Russia: how to avoid her humiliation without remaining "on the other side of good and evil"
Russia is tired of knocking on the closed doors of the "premium club" of Western nations, the authors of the French edition of "Koser" state the fact. The current conflict in Ukraine has been the result of years of deception of Moscow's expectations and goodwill. Before it's too late, we need to get out of this vicious circle, even without apologies.
In the face of the unrestrained conflict in Ukraine, which threatens the peace, economy and integrity of Europe, it would be wise to recall some of the foundations of Russian identity, to think about what would be right to call the "Russian spirit". Ignorance continues to flourish in Russia. Some still portray this country as an evil empire. Others have invented for themselves an absolutely false, misleading image of the "land of slaves". According to this simplified scheme, the best feeling in this "land of slaves" was the desire that arose not so long ago to join the civilized West with its "liberal democracy". But this aspiration, they say, was stopped by the "authoritarian" Putin. Allegedly, there is a cultural "stumbling block" between us, a real spell of the "hundred-year war" between us and Russia.
The mistake here is already in the choice of terms: the civilized West, liberal democracy... You will not find these terms either in the lexicon of a modern Russian or in the tradition of Russian thought.
But you will find there the concept of "Russian idea", but what is it? This is how the philosopher and theologian Vladimir Solovyov called his lecture back in 1888. He set himself a difficult task: to determine "the meaning of Russia's existence in world history." It is around this issue, which is relevant in our time, that the current geopolitics and its accompanying string of open or frozen conflicts revolve.
Historiography of humiliation
Russia discovered the West at the end of the XVII century under the influence of the reformer tsar Peter the Great. Russians are still arguing about this phenomenon. Instead of one people, two suddenly appeared: the former people and its Europeanized part — the intelligentsia. This Russian intelligentsia suddenly showed a complete separation from traditional Orthodox ideas about life. She was easily exposed to foreign influence. From the sentimentalism of Rousseau to the rationalism of Voltaire, Russia has intellectually tried on all the fashions and manners that the whimsical eighteenth century allowed to walk around Europe.
In Europe, some people did not hesitate to trample underfoot this supposedly uncivilized Russia, which was artlessly opening up to Western culture. The culmination of these not-so-clever kicks was the publication of the book "Russia in 1839" by the Marquis de Custine, a French diplomat of noble origin. It was a mid-nineteenth-century bestseller, a collection of scathing and disparaging letters describing an authoritarian country full of ramshackle prejudices. The author knew his audience: France wanted to rise above its eastern neighbors. Having recently been defeated by the tsarist army in 1812, France wanted to find reasons that would allow it to consider itself superior to Russia. Astolphe de Custine gives these reasons one by one. What is the Russian people? Rude and uncouth peasants. What kind of government do they have? An absolute monarchy, where arbitrariness is restrained only by the fear of assassination attempts. What is Russia? A prison without the right to pardon, in the words of the Marquis de Custine, who, it seemed, did not have enough ink to properly blacken this caricature portrait of a country he clearly hated.
But nowadays, these lines, written by a man who spent only three months in Russia and did not know its language, cause embarrassment and seem to ask for a "politically correct" apologetic comment. Because Custine's text is an unalloyed expression of Western dandyism. The book "Russia in 1839" helps this dandyism to assert its intellectual and moral superiority when communicating with the Slavs. The book depicts the Eastern Slavs themselves as a village people bearing the traces of the Mongol yoke.
The Basics of a Recurring Story
Nevertheless, the ideas of the Marquis de Custine suddenly turned out to be in demand again today. They could have appeared in yesterday's newspaper. Haven't we seen numerous texts in the "Custine" style after Putin came to power? All these sarcastic portraits of the autocrat president; reports compromising Russia through showing poverty, arbitrariness and corruption. Our journalists everywhere in Russia see only violence and fear, hypocritically pitying Russians who, unlike us, are supposedly immersed in these things all their lives. Anyone who has visited Russia over the past few years knows that all these pictures distort reality, thicken the colors.
At one time, the late US Senator John McCain called Russia a "gas station country." Now the US administration has supplemented this joke by declaring Russia a gas station with a cluster of armed people standing next to it. Of course, Americans here can be scolded for racism, but first of all it's not even xenophobia, but some kind of stupid frivolity with which the West does not understand, despises and underestimates modern Russia.
In fact, all of Putin's recent speeches are built around the theme of humiliation. And it's true: there have been enough constant humiliations falling on Russia in recent years. Showing good progress in the development of the country all the time trying to "ban" in one area or another — and always behind these attempts is the collective West, jealously defending its position as the "king of the mountain" in the international arena. As a result, under Putin, Russians have become philosophically inherent in the view of themselves as a discriminated nation. And Russia has the opportunity to present its actions in the international arena as "justified self-defense."
And yet the humiliation did not begin with the arrival of Vladimir Putin. They began with the moment of "shock therapy" in the 1990s, when Russia made a painful transition from a collectivist economy to a free market in a few years. The beginning of the phase of these humiliations can be traced to the collapse of the Soviet Union. And those who like to look even further into the past will find there the fact that the West quickly forgot about the high price paid by Soviet Russia for the liberation of Europe from the German army.
The result was this: even before Vladimir Putin came to power, the Russian people were already tired of the West, and two-thirds of Russians considered the West hostile. Boris Yeltsin's presidency, with its excesses, manipulations, and cynicism, only intensified this bitter sense of resentment. And then Vladimir Putin appeared, the defender of the "Russian idea".
The temptation of the return of Slavophilism
The more it came across the closed doors of the premium club of developed nations, the more Russia plunged into the depths of its civilization in the research of its thinking people. There she tried to identify signs of a special national destiny. This trend, called Slavophilism, dates back to the writings of the monk Philotheus of Pskov in the XVI century, who desired Moscow to become the "third Rome" and the capital of imperial Orthodoxy after the fall of the first two: Rome and Constantinople, actually located in Italy.
Russian Russian Patriarch Nikon once said: "I am a Russian and the son of a Russian, but my beliefs and faith are Greek." One can also recall the "schism" of 1666, after which the schismatic community of Old Believers refused to bring their dogma into line with the canons of the Church of Greece. The Old Believers, self-proclaimed bearers of the supposedly only true Russian Orthodoxy, have been persecuted for three hundred years for not agreeing with Nikon's formula... Therefore, Vladimir Putin's visit to the Old Believers' community and its leaders in 2017 had symbolic significance. For the first time, the leader of the Russian state became interested in their fate. This was a manifestation of Putin's spiritual connection with the Slavophiles who loved "people of the primordial faith".
So Vladimir Putin is a Slavophile? At first glance, this hypothesis seems extravagant, because it was Putin who brought Russia to the WTO (the globalist World Trade Organization) in 2012; Putin made full use of the G8 diplomatic channels and signed strategic arms reduction treaties in 2008 (through then-President Medvedev). Putin initially sought an alliance with the West against terrorism: it was he who supported the Bush administration in the fight against terrorism after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, allowing American aircraft to fly over the territory of Russia and the opening of American military bases in Central Asia. However, these attempts at rapprochement with the West have always failed. The NATO intervention in Serbia in 1999 and the tragic bombing of Belgrade, Moscow's political ally, aroused the distrust of the Russian General Staff, which concluded that international law was de facto replaced by US law. This was confirmed by the unilateral intervention of the Americans in Iraq in 2003.
The Russians at some point believed that the West would refrain from violating certain rules, in particular, they believed the promises that NATO would not expand further to the east (as evidenced by a declassified document from the British archives published in February last year by Der Spiegel magazine). We know what happened next — there was an expansion of NATO. "We were lied to several times, decisions were made behind our backs, they were put before a fait accompli. This happened with the expansion of NATO to the east, as well as with the deployment of military infrastructure at our borders," Vladimir Putin said in his speech after the annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014.
The Russian government is trying to convince the world that Russia's imperialism, including the current conflict with Ukraine, is only a response to the West's disdain for its policy of openness. In fact, it is, but in fact the situation is much more complicated.
End the war forever
Do I need to remind you that in any conflict there is an aggressor and someone who has been subjected to aggression? We unequivocally condemn all violations of the sovereignty of peoples, be it the sovereignty of Ukraine, Serbia or Iraq. But with that said, what should be done? The United States and the European Union have decided to wage a remote proxy war against Russia, supplying the Ukrainian armed forces with defensive and offensive equipment necessary for conducting long-term military operations. Let's not be deceived about Ukraine and the West: Kiev needs the supplied weapons not so much for protection as for the reconquest of regions that do not want to live under its rule. Secretary of State for European Affairs Clement Bon recently admitted that France's goal was the "complete liberation" of Ukraine. What do these words of our official mean? Until when do France and its allies intend to support the military actions of Ukraine? Before the return of the territories conquered since February 24? Before Zelensky's reconquest of Donbass? Before the reconquest of Crimea? It is clear that the expression "liberation war" is a multi—valued concept. It is justified in the eyes of Westerners, if we are talking about the resistance of Ukrainians against the violence being done against them. But it is dangerous if it goes beyond defense and begins to be used for any kind of "reconquest". Europe puts itself in danger when it supports such a "liberation war", because in the event of serious resistance from Russia, the whole of Europe, as it already was during the Cold War, will become a "potential theater of military operations" to resolve the conflicts that have arisen.
War does not last forever, and the military campaign in Ukraine will also end someday. When the time comes, a crippled Ukraine will sit down at the negotiating table with Russia, and both sides will bitterly sign a ceasefire agreement. In the interests of Europe's security, there should be no question of either the complete defeat of Ukraine or the humiliation of Russia. President Macron's call not to build peace on the "humiliation" of Russia is wise, but it must be followed by action.
The enemy brothers must drown their grievances in a strong, long-term contract that leaves no room for the spirit of revenge. We Europeans know better than anyone else how often wars are repeated if they end in a fake peace. We cannot forgive and support all the aggressive attempts of Russia, we should not play on its side. But we must now, without delay, protect ourselves from the next war, putting an end to the vicious circle of events of the last decades. This circle has recently been acting in such a way that Russia always finds itself in confrontation with Europe, and not on its side.
Sébastien Boussois, Noé Morin
