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 that 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 aspects 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.
Such deeds are always performed by those whom Putin and his gang label as “traitors to the nation” and “fifth columnists.” For now the protest movement itself has misfired. But moral-ethical protest has survived, if only among a very small part of the population. However paradoxical it may seem, one cannot dismiss the possibility that it is precisely the moral-ethical character of protest that may hold some promise for the future. Naturally, there are risks involved. A similar protest in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was infiltrated in the end by unscrupulous political adventurers whom Fyodor Dostoevsky prophetically called devils, and it led to the collapse of the country.
Speaking of the extremely unlikely possibility that Russia may take the path of democracy, it should not be forgotten that during the era of the moribund Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko, almost nobody could foresee that the end point of the trajectory of the communist dictatorship would be the democratization of the USSR followed by regime collapse. This reminder leads me to another observation.
The situation unfolding in contemporary Russia is not new. Russia found itself, if with certain important reservations, in a similar situation, usually called stagnation, during the period when Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko ruled the USSR. Stagnation possessed several distinct features: the unlimited power of a narrow circle of rulers unconstrained by the people, the disregard of domestic and international law, the Cold War, the arms race, the global opposition to democratic countries, the suppression of dissent, the constant mass hypnosis of the people regarding “successes achieved” and “hostile encirclement,” and the breakdown of civilian industry along with the buildup of military industry. The period of classical stagnation also had additional features that it shares with the current situation.
In essence, considering developments in Russia since Putin came to power—his success in establishing “stability” and constructing a “vertical of power,” on the one hand, and the sad historical experience, several aspects of which have been delineated previously, on the other—one may confidently refer to the contemporary neo-stagnation as a core element of Putinocracy. How long it will last is another question.
Although neo-stagnation is significantly different from the Brezhnev–Chernenko stagnation, the two do share many common features. This is evidenced above all by the dysfunctionality of the rulers involved, even though the two cases differ. The latter’s case of gerontocracy manifesting itself in senile indisposition, including dementia, is completely different in character from the former’s case of infantilism, which is characterized by an incomprehension of even the basics of governance and an inability and unwillingness to work. However, the consequences of both cases for Russia, its inhabitants, and the world are entirely comparable. The present authorities’ penchant for playing with power is no better than the beastly seriousness of the communist leaders.3
Another common feature of Putinocracy and classical stagnation is their ramping up of ideology; however, even here there are also profound differences. The rulers of the stagnating USSR, who mistook their dreams for reality, thought they possessed certain lofty goals and ideals. (Such people are easily and conveniently susceptible to self-deception.) While they did not even read the “holy books” of their anti-religion, they were mired in propagandist clichés and stereotypes, which, in any case, were based on their own convictions, their own experiences, their knowledge, and their lives.
The situation is fundamentally different with regard to those responsible for neo-stagnation. They have no personal experience or knowledge of what they advocate. Like little children they play at soldiers, toying with the fate of Russia and other countries. But they have an unshakable faith in the myth of the greatness of the USSR that, for them, is symbolized by Stalin, Dzerzhinsky, and their ilk. They ignore the fact that the ascent of the human spirit, the victory in the Second World War, and other achievements were possible not because of the authorities but despite them. The mythology about the “accomplishments” of the Communist Party and the Soviet government turned out to be too firmly instilled in a population rendered hapless by heterodoxy. It turns out that the current cynical authorities—a criminal class that has acquired state power and turned the Kremlin, the Russian White House, the ministries, and the federal agencies into their own property—find this mythology convenient and to their liking.
The principal warriors against the ideals of democracy and human rights—the dyed-in-the-wool xenophobes, the anti-Semites, those who hate the humanity of human beings, the morally and intellectually limited creators and products of reality who are leading Russia to political, economic, and moral ruin—did not, and do not, understand that they are the blind leading the blind along a path that ends in the abyss.
The creeping rehabilitation of the Soviet authorities’ crimes against their own and other peoples that began under Yeltsin is much more amoral and cynical than what the “true Leninists” did. After the fall of the USSR, it was more difficult not to know what had transpired than it was to know the truth.
Naturally one may explain the return to stagnation by pointing to diverse reasons, ranging from the almost total historical illiteracy of its initiators and inspirers to their deeply hidden and perverted pro-Soviet convictions. The latter version looks even more convincing in that Putin’s United Russia party in essence mimics the CPSU and that the “warriors of the invisible front”—namely, Putin and his colleagues from the “Soviet overflow” who came to power—are simply committed Bolsheviks. We should not fail to recall the professional training they underwent in Soviet times. (I say this confidently as someone who belongs to that generation.) That the authorities found the Soviet model convenient has played a large role in recent developments.
Another common feature of both classical stagnation and Putinesque neo-stagnation is the absence of a dialogue not only between society and the authorities but also among the authorities themselves. Under Putin and his puppet Medvedev, the absence of a dialogue among the authorities is much more serious than it was in Soviet times. In his diaries, Anatoly Chernyaev writes of his horror that in what was then the highest organ of power, the Politburo, there was no discussion of the most complex and critical issues. However, leaders at every level were not averse to consulting with their subordinates, who considered it normal to express their disagreements and take issue with them, defending their own points of view and not infrequently succeeding in persuading their superiors to change their minds. The same thing happened under Yeltsin, although in a different form: they simply manipulated him.
With Putin’s ascension to the throne, dialogue with the authorities ceased. “Putin never alters his decisions,” I was told by one of his former KGB colleagues in response to an attempt to correct a glaringly mistaken decision by the then acting president. Soon another thing became clear: he also didn’t need the advice of experts. As president, he didn’t spend more than fifteen minutes a day reading documents.4 According to the journal Russkii newsweek (Russian newsweek), after Putin became prime minister, “they said that in the [Russian] White House there was simply no such format: Putin, the chairman of the Council of Ministers, i.e. the prime minister, worked on the documents by himself. He came to a meeting for 15–20 minutes, met with [Vice Premiers Igor] Shuvalov, and [Aleksei] Kudrin, chaired the meeting, and left. . . . A swimming pool and two banquet halls were constructed on the fifth floor [the prime minister’s floor],” one of the prime minister’s subordinates confirmed, “and there the flies flew about.” At the time the report was published, apart from President Medvedev, the only persons with direct access to Putin were Vice Premiers Igor Sechin and Kudrin.5
During Yeltsin’s presidency, chaos reigned in the practice of personnel appointments. Chernyaev was indignant about the insecurity of personnel appointed to positions during the Brezhnev era. Appointments and tenure in office were a “function of the supreme leader’s personal sympathy or antipathy.”6 This practice returned under Yeltsin. Putin succeeded in extending this instability to other spheres, including business, and even to the possibility of engaging in oppositional activity. This is the most vivid confirmation of neo-stagnation in Russia. As in classical stagnation, neo-stagnation has fostered maximum growth in the role of the punitive organs, although under Putin this growth has been incommensurately larger than it was under Brezhnev, Andropov, and Chernenko.
This is how the authorities have negotiated the next formidable series of hairpin turns. Having just escaped the Leninist-Stalinist rut, they returned to it, lightly disguising this fact with the semblance of democracy. It is purely out of Yevgeny Schwartz’s The Naked King, but for now no one in Russia or abroad dares say that the king is naked.7
Neo-stagnation will last longer than the stagnation of the Brezhnev–Chernenko era. Back then people were hoping for something better; they waited for and searched for it. Now most of them are nostalgic for the past of Stalin and Brezhnev. This neo-stagnation may be the most prolonged period of mediocrity and will last until people finally tire of it and realize the terrible destructiveness of such an existence. Neo-stagnation will inevitably be accompanied by the further brutalization of domestic politics and conflict abroad. Just how far can the Russian authorities go?
Russia has long been heading toward renewed confrontation with the West. After the breakup of the USSR, clear-thinking politicians initially neutralized this tendency. Gradually their influence declined, and many of them left the political stage. Although it began much earlier, this shift became particularly clear to me when I was working in the Security Council. The rise to power of the special services made the brutalization of Russian politics inevitable. From my own experience I know just how much one’s profession, and one’s specialization within that profession, influences a person’s worldview. Even if one speaks of Russia’s diplomatic service then, for example, the Americanists, as a rule, were distinguished by their greater toughness and the Europeanists, on the contrary, by their flexibility and their inclination to seek compromises. What can one say about persons who thought in terms of threats, enemies, and confrontations? It was impossible for them to execute a sharp turn while preserving face or wearing perhaps just a mask. They needed a long period of preparation to engage the Western leaders, among other things. After winning over President George W. Bush and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi and engaging the services of Germany’s ex-chancellor Gerhard Schröder, Putin felt the moment had come for him to change his political mask.
After proclaiming its readiness to renew the Cold War, which had been overcome with such great effort, through the lips of pseudo-president Medvedev the Kremlin risked its cooperation with the European Union and NATO by playing the card of imperial ambition. In other words, it returned to the fallacious foreign policy that had led to the economic and political collapse of the Soviet Union and, ultimately, to its disintegration. Unfortunately, the Kremlin’s political calculation turned out to be right. Western leaders did not consider the dismemberment of Georgia sufficient reason to spoil their relations with Moscow. This irresponsible approach echoed in Ukraine, initiating the worst crisis in the system of international security since the Cold War.
There are several possible explanations. One is a fear of what else this enormous, enraged state, with an impaired memory and intellectually and morally underdeveloped rulers, might do. Another is the West’s dependence on Russian energy supplies. Even if these two most plausible hypotheses are true, from a moral perspective the policies of several Western states still look very dubious. Not only are their positions vis-à-vis Russia, Georgia, Ukraine, and international law at stake, but their own security and long-term interests are as well.
The stance of Western leaders who ignored the willingness of Russian authorities to destroy in an instant their normal relations with democratic countries that had been achieved through more than forty years of painstaking labor led to the crushing victory of the hawks over the doves in the eternal struggle within Russia. As has occurred repeatedly in Russian history, this was a victory over itself, over its own people, over common sense.
The West’s pusillanimous behavior toward Russia only exacerbated the situation and gave the Kremlin a feeling of impunity. Meeting no rebuff for actions that deserved to be punished by the international community, Putin came to believe he could get away with anything. His massive persecution of oppositionists and his repressive legislation failed to provoke an adequate reaction. But the trial and conviction of the female punk rock band Pussy Riot in 2012 and, especially, Russia’s homophobic law of 2013 could not remain unnoticed. Directly or indirectly they impacted very broad circles of public opinion in the West.
Further, no one doubts that it was on the direct orders of Putin that Mikhail Khodorkovsky spent almost ten years in captivity. The tragedy of Vasily Aleksanian, denied indispensable medical assistance when he refused to give false testimony on Khodorkovsky’s trial (see chapter 6), is the acme of meanness and sadism! A similar case was that of the accountant Sergei Magnitsky, driven to his death in the notorious Moscow pretrial isolation facility Matrosskaya Tishina in November 2009. He too was refused cancer treatment; moreover, there were several indications that he had been tortured. Magnitsky’s “crime” consisted of having disclosed a scheme to embezzle funds from the state budget. U.S. senator Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) very properly proposed that those responsible for Magnitsky’s death be punished. In 2011 the U.S. Department of State prohibited the entry of sixty Russian officials connected with Magnitsky’s death. In December 2012 the United States passed a law imposing personal sanctions on persons responsible for violating human rights and the principle of the supremacy of law, among them officials of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Federal Security Service, the Federal Tax Service, the Arbitration Court, the Procurator General’s Office, and the Federal Service for Implementation of Punishment. The “Magnitsky list” was implemented in Great Britain. too. However, this action was obviously insufficient to teach Moscow a lesson.
Moscow’s reaction to even the mildest of Western criticism is difficult to describe. Within the framework of its own pseudo diplomacy, it then decided to deny its own orphans the right to be adopted by Americans in 2013. In other words, unfortunate Russian children paid a hundredfold for the utterly absurd patriotism of unscrupulous Russian politicians who turned them into hostages.
On February 27, 2015, the charismatic, truly democratic, and fearless oppositionist leader Boris Nemtsov was killed beneath the walls of the Kremlin. This area is under the intensive, round-the-clock control of the Russian special services—above all, the Federal Guard Service—consequently, nothing is possible there without their knowledge. Considering that both the Federal Guard Service and other special services report directly to the president of the Russian Federation, there cannot be the slightest doubt about who gave the order; an executioner merely carried it out. As a result of what moreover was the ritual murder of Nemtsov (Putin and his gang love infantile demonstrations!), Russia lost the most outstanding, uncompromising, authoritative, and experienced opponent of the Putin regime. (Nemtsov had held the posts of governor, minister, and first deputy premier.)
On January 21, 2016, retired High Court judge Sir Robert Owen announced the results of a public inquest by the High Court of London into the matter of Alexander Litvinenko’s death, which has been discussed earlier. On the basis of painstaking work, including secret documents from the British special services, Owen stated that the FSB was probably responsible for the murder of Litvinenko, and the operation to eliminate him was likely executed with the approval of the then director of the FSB Nikolai Patrushev and President Vladimir Putin.8 In this context one should not be confused by the word probably. The court issued a definitive decision.
Why does Russian diplomacy block the ending of bloodletting in Syria? The answer has been rather simple from the start: it does so out of the infantile fear of setting a precedent that would allow taking analogous measures with respect to Russia. President Medvedev spoke about this on February 22, 2011, when referring to the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt. “Earlier they prepared such a scenario for us, and now they will try even harder to implement it,” he said. “In any case, this scenario will not take place. But everything happening there will have a direct influence on our situation, moreover we are talking about a rather long perspective, a perspective of decades.” To this, of course, is added the striving to demonstrate Russia’s weight in international affairs. (In this connection, Western comments about Russia’s return to the role of a world power are particularly bizarre.) Naturally, both economic and geopolitical considerations also play a role. In any case, largely as a result of Russia’s senseless and irresponsible power plays, according to UN statistics from March 15, 2011, to December 10, 2013, there were 128,000 Syrians killed and more than 2 million wounded, and the whereabouts of 16,000 persons arrested by the Syrian authorities are unknown.
Invoking the pretext of the struggle against terrorism, but in reality to support the regime of Bashar al-Assad, Russia commenced the bombing of Syria on September 30, 2015. Russia refused to distinguish between the opposition to the regime and the terrorists operating on Syrian territory. The result of Russian bombing, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, was that by September 30, 2016, no fewer than 9,364 persons had been killed, among which 3,804 were civilians, including 906 children and 561 women.
The destruction by Russian warplanes on September 19, 2016, of a humanitarian convoy some six miles from Aleppo and the bombing of rebel-controlled living quarters and of hospitals located in that city must certainly be considered war crimes. Overall Russian policy in Syria should be recognized as a crime against peace and humanity.
During the Cold War, the leaders of both camps, divided by the Iron Curtain, understood very well the danger of incorrectly interpreting the intentions of the other side and, to a greater degree, even the most insignificant unpremeditated military incident between the USSR and the United States. In that context, the current deployment in Syria of S-300 and S-400 antiballistic missile systems intended to prevent U.S. strikes against Syrian objectives appears to be a flagrant provocation directed toward further, possibly uncontrolled escalation of tension in Russian-American relations. The fanning of war hysteria by the Russian authorities, their announcement guaranteeing daily bread rations in Saint Petersburg in time of war, and their assurances that all residents of Moscow will be provided underground shelters together raise questions about the intentions of the Russian authorities and their competence.
Until the recent past, extremely distressing references circulated regarding pre-perestroika Soviet foreign policy. Against the background of what is going on in Ukraine and in Syria, the exacerbation of relations with the West, unprecedented since 1966, Soviet policy during the Cold War looks comparatively rational.
The situation became significantly more complicated after the start of Russia’s intervention in Syria in September 2015. And it would seem that the sudden declaration in March 2016 about cutting back the scale of this intervention provoked many questions and conjectures about why Putinocracy considered this necessary.
It is possible, of course, that Putin wanted to end Russia’s isolation and, moreover, enter the international antiterrorist coalition as an equal member. But in that case, he did it in a very strange way—by primarily striking blows against the moderate opposition and by killing peaceful citizens, women, children. Moreover, the question arises: by doing so, isn’t Russia sustaining the Islamic State?
The results of what is taking place in Syria are tragic. And without Putin’s active support of Bashar al-Assad, the bloodletting in this country might have ended. In the five years from the start of the civil war in Syria about 470,000 people have died and about 1.9 million have been wounded. About 13.8 million Syrians have been deprived of their livelihoods. All in all, 45 percent of the population have had to leave their homes, with 4 million having left the country and 6.4 million having become internally displaced persons.
If anyone speaks of Russia’s return to the role of a world power, it is worth looking at the Syrian tragedy in a broader context. As noted, the Putin regime does not accept freedom and democracy. It despises the very possibility that a nation might freely choose its rulers or, even worse, overthrow them, especially if Putin considers them his allies. Here one may draw a parallel between Putin’s policies in Syria and Ukraine.
Moreover, Putinocracy considers the EU a hostile organization and that the best thing to do is to destroy it. Everything else is no more than hypocrisy and intrigues. This I already knew from the time I worked on the staff of the Russian Security Council, and what I have seen later on basically comports with that given inclination. In saying this, I am by no means asserting that there were not persons who initially took opposing positions as a matter of principle. Among them I can name Igor Ivanov, who was then minister of foreign affairs of Russia and opposed seeing the EU as a threat.
And now let us look at how Russia’s policy toward Syria played out in the EU.
Europe was overwhelmed by a wave of terrorism. The most notorious acts of terror took place in Paris on January 7, 2015. Twelve persons, including two policemen, were killed and 11 wounded in the offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. On January 9 a terrorist seized a kosher grocery at the Vincennes Gates in Paris and took 15 persons hostage. Four people died. The largest-scale series of terrorist acts in Paris took place on November 13, 2015. In those acts, 130 persons died and more than 350 were wounded. On July 14, 2016, Bastille Day, a nineteen-ton truck killed 86 persons and wounded 308 by driving through a crowd that had assembled on the English embankment in Nice to observe France’s national day.
There can be no doubt that the terrorist acts in Brussels on March 22, 2016—killing 31 and wounding 340—were closely connected to those in Paris. But why Brussels? The argument that many Arabs and many Muslims live there both clearly reveals racial and religious intolerance and is incompatible with a civilized worldview. The hypothesis about a conflict or even a war of civilizations looks more than doubtful in this context. We know that for a conflict to flare up, especially between cultures that until then had lived amicably together, someone had to have organized this conflict. After all these attacks are not part of a family quarrel that arose simply from a misunderstanding or the bad mood of some family member. Let us focus on the fact that, summing up, these terrorist acts were directed against democracy, freedom of speech, and religious freedom, which, incidentally, Muslims living in Europe fully enjoy. To this list, however, one must unfortunately add the issue of still extant anti-Semitism, as evidenced by the shooting at the Jewish Museum in Brussels in May 2014 and another at the Grand Synagogue in Copenhagen in February 2015.
But let us return to the facts.
As a result of the fighting in Syria, for which Russia bears considerable blame, a wave of a million refugees overwhelmed Europe in 2015. In this connection many EU countries experienced both domestic as well as inter-state problems. A split appeared in the solidarity of EU countries. And England voted to leave the EU in June 2016. The very foundations of European civilization, including humanism and the observance of international law, also came into question.
When working on the staff of the Russian Security Council, in 1997 I encountered schemes by the special services to direct Islamic extremism and Islamic terrorism against Europe and the United States under the pretext that these phenomena were supposedly purposefully created by them and aimed against Russia. Are we perhaps not witnesses to the successful implementation of these schemes? But this is just one among a number of possible and rather vague conjectures.
In any case, we possess the facts concerning Russia’s disruption of the attempt to end the civil war in Syria through diplomacy, then its military support of the Assad regime, and its deliberate or unintentional provocation of the most dangerous challenges and threats to European civilization. By taking the path of Cold War, revanchism, and high-handed rule, Russia has once more chosen a road that leads to self-destruction—to organizational self-destruction, since it is by no means a homogeneous empire, and to moral self-destruction, since the denial of what is humane in people and in politics signifies none other than the complete contempt for people on the part of Putin and his gang, as well as their dullness, their cruelty, and their greed.
As demonstrated, contemporary Russia manifests all the symptoms of slipping into a thinly disguised form of totalitarianism, which, to a high degree for that country, is a synonym for terror. Most of all it takes the form of periodic actions against persons and organizations the authorities dislike. The Russian authorities cannot permit themselves to indulge in massive repressions; but in any case, they have no need to when it suffices to intimidate those who step out of line.
Neo-stagnation may have extremely dangerous foreign policy consequences. Russia’s imperial ambitions will be further developed. Fortunately, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, which are the objects of the Kremlin’s special hatred, are protected by membership in NATO and the European Union, but other post-Soviet countries are in a more vulnerable situation. The West, too, is under threat. By underestimating Moscow’s aggressiveness, Western leaders greatly assisted in strengthening the position of the hawks and their preparations for initiating a new Cold War. If the leaders of Western countries continue to take a relaxed view regarding Russian politics, then the consequences may turn out to be unfortunate. Russia’s aggression against Ukraine in 2014, however, may have finally taken the scales from their eyes.
With regard to Russia’s domestic politics, ultimately, neo-stagnation may either lead to a new wave of reforms and to a new perestroika, but in a new guise, or it may lead to an upheaval, the result of which may be the establishment of a genuine democracy, one not bestowed from above but seized from below. In case of an upheaval, regrettably, violence will be unavoidable, for those in power will not retreat without engaging in bitter resistance. However, for all of this, neo-stagnation will inevitably progress through certain stages of development that may take quite some time and require the passage of at least three generations.
The most dangerous, and entirely probable, outcome of stagnation in Russia is disintegration. It is fraught with extremely serious consequences. Russia is a country saturated with nuclear and other weapons, potential Chernobyls, and discarded debris from the chemical industry. It is a country with a collapsing monoculture economy oriented to the export of oil and gas. It has been intellectually bled white from a brain drain and the authorities’ inadequate attention to science, art, education, and culture. It has promoted antagonisms throughout its own territories and among its own people along ethnic, religious, property-holding, and other lines. Apart from Moscow, too few components of the Russian Federation have a strong enough interest in preserving the country’s unity.
In the event of a breakup of Russia, a number of new nuclear powers with serious disputes with other post-Russia states might arise on Russia’s present territory. Grave problems would inevitably arise over the disintegration of the armed forces and their infrastructure. (This was one of the arguments Russia used in annexing Crimea.) Moreover, the majority of post-Russia states would be headed by persons insufficiently schooled in military-political issues, and that situation might seriously elevate the threat of deploying weapons of mass destruction, to say nothing of the high risk of armed conflicts using conventional weapons. At the same time, it is very likely that the breakup of Russia would decrease the level of confrontation between the post-Russia states and their neighbors as well as with Western countries.
The economy of the country would collapse once and for all. However, in the event the enormous territory breaks up into small states, under certain conditions their economies might revive for a historically brief period. The West would almost certainly be engulfed by a wave of refugees.
The vertical of power that Putin created, and that serves as his insurance against democracy, is incapable of overcoming the breakup of the country. However, it guarantees the virtually universal accession to power of the siloviki and other corrupt officials with their characteristic mentality in the post-Russia states.
In any case, environmental pollution will continue to present a serious danger. By the late 1990s, the ecology of Russia was already disastrous. For a long time Russian authorities did not want to devote sufficient attention to preserving the environment, and post-Russia authorities, even if they desired to do so, would be unable to address it. This enormous territory is turning into a constant source of global environmental pollution.
Unfortunately, a pessimistic prognosis regarding Russia’s future may be altered only in the event of some sort of extreme situation occurring—for example, if those in power are overthrown due to a social upheaval during which the internal security forces and the army remain at least neutral. But who would come to power then? They could be rabid nationalists and “faithful Leninists,” but they could also be democratically inclined persons. This scenario has one indisputable advantage—the probable loss of power of the special services and other siloviki.
There are additional reasons why Russia’s immediate future looks bleak. For example, the collapse of Russian science and primary through secondary education, as well as higher education, inevitably impacts the entire country. From the early Yeltsin period on, for some reason education has been considered almost unnecessary. The main goal now is to make money, preferably without having to work too hard. The miserable salaries of school and university teachers have produced a situation in which people simply purchase graduation certificates and diplomas, to say nothing of buying admission to institutes of higher learning. Furthermore, there has been a significant decline in the quality of professional teachers. The consequences are lamentable.
The decline in the general level of education has been accelerated by attempts to compel all young men without exception to serve in the army. If these efforts succeed, this will surely lead to not only an intellectual but also a demographic disaster, considering that the army even recruits persons who are unfit for military service due to health reasons. There are not enough eligible others to sustain Russia’s enormous military organization.
Scientific work has ceased to be prestigious. Therefore, young people are not attracted to it. There can be no science without a fundamental change of direction that averts its extinction, with all the ensuing fatal consequences for Russia and for world science.
Considering that many Russian misfortunes are rooted in politics, both contemporary and past, it is appropriate to mention that in place of real politics, which Russia has not had for a long time, “political technological fixes” have been substituted that aim at achieving instantaneous results via any means. What kind of future awaits a country whose leaders for many years have given no thought to its relatively distant future; for whom people do not exist, only voters; and who substitute their personal interests and ambitions in place of the national interest?
Can Russia escape a catastrophe? Yes. But for it to happen, there must be a miracle—that is, Russia’s genuine intellectual and moral elite must come to power. By “elite” I have in mind a new generation of persons of the caliber of Academician Andrei Sakharov, leading rights defender Sergei Kovalev, Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Yakovlev, and other such honest, brave, and unselfish people. Several points should be noted here. First, contemporary Russian leaders and prominent politicians do not belong to this intellectual and moral elite. In reference to this particular political elite, one can only say they regularly and systematically violate all written and unwritten laws. Second, the ruling pseudo elite has driven the genuine elite out of the political arena as well as the arena of public opinion. Third, as far as it is able, the ruling pseudo elite denies the genuine elite access to the mass media and other sources of influence.
In 1851 Alexander Herzen, the outstanding oppositionist to the tsarist regime, wrote, “Just one more century of despotism such as we have now, and all the good qualities of the Russian people will disappear. It is doubtful whether without a principle of active individuality, the people will preserve their national character, and the civilized classes their education.” For all the pessimism inherent in this pronouncement, Herzen did not envision the possibility of an incomparably more savage despotism. He could not even imagine such a thing. It is interesting that the Bolshevik dictatorship was aimed precisely at extirpating the principle of active individuality. But despite the mental devastation wreaked by the authorities, this very same principle of individuality remained intact, at least among some talented children, fleeing from the prevailing dullness, who chose paths that did not depend on the authorities—for example, music and chess, as well as activities to defend rights, and so forth. There were also exceptions among those in government service, including the most highly placed, even if they were considered “party loyalists.” The most outstanding examples are found in the splendid trio from the era of reformation: Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, and Yakovlev.
But Herzen was mostly right. In one guise or another, the dystopias of Yevgeny Zamyatin, George Orwell, and Aldous Huxley came into being on Russian soil and included the mass hypnosis of the people, the establishment of a “ministry of truth” and its reconstitution under Putin, the predicted substitution of “we” for “I,” the happiness in slavery, and the welding together of the lower classes of society. Moreover, under Putin, stability—part of the main slogan of Huxley’s Brave New World—became the foundation of Russian politics.
The main reason why Russia once again, as in Soviet times, has been caught in a maelstrom of violence, lies, and fear is because the people have been crippled by the authorities for generations. This very same maelstrom also has tried to swallow countries that were in geographic, economic, or political proximity to Russia itself.
What could be more dangerous than the Russian authorities taking revenge for nonexistent threats and supposed insults? Especially when they live in an imaginary world light years from reality.
Somewhere a hundred years ago, Russians lost such concepts as soul and conscience. There were eccentrics who wrote about this, such as Dostoevsky, for example. Now one of his books—namely, The Devils—especially pertains to the Russian authorities, for in it he calls the “right to dishonor” the most important and dangerous component of the revolutionary movement.
On Russian soil the right to dishonor is not an empty phrase. It is just like the aforementioned mental devastation produced by hypnosis and manipulation. Precisely this combination led to the incalculable sufferings of the Soviet empire “from Moscow to the farthest borders,” as a popular song of Soviet times went. It is this degradation of national consciousness that is fraught with the greatest risks for everyone.
Will Russia escape from the spiral of destroying itself and other countries? The repetitiveness of events in Russian history is fascinating, especially since every loop in this spiral leads to an ever-increasingly inhuman level.
In the twenty-first century, Russia as never before has become a danger to itself and to those around it. I am not even referring to nuclear weapons; what is truly dangerous are elementary thoughtlessness, thriftlessness, and irresponsibility. They are dangerous in any industrially developed, well-armed, or simply densely populated country. Any one of these factors is capable, at a minimum, of producing serious consequences for its neighbors. Russia is a disintegrating ecological and chemical time bomb in which—under the influence of moral senility and the material disintegration of the state and its infrastructure—the incapacity and fecklessness of those responsible for its deployment and the security of themselves and those around them may have already armed the detonator.
I can repeat under oath: even without using any weapons of mass destruction, Russia is capable simply from carelessness of destroying itself and even other states that are not among its closest neighbors. For this crime, extenuating circumstances could not be found.
In conclusion, I again quote Chaadaev, who wrote, “By your leave, in the face of our misfortunes I do not want to share the striving for unbridled patriotism which has brought the country to the brink of the abyss, which wants to disentangle itself while persisting in its illusions, not wishing to acknowledge the desperate position it has itself created.”9