Putin's Wars (3 page)
It is interesting to note that Rousseau wrote this text during the reign of tsarina
Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796 and was a great admirer of the
French encyclopaedists. She corresponded with Diderot and Voltaire, and she actually
invited Diderot to Saint Petersburg for five months. Like Peter the Great before her,
she displayed an energetic drive to modernize the country, and she herself wrote the
655 articles of the
Nakaz,
a radical law reform based on the works of Montesquieu. She even introduced some pseudo-democratic
measures, such as convening an All-Russian Legislative Commission. But all this had
no lasting consequences. Back in Paris, Diderot wrote his
Observations,
in which he expressed a sharp critique of the
Nakaz.
“There is no true sovereign except the nation,” he wrote. “There can be no true legislator
except the people. It is rare that people submit sincerely to laws which have been
imposed on them. But they will love the laws, respect, obey and protect them as their
own achievement, if they are themselves the authors of them.”
[6]
Diderot made no effort to flatter the tsarina. “The Empress of Russia,” he wrote,
“is certainly a despot.”
[7]
Catherine only saw Diderot’s critical
Observations
after the death of the philosopher, when his library was transferred to Saint Petersburg
under a contractual agreement. When she finally read Diderot’s comments, wrote Jonathan
Israel, “she flew into a rage and apparently destroyed the copy she received.”
[8]
However, Catherine, this modern, enlightened despot
,
became less enlightened and more despotic during the Pugachev revolt (1774–1775).
This popular uprising in the southwestern part of her empire, led by a Cossack leader
who claimed to be acting on behalf of the assassinated tsar Peter III, Catherine’s
former husband, changed her ideas. During this peasants’ revolt over a thousand noblemen
and their families were killed, which was approximately 5 percent of the Russian nobility.
[9]
Instead of abolishing serfdom and giving the Russian people a parliament as she
had promised to do, she signed in 1785 the Charter of Nobility, which gave the Russian
nobility the same special rights as in Western Europe. Ironically, this happened at
a time when in Western Europe these rights began to be questioned and would be abolished
some years later during the French Revolution.
[10]
In the end Catherine’s “democratic revolution” created precisely the opposite:
it “created an aristocracy, the better to govern, or rather to dominate the mass of
the people. For some to have a sphere of rights due to special birth or rank was doubtless
better than for no one to have any assured rights at all.”
[11]
Catherine remained a convinced autocrat and is mainly remembered for her exuberant
love life and the Russian expansion into the Crimea.
The despotic character of Russian rule was criticized not only by foreigners, but
equally by the Russian intelligentsia. However, reform periods in Russia were, in
general, short-lived. They were mostly introduced after
lost wars
, when the absolute power of the tsar and the ruling elite was temporarily weakened.
In the last two centuries there were at least
four
such lost wars that led to deep and important reforms: the Crimean War (1853–1856),
the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), the First World War, and the Cold War.
[12]
The Crimean War had the effect of a wake-up call. Despite the fact that tsarist
Russia mobilized 1,742,297 officers and men, plus 787,197 irregulars and militia,
it was unable to deal with a force of 300,000 French, British, Sardinian, and Ottoman
troops.
[13]
The rank and file of the Russian army consisted of serfs, who were conscripts for
life. The officers came from the nobility. It became clear that in an epoch of mounting
nationalism one could not win a war with an army of unmotivated and illiterate serfs.
[14]
A direct consequence of the lost war was the Era of the Great Reforms, initiated
by tsar Alexander II, who during his reign (1855–1881) abolished serfdom in Russia.
However, these social reforms were less inspired by a genuine concern for the situation
of the exploited Russian
muzhik
, as by the geopolitical needs of the Russian empire. Walter Pintner rightly remarked
that it was “Russia’s military requirements [which] dictated major social changes.”
[15]
A similar situation arose in 1905 after the defeat in the war against Japan. This
defeat led to a revolution and subsequently to the formation of the first parliament,
the State Duma in Saint Petersburg. Another lost war: the defeat of the tsarist army
in the First World War gave birth to the February Revolution of 1917 that laid the
foundation for a Western-style democracy. Unfortunately, at the end of the same year
the fragile democratic government of Kerensky was swept away by the Bolsheviks, who
installed an autocratic and totalitarian system that endured for the next seventy
years. Although during the communist era Khrushchev’s rule brought a short period
of cultural “thaw” after Stalin’s death, it did not bring internal democratization,
and one had to wait until 1989 before the autocratic communist system began to crumble.
When this finally happened expectations were high. At last Russia would take its rightful
place amongst the ranks of the democratic countries of Europe. At last it would build
a viable
Rechtsstaat
with an independent judiciary and abolish the almost inborn fear that the police and
secret services instilled in Russian citizens. Inside, as well as outside, Russia
there was a sense of relief: finally Russia would become a “normal” country. Western
powers were so eager to let this transformation happen that they offered Russia access
to democratic forums even before Russia had shown itself worthy of this honor and
had acquired the necessary democratic credentials. Rather prematurely Russia was invited
to the G7 meetings (renamed G8) and became a member of the Council of Europe. In retrospect
this early embracing of a new democratic Russia was too optimistic and too hasty,
granting Russia a position among the democratic nations it did not yet deserve.
[16]
It was as if the West, by granting Russia the status of a fully fledged democratic
state, wanted to invoke a “democratic spirit,” hoping that Russia, having been accepted
as a member of the club, would automatically
behave
as a member of the club.
A few critical voices in the West warned against too much optimism. One of them was
Zbigniew Brzezinski. “Unfortunately,” he wrote as early as 1994, “considerable evidence
suggests that the near-term perspectives for a stable Russian democracy are not very
promising.”
[17]
Brzezinski was right. It did not take long, indeed, before the West grew disappointed.
After the chaotic, but democratically still promising decade of the 1990s under Yeltsin
the Russian spring turned into a chilly winter. While the façade of a multiparty democracy
was kept in place, elections were falsified and stolen, corruption was rampant, democratic
freedoms were trampled upon, journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists were
killed, the judiciary lacked independence, and not the people, but the spymasters
of the KGB—rebaptized into FSB—became the country’s supreme masters. Despite Medvedev’s
repeated mantras on
modernizatsiya
, it was not the modernization of the country, but its own self-perpetuation that
was the real objective of the regime.
Three times—in 1856, 1905, and 1917—modern Russia had tried to reform itself after
a lost war. Three times it failed. The only enduring success was the abolition of
serfdom by tsar Alexander II. After the end of the Cold War it had—probably for the
first time in its history—a real chance to join the democratic mainstream. Unfortunately,
Russia missed this unique historical opportunity. Russian despotism could be likened
to a mythical monster: every time it lies down on the ground and appears finally defeated,
it rises to power again. This despotic nature of the Russian polity is not only a
problem for the Russian population, its immediate victim, but also for the neighboring
peoples, and—ultimately—for the whole world. The reason for this is that Russian despotism
is intimately linked with Russia’s imperial drive.
This “eternal” Russian imperialism has four origins:
Russia’s geographical position
Russia’s economic system
Russia’s expansionist tradition
A deliberate expansionist policy conducted by the Russian ruling elite
Historically it was Russia’s geographical position, near Siberia—a huge and almost
empty space—that made expansion easy. This was a great advantage for Russia compared
with the countries of mainland Europe that competed for territorial expansion in an
area where land was scarce. Russia’s opportunities for territorial expansion were
enhanced after Ivan III (The Great), who reigned from 1462 to 1505, had succeeded
in driving the Mongols back. Under his grandson Ivan IV (The Terrible), who reigned
from 1547 to 1584, Russia—as if driven by a
horror vacui
—started to conquer the vast expanses of Siberia. Within a century the Russians had
reached the Pacific. They did not stop there, but crossed the Bering Strait and went
on to conquer Alaska. In the early nineteenth century Russian colonists went as far
as California, where, in 1812, they founded Fort Ross north of Bodega Bay on the Pacific
coast, just above San Francisco.
[18]
According to the American geopolitician Nicholas J. Spykman, “It was fair to assume
that if the grip of Spain in California ever weakened, Russia would be eager to take
her place.”
[19]
However, Russian territorial expansion into the South, the West, and the North
was less easy. Here it was less
pull
factors of an easy expansion than the
push
factors of a deliberate imperialist policy that prevailed.
An important push factor for Russia’s imperial expansion was Russia’s
economic system
. It was based on agriculture in feudal properties, and the labor force consisted
largely of serfs. This agriculture was not capital-intensive, as was mostly the case
in Western Europe, but
coercion-intensive
.
[20]
This meant that it was neither innovative nor efficient and rendered only marginal
profits to the landlords who disposed of two methods only to raise their profits:
increasing the exploitation of the serfs or adding new land. Because the exploitation
of the serfs could not be increased beyond certain physical limits, this led to a
continuous search for new land and territorial expansion. This tendency was reinforced
by the fact that “the Russian state took shape in a capital-poor environment.”
[21]
The state simply did not have enough money to pay or reward faithful servants of
the state and successful military commanders. “[T]he logic of warmaking and statemaking
in a region of little capital led rulers to buy officeholders with expropriated land,”
[22]
and with newly acquired land. The two above-mentioned factors led to Russia developing
a tradition of territorial expansion from an early stage. Territorial expansion became,
as it were, the normal “way of life” of the Russian state. It was like an organism
that grows and grows and continues to grow until it has reached its full size, preordained
by its biological nature. But unlike an organism, Russia did
not
have a genetically preordained “normal size.” It could go on and on, growing beyond
any limit. And in a certain sense that was what happened. According to Colin Gray,
territorial expansion was “the Russian way,” just as it has been “the Soviet way.”
It is estimated, for example, that between the middle of the 16th century and the
end of the 17th, Russia conquered territory the size of the modern Netherlands
every year
for
150 years
running. Furthermore, unlike the case of most other imperial powers conquest by Russia
became a permanent and nonnegotiable political fact (save under conditions of extreme
duress, as with the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March 1918).
[23]
Traditions can be upheld and followed with more or less constancy and enthusiasm.
A country can become an imperial power by making this an explicit choice or in a more
or less accidental way. The British Empire, according to the nineteenth century British
historian Sir John Seeley, was acquired “in a fit of absence of mind.” There existed
no previous, elaborated British
plan
to build an empire. Edward Dicey, a British journalist and writer, wrote in 1877:
We have never been a conquering nation. Since the days when the Plantagenets essayed
the conquest of France we have never deliberately undertaken the conquest of any foreign
country; we have never made war with the set purpose of annexing any given territory.
We have had no monarchs whose aim and ambition it has been to add fresh possessions
to the crown, in order simply and solely to extend the area of their dominions.
[24]
Although the British perception that their empire was created in “a fit of absence
of mind” may be exaggerated, it is not an exaggeration to say that from its early
beginnings the Russian empire has been conceived as a
deliberate
project.
The twin objectives of territorial expansion and the subjugation of other peoples
were consciously and purposively pursued by Russia’s political elite. An exemplification
for this mindset is tsarina Catherine the Great’s famous dictum: “I have no way to
defend my borders but to extend them.”
[25]
It was not only a supposed fragility of the Russian state that was at the root
of its continuous expansion. “The fact that, unlike Western Europe, the formation
of the empire does not
succeed
the construction of the state, but
accompanies
it, has also blurred the dividing lines. The concept of the nation and imperial ambition
merge as soon as Moscow, the first centre of the modern state, gains the upper hand
over rival Russian principalities and, then, over the weakened mongol overlord.”
[26]
The fact that in Russia empire building was a constitutive part of the process
of state formation indicates a fundamental difference with empire building by the
Western European states, which only began
after
the national states had been consolidated. While Russia was a “product of empire,”
this was not the case here. John Darwin, for instance, emphasized the fact that Britain
“was not in any obvious way a product of empire. It was not ‘constituted’ by empire—a
modish but vacuous expression. The main reason for this was that its English core
was already an exceptionally strong and culturally unified state (taking language
and law as the most obvious criteria) long before it acquired an empire beyond Europe.”
[27]
The same was true for Portugal, Spain, France, and even the Netherlands (which
from 1568 to 1648 was fighting a war of independence against Spain).
