borders of the U.S.S.R.; another 17 percent would like the restoration of the Soviet Union minus the Baltic States; and 23 percent would welcome any territorial gains. Two-thirds of the Russians feel offended with other former Soviet republics for various reasons.

World history does not know examples of a state giving up its imperial status easily and painlessly. Various countries, such as Great Britain, France, Portugal and Austria-Hungary, faced similar problems; now it’s Russia’s turn to address them. I do not think that people of Belgium, which followed a similar path, need to be explained how difficult it is for a country to change its national identity. In Russia, problems of the transition period are aggravated by the fact that this country needs not just to change its identity but to build it anew. Moreover, the Russians are building their sovereign nation-state in the epoch of globalization, amidst the general instability of international relations, when the very principle of sovereignty and nation-states is eroding universally. No wonder that the Russians have a particularly keen feeling of vulnerability and strongly react to outside dangers, real or imaginary.

Russia and developed states in the West are actually in different time zones, implementing different agendas and having different views of the reality. Russia’s political thinking is of a strongly pronounced geopolitical nature, and many events are seen from Moscow quite differently than, for example, from Brussels. The European Union has always resolutely denied there is a geopolitical element in its policy. But try to look at the European Union of the early 21st century from the point of view of classical geopolitics, which is so dear to the Russian political thought. For example, if we look at it from the point of view of Otto von Bismarck, who gathered together the German nation-state with an iron hand, the result would be striking. We would see an expansionist empire of a new type which is slowly yet steadily driving Russia out of its traditional sphere of influence, seeking to create a buffer zone on Russia’s border and impose its own views, norms and rules on the Russians. Worse still, this entity openly declares that it does not know where its borders lie and where its expansion will stop. The same situation with the “soft power” and promoting of democracy is perceived as sophisticated methods of outside influence. According to sociologists, 45 percent of the Russians believe in the existence of a global conspiracy against Russia, while 39 percent do not. Over the last five years, the number of Russians supporting a rapprochement between Russia and NATO has decreased almost by half (from 48 to 26 percent). On the other hand, asked what is the greater threat to Russia – Islamic fundamentalism or the United States and NATO – a majority (26 percent) named Islamic fundamentalists, while 15 percent said the main threat was coming from the West.

A recent “rating of socio-cultural thinkers,” compiled on the basis of a poll among the editors of over 30 political and literary magazines, can serve as an indicator of the intellectual atmosphere in Russia. Of the 25 leaders of the list of the brightest and most influential thinkers, 17 hold different yet strongly pronounced anti-Western views – conservative, ultra-leftist, anti-globalist, traditionalist, and statist. Until the formation of a new self-perception of both the society and the establishment is complete, the country will see danger in everything that it will consider an encroachment on its sovereignty. The reaction to actual or imaginary attempts to impose any models from the outside will be as negative.

The first of the aforementioned factors of the collapse – the destruction of the Soviet paternalist system – also has an effect on the general perception of security. Over the 15 years of the difficult transitional period, which has not been much of a success, the Russian society has moved toward individualism. However, this individualism manifests itself not in enhanced civil activity and private initiative but in mistrust toward state and public institutions. According to the Russian Public Opinion Center, an overwhelming majority of the Russians (81 percent) are confident that in case of a serious danger they can rely only on themselves and on their families, and only 18 percent believe that the authorities will ensure their safety. Of all power bodies in the country, it is only the president that enjoys a stably high popularity rating (over 70 percent), which attests not only to his personal popularity but also to the general institutional weakness of the system. According to the same public opinion poll, 43 percent of the Russians are not confident about their future. They name high prices and unemployment as their main worries.

Today’s Russia is a very rich country – thanks to the favorable situation on the world energy markets – with a poor population. According to a poll held by the Levada Public Opinion Center late last year, 77 percent of the Russians feared a further price growth and a decline in their well-being in 2006, while 52 percent feared an economic crisis and the ruble’s devaluation. The better the general macroeconomic figures, including the level of consumption and living standards, the stronger the subjective feeling of injustice and of being cheated. The annual growth in the number of Russian billionaires in the list of the world’s richest people as estimated by Forbes (in the latest edition there are 44 of them) convinces ordinary Russians that the reforms have been good only for a very small group of people.

The above is directly relevant to the subject of our discussion. In the eyes of the larger part of the Russian population, the reforms of the 1990s were caused not by the bankruptcy of the Communist system but by actions of Western nations, above all the U.S., which imposed social, political and economic changes on Russia in their own interests. Accordingly, the perception of the reforms’ results tells on the attitude toward those foreign partners with whom these reforms are associated. The Soviet past has never been given a realistic assessment.

The epoch of the 1990s, marked by cataclysms and chaos, dispelled the illusion that Russia could, like other post-Communist states, become a “normal” Euro-Atlantic country meeting the Copenhagen criteria for EU membership.

Today, in the period of economic growth and stabilization of the centralized political system, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. The unprecedented resource abundance is creating another illusion that Russia has become so strong that it does not at all need someone else’s advice and that it can act without paying much attention to other countries’ reaction. I think this illusion will soon have to be abandoned as well.

To sum up, Russia is going through a difficult stage in its development, and the transition period is far from complete. The society is not ready yet to realize its new identity, both internal and external. After the 20 years of reform, we have achieved at least one fundamental result. Russians have tried all possible models for the country’s strategic development and become disappointed with each of them: first the Soviet model which proved unviable and bankrupt; then a pro-Western liberal model which brought about a bitter disillusionment with the very idea of democracy. Finally, there was an “Asian” model of authoritarian modernization, on which many pinned much hope at the beginning of Putin’s rule. Many Russians, even those who share liberal ideas, believed that there would emerge a strong and resolute leader who would restrict democracy while at the same ensure an economic breakthrough. However, such aspirations – even if they still exist among the Russian leadership – get bogged down in the quagmire of corrupt bureaucracy. Today it is clear that we are on the threshold of the emergence of some new model, but we can only guess what it will be like.