Putin's Wars: The Rise of Russia's New Imperialism

Chapter 3 Putin and the End of Russian “Empire Fatigue”

In retrospect, 1991 offered the first real chance in modern Russian history to break the infernal cycle of imperialist expansion and colonial subjugation of neighboring peoples. It was not a war that caused the breakup of the empire. The empire collapsed because of its internal tensions: its inefficiently planned economy, its lack of freedom, its corruption, and its bureaucratic overload. “Many Russians were weary of supporting and subsidizing the economies of poorer regions of the USSR, such as Central Asia, and argued that economic reforms and modernization in Russia had a better chance if Russian statehood was dissociated from its colonial past.”[1] For the young, liberal reformers the loss of empire was a real liberation, it was like the loss of a historical ballast. They knew, intuitively, that Russia could only proceed further on the road toward a liberal, Western-style democracy if it were able to shake off its centuries-old legacy of imperial conquest and oppression. According to Igor Yakovenko, “the collapse of the USSR was the luckiest event in the past half-century.”[2] Why? Because, as Brzezinski rightly remarked, “Russia can be either an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both.”[3] Democracy and empire mutually exclude each other.[4] According to Charles Tilly, “segments of empire can in principle achieve some democracy but whole empires remain undemocratic by definition; at an imperial scale their segmentation and reliance on indirect rule bar equal citizenship, binding consultation, and protection.”[5] Zbigniew Brzezinski, therefore, was right when he wrote: “In not being an empire, Russia stands a chance of becoming, like France or Britain or earlier post-Ottoman Turkey, a normal state.”[6]

EMPIRE FATIGUE: A CHANCE OF BECOMING A “NORMAL STATE”?

The demise of the Russian empire was an atypical event. Apart from an independence movement in the Baltic republics that had started earlier, it found its basis not so much in the periphery—in the nationalism of the colonized nationalities—as in the nationalism of the colonizing center: Russia. This was one of the contradictory outcomes of the Soviet Union, in which ethnic Russians were in control of the party, the army, the KGB, and the heavy industry, but, at the same time, the Russian national identity was suppressed in favor of an invented, mostly artificial “Soviet” citizenship. Indeed, “a strong Russian nationalist movement… was in fact the most potent mobilizing force against the Soviet state. It was the merger of the struggle for democracy, and the recovery of Russian national identity under Yeltsin’s leadership in 1989–91, that created the conditions for the demise of Soviet communism and the breakup of the Soviet Union.”[7]

There existed in the center even a certain resentment against the other nationalities, some of which had a higher standard of living.[8] Others, poorer ones, got subsidies from Moscow to balance their budgets. In the end all profited from the center by buying their energy at cheap, subsidized prices. The subsidies were significant. In 1991, for instance, seven Soviet republics received substantial subsidies from the Union Budget, which, in the cases of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan amounted to almost one half of their state budgets (46.6 percent and 42.9 percent, respectively).[9] It was, therefore, no surprise that in the eyes of the average Russian the empire was no longer considered to be advantageous, but, on the contrary, a heavy burden that only cost them money.[10] Russian nationalism, instead of being a motor of Russian expansionism, had become the motor of the Soviet Union’s disintegration in a process of empire fatigue. This empire fatigue could have been the starting point for a revival of the Russian nation on a fundamentally new basis—that of a democratic Russia that had freed itself from its imperialist drive. Severing the old colonial ties can be advantageous for both the colonial power and the former colonized peoples. Adam Smith had already written during the American Revolution:

“Under the present system of management, therefore, Great Britain derives nothing but loss from the dominion which she assumes over her colonies. To propose that Great Britain should voluntarily give up all authority over her colonies, and leave them to elect their own magistrates, to enact their own laws, and to make peace and war as they might think proper, would be to propose such a measure as never was, and never will be adopted, by any nation in the world. No nation ever voluntarily gave up the dominion of any province, how troublesome so ever it might be to govern it, and how small so ever the revenue which it afforded might be in proportion to the expense which it occasioned…. The most visionary enthusiast would scarce be capable of proposing such a measure with any serious hopes at least of it ever being adopted.” …If Great Britain, however, would decide to do so and would sign a free trade treaty with its former colony, it would not only save money, but “by thus parting good friends, the natural affection of the colonies to the mother country which, perhaps, our late dissensions have well nigh extinguished, would quickly revive. It might… favour us in war as well as in trade, and instead of turbulent and factious subjects to become our most faithful, affectionate, and generous allies.”[11]

Adam Smith spoke wise words. But he also considered it unthinkable that a colonial power would voluntarily give up its colonies. However, this was what happened in 1991 in Soviet Russia. It was not only a huge historical opportunity for developing a democracy in Russia, it was also a unique opportunity for Russia to establish new, friendly relations with the former Soviet republics.

HANDLING POST-IMPERIAL PAIN

Unfortunately the reality was different. The empire fatigue was of short duration. Almost immediately after the empire had actually collapsed, it was followed by post-imperial pain. This is a natural syndrome in former empires. As early as the nineteenth century British authors predicted a national—and international—disaster if the British Empire should ever cease to exist.[12] After the Treaty of Saint-Germain, in September 1919, and the dismemberment of the Hapsburg Empire by the Allies, the inhabitants of the new rump state of Austria experienced, apparently, such a “shock of lost empire.” They lived “in a climate of apathy and general depression.”[13] In the Netherlands, after World War II, there was a popular proverb, “Indië verloren, rampspoed geboren” (“If Indonesia is lost, it will be the beginning of catastrophe”).[14] A similar feeling of national disaster could also be found in decolonizing France, where it led to the emergence of the OAS, a right-wing terrorist resistance organization. Yegor Gaidar described this post-colonial pain in Russia as follows:

There is a medical phenomenon in which a person who has had a limb amputated perceives that limb to be still causing pain. The same phenomenon applies to the post-imperial consciousness. The loss of the USSR is a reality. It is a reality that has led to social pain caused by separated families, the suffering of fellow-countrymen abroad, nostalgic reminiscences of former glory, longing for the geography of the homeland that has shrunk or been lost.[15]

1

Vicken Cheterian, War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia’s Troubled Frontier (London: Hurst & Company, 2008), 220.

2

Igor Yakovenko, “Ukraina i Rossiya: suzhety sootnesennosti,” Vestnik Evropy 26, no. 64 (2005).

3

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (1994), 72.

4

It is not correct, therefore, to speak of an American “empire” as, for instance, the Marxist economists Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy did in their book Monopoly Capital (1968). They wrote: “Legitimate differences of opinion will of course exist as to whether this or that country should be counted as belonging to the American empire. We offer the following list as being on the conservative side: The United States itself and a few colonial possessions (notably Puerto Rico and the Pacific islands); all Latin American countries except Cuba; Canada; four countries in the Near and Middle East (Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran); four countries in South and South-East Asia (Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, and South Vietnam); two countries in East Asia (South Korea and Formosa); two countries in Africa (Liberia and Libya); and one country in Europe (Greece).” (Paul A. Baran, and Paul M. Sweezy. Monopoly Capitaclass="underline" An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 183.) Clearly this hotchpotch of sovereign countries does not make an empire. Alexander Motyl’s description of the relationship of the United States with many Latin American countries as a “hegemonic nonimperial relationship” comes closer to the reality. (Alexander J. Motyl, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 20 (emphasis mine).)

5

Charles Tilly, “How Empires End,” in After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, eds. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 7 (emphasis mine).

6

Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.

7

Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Volume II: The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 37.

8

In 1990 Estonia’s per capita GDP was 119.3 percent, and Latvia’s 107.5 percent of Russia’s. (Source: Statistical Handbook: States of the Former USSR, Studies of Economies in Transformation, Paper No. 3 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1992), 4–5 and 14–15). This also occurred sometimes in other colonial empires. Piers Brendon, for instance, indicated that Hong Kong, at the time of its handover to China in 1997, had “£37 billion in reserves and inhabitants who were richer per capita than those of the United Kingdom.” (Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (London: Vintage Books, 2008), 655.)

9

The figures for 1991 for the other republics are: Armenia 17.1 percent, Belarus 16.3 percent, Kazakhstan 23.1 percent, Turkmenistan 21.7 percent, and Ukraine 5.9 percent (Statistical Handbook: States of the Former USSR, 14–15). This dependence on the Union Budget could be one of the factors that explain the Central Asian republics’ initial, sometimes almost reluctant, attitude to “accepting” their independence in 1991.

10

The Russian situation resembled, therefore, that of the British in India, of which A. N. Wilson wrote: “[T]he British incursion into India, which had begun as a profit-making enterprise for merchants, had become a drain on British resources.” (A. N. Wilson, After the Victorians: The Decline of Britain in the World (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2005), 489.)

11

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Volume II, with an introduction by Prof. Edwin R. A. Seligman (London: Dent Dutton, 1971), 112–113.

12

In 1881, for instance, the Earl of Dunraven wrote: “The future of England certainly depends upon her relationship with her colonies. She may remain the centre of a great empire, or become a small, scantily populated, and unimportant kingdom.” A prospect that was considered totally unacceptable by the author: “British possessions will remain British as long as we can hold them, by force if necessary.” (The Earl of Dunraven, “The Revolutionary Party,” August 1881, in Michael Goodwin, Nineteenth Century Opinion, 272–273.)

13

Franz Cede, “The Post-Imperial Blues,” The American Interest, 7, no. 2 (2011), 118.

14

Despite these doomsday prophecies the Netherlands experienced a protracted economic boom after the loss of Indonesia. This certainly helped to assuage post-imperial pain, but did not eradicate it. According to Thomas Beaufils, “In the Netherlands the workings of memory still prove difficult…. Fifty years [!] is a too short period to hope that wounds that are still open can be healed.” (Thomas Beaufils, “Le colonialisme aux Indes néerlandaises,” in Le livre noir du colonialisme: XVIe–XXIe siècle: de l’extermination à la repentance, ed. Marc Ferro (Paris: Robert Laffont, 2003), 262.)

15

Yegor Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire, xiv. The same image was used by the Russian sociologist Yury Levada, who said: “The phantom pain from the loss of the Soviet empire remains vivid, like an amputated limb that one still feels.” (Quoted in Marie Jégo, Alexandre Billette, Natalie Nougayrède, Sophie Shibab, and Piotr Smolar, “Autopsie d’un conflit,” Le Monde (August 31–September 1, 2008).)