How Russians Think About World Politics
(An earlier and shorter version of this article appeared in the Slovak newspaper Denník N on December 2, 2022.)
Very many politicians and analysts in Western democracies complain that they do not understand Russian political thinking, they are taken aback by Russia's actions, and they cannot estimate Russia's goals.
However, this is largely because they are reluctant to admit that international relations and politics can be thought about differently in Russia as compared with democratic societies, and indeed that this difference in thinking has been notable during the last three generations (marked by the decolonization and radical demilitarization of West European societies, roughly from 1955 to 1970).
Contributing to this, perhaps, is a slight arrogance on the part of the educated upper middle classes in the West, who tend to believe that their view of the world is not only correct but even the only possible one, and that everyone else thinks the same way as they do, or at least strives to approach their way of thinking.
But this is not the case. Despite many common roots and similarities in civilization, the Russian elite, as well as ordinary citizens, think in international affairs in a different way and set goals in foreign policy which are different from those of the societies of North America and Central and Western Europe. These differences, of course, are not connected with some "eternal and unchanging" character of the Russian nation. Many of them were also common in Central and Western Europe in the past.
Differing Fundamental Approaches in the West and in Russia
Today's Western politicians and diplomats (especially in Europe, less so in the US) are the offspring of democratic humanist and pacifist societies, within the long period of peace after 1945. They were personally shaped by an environment that had rejected the use of violence in politics already by the 1960s, and where the goal of politics is the maintenance of peace, the achievement of well-being, the happy life of individuals, the satisfaction of their needs, etc., not only in their own country, but also in the whole of Europe and, in fact, all over the planet. The state is regarded as having very little moral right to put its own citizens (including soldiers) in situations where they would be in danger of losing their lives.
In international politics, the personal and political views of Western politicians and diplomats are based on the concepts of neo-functionalism, the theory of complex interdependence, the need to respect the law, and generally on the idea that there are numerous common interests of humanity, chief among which are peace, development, human rights, freedom and democracy. Their primary experience in international relations derives from life and professional activity within the environment of the European Union and NATO. In this environment, the use of force or coercion has become unacceptable in relations between member states, and politics has the character of long and exhaustive negotiation with the intention of reaching a compromise and subsequent consensus. They see international politics not as a zero-sum game but as a means of achieving synergistic effects and benefits for all. As they see it, the factor of military force has been significantly reduced and its use should be limited to police actions against irresponsible and underdeveloped nations somewhere on the periphery. After all, developed nations do not fight each other,; they do not compete, they cooperate. “The post-Westphalian model” might be a description of describe the international environment, as seen by the particular community of such advanced states.
However, such an approach, based on the aforementioned "post-Westphalian model" of international politics, cannot be applied in negotiations with Russia. Its current political leaders, a significant part of the intellectual elites and many ordinary citizens are firmly anchored in the "Westphalian world" and, moreover, in a distinctively Russian tradition of thought (we could even say in a conglomerate of several traditions): a heritage, firstly, of pre-revolutionary Tsarist Russia, secondly, of the USSR, and thirdly, also of developments in the post-1991 period, during which several specific ideological concepts were formed.
The most visible of these are eclectic combinations of geopolitical theories with social Darwinism, a nostalgia for imperial Tsarist Russia and the USSR, and last but not least, ideas about the need for a "strong state" with a "strong national leader". The goals of the Russian political elite around President Vladimir Putin are therefore logically different from those of most Western politicians. These Russian imperialistic concepts are not principally focused on the happiness and well-being of Russia´s own citizens, world peace or development. The real goal of politics and diplomacy is to increase the power and territory of the Russian state.
Acceptance of these geopolitical concepts, at least partially, means among other things that for members of the Russian elite world politics is a "zero-sum game", and its basis is a ruthless and continuous power rivalry between great powers, in which small states have only the role of passive onlookers and possible prey. The question of the dilemma between peace and war is rather a question of choosing the appropriate tool at a given particular moment. The use and threat of force, and the employment of various hybrid operations, are thus permissible instruments of international politics, as long as they are legitimized post facto by the strengthening of Russia's power. For the Russian elite, war is basically a natural state. It can be interrupted by formal peace for a long period of time, but this does not change the essence of things, because even in times of peace, war continues: it is simply “conducted by other means".
Moreover, even a cursory glance at the composition of the narrowest group responsible for shaping Russia's foreign and defence policy will show that they are mostly people (headed by President Vladimir Putin himself) whose professional beginnings are connected with the army, security-intelligence apparatus, and diplomatic corps of the USSR, that great totalitarian empire of the past. The formative years of their youth and studies coincided with the period of this empire’s greatest power and glory, falling approximately between 1960 and 1985); after that came political experience and involvement in the collapse of the 1990s.
Their experience was accordingly one of an incomprehensible decline in power on the one hand, interpreted as the result of a domestic and foreign conspiracy, and on the other hand of a massive penetration of criminal-mafia practices into Russian political and social life and their partial adoption as instruments of policy and problem solving. They have their own idea of their country’s exceptional position, and if Russia has any other status besides that of one of the two or three main world powers, they consider this a national and personal humiliation.
Where western societies favour comprise and show reluctance to engage in confrontations or to use violence, Russian policy formers tend to interpret this as a sign of weakness and decline; they see western emphasis on human rights, free elections, the rule of law, etc. as hypocrisy. Their vision of a possible agreement with the West is almost always based on the assumption of a division of spheres of influence over the smaller nations of Central and Eastern Europe. The rejection of such proposals by western politicians for legal and political reasons surprises them and only confirms their inner conviction that the West does not want to reach any compromise with Russia.
Objectively, it must be admitted that in Russia overall ideas about the inevitability of Russia's great power status, the need for confrontation with the West, and the unjust “robbery" of Russia's historical territories are not limited to the political and power elite, but are shared also by a significant part of ordinary Russian society, including intellectuals and opposition politicians, and even those who in general promote the democratization and liberalization of Russia.
We can concretize this approach in the following (slightly simplified) axiomatic theses, which have been present in Russia in various forms for about three or four centuries.
Axioms of Russian Imperial Political Thinking
The first is the belief that Russia must always have the status of a great world power. And this must be accepted as such without any additional conditions. Russian political tradition does not even allow the idea that it could be otherwise. It has no concept of the existence of a Russia which would not hold the position of a globally recognized superpower. This conception does not include a demand for world hegemony, as is sometimes mistakenly claimed, but certainly it includes the claim that Russia must always be in the current "top league". In the past, for example, together with Germany or the British Empire, today with the USA and China.
Russia considers itself simultaneously the successor of several great empires of the past: the USSR, the Russian Tsarist Empire, Kievan Rus, Byzantium, the Golden Horde, as mentioned already... The vexing question, “Why do the Russians have such ambitions with a population smaller than Bangladesh or Brazil, and with about 1.8 percent of the world's GDP?”, is usually met with an insulted silence. Or there may be a warning about the Russian nuclear arsenal, which would still enable Russia to destroy the whole world even at the cost of its own destruction, as long as the other nations do not grant Russia the status of a great power, regardless of other real parameters. And this status includes joint decision-making with the USA and the People's Republic of China on all world issues and unilateral freedom of action in deciding the fate of the nations within the Russian "sphere of influence", to which Russia has a natural right.
This is the state that the Russian elites are talking about when they say that Russia "must be respected” (“Россию надо уважать”). Occasional warnings from Moscow, that Russia is not interested in preserving the world’s existence if Russia is not recognized by other nations as a superpower, should be understood in this context. International legal obligations should apply only between great powers, primarily about non-interference in their own recognized spheres of influence. And issues of human rights, individual freedoms, democracy etc. must be simply eliminated from international relations.
On the other hand, in reality the disproportion between the real material prerequisites for the position of a superpower and the imperative to be such a superpower at any cost, creates an insane tension and cyclically results in collapses of the Russian state. In the 20th century alone, the Russian state collapsed three times (1917, 1941 and 1991).
The second basic Russian political idea is also related to this. Russia is not a nation-state in the European sense: Russia must be an empire. Russians still do not have the concept of their own nation-state in the ethnic sense. They do not reduce it to a territory inhabited by ethnic Russians, but they consider it completely natural that other nations are also part of such a Russian empire to varying degrees, if the Russians so decide, and the world (meaning the other great powers) must recognize this. And these subordinated nations can also be quite numerous ethnicities, such as Tatars, Ukrainians, Georgians or Poles.
Of course, the primary Russian goal is not to eliminate them or somehow excessively humiliate them, but simply said: these others "must know their place". If they rebel against such a fate, then from the Russian point of view they are considered disturbers of peace and order, and the Russian power has a natural right and obligation to punish them for such unreasonable behavior. The "world", the "West" must also understand and accept this. And whoever criticizes Russia for this is acting with the aim of harming Russia.
In the Russian sense, belonging to the Russian Empire is a great honour and happiness. There is something unreasonable and childish about trying to separate from it. The nations within its framework that strive for some kind of stronger linguistic and cultural identity, perhaps political independence, certainly do not do so of their own free will, but must be incited by the Austrians, Poles, and Americans!
This may sound surprising, but Russian society does not have its own concept of Russian ethnical nationalism. In the European understanding, nationalism means the idea that an ethnic, linguistic and cultural nation should have its own national state with defined state borders. Nationalism is often criticized as a source of conflicts, but its positive and stabilizing effects on the European order are unnecessarily denied. Yes, it drives nations into conflicts over mixed territories (Alsace, Tyrol), but it directly denies the vision that nations or larger territories inhabited by ethnically different inhabitants should be incorporated into their own nation-states. For example, Italian nationalism could compete with Croatian nationalism for Dalmatia, but it did not claim the annexation of the whole of Croatia.
In Russia, however, the main collective idea is Russian imperialism, which positively expects that the territory of the Russian empire will generously exceed the borders of the territory inhabited by ethnic Russians. Actually, the territory inhabited by ethnic Russians cannot even be precisely defined, due to the specific circumstances of Russian expansion in the 16th-19th centuries. When moving forward, the Russian conquerors and settlers left behind large heterogeneous islands, such as the Tatars, Maris, and Bashkirs, and on the periphery of the empire the Russians themselves were often in the position of minorities or mere settlements of military colonists (Lithuania, Transnistria, southern Ukraine, Central Asia).
It follows that the Russians rarely identify themselves with ethnic borders. They relate rather to the political borders of the empire, the borders of the Russian state, which are in any case more clearly defined. And these can be constructed in their "mental map" according to various criteria and may correspond to the borders of the former USSR, the Tsarist Russian Empire from 1914, the Warsaw Pact, all territories that at any time were under Russian power (for example, even Alaska), or in the extreme case to borders dreamed up by various "geopolitical" and "Eurasian" fantasists, and immediately those may be designated as the only fair and natural borders, thus establishing a legitimate claim for Russia to reach them also by military means.
From the point of view of Russian imperialists, the Russian Empire has the right and even the duty to exist (it represents certain standards of morality and civilization, after all!), even at the cost of suppressing the right to self-determination of smaller nations. The latter are supposed to give up their ridiculous and provincialist (from the Russian point of view) claims to independence, in exchange for participation in a great imperial project and for the right of local elites to participate in the administration of this empire in some form.
To some extent, this worked: Russia and the USSR were in principle open to representatives of non-Russian peoples to pursue careers, even at the central level. The condition was, of course, willingness to agree that one's own nation and territory belonged in this empire, full political submission to the authoritarian central power, adoption of the imperial mindset ("imperial spirit" – “имперский дух”), loyalty, and a sufficient (though not necessarily 100%) command of the Russian language. That was actually everything. A certain amount of local autonomy in folkloristic, cultural and linguistic matters was permissible (though with exceptions), as long as it did not serve as a basis for resistance against the central government in St. Petersburg or Moscow. Countless German Baltic barons, Tatars, Ukrainians, Armenians, Georgians, Bashkirs, and also Poles, made full use of these possibilities. Under favourable circumstances, so did German, Scottish, Serbian, Greek, French, Slovak, Czech and other immigrants.
The idea of the USSR as an equal union of 15 republics was presented abroad and in the 14 non-Russian union republics. Around the years 1940-1950, the Soviet power reached a certain form of spiritual compromise and national reconciliation with pre-revolutionary Great Russian ideas and indeed with the White Guard movement, precisely on the basis of imperialism and on the claim that the USSR actually represented a continuity of the Russian Empire. And that it is actually the Russian state, and therefore there is no need to rebel against the Bolsheviks. Russians were to believe that the USSR is the real “Great Russia”.
For the Russian elites, their real homeland is the Russian empire, not the smaller and more ethnic Russian Federation. From their point of view, every step towards the reintegration of the USSR or the Russian Empire is just and legitimate. The smaller states that were formed on the territory of the former USSR are not full-fledged and do not have the right to a real independent existence. Therefore, even wars waged with the intention of reuniting them with Russia, and thus denying their right to independence and self-determination, are fully justified and do not constitute any aggression, and the West "must understand this".
The current configuration of the territory of the Russian Federation is for them deeply frustrating and unacceptable, especially for the older generation of people connected to the power apparatus. Such a "mutilated" Russia does not have much value for them. In fact, they are willing to risk its existence in an effort to achieve its expansion into a form with which they can identify. It is well to remember this way of judging the value of the present-day Russian state, when people speculate on whether the strategy of mutual assured destruction in a nuclear war still applies between the Russian Federation and the USA...
These attitudes may be amplified by "pathetic heroic suicidality", which is present in Russian culture as a model: an effective but dignified end in a hopeless situation by suicide, or actual suicide by exposure to a situation that inevitably leads to death. Something like this is very often depicted and celebrated in Russian art and narrative: White Guard officers shooting themselves in the head, "psychic attack" against machine guns, throwing one's own body at enemy firing points, self-immolation of Old Believers, “Gastello's heroic act" (i.e. an aircraft used as a missile), etc.
The idea of Russian greatness is associated with a certain disdainful attitude towards smaller or (in the Russian perception) weaker nations. As if Russians do not want to accept that these nations can have their own ambitions, interests and ideas. Today, the Russian elites consider the Americans, in part also the British and the Germans, to be the only equal partners. Even the Italians and the French often appear as comically inadequate, a view that is linked with the idea of their military impotence. With a certain self-denial, the Russians now also consider China to be equal in power. However, full recognition of the Chinese or Indians is not entirely possible due to Russia's latent racism. According to the Russian vision of the future world order, Russia should share the world and Europe in peace and friendship with the Americans, and possibly the Germans, the British and the Chinese; other states should play the role of subordinate manipulated nations, safety bridgehead or buffer zone, without any right to comment on the matter. Russian imperialists consider such an arrangement to be fair, the only possible one, and they are surprised that others do not understand this. If others reject such a political order, they are actually showing hostile intentions towards Russia and refusing to negotiate peaceful coexistence, and they are putting themselves in the position of potential aggressors and warmongers.
At the same time, however, the Russian elites are convinced that other countries are obliged to love Russia, regardless of what Russia does and how it behaves. Russia, as a projection of some "higher idea of empire, Orthodoxy, communism, etc.", always acts correctly and is always right. Criticism of Russia's actions is referred to as irrational, and indeed as criminal "Russophobia". Even an average Russian feels very aggrieved on discovering that, for example, the inhabitants of the Baltic countries do not feel very positively towards him/her. When it is explained that this is a natural reaction to Russian efforts to suppress the independence of these nations, with the associated history of repression, violence, terror and deportations, he or she, wide-eyed, simply declares that Russians have nothing against Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians. On the contrary, Russians like them, only that these nations must understand that Russia needs to have good access to the Baltic Sea.
Russian society has no historical experience with moral or judicial reconciliation with the crimes of the past, perhaps committed against other nations. No Soviet or Russian "Nuremberg" took place. The Russian public reacts with great irritation to court proceedings against representatives of the Soviet power apparatus in, for example, the Baltic countries. Yes, the memory of harsh repressions against representatives of some former regime or power group in the case of a coup, purges, etc. did remain in the Russian memory. But these repressions were not perceived as fair punishment for crimes and other misdeeds, but rather as a result of failure in the power competition without any significant "moral reckoning with the past" (executions and lynchings of tsarist officers in the years 1917-1922, deportation of supporters of unsuccessful claimants to the throne to Siberia, etc.). Thus, the belief that "man must be careful even when obeying orders or behaving towards enemies, because one day he can be punished for it" has not been established. In relation to enemies or the civilian population of conquered and occupied territories, as well as to their own citizens, the feeling of impunity prevails to a large extent among politicians, soldiers, policemen and officials.
Russian imperial thinking tends to present Russia as a separate civilization, even in opposition to the entire West. The fact that they are incomparable entities in size does not play a role. Nor does the fact that the ideology which is supposed to represent Russian distinctiveness and exclusivity has gone through odd mutations. At one time it was Russian Orthodoxy, then Slavism, Communism, Eurasianism, vague conservative spirituality etc.... Since all of them invoke authoritarianism in some form, it is reasonable to assume that the talk of such an “alternative civilization" merely conceals an attempt to justify the Russian government’s unwillingness to allow more freedom and perhaps democracy, according to the European model. Ultimately, regimes that were "tougher" even by Russian standards spoke more about Russian distinctiveness. And on the contrary, all attempts to liberalize Russian society were associated with an emphasis on the Europeanness of Russia.
A distinctive Russian characteristic is the tendency to judge the success or failure of their top political leaders mainly according to the number of square kilometres added or lost. Territorial expansion seems to be the main target of the Russian state. Russia always had the right to expand, and any Russian regime always knew how to justify it. Other great empires in the past shared this characteristic. The difference is that former imperialist nations in the West have renounced their empires and colonies and now are apologizing for their past and paying various forms of compensation.
On the other hand, in Russia little attention is paid to, for example, the economic sense of such expansion and also to the rational utilisation of the controlled territory, which is often subjected to relatively less effective management methods based on the extraction of natural resources or the plundering of the controlled population. It must be said that, overall, economic efficiency is not ranked too high in the Russian scale of values.
Russian society is strongly militaristic. This is one of its most distinctive features, which immediately catches the eye. It is perhaps one of the most militaristic societies in the world. And that is true in terms of the position of the army in society, willingness to use military force in domestic and foreign policy, and also the entire culture of violence, military heroism and celebration of war victims and fallen soldiers.
Death on the battlefield has been presented in Russian official culture as a natural and dignified completion of life. That is not a coincidence: the army, the secret police and the defence sector in Russian society were segments that always somehow functioned, and belonging to them was associated with high prestige and high social status. Military power was probably the only factor that gave the Russian state an advantage over its neighbours and enabled it to expand quite successfully. In turn, from the 16th to 19th centuries territorial growth legitimized a politico-social model based on authoritarianism and militarism, confirming it as actually correct and successful without any need for change. Thus, Russian politics has a natural tendency to resolve situations with the use of force: internally in the form of repression, and internationally in the form of military aggression. Use of force is automatically perceived as something to which Russia has a "right" and which it is "compelled" to resort to, because there is no other way.
How to approach Russia?
In the 1990s it seemed that Russian political thinking, having abandoned Marxist ideology and Soviet propaganda, would make a purely one-way adaptation to the Western liberal-democratic narrative with its emphasis on respect for freedom, human rights, the international order based on international law, the UN and other international organizations, and condemning aggressive war and illegal annexations. Many traditional Russian political ideas were simply ignored, regarded as obsolescent features that would disappear from Russian politics and historical thinking in the gradual process of liberalization.
Persistent or re-emerging geopolitical and Eurasian teachings, imperial ideas linked to Tsarist Russia and the Stalinist USSR, pseudo-Slavic mysticism, revived militarism, conspiracy theories, alternative pseudo-history: all of these were regarded as belonging to an "ideological peripheral underground" which, after all, cannot have an impact on real politics.
Therefore, most Western observers of Russia refused to acknowledge the fact when, from 2005 to 2008, many of these ideas gradually entered the mainstream of political debate and their conglomerate infiltrated the universities and the statements of politicians, to eventually become the basis of the legitimizing political ideology of the regime of President Vladimir Putin.
In conclusion, I am obliged to state that my goal was definitely not to demonize Russia or to portray it as an eternal and irreparable enemy. Nor did I argue that Russia is immutable and that positive changes, democratization, liberalization and de-imperialization cannot take place there. Russian society and culture are fundamentally European. Historically, it is not so long since Germany and France were presented as model militaristic dictatorships with an aggressive, imperialistic foreign policy (because of Hitler, Napoleon etc.). And seriously intended scholarly papers were even written promoting the idea that such a "lifestyle" was the only possible one for these nations.
In any event, however, it should be remembered that present Russian political thinking is not the same as modern European and North American political thinking. It has its peculiarities, which must be taken into account in every analysis and proposal for practical action in politics vis-à-vis Russia.
Therefore, when shaping the policy of the West it is necessary to start from the reality of Russian politics, from what it really is. It is essential to know that the current leaders of the Russian Federation are anchored in different concepts and pursue other goals than most Western politicians (with the partial exception of the USA). Their mental worlds and value systems overlap only in some segments. The methods and mechanisms that work, for example, inside the "post-Westphalian" EU cannot be applied to relations with "Westphalian" Russia.
For NATO and the European Union this means that any negotiations with Russia, if they are to be effective, must contain an element of power pressure: economic, military, political, and also the resources of so-called “soft power”. To increase the probability of success in negotiations with Russia and to promote the values and interests of NATO and the Union, both of these associations must visibly strengthen their abilities to use this element of power. To put it plainly: whoever wants to negotiate with Putin must themselves be a bit like Putin and be able to act from a position of strength, not simply from the position of moral and legal arguments.
Therefore, if the West really wants to resist Russian pressure, in addition to acknowledging the true nature of the Russian regime and the fundamental difference in its foreign policy goals from western and especially European ones, it is necessary to achieve visible progress in fulfilling four basic conditions:
- The effective unity of the West and its ability to act (which means strengthening the European Union in a close partnership with the USA, the United Kingdom and Canada, at least on the basis of NATO, and also with Japan, Australia, etc.)
- Obtaining adequate capacities of economic, military, political and technical power (which requires massive investment in the armed forces, energy and raw material security, support for technology development, economic growth, etc.).
- The ability to decide promptly on the deployment of armed force and also on taking the risk of a possible escalation of confrontation and conflict, etc. (which implies a certain intellectual conversion and retreat from the current pacifist paradigm which prevails among both the political elites and the citizens generally.
- Willingness of the population to bear the economic and also personal costs (for example, military service, combat losses) of such investments and policies (this would require a change of rhetoric and political message at the national and European level of politics, accepting the risk of a spontaneous naive reaction of rejection).
For all this, however, a certain psychological Rubicon must be crossed, which is not something that can happen automatically. In this context, one must take the liberty of pointing out that all plans for a "new EU global policy", a "geopolitical Commission" and "the EU as one of the main actors of international relations" are only pious statements, unless the Union and its member states make progress in fulfilling the four conditions mentioned above.