<blockquote>
'Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar pointed in April 2000 at the Slovene Nova Revija Club to the acceptance of Ukraine as a genuinely independent state as a necessary condition of progress for Russia .. It behooves Western decision makers therefore to distinguish clearly in their minds between the interests of Russia’s ruling group and the wider interests of the Russian people, and insofar as they are able to do that, to make it clear that they do so. Communicating with the wider public will not be easy, but will be as necessary as it was in Soviet times.'</blockquote>
'..Russians to this day find it hard, even impossible, to see how others see them or to understand that there can be outcomes of mutual benefit..
..
..The constitution that was accepted in 1993 by referendum—or, in the eyes of many, that was imposed on Russia—was typical of all too many modern constitutions in being too detailed and too long to allow for gradual evolution, popular understanding, or long-term emotional attachment.
..the legal foundations of the new Russia remained fragile. Too much was decided by Presidential decree. The bedrock of Soviet law and the assumptions underlying it remained at odds with the market oriented and liberally inclined provisions of new laws superimposed upon it. Property rights were ambivalent..
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..There are all too many human reasons to elide the scale of the Soviet tragedy. But without honestly accounting for its history to itself, Russia will never be a “normal country.” It will remain haunted by memories it would rather not acknowledge, and unexamined Soviet habits of mind..
..
There was however from the beginning a different note in the ends that Putin pursued, at odds with the instinctive assumptions of the West. This strain had deeper roots in Russian history than the liberal belief in governments being answerable to their peoples. This tradition decrees that the principal duty of the leadership is the preservation of the state by whatever means are necessary, and that it is the people who are answerable to their leaders, not the other way around..
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The stability that Putin promised under the “dictatorship of the law” was nevertheless illusory. Russia has progressed over the past decade and a half from stabilization to top-down control to its present fear-haunted laager..
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..there has been a reversion to the Soviet idea of the collective not the individual being the dominant force in the country’s development..
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..To see Yanukovych’s fall as the fate of a corrupt authoritarian ruler would have been deeply uncomfortable. Russia insisted on turning the issue of how Ukraine should develop into an East/West issue, not one for the Ukrainians themselves to decide.
Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar pointed in April 2000 at the Slovene Nova Revija Club to the acceptance of Ukraine as a genuinely independent state as a necessary condition of progress for Russia..
..
It behooves Western decision makers therefore to distinguish clearly in their minds between the interests of Russia’s ruling group and the wider interests of the Russian people, and insofar as they are able to do that, to make it clear that they do so. Communicating with the wider public will not be easy, but will be as necessary as it was in Soviet times.
..
..negotiating with the Russians should also take care to be sure of what precisely is meant by particular words or phrases. False parallels, the useful lie, and equivocation are long standing Moscow specialties.
NATO powers and non-NATO powers in the West will need to re-establish their defense capability if the Russians are to take them seriously .. The EU has .. to find a coherent way to concentrate its policies toward Russia .. to align them with NATO’s potential .. to work more effectively with the United States and Canada.'<blockquote>'..The question of why East and Central Europe, and the Baltics, wanted to join the Alliance is one that the Russians refuse to address. Nor will they acknowledge the proposition that widening NATO might have helped to stabilize the situation in the region. It has instead increasingly been taken for granted in Russia that NATO enlargement was directed against Russia by the United States, and continues to be a major threat. But given the instability elsewhere in the Russian neighborhood—in Ukraine, for which Russia bears a heavy responsibility—the logic behind the proposition that NATO is the major threat to Russia is not at all obvious. It only holds good on the deeply Soviet supposition that major power groupings outside Moscow’s direct control are necessarily a threat to Russia.
..Russians to this day find it hard, even impossible, to see how others see them or to understand that there can be outcomes of mutual benefit. The mental inheritance of the Soviet Union is clear: Any benefit to one country or group of countries is paid for by another, usually Russia. Win/win looks good to Westerners but naive to most Russians.
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..The break up of the USSR was particularly disorienting for the Russians, and the confusion as to what exactly a Russian might be was considerable..
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..There was from the beginning a division between those Russian citizens who saw their new country as a continuity with the Soviet Union and those who hoped for it to become in time a liberal democracy with a functioning market economy. That division was exacerbated by the fact that Russia inherited laws, and indeed initially a constitutional structure, from its Soviet past. Russia’s judicial and administrative systems, too, were part of the Soviet inheritance, both in terms of the people working in them and the ways they worked. The clash between the Supreme Soviet and Yeltsin was resolved in 1993 by force, not consensual agreement. The constitution that was accepted in 1993 by referendum—or, in the eyes of many, that was imposed on Russia—was typical of all too many modern constitutions in being too detailed and too long to allow for gradual evolution, popular understanding, or long-term emotional attachment.
..the legal foundations of the new Russia remained fragile. Too much was decided by Presidential decree. The bedrock of Soviet law and the assumptions underlying it remained at odds with the market oriented and liberally inclined provisions of new laws superimposed upon it. Property rights were ambivalent. The relationship between the federal authorities and the regions had yet to evolve satisfactorily. Russia’s Constitutional Court had proved unable, or unwilling, to make effective and independent rulings as to what was or was not in accordance with Russia’s Basic Law. The historical contrast between it and the U.S. Supreme Court was and remains telling. The Supreme Court, operating often enough against the desires of the executive powers but in accordance with inherited and widely understood beliefs as to the independence and universal applicability of the law to all, high or low, has been critical to the evolution over time of the meaning and validity of the U.S. Constitution. It has also been a bulwark of the independence of the U.S. Judiciary.
No such beliefs have upheld the Russian system. On the contrary, the Soviet and pre-Soviet traditions of top down rule have retained their hold. Such rule is necessarily extra-legal at best, and inherently arbitrary. That does not mean to say that it is always unjust, though it often is, but it is to say that there is a clear division between subjects and rulers both in fact and in their understanding of their places in society. Dialogue between them is ineffective, and mutual trust limited, while formal declarations of allegiance are balanced by mutual suspicion..
The changes needed to face up to and deal with the collapse of the Soviet command economy were of course daunting, as leading Russian reformers of the time like Gaidar, Chubais, Aven, and Kokh have written. But the new elite, despite being composed of able members of the old nomenklatura—or maybe because of that background—were unskilled at explaining to the populace at large why radical changes were necessary, or to persuade them that the Soviet system was doomed. There were also very few accountable reformers to go around, with too much to do..
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..It also implied coming to terms with Russia’s past, most notably its Stalinist past, in order to overcome its toxic legacy. Russia is not the only country to have preferred to ignore that sort of invidious task, as far as possible. There are all too many human reasons to elide the scale of the Soviet tragedy. But without honestly accounting for its history to itself, Russia will never be a “normal country.” It will remain haunted by memories it would rather not acknowledge, and unexamined Soviet habits of mind .. the full weight of what happened under Lenin, and Stalin, along with the strains their successors faced in trying to deal with it, did not come home to the Russian people as a whole, and have since been shunted firmly into forbidden territory. Lenin was allowed to stay embalmed on Red Square. His presence there hangs heavier over Russia with each passing day.
The attempts made in Yeltsin’s time to work out a National Idea for Russia were indicative of a country in some sort of undefined transition. They failed either adequately to disavow the past or satisfactorily to define a future. Time might conceivably have resolved the matter, but Yeltsin and his colleagues lost popular credibility as they held on to office. Old certainties gradually revived. The Primakov outlook, which gained force after his appointment as Foreign Minister in 1996, and as Prime Minister after the 1998 economic crash, was founded on the idea that Russia would have to renew itself as a center of world power, and therefore to reassert itself against the West as it had had to do in the 19<sup>th</sup> century after the Crimean War. What he and others saw as the “unipolar moment” of American dominance had to be ended. While Primakov would not have put it so bluntly, Russia had to see itself once again as a fortress, somewhat as the USSR had been, and it had to be ready to defend itself against all comers. The Kosovo crisis of 1999 reinforced that attitude.
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..I left the British Embassy in January 2000 believing that there was a chance of further constructive change coming about toward more accountable and effective government. No one expected rapid progress. But economic growth had resumed quite quickly after the 1998 crash, partly thanks to the rise in the price of oil but also thanks to the market oriented reforms that had been introduced, though not completed, under Yeltsin. Following the elections of late 1999, the Duma seemed better disposed than its predecessors to work with a new President. A shake up in the regions was in prospect with the scheduled retirement of regional Governors whose time had run out, according to most interpretations of Russia’s constitution. Such factors all had the potential to open up fresh possibilities. It seemed obvious enough that such change would be in Russia’s general interest. And Russia still then had the benefit of one of the greatest accomplishments of the Yeltsin era: a free press and a nascent civil society.
There was however from the beginning a different note in the ends that Putin pursued, at odds with the instinctive assumptions of the West. This strain had deeper roots in Russian history than the liberal belief in governments being answerable to their peoples. This tradition decrees that the principal duty of the leadership is the preservation of the state by whatever means are necessary, and that it is the people who are answerable to their leaders, not the other way around..
..
The stability that Putin promised under the “dictatorship of the law” was nevertheless illusory. Russia has progressed over the past decade and a half from stabilization to top-down control to its present fear-haunted laager. A few dates illustrate the point:
<blockquote> 2001: The Kremlin’s seizure of control over the television channels ORT (until then managed by Berezovsky) and NTV (Gusinsky), as the first step towards the control and corruption of the Russian media into an instrument of Kremlin propaganda, and the present extension of that effort into the internet.
2003: The arrest and sentencing of Khodorkovsky put the Yeltsin era “oligarchs” on notice as to their subordinate role, and reminded Putin’s favorites, if they needed it, of their dependence on him. The role of the state in the Russian economy has steadily mounted.
2003: The dismissal of the Kasyanov government.
2004: The school siege in Beslan (North Ossetia) was used to justify the final translation of regional governors, and the Council of the Federation in which they sit, into the Kremlin’s direct instruments. The translation of the regions into today’s impoverished fiefdoms whose chiefs answer to Putin not their local populations has continued. The Duma had already been transformed into a place where discussion of Kremlin-proposed legislation was redundant. The emasculation of what under Russia’s Constitution are supposed to be autonomous institutions has continued.
2004: The Orange Revolution in Ukraine was seen in the Kremlin as a direct challenge, fomented by the West. Domestic measures designed to counter the potential threat to Russia’s rulers have been built up ever since, and notably so after Putin’s return to office after the period of Medvedev/Putin tandem rule in 2008–12.
2007: Putin’s broad ranging and strongly worded attack on U.S. policies at the Munich Security Conference, on February 10.
2008: The invasion of Georgia and seizure of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The alleged threat of NATO expansion was answered by a Russia “risen from her knees.”
2008: The global financial crisis, bought off in Russia by sustaining existing economic interests. Ideas begin to circulate for a renewed economic reform effort, with the political implications left unspoken.
2009–11: The Obama reset leads to a period of calm in U.S./Russia relations but no substantial change in their nature.
2011–12: Street protests following Putin’s decision to run for the Presidency again, and fraudulent Duma elections.
2012: Putin’s return to the Kremlin, rejection of reform ideas aired under Medvedev in favor of a state-directed attempt to revive Russia’s economy, including a significant increase in military spending, together with the suppression of opposition and independent civil society. Darkening of Russia’s economic prospects.
2013–14: Maidan, the flight of Yanukovych, seizure of Crimea, export of anarchy to Eastern Ukraine, further domestic clamp down on opposition figures, Western sanctions, Russian defiance.
2014: Malaysian Airways Flight MH 17 shot down near Donetsk, eastern Ukraine. Direct military action by Russian forces in August to frustrate the potential success of Ukrainian armed forces in restoring Kiev’s control over Donetsk and Luhansk.</blockquote>
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Russian Values are enshrined in an approved version of Russian history .. not the kind that sees value in learning from objective studies of the past.
Second, there has been a reversion to the Soviet idea of the collective not the individual being the dominant force in the country’s development..
And third, Russian Values are not just superior to those of the West but need constant protection from the West. Russians’ access to the Internet has come under increasingly restrictive pressure. Travel abroad is being circumscribed for a growing number of Russians. Dual passport holders are now to be identified, under the presumption that this status is somehow suspicious. Pressure on NGOs continues to rise, along with pressure on independent minded academics and journalists. The mass media have been reduced to mendacious and disturbingly effective propaganda instruments.
The fall of Yanukovych and the installation of a Western-oriented government in Kiev gave the lie to the set of values that had come to dominate the thinking of the “Russian World” as espoused by Putin and increasingly imposed by the Kremlin’s supporters in Russia. Putin’s first two terms in office had been blessed by resource-based prosperity. That was over by his return in 2012. The narrative of Russia as a Great Power threatened by a jealous West was given greater prominence in compensation, and as a justification for the tightening of central control in the first two years of Putin’s tenure as Russia’s President, legally due to end in 2018. The conviction that Ukraine was forced out of its natural alignment with Russia by Western conspiracy came naturally to the Kremlin. To see Yanukovych’s fall as the fate of a corrupt authoritarian ruler would have been deeply uncomfortable. Russia insisted on turning the issue of how Ukraine should develop into an East/West issue, not one for the Ukrainians themselves to decide.
Former Russian Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar pointed in April 2000 at the Slovene Nova Revija Club to the acceptance of Ukraine as a genuinely independent state as a necessary condition of progress for Russia. The national interest of Russia, for him, was to attain prosperity, not regional hegemony. Shevardnadze, when Soviet Foreign Minister, was surely correct in saying, “It is time to realize that neither socialism, nor friendship, nor good-neighborliness, nor respect, can be produced by bayonets, tanks or blood” (as quoted in the recent obituary in the Economist). Moscow’s policies towards Ukraine have put a serious question mark over the future of Putin’s favored project of a Eurasian Union.
Forward Russia?The search for Russian Values and a Russian Way ends in dangerously empty banality. The pursuit of Russia’s revival as a Great Power is in the end an emotional project, not a blueprint for prosperity, nor even for establishing or protecting the wealth and culture needed to sustain its pretensions. Its leitmotif amounts to no more than the ancient and amoral claim that might is right.
..
It behooves Western decision makers therefore to distinguish clearly in their minds between the interests of Russia’s ruling group and the wider interests of the Russian people, and insofar as they are able to do that, to make it clear that they do so. Communicating with the wider public will not be easy, but will be as necessary as it was in Soviet times.
The West should not accept the Russian paradigm of tensions between Russia and themselves as East/West, Cold War, and so on. It is Russia that the Western powers, whether separately or together, are dealing with, not a Russian bloc. And it should be particular issues that should be managed, not the perceived interests of protecting or furthering an overall relationship. The primary issues in the Ukraine crisis for instance are how Ukraine should govern itself, and what the legitimate and accepted role of Russia should be in the former Soviet space (and by extension the wider world), not whether Ukraine should be the property of Russia or the West.
The basic premise of Russian foreign policies is that might is right. Accepting the proposition that self-proclaimed Great Powers are justified in forcing their will on weaker states is the road to international anarchy. That is why Western powers should defend as best they may the right of Russia’s neighbors in the Former Soviet Union—and the right of Ukraine in particular—to decide for themselves how they are to be governed, and what path they should take.
Western powers should consider what areas may most constructively be dealt with together with the Russians, and which are less promising. The overall state of relations should not be the principal consideration. Bilateral relationships are bound to vary over time. The Russians will not soften their approach for fear of provoking Western countries or in the hope that one good turn will deserve another at some later stage. Those negotiating with the Russians should also take care to be sure of what precisely is meant by particular words or phrases. False parallels, the useful lie, and equivocation are long standing Moscow specialties.
NATO powers and non-NATO powers in the West will need to re-establish their defense capability if the Russians are to take them seriously, and those most exposed to possible Russian pressure are to be reassured. That is not to threaten Russia militarily, but mere prudence. Russia threatens its own future more than do any Western powers.
The EU has yet to find a coherent way to concentrate its policies toward Russia, or to align them with NATO’s potential. The present crisis may perhaps sharpen EU minds as to the need to do this, and to work more effectively with the United States and Canada.
Lastly, Russia will one day resume its trek towards becoming a better-governed and more responsible society. Autarchy is not a long-term option. How and when such change will come is no easier to determine than it was when I wrote in 1981. It may indeed now be more difficult to pre-figure because the hard but attractive option of democratic and Western-influenced change in Russia was then seen, however imperfectly, as the possible alternative to sticking with the failure of the Brezhnev version of the exhausted potential of Soviet Communism. The Russian fear now is that chaos, not hope of betterment, will rule as and when the Putin system gives way.'
- Andrew Wood,
Part 1,
Part 2, november, 2014</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
'..Ukraine and the West must understand what Putin is doing and call it by its rightful names: invasion, Anschluss, provocation, intimidation, and panic-sowing..'(Ukraine) - '..Russian-led forces already have been fighting to capture the Donetsk airport..'Ukraine's Last Chance - 'As bureaucrats keep stealing and politicians keep stalling, the specter of financial collapse hovers closer..''The widespread image of the CIA's demonic powers in Russia is the mirror image of Washington's conviction..' - Gaidar</blockquote>