Russia's Dead End: An Insider's Testimony from Gorbachev to Putin

by Andrei A. Kovalev

  On the one hand, this looked like a splendid example of cooperation in pursuit of common and noble goals. On the other hand, despite the obvious evidence of fresh and positive approaches, Schifter still lacked sufficient trust in his Soviet interlocutors and did not fully understand that in the Foreign Ministry only through such démarches were his Soviet interlocutors able to solve long-festering problems in the interest of their own country. In a confidential conversation, Anatoly Kovalev told me of his disappointment that Schifter had not asked for more.

  Meanwhile, many Western politicians were taking advantage of the developing situation in the USSR, especially after the August 1991 coup, to extract the maximum benefit for themselves without giving much thought to the long-term consequences. During Gorbachev’s perestroika a positive interaction generally existed between Realpolitik and the politics of the idealists—Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Yakovlev—but after President George H. W. Bush changed American policy in the direction of greater “pragmatism,” this positive sum game collapsed.

  With the breakup of the USSR, Realpolitik became an even stronger trend in international politics. To a large extent this was the paradoxical result of the West’s no longer having to face the critical question of how to coexist with an unpredictable Soviet giant armed to the teeth. During the periods of international détente, Western leaders behaved more decorously than they did after the breakup of the USSR. For objective reasons they had to enter into dialogue with the USSR, but they neither bowed and scraped before its leadership nor evinced friendly feelings. After the breakup of the USSR, Western leaders pursued a policy of political expediency, a derivative of Realpolitik. In this context political expediency was a poisonous byproduct of cynicism, fear, hypocrisy, and political shortsightedness. Such a policy alone allows one to support those whom, in a normal system of contacts, it would be impossible to support. Most likely one should look for the roots of political expediency in 1938 in Munich, where, to put it mildly, the shortsighted leaders of Great Britain and France demonstrated political expediency toward Hitler, who wanted to receive the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia. Everyone knows what happened afterward.

  Munich—it is precisely this shameful label that best describes the Russia policies of several Western countries. It applies to a wide range of issues, from their virtually silent acquiescence to the partition of Georgia, crimes in Chechnya, and political assassinations to their unwillingness to discuss questions of human rights and democracy with the Russian authorities. The West’s politically expedient policy of Realpolitik has already come back to haunt both it and Russia, which should not under any circumstances be confused with its rulers.

  Ironically, no matter how paradoxical it may seem, the Soviet masters behaved more decorously, too, during the Cold War than did their successors in the Kremlin. Starting with Brezhnev, the leaders during the period of stagnation, looking at the West, understood that if they behaved otherwise, that would be the end of détente.

  Unfortunately, neither history nor historians are currently very popular among politicians or voters. What is valued are technocrats and so-called pragmatists who often not only are unversed in the past and its lessons but also believe they have no need for advice from experts in those fields. The result is that what they do is grounded in myths and incompetence rather than in realities, and it cannot be considered politics.

  Conclusion

  In 2007 I left government service. As I had predicted, the situation in Russia had worsened. After Putin came to power, it became impossible to influence what was going on. I was not surprised. My political career with its peaks and valleys of activity and effectiveness stretching over four periods of national history—the period of stagnation, the changes of Gorbachev’s perestroika, the Yeltsin years, and the rise of Putinism—had prepared me for this. My family’s upheavals and historical education sharpened my intuition regarding events in Russia.

  Much had happened in that time, but everything pointed in one direction: the Putin regime’s attempts to do everything possible to return the country to the past had already resulted in a complete fiasco. Let us not forget that even the crumbling USSR was objectively much stronger than contemporary Russia, which has been weakened not only by the fatal errors of the past but also by the complete madness of Putin’s policies.

  The political lunacy had already begun under Yeltsin. It was then that the foundation was laid for the unprecedented power of the special services. It was then that preparations began to revive the imperial monster. It was then that the dictatorship of a systematic ideology again crawled out into the open. It was then that undesirables began to be eliminated, both physically and morally.

  It was under Yeltsin that the foundations for a new Russian imperialism were constructed. As noted previously, one of the main instruments for this was the so-called policy of “defending Russian-speaking people.” The partition of Georgia was in preparation long before it actually occurred. The same operation took place with respect to Ukraine, Moldova, and other post-Soviet countries.

  The rebirth of the reactionary ideology of Nicholas I’s era—namely, Russian Orthodoxy, autocracy, and narodnost’—also occurred under Yeltsin. The last of these concepts, which is essentially untranslatable into other languages, requires some explanation because its meaning is especially political in this context. From the very beginning to the present, it has meant the rejection of anything foreign; a sort of “special Russian path”; and some sort of mystical and, even more, mythical unity of power, religion, and the people on the basis that the Russians—“God’s chosen people”—have the only “true” religion, traditions, and customs and, therefore, stand above all other peoples. In other words, it represents a dense xenophobia that rejects the value of human individuality, rights, and freedoms, as well as other universal values. It was precisely narodnost’, sometimes glorified by politicians as a “collective mentality [sobornost’],” that served in Rus’ as the rationalization for crimes committed by those in power against the individual, including, for example, Stalinist collectivization. It also serves as justification for the phony populist demagogy on which the semblance of democracy is based. Narodnost’ has become especially popular under Putin, although the special services prepared the ground for this starting from the time of Gorbachev’s perestroika. The other elements of this triad are much simpler. After the collapse of the USSR, Russian Orthodoxy became the de facto state religion, and the president became an autocrat.

  It is doubtful that Yeltsin himself was aware of much of what was happening on his watch. One may suppose with a high degree of probability that during his presidency the links between cause and effect were largely broken.

  The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Russians, unfortunately, suffer from defective vision, including historical vision, as well as infantilism.1 This is precisely why they accepted, and many even welcomed, the loss of their own rights and freedoms. Is it not revealing that during the May Day celebrations in 2014, many marchers carried portraits of Stalin and Beriya? Is it not a national catastrophe that the overwhelming majority of Russia’s people was overjoyed by the dismemberment of Georgia and especially of Ukraine? Russia again fell victim to the situation Alexander Herzen, the great nineteenth-century Russian writer and critic, described: the entire society seemed to be infected by the disease of imperial patriotic syphilis. In Herzen’s day this was a reaction to Russia’s brutal suppression of the Polish uprising of 1863 in which the people demanded reforms, democratization, and independence.

  The symptoms of the chronic illness of the Russian people and its rulers became much more acute following the start of Russia’s undeclared war against Ukraine, including its annexation of Crimea in 2014. The concrete actions of the Russian authorities in pursuing an opportunity to conduct their insane foreign and domestic policy are merely details. The main thing is that Russians accepted it uncomplainingly and even enthusiastically.

  Until recently to say and, even more, to write t
hat the Cold War is again gaining strength after a brief intermission would have been almost indecent, since this would have contradicted generally accepted views. It makes sense only now, when Russia has demolished de facto the entire system of international security. Having failed to take note of Russia’s Cold War–inspired policies—policies that Moscow itself spoke of quite openly but about which the West did not want to hear—the West, to its own surprise, finds itself at a red line, a line that the Putin regime has long since crossed.

  The same situation exists when attempting to explain that Russia is now experiencing a new period of stagnation. It has become clear that this neo-stagnation has already transmogrified into a dictatorship of a systematic ideology to which the overwhelming majority of Russians have submitted. As an omnipresent mind-set, this national catastrophe is worse than all the preceding ones. After getting a taste of freedom, Russia has renounced it of its own free will and opted instead to establish a new satrapy.

  As soon as Putin was appointed the “successor,” I realized the futility of hoping for a democratic path of Russian development. My intuitive perception of this badly brought up, poorly educated, dull Chekist with the demeanor of an underworld thug tallied with information I possessed as an official on Russia’s Security Council. He habitually lied, took decisions that made no sense, and did everything he could to crush the buds of democracy. Naturally I considered it impossible to take part in what was going on. Although I consciously distanced myself step by step from real power in Russia starting in 2001, it was only in 2007, by emigrating, that I was finally able to complete this process.

  The reasons for this probably can be understood from what I have already written, but they may be summed up as the crushing defeat of the ideals and values—hopefully a temporary defeat—to which more than one generation of my family, including this writer, was devoted. To a high degree this defeat was concisely expressed in Putin’s speech of February 10, 2007, at the Forty-Third Munich Security Conference; however, his speech was simply just another routine Cold War declaration. His choice of Munich as the venue for delivering this extremely confrontational speech imparted an especially sinister meaning to the phrase New Munich. Was this choice of venue dictated by Putin’s idiosyncratic sense of humor?

  In any case, I remember that in Munich, Putin expressed terrible sadness about the dominating factor of force in international relations and about the disregard for international law. He also decried the fact that “in international relations more and more frequently one encounters the striving to resolve one or another question, arising from so-called political expediency, grounded in current political competition”; that “no one feels secure any longer”; and that NATO and the United States, in the first place, threaten Russia’s security. And he raised one more extremely important factor: according to Putin it is becoming impossible to resolve conflicts through political means. As the saying goes, “It takes a thief to know a thief,” as this factor became fully evident with Russia’s aggression first against Georgia and then against Ukraine.

  In Munich, in language that everyone understood, Putin yet again enunciated a policy of revanchism and Cold War. Those who did not want to hear his words have only themselves to blame.

  Russian history is full of bad and even criminal rulers. But as Pyotr Chaadaev wrote, nations are moral beings just like individual persons. In the first half of the nineteenth century, he complained that “among the saddest features of our distinctive civilization, . . . we still only discover truths that others find trite,” and that “standing as it were outside of time, we are untouched by the world-wide education of the human race.” Naturally he could not have foreseen that his conclusions would come true in Russia almost two hundred years later. Alas, the age-old slavishness of the Russian people, or their submission to power—many love to praise it, calling it long suffering—has brought on another catastrophe. The overwhelming majority of Russians dare not even think of challenging the authorities, let alone overthrowing them. The most they hope for is to weasel something out of them. This fully applies to many of the “leaders of the opposition.” It is precisely such passivity on the part of the people that makes the situation so hopeless.

  As a result of the symbiosis between the openly criminal authorities and the subservience of a people hypnotized by the power of the contemporary mass media, Russia again presents an indisputable danger to itself and to those around it. Apart from imperialism and revanchism, the greatest risks stem from the mentality of most of the inhabitants of the country.

  But let us return to Chaadaev’s diagnosis of infantilism. Among the characteristics of infantilism is a striving to receive something desired without making any effort, a confidence in one’s impunity, an unshakable conviction of one’s own rightness, a disinclination and inability to get along with others and to take their interests into account, an unwarranted cruelty, and an aggressiveness raised to the level of absolute egocentrism. All of these characterize the content and style of contemporary Russian domestic and foreign policy. Its xenophobia not only refers to its fear or hatred of other countries, peoples, cultures, and religions but often also perceives as inimical everything that is not “ours”—that is, even persons from other towns, to say nothing of persons holding other political views. Regrettably, the concept of tolerance is alien to contemporary Russia.

  The combination of a slavish psychology, infantilism, and xenophobia is already a danger in itself. But its danger grows immeasurably from the age-old messianism that has been inculcated into many generations and has grown particularly acute from the time of the Bolshevik coup. These factors all became the main ingredients of the explosive mix of the new Russian imperialism. The lack of any popular check on the authorities, on the one hand, and the people’s heightened suggestibility, on the other, enable Moscow’s sovereigns to engage in any kind of adventures they please.

  As a result of massive impoverishment, demagogic juggling of democratic slogans, and concentrated lies from the authorities, a large majority of the population developed a strong allergy to democracy. Growing nostalgia for the “good old days” guaranteed the popularity of tough approaches and actions, including the use of force, both domestically and abroad. In the absence since then of any influential independent mass media, the authorities have enjoyed an unchallenged ideological monopoly. In these conditions, the likelihood of a democratic evolution in Russia was so slight that it could not even be seriously considered for the foreseeable future.

  Speaking of the will-o’-the-wisp of democratic prospects for Russia in the foreseeable future, it is appropriate to turn to an article by Yury Afanasyev, one of the leaders of the democratic movement in Russia in the perestroika period.2 He believes that “as before, our people have not become a people that is a subject of history, but have remained a people that is a mass, a crowd in history.” In this connection, Afanasyev notes “contemporary Russia’s reversion to its old ways, its return to the Russian and Soviet rut,” which he characterizes as “repetition, unchangeability, centuries-old structural stability—this constantly changing immutability.” Integral components of this rut are “Russian Orthodoxy, messianism and expansionism, people’s habits, and their world view.” These “components, constantly interweaving, mutually interacting, changing (sometimes to the point of becoming unrecognizable) created that very same ‘Russian rut’ which we seem to have fallen into today.” Here Afanasyev clarifies his point: “Actually, if one takes a closer look, for us ‘to return’ really means to wind up at a place from which we never departed.”

  The gloomy picture Afanasyev paints points to the impossibility of a truly democratic evolution of Russia in the foreseeable future, one not “bestowed from above.” What would be needed is some sort of break from continuity, from constructing the “Third Rome,” and from messianism and other attributes that, unfortunately, are inherent in Russia.

  The pas de deux of many oppositionists with the Russian authorities, along with several other aspe
cts of their conduct, raises the question as to whether any democratic opposition as such really exists in Russia. Under the name of “opposition,” haven’t the special services been taking active measures since the time of Gorbachev? One cannot exclude this possibility especially since, to put it mildly, many of the “opposition leaders” seem unconvincing. I am referring to the obvious, or thinly disguised, agents of the special services. But there are more serious grounds for considering such an assumption about the opposition as a serious working hypothesis. None of the so-called opposition leaders aspires to presidential power. Moreover, none of them has even the hint of a program; the slogan “Russia without Putin” is not a program. A slogan is just a slogan, not something that entails any concrete action. I will stick my neck out and conjecture that for a long time the opposition politicians have only been playing at opposition, and some among them have been doing this from the beginning in order to create the appearance of a political struggle in Russia.

  In contemporary Russia not even the germs of a civil society exist, thanks to the efforts of its rulers. The within-system dissidents who really made a decisive contribution to hopes for the democratic development of the country have been replaced by a mediocre semblance, a sort of ersatz “within-system opposition,” that seeks neither power nor any serious changes in domestic and foreign policy.

  It would be wrong to overlook or to disparage the actions of those people who are motivated by notions of conscience, honor, dignity, justice, and the interests of the nation and its inhabitants. Among all age groups and members of various professions, more than a few people act according to the famous motto “Do what must be done, and let the chips fall as they may.” It is unfortunate that acting with the means available to them, they rarely attract any attention. The martyrology of victims of the Russian authorities is far from complete and by no means limited to well-known persons, however, especially because in contemporary Russia even elementary personal and professional decency frequently stands out as a meritorious deed.