Russian political psyche: history and modernity

[kaur]

mirhond, I'm always glad to help you

http://mitrokhinarchiveii.blogspot.be

[mirhond]

mirhond, I'm always glad to help you
http://mitrokhinarchiveii.blogspot.be

I've read it - it's a good political journalism, I'll put it into bookmarks, thanks.

KGB rulezz!!!

[mirhond]

inspired by link davidbfpo has posted in Ukraine thread

link #1 http://20committee.com/2014/07/03/me...onal-brigades/

link #2 http://20committee.com/2014/05/05/ru...patriotic-war/

quote from 2:

Average Russians are emotionally invested in the potent lies of the Official Narrative and it’s hard to blame them, since most of them have never heard any other version of events. But it’s important to note that lies about 1939-1945 continue to serve as a justification for Russian crimes in Ukraine right now

Statement in bold is actual Bravo Sierra, because here in Russia we have entire school of folkhistorians preaching the dogma

USSR was just as complicit as Germany

. It started in 90-s with Edward Topol famous exposure of "preparations of Soviet agression" and continues nowadays with Mark Solonin same crackpot theories. Anyone who eager to learn a thing about it could buy the books, or download it or resieve the sacraments from the worshippers at the corresponding sites. They aren't popular though, because most of the Russians just don't by this bull####.

So, the anonimous author of this article knows wery little or nothing about Russian popular beliefs.

[Firn]

A Soviet Leader Who Saw Russia Clearly is an interesting piece by Leonid Bershidsky about the late Eduard Shevardnadze.

In 1992, the field commanders who had deposed independent Georgia's first president, Zviad Gamsakhurdia, invited Shevardnadze to return to his homeland and lead it. As he freely admitted, he was never fully in control. Contrary to his orders, one of the military commanders who had brought Shevardnadze to power led troops to the separatist region of Abkhazia. Shevardnadze tried to stop the advance and even negotiated a peace with the Abkhaz leadership, sealed with a handshake in Moscow in the presence of Russian President Boris Yeltsin. Then Abkhazians, backed by Russian warships and planes as well as well-trained "volunteers" from neighboring Russian regions, such as Chechnya, struck back, and the weak Georgian army was crushed.

In other words, Shevardnadze was the first post-Soviet leader to see a Russian-backed unofficial military operation on his land. Like Ukrainian politicians today, he called it a war with Russia. Today's military operation in eastern Ukraine is as deniably but transparently Russian-backed as the 1992 war in Abhkazia was. Shevardnadze recalled in his memoirs that Yeltsin proposed splitting Georgia in two to stop the conflict. He called Leonid Kravchuk, then the Ukrainian president, to complain: "Can you imagine someone giving you a friendly recommendation to split Ukraine in two?"

"The centuries-long process of expansion and 'collection' of other nations' lands by Russia continues in the 21st century," Shevardnadze wrote more than a year before Russian troops openly entered Georgia in 2008 and Moscow recognized the separatists states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Personally I think it is rather obvious why that Soviet age glowed so golden for so many. While the seeds of the mighty implosion were sown already early most seem to have been unable to understand that the SU collapsed by it's own making. The sinew was streched till it had to break, and the economic and political result weren't pretty. Other nations were able to clean up the Soviet mess early while Russia and Putin needed the gift of a ressource boom to gain some of the ground lost.

Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia is indeed a worthy read about that economic tragedy.

[AmericanPride]

Interesting conversation. My thoughts:

(1) Perceptions are reference dependent on context in time and place. The traumas of the 'shock therapy' during the 1990s colored the public's perception of the time before it - same way conservative politics today in the United States mythologize the 1950s despite the Red Scare, segregation, and so on. The reference point also does the same for experiences gained afterwards; if the first experience with democratic capitalism is chaotic, perceived to be unjust, and difficult, then alternatives will be welcomed.

(2) The liberals/Westernizers in the early 1990s of the Yeltsin administration made great efforts in integrating Russia into the West's model of a Westphalian nation-state committed to democratic capitalism. It held elections. It sold off state property. It abandoned Russia's historical empire, creating numerous states of the dominant nations. This trend only tampered off recently, even the Putin administration pushed for Russia's membership in the World Trade Organization.

(3) Yes, the West did dismantle the Russian empire (there are 15 states where there used to be one, in addition to the former Warsaw Pact states). The problem is that the West never fully embraced Moscow, and Yeltsin's poor performance never met the challenges posed by the realists and nationalists. Russia's experiences with Yugoslavia, Kosovo, shock therapy, NATO expansion, and missile defense only empowered the realists and nationalists, and the second economic crisis in the late 1990s finally pushed Russian politics in their favor.

(4) Yeltsin virtually abdicated to Putin, paving the way for a relatively peaceful transition from the Westernizers to the Realists. During Putin's early years, he still had some of the same ambitions as his predecessor, but the abandonment of the democratic-capitalism project was necessary to save what the realists and nationalists believed to be at risk at the time: the very existence of Russia. The dissolution of the USSR and Yugoslavia, and the wars in Chechnya and Dageston were traumatic events from this perspective. All of Russia's wars from 1991 to 2014 involve former Soviet republics and all of them involve questions of territorial integrity and political sovereignty. These conflicts are a direct result of the dismantling of the Soviet empire - the very policy advocated here (and initially opposed by the Bush I administration).

(5) So, collapse of the USSR was a decentering of political power away from Moscow - and this triggered political and economic crisis throughout the entire post-Soviet region (it also untethered the international security regime from the bipolarity of the Cold War, making life more complicated for everyone). The West and some of those post-Soviet states took full advantage of this opportunity to make a clean break from Moscow. Good for them. The Putin administration has been working diligently to restore centralized political power - it started with the Second Chechen War and is continuining today through Ukraine. Despite it all, Russia has managed to build relatively constructive relations with continental Europe even as the U.S. has been generally confrontational and suspicious of Russia's efforts.

(6) Russia is still a second-rate power compared to the U.S.; the problem is that the Russian elite knows this and despises being in that position. That they are buoyed by the political attitudes of the general population is not surprising, but it should also be a signal that there are legitimate problems that need to resolved (preferably not through force of arms).

[kaur]

AmericanPride, could you elaborate your point. You were talking about Russia and then you added Ukraine to Russia. Were are the geographical limits of centralization?

The Putin administration has been working diligently to restore centralized political power - it started with the Second Chechen War and is continuining today through Ukraine.

Ps who is shouting Shouting the Battle Cry of Freedom today in Ukraine?

[kaur]

D. Trenin has written nice book about rose and collapse od Russian empire.

http://carnegieendowment.org/pdf/book/post-imperium.pdf

In Russia this topic is very actual like this article shows.

http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.be/...esponding.html

Legendary Russian sociologist Yuri Levada studies "Soviet man" and without this aspect it is hard to uncode the events in Russia and connected with Russia.

http://cdclv.unlv.edu//yla/

[AmericanPride]

Kaur,

That's part of the problem in de-centering an imperial power: where are the legitimate boundaries? Which norms make those boundaries legitimate? The Westphalian nation-state model provides some answers, but that's a different paradigm than the one under which the Russian state operates. The historical references of Moscow are not the same as those of Washington, London, etc. In the Russian experience, boundaries (and nationalities) are mobile, and state systems are less defined by their geographic scope than their political reach through networks of patronage. During the Yeltsin years, the Russian elite attempted to make this transformation from an imperial power to a Westphalian one, but that project ended in failure.

EDIT: There is not a differentiation between internal and external in an imperial system, or a recognition of subordinate but equal political units. The Westphalian model emphasizes the creation of nation-states, but Russia has historically been a single state with multiple nations. Whatever political structures were granted to these nations were subordinated to the centralized power in St. Petersburg and/or Moscow. So what the dismantling of the USSR did was create numerous issues about the territorial integrity and sovereignty of of new political units created for nations that were not, on the whole, independent historically. So what are the geographical limits of centralization? There are none because imperial power is not defined by geography. We use the Westphalian typology that makes clear demarcations between internal and external to describe the construction of states, which makes it difficult to describe the importance of the term 'Near Abroad' in the Russian foreign policy lexicon. Essentially, from Moscow's perspective, there is no difference between Ukraine and any of Russia's 22 republics.

[mirhond]

Interesting conversation. My thoughts:

(6) Russia is still a second-rate power compared to the U.S.; the problem is that the Russian elite knows this and despises being in that position. That they are buoyed by the political attitudes of the general population is not surprising, but it should also be a signal that there are legitimate problems that need to resolved (preferably not through force of arms).

Here, from inside, I don't see any frustration of the ruling class being second-rate power. Well, they always say so in the media (public love it), but for me personally it doesn't sound very persuasive.

Essentially, from Moscow's perspective, there is no difference between Ukraine and any of Russia's 22 republics.

Now it is, stated loud and clear and that's good for all. So, there are geo-political boundaries for the empire, they lay where the state can't project its political influence and military power.

[kaur]

For months, Western officials have been repeating a mantra that a new Cold War will not break out because there is no ideological basis for such a confrontation. But is it not a form of ideology when Putin states: "It is time we admit one another's right to be different, the right of every country to live its own life rather than to be told what to do by someone else"? Today's world exists in part because leading nations respect certain conventions, and turning the clock back to 1815 threatens that order.

Essentially, Putin is demanding the right to live in a fictional world and to structure not only Russia's life, but the entire world order, according to long-obsolete rules. The worst thing world leaders can do is to continue to pointlessly explain to Putin that they are not a threat, when he fixedly believes that they absolutely are.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinio...es/503400.html