The thesis of this book is that the Russian Federation is both a post-imperial state and a pre-imperial state. The aim of this book is to analyze Putin’s wars in Chechnya and Georgia and to put them in a broader context in order to better understand the inner dynamic of Putin’s system. The key idea of the book is that in Russian history there has always existed a negative relationship between empire building and territorial expansion on the one hand and internal democratization on the other. Reform periods in Russia (after 1855, 1905, and 1989) are often the result of lost wars and/or the weakening of the empire. Periods of imperial expansion, on the contrary, tended to have a negative impact on internal reform and democratization. Gorbachev’s perestroika—a product of the lost Cold War—is an example of the former, Putin’s policy of a reimperialization of the former Soviet space is an example of the latter.
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
The book consists of three parts.
In this part I analyze the role of empire building in Russian history and look at the similarities and differences with empire building in Western Europe. Why is it that in Russia empire building and despotism have always tended to go hand in hand? What are the differences and similarities between the legitimation theories used for empire building in Russia and in the West? This part ends with a chapter on “empire fatigue” in post-Soviet Russia and suggests that empire fatigue came to an end with the arrival of Vladimir Putin, who considered it his historic role to reestablish the lost empire. In the final chapters of this part the different diplomatic initiatives of Putin are analyzed, such as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), the Russia-Belarus Union State, the BRICS, the Customs Union, as well as his most recent project: the Eurasian Union.
Part II analyzes how Putin, convinced that in order to rebuild the empire he needed to rule for at least twenty years without interruption, put a system in place that guaranteed this continued rule. It analyzes in detail how he eroded and dismantled the democratic reforms, manipulated the party system, introduced fake parties, falsified elections, and transformed the ruling party “United Russia” from a centrist party into a revanchist and ultranationalist party. One particular chapter describes the activities of the Kremlin’s youth movement “Nashi,” which enabled the Kremlin to inculcate its adherents with its ultranationalist ideology and strengthen its grip on civil society by harassing and intimidating opponents. Another chapter describes the new role, assigned to the Cossacks, who function as Putin’s praetorian guard and auxiliary police force after the mass protests of 2011–2012.
In this part the wars of Putin’s regime are analyzed and compared with other recent wars fought by (Soviet) Russia. In the first chapter three lost wars are analyzed: the war in Afghanistan, the Cold War, and the First Chechen War. This analysis is followed by a chapter on the casus belli, which offered (then) Prime Minister Putin an opportunity to start an all-out second war in Chechnya: the so-called “apartment bombings” of September 1999, which killed hundreds of Russian citizens. The Kremlin ascribed these attacks to Chechen terrorists, but the official Kremlin version is put in doubt by allegations that the FSB, the KGB’s follow-up organization, masterminded these explosions. This chapter is followed by a chapter on the Second Chechen War, a war characterized by purges, torture, and forced disappearances. I explain that this war had a triple function for the Kremlin: to consolidate Putin’s position, to legitimate Putin’s power, and, additionally, to enable him to roll back the democratic reforms. In the final chapters the 2008 war with Georgia is analyzed. I distinguish three phases in this war: a “cold” war, a “lukewarm” war, and, finally, the “hot” (five-day) war. Despite the Kremlin’s declarations that this war came as a surprise, I present and analyze the many circumstances indicating that this war was preplanned with the objective of bringing about a regime change in Georgia.
Part I
Russia and the Curse of Empire
Chapter 1
Despotism and the Quest for Empire
The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.
Russia has always been, and still is, a very special country: first, because of its geographical size, and second, because of its history. Russia is huge. It covers the biggest landmass in the world. But this huge country is mostly landlocked and has only some sparse outlets to the sea—on the Baltic and the Barents Seas in the north, the Black Sea in the south, and the Pacific Ocean in the east. If the sea is a “window on the world” (as tsar Peter the Great thought, which was why he built his new capital in Saint Petersburg), then Russia resembles a huge bunker with high closed walls and only a few small apertures. Is this the reason for the “bunker mentality” that foreign visitors often observed and which led Russians to view their Western neighbors with mixed feelings of distrust and jealousy?: jealousy because of the economic progress and technical prowess of these neighbors (which Russia was eager to copy) and distrust because of the dangerous democratic ideas that were considered a contagious disease that should be stopped at the frontier. This country on the fringes of Europe was known for the despotism of its leaders, its lack of freedom, and its eternal drive for territorial expansion.
MONTESQUIEU, ROUSSEAU, AND DIDEROT: EARLY CRITICS OF RUSSIAN DESPOTISM
In the eighteenth century especially, when in Western Europe philosophers of the Enlightenment started to attack absolutist rule and formulated their first radical democratic projects, Russia became the counterexample to everything the philosophes stood for. Montesquieu, for instance, considered Russia a huge prison: “The Moscovites cannot leave the empire,” he wrote, “not even to travel.”[1] The tsar, he continued, was “the absolute ruler over the life and the goods of his subjects, who, with the exception of four families, are all slaves.”[2] In De l’esprit des lois Montesquieu wrote that despotic governments, like Russia’s, are exclusively based on fear: “One cannot speak without trembling about these monstrous governments.”[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau was hardly more friendly in his assessment of the Russians, who were for him not only “cruel fellows,” but who “will always regard free people as they themselves should be regarded, that is to say as nobodies on whom only two instruments bear any influence, namely money and the knout.”[4] Rousseau wrote these words in a recommendation for reform of the Polish government that he sent to his Polish interlocutors shortly before Poland’s first partition in 1772. It was not without foresight that he warned the Poles: “You will never be free as long as there remains one Russian soldier in Poland and your freedom will always be threatened as long as Russia interferes in your affairs.”[5]
1
Montesquieu, “Lettres persanes,” in
4
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projettée,”
5
Rousseau, “Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne et sur sa réformation projettée,”