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On a German Take on the Russian Perspective

By Sergei Roy

Christian Wipperfuerth's article on "The Russian Federation's Foreign and Security Goals" recently posted at guardian-psj.ru was in fact a paper presented at a conference of high-ranking British, German, American and Ukrainian officers. In a personal communication its author informed the present writer that the paper had "caused quite a stir among the Anglo-Saxons, but [it] is just - more or less - the interpretation which is shared by the most important makers of German foreign policy. Nobody in the Bundestag or the Auswärtiges Amt trusts Saakashvili, while the Anglo-Saxons without end speak about the "Russian invasion" of Georgia."

I have written to Dr. Wipperfuerth to congratulate him on a balanced and matter-of-fact presentation of what he refers to as the Russian perspective. Indeed, the "German view" of Russia's mood, intentions and goals is incomparably more realistic than the warped, "Anglo-Saxon" outlook on the same. Saakashvili's August 2008 criminal assault with sophisticated, murderous weapons on a sleeping South Ossetian town, whose population are 90+ percent Russian citizens, is well documented both by European institutions and world media. In this context talk of Russia's "invasion" is merely a smokescreen covering up the collusion in Saakashvili's aggressive act by the Western powers, which provided the Georgian ruler with funds to buy those murderous weapons and with the weapons themselves.

On a more general plane Dr. Wipperfuerth points out quite correctly that the Russian people and its political class do not - indeed, cannot - harbour any imperial ambitions vis-à-vis their CIS or any other neighbors. It may be added on this score that, in view of the economic ruin and demographic crisis attendant on the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation's overriding goal is survival within its post-1991 borders, not expansion, enlargement or anything of the kind. As a matter of fact, the smuta "troubles" of the 1990s resulted in a situation where the Russian Federation could be headed for disintegration in much the same way as the Soviet Union had, and that fear was clearly expressed at the time by numerous politicians and ordinary citizens. It was nothing short of a miracle that a turnaround in Russia's political class at the turn of the century steered the country away from that peril.

While accepting the general tenor and most arguments of Dr. Wipperfuerth's paper, I would like to comment on some points where his position seems to me to be less well-founded, displaying as it does an insufficient acquaintanceship with certain down-to-earth facts of the "Russian perspective."

1. Consider the author's following statement: "The Russian leadership knows that an ethnocentric-nationalistic policy potentially does not just endanger the multiethnic state but would also result in an immediate application for NATO-membership by friendly states like Kazakhstan." I just do not know of any statements by any Kazakh leader or politician regarding Kazakhstan's intention to join NATO in any eventuality. On a personal note, in the past I translated into English, at the request of the Kazakhstan Embassy, two books of collected speeches and articles by President Nazarbaev; I was well acquainted with His Excellency Tair Mansurov, Kazakhstan's Ambassador to Moscow; I attended receptions at the Embassy, on various occasions; I once crossed the whole of Kazakhstan's vast territory on a bike, west to east, and had ample opportunity to observe Kazakhstan's peoples close up, so to speak. Given this background knowledge I must say that the idea of Kazakhstan, with its forty percent ethnic Russian and 100 percent Russian-speaking population (Russian is an official language there on a par with Kazakh), applying for NATO membership is not just over the top but - pardon me - absurd.

Again on a more general plane, Russia's leadership does not follow an "ethnocentric-nationalistic policy" not out of fear of Kazakhstan or anyone else joining NATO, but for the very simple and obvious reason that such a policy is a sheer impossibility. Let me double stress this point: it is not something that might "endanger the multiethnic state": it is an impossibility.

To look back a bit, an "ethnocentric-nationalistic policy" did not exist in Czarist times: historians often comment on the Russian Czars' astute policy of letting Khiva or, say, Bokhara retain their political and judicial systems while pleading allegiance to the "White Czar."  Rather than pursuing an "ethnocentric-nationalistic policy," the Czars offered the elites of non-Russian peoples of the empire membership in the empire's gentry and aristocracy. It is not often remembered these days that Russia's bureaucracy was to a considerable extent German in origin, consisting of the so-called Ostsee barons and others from that area. The revolutionary exile Alexander Herzen, himself half-German, half-Russian, lambasted them quite eloquently for their essentially German characteristics. Or take another little-known fact: there were more Georgian princes in the Russian Empire than ethnic Russian ones. True, those Georgian princes were more often than not the butt of good-natured jokes (it was often said that anyone who owned a hundred sheep in Georgia was sure to be a prince), but the stud books of the empire's nobility are there for anyone to see the fact for themselves.

In later, Soviet times, no "ethnocentric-nationalistic policy" was possible, if for no other reason than that the ruling party's ideology and practice were internationalist to the core. "Friendship of the peoples of the USSR" was the official catchword and in fact the predominant reality on the ground. Indeed, it would be hard to decide on the ethnic element of an "ethnocentric policy" in the Soviet Union, as ethnic Russians were from the start quite scantily represented in the supreme institutions of the ruling Communist Party like the Politburo and the Central Committee. Or consider this: two-thirds of the mainstay of the Communist regime, the secret police - the OGPU-NKVD-MGB-KGB - were ethnic Georgians, compatriots of top Communist leaders like Stalin (Dzhugashvili), Ordzhonikidze, or Beria. These are all well-documented facts that anyone of the older generation in Russia is fully aware of.

In view of all this, it is small wonder that the current Russian leadership is intent on keeping up these centuries-old traditions of "peaceful coexistence" of more than a hundred nationalities inhabiting the Russian Federation. Anything threatening this status quo is met with a fierce rebuke from Russia's ruling establishment. So much so that Vladimir Putin, in his forthright  manner, more than once used fairly unparliamentary expressions (like pridurki "jerks") about anyone playing the nationalistic card.

Of course, like all the world Russia has its share of xenophobic elements on the so-called bytovoy (having to do with everyday life) level, but any fear of it becoming institutionalized and affecting the country's domestic and, still less, foreign policy is a figment of the imagination of mossy brains like Brzezinski's. The only party represented in the Duma that indulges in off-color nationalistic rhetoric is Zhirinovsky's (so-called) Liberal Democratic Party. Well, the picture of a quintessential Jew playing at being a purebred Russian nationalist merely adds yet another quirky element to Russia's political theater. Rhetoric aside, when voting time comes, this one-man party invariably toes the Kremlin line. And one can be absolutely certain that the Kremlin is never going to rock the boat of Russia's statehood by switching to anything like an "ethnocentric-nationalistic policy." 

2. Some comments are also due on the issue of "Russia joining the West," particularly on a statement like this: "Russians are not sure if they could and should be a part of the Western civilization, and the West does not know what Russia is - and it is split: Is Russia an alienated relative, who should be welcomed or a potentially dangerous stranger?"

Doubts as to whether Russia is or is not part of the Western civilization are somewhat surprising in an otherwise insightful text. Whatever civilizational aspect one takes, Russia is a European country not much different from other European entities. Religiously, Russia is a predominantly Christian land, and the differences between, say, Russian Orthodoxy and Roman Catholicism are not greater than, e.g., between the latter and Lutheranism. Culturally, for centuries an educated Russian meant someone who could speak French, while these days it is English - not Chinese or Japanese. In terms of economics, Russia is a market-dominated country; some in the West still call Russia's an economy in transition, but here in Russia we have no doubts left about the nature of our economy; any such doubts have long been knocked out of us by the fierce market forces here at play. Politically, Russia is a democracy, whatever its denigrators might say: it has all the democratic appurtenances, however defective in some areas. It is really amazing to hear, say, India described as the "largest democracy in the world" despite its largely patriarchal society, familial relationships as the overriding factor among its top ruling class (cf. the recent history of the Ghandi clan), a caste system that stubbornly refuses to die, and so on, while Russia is deemed "autocratic" because such a view suits the aforementioned denigrators.

Civilizational aspects aside, the question that seems to be uppermost in the German take on the "Russian perspective" is whether Russia can or cannot, should or should not "join the Western orbit" or, more specifically, NATO. There is one important element lacking in this appraisal of the "Russian perspective": the fact that during the later years of perestroika and especially after the 1991 anti-Communist revolution Russians were eager to join the West in every conceivable manner: the general feeling here was as if the brave new world were opening its doors to them, and Russians expected to be enfolded in a brotherly embrace as the Iron curtain collapsed. Alas, the West treated Russia as a defeated, if not conquered nation, and did practically everything to disabuse Russia's population of any enthusiasm it might have felt regarding a union with the West.    

It is assumed that the "turning point in the Russian-Western relationship was perhaps the ‘Orange Revolution' in Ukraine." Not so but contrariwise, as a Lewis Carrollean character would say. The West showed its contempt for Russia's position in 1999,  long before the Ukrainian upheaval, as it kept bombing out, from near stratospheric heights, in perfect safety, civilian targets in Serbia and effected a "regime change" there - a blatant interference in the internal affairs of a presumably sovereign state that was later practiced, with little variation, in Ukraine, Georgia, Kirghizia, and which Romania attempted to follow most recently, in a characteristically farcical manner, in Chisinau (Iraq and Afghanistan were the other "regime change" episodes). Like a cold shower, the realization came to the most Westernist-oriented Russians like the present writer that, had it not been for Russia's nuclear capability, Western military might could be used to "force peace" on the Russian state fighting an aggressive, bandit-ridden, Islamist regime in Chechnya - in much the same way as Serbia was beaten into submission by the West, which supported Kosovar bandits for its own geopolitical goals (for which read the US Camp Bondsteel military base in Kosovo).

In view of the Serbian experience, Russians were left in little doubt that "joining the Western orbit" in any mode closer than the present one would mean (a) the taking over of Russia's military machine by the US within the NATO framework, and (b) the taking over of the Russian economy by Western multinationals. As a matter of fact, an attempt was made by a certain oligarch, name of Khodorkovsky, to escape Russia's jurisdiction by handing over this country's strategic asset to the US in exactly this kind of maneuver, and again it's nothing short of a miracle that the stratagem did not succeed.

***

I hope most sincerely that these notes will be accepted in the friendly, cooperative spirit in which they are intended, and that they might lend greater realism to the German take on Russia's perspective.

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