'Although most representatives of the contemporary Russian political and business elite were educated and began their professional activity under the Soviet system, the moment which was ultimately formative in their political culture, also in foreign policy, was primarily the period of constitutional transformation in the 1990s. At that time, the uncontrolled dismantling of the Soviet model of government, the economy and society was accompanied by the construction of a specific, anarchic quasi-de-mocracy and a Darwinist, criminal proto-capitalism. Against the background of the dissolution of the existing structures and institutions, the deepening dysfunction of the state and law, a broad field opened up for rapid albeit risky business and political careers, but also for the flowering of the activities of the organised criminal groups which had first appeared in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Due to the crisis of state power, including the administration of justice, and the temptation of huge profits related to trading in raw materials or the ‘wild’ privatisations, liberated from the supervision of an ailing state, the struggle for influence in these circumstances was particularly ruthless.
The intermingling of politics with the criminal world, the rise in the links between criminal groups and the interests of the representatives of federal and regional government, and also the fact that the fight for financial assets and influence often went literally to the death, resulted in the transfer of mafia-style thinking and methods onto state policy. In this way the ethos of the Soviet nomenklatura, which had operated in the conditions of a closed planned economy and been forced into the straitjacket of Soviet state structures, was replaced by a quasi-criminal ethos, governed by the rules of political Darwinism. The Russian political context of the 1990s therefore permits the identification of similarities between the current culture of the political salons of power and the criminal ethics of the underworld, as manifested in the attitudes and statements on foreign policy expressed by high-level Russian officials. (32, 33)
Conclusion
The Kremlin’s confrontational stance towards the West is not a temporary matter..
..
because the relationship between the government and the people in Russia is based not so much on voluntary subordination as on compulsion, the morbid fear of a ‘colour revolution’ (especially when faced with the threat of long-term stagnation) prompts the Kremlin to deepen its isolation from society and combat any manifestations of independence. In this situation, only confrontation and the designation of an ‘enemy’ can legitimise the poor state of the economy, the deterioration of standards of living for the general public, and the lack of any prospects for development, as well as the regime’s throttling of any opportunities for innovative development, which would be politically risky. The only alternative to this anti-Western ‘conservatism’, which mobilises the people around the government, would probably be xenophobic nationalism, which in a multiethnic state, hosting masses of immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia, would seriously jeopardise Russia’s domestic political stability.' (56)
'..the establishment in Russia of a Chekist-kleptocratic feudalist model – a system based on the elite’s paranoid anxiety of losing power, and on suspicion of the outside world. (7)
..
The environment in which Russian thought on foreign policy has been formed is the authoritarian system of government, which derives from the model of centralised authority that has been deeply rooted in Russian history. No genuine implementation of liberal democracy has ever succeeded in breaking through this model during the centuries of the construction of Russian statehood. This system is characterised by the fundamentally undemocratic relationship between the rulers and society, as well as by the specific relationships within the ruling elite. Both of these features directly affect how the Kremlin formulates the ideological and operational dimensions of Russian foreign policy. (9)
..
One of the key differentiators of Russian foreign policy is the government’s desire to project elements of the Russian authoritarian model onto the country’s international surroundings. Attempts to move this uncontrolled model of government to the outside have resulted in the absolutisation of the category of sovereignty. In the era of globalisation and international integration, Russia sees global order as a kind of an idealised ‘Westphalia’ system, in which the government has the exclusive right to control the internal affairs of the state (although Moscow does not apply this rule to other, especially smaller countries). (11)
..
..the empowerment of the individual and society as political actors is in conflict with the vital interests of the Russian ruling elite.
..
An important factor in the Kremlin’s anti-Western policy is
and still remains the unconquerable psychological complex resulting from the collapse of the empire and the degradation of Soviet power, and the imperative of rebuilding the state’s position as a superpower on the world stage. This is intended to serve, by means of effective influence on the global order, both the defence of the regime’s interests on the domestic stage, and the implementation of the objectives of its foreign policy, which are often fundamentally contrary to the interests of its Western partners. Russia wants to obtain consent to dominate the post-Soviet area, rebuild Europe’s security architecture in accordance with its own interests, and maximise the economic and political benefits of cooperation with the West without making any concessions on its part. (14)
..
George Kennan’s diagnosis from 1946 therefore remains valid: the sense of threat that consumes the Russian elite results from the awareness that their system of governance is archaic, has a weak ideological base, and would not withstand competition from the much more attractive Western system. This rules out a cooperative model of international relations, as the Russian system is permanently trying to strengthen its defences.
Moscow’s attitude to the liberal Western political mainstream is characterised by intrinsic suspicion, and is subject to the overriding objective of maintaining power at all costs, while aiming to strengthen Russia’s international position on its own terms. (19)
..
..
Russia wants to push the West into consolidating a system that in essence remains anti-Western: its anti-Western nature is being enforced not by the state’s current interests, but by the inherent nature of the authoritarian model of government. The Russian vision of this ‘cooperation’ is thus just as parasitic in nature as the relation of the Russian elite to the general public. This vision assumes maximalising the material and prestige benefits and the political power exercised by the Russian government, which would allow it to ruthlessly force its partners to act in accordance with the interests of the Russian Federation. (23)
Any explanation of Moscow’s methods of operation in the area between open confrontation and pseudo-cooperation requires us to delve into the substance of the individual and group mentalities of the ruling elite. This influences the specific features of Russian authoritarianism, and determines fundamental difference of Russian political culture from that of the West – a difference which often causes communication problems and misperceptions about Russia’s intentions. (24)
In order to understand the logic directing how Russia’s decisionmakers reflect on foreign policy, not only in the dimension of its worldview but also operationally (the choices of instruments and working methods), it is necessary to analyse the consequences of the individual and generational experiences which formed the political careers of today’s ruling elite, including Vladimir Putin himself and his ‘inner circle’ (i.e. his closest friends and advisors).
The shape of the ruling elite’s collective mentality is largely based upon the strong position of the people in it who are linked to the special services and the other ‘structures of force’, which have transferred the mindset, habits and working methods of the ‘Chekists’ environment onto the policy of the state. At the same time, the ethos and the range of methods used by the special services
are being strengthened as a result of the filtering through into Russian policy of the rules governing the criminal world. (25)
..
The participation of representatives of the power structures in the organs of Russia’s central government and regional bodies has increased significantly since Vladimir Putin’s rise to power. This figure is assessed at from around 20% to 40% of the ruling elite; their importance, however, derives not so much by their number as the important decision-making positions they are given. One example is the crucial importance of the Security Council – a body dominated by the
siloviki – in drawing up decisions concerning the broader internal and external security of the state. The most significant determinant of the ‘Chekists’ importance to the political system, however, is
the dissemination of their mentality and ethics among the ‘civilian’ part of the elite: in the era of Putin “there have been formed among the elite specific codes and standards, a matrix that allows the reproduction of the model – not necessarily by directly planting [government institutions] with the representatives of the corporationsof power, but through entrenched norms and mechanisms of operation”. These include a suspicious, closed-off way of thinking, formed during the Soviet era, as well as the perception of official policy as an area of lies and deception into which the unauthorised cannot penetrate. (26, 27)
The siloviki’s strong position in the decision-making circles affects Russian foreign policy in two ways, at both the ideological and operational levels. First, the degree to which the state administration has been penetrated by the services and the mutual rivalry between them mean that, in order to maximise their influence and financial benefits, they must try to demonstrate that Russia is constantly under threat.. (27)
..
One of the key tools of foreign policy as a ‘special operation’ is the language of information dissemination, used both as an instrument of sabotage on the international stage, and as justification of the purpose and methods of the state’s foreign policy on the domestic stage. The language of the authorities reflects the very substance of the mentality and habits of the special services, as well as the still extant Soviet code (‘double-think’), which has been enhanced with the communication codes of the criminal world (of which more later). This in turn corresponds to the phenomenon, familiar to Western reality, of ‘post-truth’. All these patterns
reject the possibility of coming to an agreement with the use of language, both because of the conscious intent to falsify the intention of communication, and because of the annihilation of meanings. (30, 31)
..
Although most representatives of the contemporary Russian political and business elite were educated and began their professional activity under the Soviet system,
the moment which was ultimately formative in their political culture, also in foreign policy,
was primarily the period of constitutional transformation in the 1990s. At that time, the uncontrolled dismantling of the Soviet model of government, the economy and society was accompanied by the construction of a specific, anarchic quasi-de-mocracy and a Darwinist, criminal proto-capitalism. Against the background of the dissolution of the existing structures and institutions, the deepening dysfunction of the state and law, a broad field opened up for rapid albeit risky business and political careers, but also for the flowering of the activities of the organised criminal groups which had first appeared in the Soviet Union in the 1970s. Due to the crisis of state power, including the administration of justice, and the temptation of huge profits related to trading in raw materials or the ‘wild’ privatisations, liberated from the supervision of an ailing state, the struggle for influence in these circumstances was particularly ruthless.
The intermingling of politics with the criminal world, the rise in the links between criminal groups and the interests of the representatives of federal and regional government, and also the fact that the fight for financial assets and influence often went literally to the death, resulted in the
transfer of mafia-style thinking and methods onto state policy. In this way the ethos of the Soviet
nomenklatura, which had operated in the conditions of a closed planned economy and been forced into the straitjacket of Soviet state structures, was replaced by a quasi-criminal ethos, governed by the rules of political Darwinism. The Russian political context of the 1990s therefore permits the identification of
similarities between the current culture of the political salons of power and the criminal ethics of the underworld, as manifested in the attitudes and statements on foreign policy expressed by high-level Russian officials. (32, 33)
..
..In the political thought of the Russian elite, this gave rise to an identification of the power one possessed with material resources obtained illegally or semi-legally, and with personal security. In conditions of fighting without formal rules,
all kinds of tricks were allowed, provided they were effective. The post-Soviet elite generation, which had been tempered in the era of ‘wild capitalism’, therefore acknowledges the logic of
‘winner takes all’, which means that by definition the interests of a competitor or opponent are not taken into account.
These principles are reflected in the methods employed in Russian foreign policy. Each international game is treated as an all-or-nothing contest; the position of the state and the elite requires constant confirmation and a series of successes (at least in propaganda), and the threshold of tolerance for risk is much higher in the case of the Russian elite than for the Western elites, for whom – in the face of a democratic rotation of governments – a loss of power or prestige is rarely seen as the end of the world. As when criminals settle their scores, the arsenal of measures to be used is not defined
a priori, there are no rules imposed ahead of time, no ‘red lines’ that should not be crossed; this results in the brutalisation of Moscow’s political activities. (34, 35)
..
Also, according to the logic of the criminal, the ‘client’s cooperation with the ‘protector’ does not oblige the latter to do anything. The rules of ethics or morals are characterised by a kind of quasi-tribal thinking; they are exclusive in nature, and are valid only in relation to their own group. Because the ‘alien’ is outside the world populated by one’s own kind, one does not need to take any account of him. In this way, the members of the group do not see lies or manipulation as anything offensive, still less so if they win. This precludes any respect for those rules of cooperation that were shaped in the Western paradigm of liberal democracy and the rule of law. Russian discourse, regardless of its subject matter (be that a historical issue, the implementation of international agreements, or the course of the conflict in Ukraine) regularly involve lies, not only at the level of communication in the media, but in international discussions at the highest level.
In this context, the mistake commonly committed in the name of seeking an ‘understanding of Russia’ is based on the assumption that openness to dialogue and concessions from the West will lead to real compromise and appropriate concessions from Moscow. Meanwhile these same concessions are treated as weakness, and only encourage further demands, extortion and blackmail. The ‘owner’ of the territory arbitrarily determines the law which applies in that territory, and this need not have anything to do with notions of justice.* (37, 38)
The determinants of Moscow’s confrontational foreign policy, which result from the inherently authoritarian regime, its Russian-specific characteristics, and the mentality of the ruling elite, correspond to the historical-cultural subsoil from which the mentality of most of Russian society originates. To a great degree it accepts (passively or actively) the ideology and the toolkit of the Kremlin’s actions on the international stage. Regardless of the fascination with the Western model of economic development, and with Western culture itself, the anti-Western fears and complexes of the Russians are often made clear as regards their assessment of mutual political relations.
The Kremlin’s anti-Western propaganda would not be as effective were it not based on the deeply-rooted social matrices of the Russian world view, which have not been changed either by Russia opening up to the world after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, or by the evolution of individuals as a result of the subsequent socio-economic transformation. Pro-Western circles remain marginalised, and they will have no effect on the policy of the government in the foreseeable future.
Social consent to the elite’s arbitrary definition of national interest and their choice of measures to implement it is possible largely thanks to the deep roots in Russian history of the paternalist, hierarchical model of the relationship between authority and the citizens. These relations are based on the assumption that the state, in the name of the proclaimed good of the citizen, is entitled to restrict his rights and exercise control over him, thus releasing him from responsibility for the shape of the surrounding reality. (39)
..
The ‘Soviet man’ is characterised by his tendency to follow the authority of the state in its assessment of reality, to adopt an attitude of mistrust and anxiety towards anything foreign and unknown, and is convinced of his own powerlessness and inability to affect the surrounding reality; from here, it is only a step towards lacking any sense of responsibility for that reality. His suppressed aggression, birthed by his chronic dissatisfaction with life, his intense sense of injustice and his inability to achieve self-realisation, and his great envy, all erupt into a fascination with force and violence, as well as a tendency towards ‘negative identification’ – in opposition to ‘the enemy’ or ‘the foreigner’. Such a personality suits a quasi-tribal approach to standards of morality and law (the things ‘our people’ have a right to do are condemned in the ‘foreigner’). (40)
..
According to the results of sociological research, people with this kind of personality type make up about 35-40% of the population of Russia, but individual characteristics or behavioural patterns appear at appropriate moments of mobilisation (economic, political or social crises) in up to 80% of respondents. With regard to the strengthening of authoritarianism in Russia and the elimination of pluralism, this type of personality is beginning to come to the fore, and is moreover being reproduced in the younger generations. (41)
..
This mechanism was reinforced by the logic of the state of emergency which marked the first decade of the Russian Federation’s existence. The political crisis, which ended in the shelling of the Parliament building in 1993, and the two wars in Chechnya formed a specific scheme of the government’s legitimacy. This is based on a common belief that in a crisis threatening the community, a government which is maximally focused and unfettered will be more effective than one which is limited by democratic procedures: therefore it is not the law which is of value, but rather effectiveness. This meant the suspension of the principles of ethics and morals which apply in normal conditions. In this way the limits of tolerance for the use of exceptional and unconstitutional means, as well as for the extra-legal expansion of the government’s mandate to act, were permanently shifted, both in domestic and foreign policy. These models were updated once again, with full public support, early in spring 2014 during the conflict with Ukraine and the economic crisis, when the atmosphere of the ‘state of emergency’ was reactivated. (44)
..
..the instruments which the Kremlin uses in its foreign policy. This allows Moscow to use the element of surprise in its relations with Western governments, which are much less inclined to use coercive measures, military force in place of persuasion, or purely verbal pressure. The belief that rule based on dialogue is weak makes it easier for the Russian elite to acquire a social mandate for its principled rejection of the paradigm of liberal democratic culture in its essence. This impedes the diffusion of Western models for organising the state or the relationship between the government and the people, as well as the adoption of the Western culture of international negotiations.
Another product of the culture of violence is the acceptance of manipulation and lies as a standard instrument of foreign policy. Two phenomena form this fertile soil: the legacy of Soviet ‘doublethink’ and quasi-tribal thinking, built on a fundamental opposition between ‘us’ and ‘the other’ as the axis of the world’s structure. For a substantial part of Russians, deception, like violence, is an acceptable tool of external action, because their interactions with their own state have been built upon it since time immemorial. The inferiority complex, in combination with the complex of lost greatness, births the desire to achieve satisfaction by outwitting one’s opponent. There is no fair play in the fight, the more so as the desire to retaliate and promote one’s self-esteem cannot be met by the state’s economic performance or the attractiveness of its ideology, and the use of military advantages as a bogeyman pose too high a risk in the long run. In this kind of fight, all moves are permitted, and lying and manipulation are raised to the rank of a military art. (47)
..
In the Russian people, then, a lasting prejudice against the West has arisen, but one which had hardened even before Putin’s rise to power. Whereas in the 1990s the rise of anti-Western sentiments was rather natural, a genuinely bottom-up phenomenon, over the next decade the Russian authorities began to deliberately stoke it and use it to justify their superpower ambitions as a response forced upon them by the ‘aggressive actions’ of the US and NATO. These negative trends were enhanced in 2003-5 (the second wave of NATO enlargement eastwards, the wave of ‘colour revolutions’); then the sense of belonging to Western culture, which had been important for collective identity in the 1990s, began to wane; thereafter, the belief arose that Russia is a separate civilisation with its own normative system. Thanks to this, public support for suspending or violating the formally recognised norms of international law has been built up, andthe sanctions for violating them are not seen as a justified punishment, but rather as testimony to the growing power of Russia and to other countries’ unfair competition with her.
This has therefore led to a convergence between the public’s images of Russia on the international stage and the understanding of international politics in Putin’s inner circle. (50, 51)
..
ConclusionThe Kremlin’s confrontational stance towards the West is not a temporary matter....
..because the relationship between the government and the people in Russia is based not so much on voluntary subordination as on compulsion, the morbid fear of a ‘colour revolution’ (especially when faced with the threat of long-term stagnation) prompts the Kremlin to deepen its isolation from society and combat any manifestations of independence.
In this situation, only confrontation and the designation of an ‘enemy’ can legitimise the poor state of the economy, the deterioration of standards of living for the general public, and the lack of any prospects for development, as well as the regime’s throttling of any opportunities for innovative development, which would be politically risky. The only alternative to this anti-Western ‘conservatism’, which mobilises the people around the government, would probably be xenophobic nationalism, which in a multiethnic state, hosting masses of immigrants from the Caucasus and Central Asia, would seriously jeopardise Russia’s domestic political stability. (56)
- Maria Domanska,
Conflict-dependant Russia, November 2017
* S. Stephenson,
Gangs of Russia: From the Streets to the Corridors of Power, op. cit., pp. 178–9.
Context' "As we look out across the years and across the generations, let us develop and move right here. We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that we will be able to make of this old world a new world. We will be able to make men better. Love is the only way. Jesus discovered that.
"And our civilization must discover that. Individuals must discover that as they deal with other individuals. There is a little tree planted on a little hill and on that tree hangs the most influential character that ever came in this world. But never feel that that tree is a meaningless drama that took place on the stages of history. Oh no, it is a telescope through which we look out into the long vista of eternity, and see the love of God breaking forth into time. It is an eternal reminder to a power-drunk generation that love is the only way. It is an eternal reminder to a generation depending on nuclear and atomic energy, a generation depending on physical violence, that love is the only creative, redemptive, transforming power in the universe.
"So this morning, as I look into your eyes, and into the eyes of all of my brothers in Alabama and all over America and over the world, I say to you, "I love you. I would rather die than hate you." And I'm foolish enough to believe that through the power of this love somewhere, men of the most recalcitrant bent will be transformed.." '
- Martin Luther King, Jr,
Loving Your Enemies'..the United States and Europe .. Russia .. managing those disagreements..''..Russia .. What is needed .. a truth commission, like South Africa’s Commission on Truth and Reconciliation..'(Russia) - '..the wounds inflicted by the Soviet experiment have never healed..''..Zero tolerance for Russian intrusions..' - '..need to “dismantle” spying networks and prevent other illegal activities by Russia..'