To Understand Itself, Russia Needs Knowledge, Not Myths

Russia, in order to survive, must rid itself of useless myths and illusions. What is more, it must imitate, or at any rate learn to play ball with, the United States, a nation which, after all, is wealthier, more powerful and more globally popular than is Russia. Such appears to be the gist of Valery Garbuzov’s essay, “To Understand Itself, Russia Needs Knowledge, Not Myths,” whose appearance in the mainstream Russian newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Aug. 23, 2023 caused an enormous furor — a furor generated not so much by the text’s substance as by the identity of the author: Garbuzov, at the time his essay was published – i.e., little more than a week ago -- was director of the prestigious Institute of the U.S.A. and Canada of the Russian Academy of Science.  His dismissal from that post was made public on Sept. 2.

Beyond its curiosity value as political scandal, Garbuzov’s essay also presents quite a useful counterpoint to our recent think-piece by Alexei Chadaev, What is Modernity? (Landmarks, August 7, 2023). Chadaev believes that Russia should not imitate the United States, but should instead define its own version of modernity, since otherwise it will be incapable of defending its own understanding of what it means to be human, and what it means to be Russian.

It is, to be sure, also of considerable sociological interest that the director of a Russian government research institute dedicated to the study of the United States and Canada should view his own country and its entire history with such scorn.  Our own experience with Russian academia confirms that such attitudes are by no means rare.  Boris Mezhuev, a professor of the history of Russian philosophy and long-time friend of the Simone Weil Center, noted in a recent social media posting the oddity of Garbuzov’s behavior.  It was tantamount to George Kennan, at the onset of the Cold War, having written, in place of his famous Long Telegram, an article urging America to throw in its lot with Russia, what with the USSR and communism’s enormous prestige with 70% of the world’s population.

All of which raises, of course, Samuel Huntington’s famous thesis that henceforth not national, but civilizational identities will be key.  Clearly, Garbuzov, though living in Russia, feels more a part of the American civilizational type. Why blame him? Many Westerners no longer identify much with what their own civilizations have recently become.

To conclude this very long introduction, we wish to note that the theme of ‘myths and illusions’ so insistently raised by Garbuzov — a theme which he most unconvincingly applies only to Russia (and since the 9th century at that!) — is nonetheless important and timely.  According to American scientist, inventor and philosopher Mark Stahlman, the post-analog world of digitalized information is everywhere sweeping away those centralizing ‘illusions’ (or narratives) that late modernity used to bind together national communities.  Digital technology, instead of unifying people, tends to fragment them. What is the best response?  One possibility is rejecting all the old unifying ideas (and ideals) as nothing more than ‘myths and illusions.’   That is Garbuzov’s approach. Another option is to double down on ‘unity’ by monopolizing and censoring the digital world so thoroughly that it mimics (or, with the help of AI, vastly exceeds!) the centralizing function of televised modernity. In other words, the path to post-humanism.  Stahlman recommends a different approach.  His thinking is more complex than this ‘bumper-sticker’ summary, but among much else, he holds that communities can only be re-founded on the bedrock truths and philosophical revelations on the basis of which each of the great civilizations first arose.

The translation below is our own. We are very grateful to Johnson’s Russia List for bringing this article to our attention and supplying an initial (machine) translation. – The Editors

The outgoing era is carrying away with it many things. Illusions and hopes are dying; myths are vanishing; a new reality is beginning to appear as the whole context of life is changing. What entire generations lived by is being forgotten

Often, the ruling elites of authoritarian and totalitarian political regimes deliberately create utopian ideas and myths which are then deliberately disseminated among the masses. Such mass manipulation of the consciousness of society immediately gives rise to a utopian picture of the perception of the world [sic – trans.] in millions of people, allowing disparate political and social groups to unite around a national leader in the name of a specific goal. At the same time, such manipulation is also a powerful tool for the long-term retention of personal power. Russian history is by no means an exception to this pattern.

It is no secret that the desire for foreign policy expansionism has always been present in Russia, haunting it throughout its historical development. Indeed, precisely this impetus has been one of the engines of development of the Russian state.

This trend manifested itself during the years of the early feudal Old Russian state of Kievan Rus in the IX-XII centuries, and in the period of feudal strife between apanage principalities of the XII-XV centuries, and during the Moscow centralized state of the XV-XVIII centuries, as well as after the formation of the Russian Empire in 1721, when Eurasian continental expansionism became the focus of Russia's often aggressive foreign policy activity, an activity which, by the beginning of the XX century, had turned it into the largest power in the world.

The Myth of World Communism

The Bolsheviks, who came to power in October 1917, enthusiastically took up the banner of Russian continental expansionism. To be sure, they gave it a communist coloration and a global scale.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the ruling elite of the young Soviet republic adopted the expansionist idea of ​​a world proletarian revolution, an idea in which the first Soviet Bolsheviks (Zinoviev and Kamenev, Lenin and Trotsky, Stalin and Bukharin) wholeheartedly believed. Few of them doubted that after October 1917, in the footsteps of Russia, a revolutionary fire would spread throughout the rest of the world, and the whole of Europe (and even America) would certainly become Soviet.

In those early days a special revolutionary radicalism emanated from Trotsky, who claimed to be the main organizer of the October Revolution and the ideologist of permanent revolution -- of a continuous revolutionary process on a world-wide scale.

With the goal of organizing the world revolution, a headquarters for it, the Comintern, was set up in Moscow in 1919.  The Comintern created its own subdivisions -- the national communist parties --  and became a foreign policy tool of the rapidly growing Soviet empire. However, it soon became clear that its idea was just an empty myth, an impossible utopia. In 1943, under pressure from the Allies in the Anti-Hitler Coalition, the Comintern announced its dissolution.

Soviet mythology

The state propaganda of the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s was built around several tricks that formed the Soviet foreign policy mythology.

One of them was the thesis of American imperialism taking over the entire globe and preventing the rest of the world from moving towards the bright communist future. Today, few have any doubts about the fact that the foreign policy of the USSR during the Cold War was America’s mirror image. The two superpowers restrained each other, practically using the same tools to create their own spheres of global geopolitical influence.

At the same time, another thesis had become widespread in Soviet scientific and educational literature: the impending historical doom of capitalism, which had entered its final stage – imperialism; and the three centers of inter-imperialist contradictions (the USA, Western Europe and Japan). The accumulation of these contradictions would lead to the inevitable death of the capitalist order and the victory of world communism.

Three streams of revolutionary struggle were declared to be the main fighting cohorts of the anti-imperialist movement: these were the countries of the socialist camp, the world communist movement and the national liberation, anti-colonial movement.  Through their joint efforts the powerful imperialist dam impeding the progress of mankind was to be destroyed.

The sharpening of the contradictions of imperialism, the collapse of its colonial system, the intensification of political reaction, the deep crisis of bourgeois politics and ideology were declared symptoms of the "general crisis of capitalism" that engulfed Western society. This utopian theory existed for decades; it was disseminated throughout the USSR and the socialist countries, all the time never being questioned.

Such utopian dogmas were enshrined in the Third Program of the CPSU adopted by the XXII Congress of the CPSU in 1961, which aimed at building communism within 20 years, and then again, in a new version, adopted by the XXVII Party Congress in 1986, based on the utopian doctrine of "developed socialism."

On each occasion, these ideological lurches of the permanent Soviet party-state elite plunged society into a world of illusions and led to the formation of a false picture of the world.

The Evolution of Capitalism

However, the reality (as is often the case) turned out to be completely different. The "general crisis of capitalism" did not lead to the victory of world communism. On the contrary, it was the Soviet Union that collapsed under the weight of its deep internal contradictions, and with its collapse the system of socialism, which was already at a dead-end, collapsed. The world communist movement found itself in a deep crisis, never having achieved its goal.

Things worked out very differently in the West. In the process of overcoming crises, Western capitalism did not die, but instead evolved -- mainly in socialist and neoliberal directions. Following the rule “if you want to survive, change,” it became more and more regulated by the state, more and more humane and attractive to its own citizens. Social responsibility on the part of both the state and business has become the norm of the Western world.

This ability of capitalism under the influence of crises to quickly adapt, ridding itself of its own vices, constantly developing and improving, turned out to be beyond the vision of "far-sighted" Soviet thinkers.

“Old songs about what’s most important”

Today, a wave of anti-Western sentiment and an atmosphere of pseudo-patriotic madness has engulfed a Russia which regularly listens to “old songs about what’s most important.” [1]  In this same Russia, with amazing ease, the public naively and thoughtlessly absorbs the new theses and myths of total state propaganda. The result is that a new modern utopian consciousness is being formed. These myths are being spread day and night through a new generation of well-paid professional political manipulators and participants in numerous television talk shows.

Through their efforts, and in the context of the creeping restoration of Stalinism, new dogmas are being introduced  about the crisis of globalization and of the entire ""Anglo-Saxon” world (what would this mean in the XXI century?), about a new anti-colonial revolution (there are only 17 colonies left in the world!), about the loss of American dominance (and this after the collapse of the USSR?), about the great global anti-American revolution, and, in general, about the decline of the West (the second coming of the “general crisis of capitalism”?!).

For such statements to be made, solid evidence must be procured. Does such evidence exist? Let's try to figure it out.

Informal empires of the modern world

The dominance of the United States is an objective, permanent factor that began its process of formation from the beginning of the XX century and still exists today (to the deep sadness of modern domestic pseudo-patriots). True, the scale of this factor, as well as the nature and forms of its manifestation, have evolved.

In the course of the almost 250 years of its existence and development, thanks to the global expansion of the United States in the XX century, the U.S. has become the “informal empire of the modern world,” permeating and simultaneously integrating almost all countries and continents. This has become the long-term strategic course of the United States -- the “nation of all nations” and the superpower of our time.

Today, the United States, producing 25% of the world's industrial GDP, continues to be the economic giant of the modern world. With the help of 12 military-political blocs and more than 1000 military bases and facilities located in strategically important regions of the world, the United States is able to ensure its global dominance: America’s military presence can be found in more than 80 countries throughout the world.

The United States is a nuclear superpower that maintains global leadership in economics, finance, the military sphere, innovation, direct investment and culture. And the United States continues to retain its attractiveness, as is evidenced by the inexhaustible flow of immigrants moving into it from all continents of the world. About 1 million people arrive in the United States every year.

With more than 70% (8150 tons) of the world's total gold reserves, the United States is the undisputed leader in terms of gold reserves, a circumstance which allows the U.S. to maintain the position of the US dollar as a world currency. And although only 3% of Russians believe in the reliability of the dollar today (a paradox: about 60% of Russian citizens keep their savings in dollars, the volume of which is a record 226.6 billion!), in the long term, the dollar continues to be the most popular and stable currency in the world -- the world's main reserve currency.

American global dominance provokes differing reactions -- varying from rejection to support. In the world as a whole, almost 70% of the global population recognizes the leadership of the United States and has a generally positive attitude towards it. At the same time, anti-Americanism has always accompanied the movement of the United States on the way to the geopolitical summit. Persistent rejection of this superpower persists today in countries such as Jordan, China, Palestine, Pakistan, Lebanon, North Korea, Russia, Belarus, Cuba, Austria, Slovenia, Venezuela, and Iran.

The anti-American foreign policy of the USSR, aimed at countering the United States and the entire West, helped at one time to create an alternative socialist empire that lasted only a few decades and collapsed due to its own non-viability. Its global collapse should have been a good lesson for all of humanity.

Any attempts to put together a new anti-American coalition on a global scale (stubbornly being pursued today by the Russian authorities, seized by the desire to "regain what has been lost") are unlikely to lead to success. The interests of most of the world's states are too integrated into those of the United States, forming a strategic interdependence between them and thereby restraining any aggressive anti-Americanism.

Challenging the United States and beginning its rise more than 40 years ago, China is following a similar path to the United States, conquering more and more new markets and spheres of influence around the planet. Having turned into a world factory, this power is on the verge of transformation into the second “informal empire of the modern world,” the main (after the collapse of the USSR) global competitor of the United States. However, the factors securing China's imperial future are likely to be different.

According to macroeconomic forecasts, in the next 10 years, China may bypass the United States in terms of the nominal size of the economy. This process will be accompanied by the struggle of the yuan with the dollar and the possible displacement of the latter from the position of the world reserve currency. Will this happen? It is still difficult to answer this question. But if it does happen, the world will undoubtedly face big changes.

Thus, today, there are only two informal empires on the planet — the United States and China. Russia is a former empire, the heir to a Soviet superpower that is experiencing an extremely painful syndrome of suddenly lost imperial greatness.

The fact that Russia today has a pronounced post-imperial syndrome is more of a tragic pattern than a historical anomaly. What makes the Russian case peculiar is that the syndrome did not manifest itself immediately after the collapse of the USSR in 1991, but made itself known much later, with the coming to power of Putin. More than 30 years later, the delayed syndrome, the possible emergence of which had not previously been given much importance, has become threatening.

Three geopolitical programs

In today's world, there are only three powers with their own global programs: the United States, China and Russia.

First of all, the United States, which throughout its history has formed its own geopolitical program based on the ideas of American exceptionalism and messianism, the universalism of American values, American dominance and undisputed leadership. Pursuing a policy of global expansionism, spreading its own values ​​and institutions beyond its borders, and turning into the informal empire of the modern world in the second half of the twentieth century, the United States secured its status as the main superpower of the planet for a long time.

Only relatively recently has China embarked on the path of forming its own global course. Its main stages have been the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, the policy of “One Belt - One Road” and the concept of “Creating a community with a common future for mankind.” All of them, in one way or another, are aimed at achieving for the Celestial Empire a leading position on the path to world progress.

One thing is clear: the United States and China are the two informal empires of the modern world. Moreover, both of these empires, born in different parts of the world, in different eras, are very similar in their methods of spreading their global influence. It is no accident that the main axis of confrontation of the modern world lies between them.

Russia, on the other hand, has its own special orbit. Being the main heir to the Soviet superpower created on the ruins of the Russian Empire, it is a hostage of its own imperial complex. This explains its current foreign policy behavior and the problems it brings to the world.

It is no secret that after the collapse of colonial empires, all metropolises experience an inevitable nostalgia for lost greatness - the so-called post-imperial syndrome. It typically arose almost immediately, as soon as it became clear that the former colonial power was collapsing.

For example, Winston Churchill was not made very happy by the victory in World War II, because something happened as a result of it that he was clearly not ready for. Raised and educated in the British Empire, he could not accept the fact that this empire was falling apart before his very eyes. The same can be said of his contemporary, General Charles de Gaulle. Brought up in a French society with an imperial consciousness, he could not get used to the fact that France was irretrievably losing its colonies one after another. And yet, having overcome these imperial feelings, they nonetheless managed to adapt to the fundamentally new situation.

Russia, which is now going through an extremely painful post-imperial syndrome, is also trying to form its own global geopolitical program. But its program is still too flimsy, unstable and eclectic. Judge for yourself: it is a program (or rather, a set of attitudes) based on a mixture of the ideas of Eurasianism, the "Russian world", aggressive anti-Americanism, confrontation with the unipolar world and with the “decaying” West as a whole.

It also contains the ideas of “sovereign democracy,” “the silent majority,”[2] a longing for traditional values, ​​and the Orthodox Christian faith. To this whole mixture is added a conservative glue that holds together its heterogeneous components. In some ways, this hodgepodge is reminiscent of the anti-Western ideological inventions of almost 200 years ago - the “theory of official nationality” of the permanent president of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences and part-time Minister of Public Education, Count Sergei Uvarov, who remained in his position for 30 years. His triad “Orthodoxy, Autocracy. Nationality” was the ideological embodiment of Russian monarchism, which, along with Orthodoxy and the autocratic power secured by the support of the people, supposedly acted as reliable guarantors of the existence and greatness of Russia.

As for conservatism, which our current Russian authorities have become so fond of, it is not such an unambiguous thing. There is no single, timeless and universal conservatism in this world. This phenomenon is flowing, its objects of conservation are different, and in different countries it takes on its own, individual shape. And the conservatism that existed once in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century and which is sometimes taken today as a model is hardly suitable in the current circumstances.

Modern Russia, having become the main successor to the Soviet superpower, is nostalgic for its former greatness and lost influence, and is now experiencing a deferred post-imperial syndrome, despite its small share in the world economy. This same Russia still has strong expansionist inclinations and latent ambitions for global geopolitical influence.

Russia inherited a rich experience of communist expansionism associated with the activities of the Comintern, which was followed by the possibility, following the victory in WWII, of quickly creating its own sphere of regional and global influence after the victory in World War II. After instantaneously losing all of this with the collapse of the USSR, modern Russia is still unsuccessfully trying to take a belated revenge.

To this end, it initiated the creation of new integration associations (CSTO, EAEU, SCO, BRICS), thereby forming its own geopolitical fields and spaces. The same goals were pursued by Russia's once successful energy strategy, which was perceived in the world not only as a tool for securing reliable energy markets, but also as a key element in organizing Russia’s own spheres of global influence.

Trying to rally around itself on an anti-Western platform the former colonial and oppressed peoples of the countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America, involving them in the struggle against the countries of the “golden billion” that has been “pushing its world domination” “and dominating the world for decades,” Russia today claims to be the leader of the “global majority.”

However, it has not yet been able to compete with the United States and China and turn into an independent geopolitical anti-Western locomotive. And with the help of its newly created state mythology, it is unlikely that it will be able to do so.

The purpose of all this is quite obvious: plunging one's own society into a world of illusions  accompanied by great-power and patriotic rhetoric, all of this being an undisguised and deliberate effort, heedless of cost, to indefinitely keep in power the current political regime, the ruling elite and oligarchy integrated with it, and to protect their property.

In the conditions of the information age, a time of replacing realities with illusions, Russia seems to be frozen in the past, still piously relying on the Tsar-father, or some other firm hand of the supreme power, all the while trying unsuccessfully to regain its former greatness, its lost possessions and global influence.

In this regard, we note that many today are inclined, as it was put by that connoisseur of our country’s autocratic-bureaucratic realities, Saltykov-Shchedrin, to confuse two concepts: “Fatherland” and “Your Excellency.” The words spoken by the great writer in the era of tsarism are still relevant today. The current domestic acolytes of authoritarianism (like the satraps of the ancient Eastern despotisms that have sunk into oblivion), apparently completely devoid of historical consciousness, without embarrassment, with touching tenderness, sincerely identify the head of state with the state itself; confuse the temporary ruler of the country with a great national and historical constant.

Shameful, gentlemen, and humiliating

Each nation, like every person, has its own biography. It even has its own residence permit. And the most valuable thing is its unique character, which gives everyone a special individuality and exclusivity. Only by knowing that individual character is it possible to build a continuous line of civilized and responsible international behavior, the obvious lack of which exists in today's world.

But that is not all. It is knowledge, not myths about another people and state, that allows you to understand not only it, but also yourself, and which allows you to form a comprehensive and at the same time a critical view of your own country and its history, including all its difficult chapters, its difficult and tragic past  -- despite that past being itself mixed up with various illusions that managed to take possession of society.  And yet it is also true that those myths have long since been irretrievably lost.

NOTES

[1] The reference here is to a popular post-Soviet televised film series, “Starye pesni o glavnom” (Old Songs About What’s Most Important), produced and aired in the period between 1995 - 2001. Each film in the musical-comedy series takes place in different periods of the Soviet Union, with the action in the first installment taking place on a collective farm in the post-war period of reconstruction. In all of the films, songs known to virtually everyone who grew up in the Soviet Union are sung by popular Russian film stars. The series’ broad-based success was considered an indication — one among many — of popular nostalgia for the USSR.

[2] In Russian, ‘the deep people’ (глубинный народ).  The phrase, in Garbuzov’s usage, is most likely a reference to the article by Vladislav Surkov, “Putin’s Lasting State,” the English translation of which by Bill Bowler renders ‘glubinyi narod’ as ‘the deep people,’ which translation is perhaps to be preferred, as it is meant to be in counter-point with ‘the deep state.’