Filenews 5 July 2024 - by Marc Champion
Living in Moscow in the 1990s, I remember watching a skit in which a Russian acquaintance of mine played after dinner. He stood next to a large map of the newly dissolved Soviet empire, struck Russia's new neighbouring states with a stick, and then shouted: "Vot! Nashi!", (Here! Ours!), "I vot! Nashi!” (And here! Ours!), striking in turn at every former democracy, before moving on to Alaska, California and beyond.
Of course, he mocked the country's neo-fascist nationalists, who had formed a group called, guess what, Nashi. It seemed funny then, but it looks less funny now.
This was in 1993, the year Harvard professor Samuel Huntington published his controversial essay on International Affairs, "The Clash of Civilizations?", predicting that the world would not adopt Western values, but instead would be divided and fought along religious and cultural lines. I had already met nationalists fighting pro-Russian separatists in Georgia and Moldova, but they had broken with the Kremlin. However, by 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin would adopt their ideas, proceed to annex Crimea and invade Ukraine.
Russia's motives
Western leaders need to better understand Russia's motives in its so-called near abroad if they want to correctly interpret Putin's approach to ending the conflict in Ukraine. We are naturally "selfish", considering that everything revolves around us. And that's before we get to the sheer narcissism of former US President Donald Trump, who again in a recent podcast insisted that if he had still been in the White House in February 2022, Putin would never have invaded Ukraine, because... it's Trump – and Hamas wouldn't dare attack Israel either. The root of the problem, he said, like Putin and too many others, was NATO's provocative decision to allow new members from the former Soviet bloc to join.
Putin was clearly outraged by NATO's expansion. However, the important questions here are why and whether Russia would continue to invade its neighbours in the absence of NATO. The answer to the latter part is of course rhetorical, but most evidence suggests that yes it would, because this is not primarily about us, but about Russia.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union
In the 1990s, the Nashi looked like "dinosaurs," but Russia's nationalists were right about one thing: the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked only the beginning of a disputed imperial collapse, not the end of it. The country was just beginning a process of understanding what it meant to be Russian. Russia has never before been a Western nation state. The new post-Soviet border seemed unnatural, and not just to former KGB agents like Putin. Very few Russians I met in the 1990s believed that Ukraine was a real country, like Belarus and Kazakhstan.
It took the Kremlin some time to fully articulate what it means to be a post-Soviet Russian and find a label for this ambiguity about where the country ended. Putin began defining Russia as a "civilization state" (as opposed to a simple nation state) around 2012, but it became a fully-fledged doctrine in the 2023 edition of the Foreign Policy Concept of the Russian Federation. The document in question states "Russia's special position as a separate state-culture", responsible for all peoples within the "Russian World".
Putin's aggressive response
This idea is key to setting expectations about the conditions under which Putin could make peace in Ukraine and for how long. It is also important to remember that Russia has never been just a victim responding to threats, but has pursued its own agenda of expansion and transformation, which it considers positive.
That's why Putin reacted so aggressively in 2013 to Ukraine's decision to sign a trade and association pact with the European Union — the deal threatened to thwart his plans for Ukraine. At the time, NATO membership was not on anyone's agenda, not even feasible for Ukraine, whose constitution forbade joining any military alliance. That obstacle was removed only in December 2014, nine months after Putin annexed Crimea and long after he sent Russian troops and tanks to fight in eastern Ukraine.
Russia as a state – culture taught to young people
This way of understanding Russia as a civilizing state against the West is now being taught to young people, who may be more susceptible to Western ideals and civilization. Since September 1 of last year, every student entering the university of Russia had to take a new compulsory course, which is called "Foundations of Russian statehood".
The basic idea is that Russia, as a state-culture, is "heir to the historical and political experience of all previous states that existed on the territory of our country: Russian land, Russian state, Russian kingdom, Russian empire, USSR." Embodying this version of history is a huge task. It involves appointing vice-rectors as modern university commissars, responsible for the ideological content of courses, and sending nearly 6,000 professors to "re-education" centers.
There is also a new incarnation of the New Pioneers of the communist era, which was launched in 2022 to teach collectivism to some 5 million children, among other values considered traditional for Russia, in contrast to the individualistic decline of the West. History textbooks in smaller classes have also been replaced by a number of newly approved titles.
The name Ukraine, Russian students now say, was never a national or ethnic designation, but denoted an area of Russia's border territories.
Existential competition
Cultures are not static, and smaller countries and ordinary people can take action. A large part of the Ukrainian soldiers fighting the invasion are Russian speakers from the East. On June 25, even as the war continued, Ukraine (and Moldova) began talks with the EU not only on trade but also on full membership, an option we could describe as cultural. The process involves adopting far more than 100,000 pages of laws and will make the two states look more like Poland and Romania and less like Russia.
From the Kremlin's perspective, this competition is indeed existential, not because it fears that NATO forces will attack beyond its internationally recognized borders, but because even the prospect of joining Western institutions encourages Moscow's former possessions to resist the Kremlin's expansionist plans. And if Russia is going to be not just a nation state but a great cultural power, then to lose the opportunity to control Ukraine is to lose its role as a great power.
The problem posed by Putin's worldview
The problem that Putin's worldview poses for Ukrainian sovereignty is obvious. But it's also a problem for Europe, because it's not at all clear where Russia's cultural project ends or how Ukraine's absorption could meet its ambition. The "Russian world" is both large and unclear. So what to do? Should we allow Putin to impose his "civilization state" or stop him in Ukraine?
Russia is not the first empire to resist the loss of colonies it has long maintained, so there is nothing unique about its effort. But few would argue that the Ottoman, British, or French empires had the right to maintain, let alone restore, their imperial claims, or that the desire to do so was "provoked."
Understanding Putin's perspective is key to understanding that the "neutrality" and "demilitarization" he demands of Russia's neighbours is not his ultimate goal. It is a prerequisite for the reconstruction of the Russian state-culture and Moscow's position as the center of a great power. Any peace proposal for Ukraine must have this thinking in focus when and if a future President Trump wants to play the role of mediator. But he should start by reading the Kremlin's new book on universities.
Performance – Editing: Stathis Ketitzian
