Right now, this call sounds like a kind of utopia, especially considering the tangle of historical, economic and geopolitical problems connected with the Arctic: modern civilization developed in the Northern Hemisphere, and the Arctic has been an arena for a centuries-long confrontation. It is highly unlikely that states – especially Russia as it ‘gets up off its knees’ (according to the propaganda slogan) – will be prepared to give up their appetites for sovereignty or their economic ambitions. But when the global campaign to save the Antarctic began, that too seemed no less utopian. Now it’s the turn of the Arctic.
Ultimately, Russia’s national interests consist not in sticking titanium flags on the bottom of the sea, nor in illusions of territorial acquisitions; not in new military bases, nor in ‘energy security’ (which, in fact, simply defends the interests of the oil corporations); but in the ecological security of the country and its sustainable development. For Russia, the Arctic represents an ecologically vulnerable zone, and in such a situation our interests are defended not by Gazprom and Rosneft, not by Arctic troops, nor by coastal patrol vessels, but by a bunch of gutsy Greenpeace activists. But it’s difficult for the country to understand this when it’s been blinded by the mirage of sovereignty and myths about inexhaustible resources.
CRIMEA AS A TERRITORY OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS
How funny it all was at the start: we had the ‘Cat Stomping Law’ (the nickname given to the Law on Silence that forbids loud noises during the night and was adopted in St Petersburg)[8] and the return of school uniform – State Duma deputies Vitaly Milonov and Elena Mizulina comically battling away for morality; and the creation of the Theology Department of the National Research Nuclear University (MEPhI – Moscow Engineering Physics Institute), the country’s leading university in the sphere of the natural sciences. At first this all seemed absurd, grotesque, like trolling: Cossack patrols, the blessing of space rockets, the banning of exhibitions and shows by demand of the Orthodox community. In 2012, things began to look rather more serious, when the court case against Pussy Riot began; and the ‘Dima Yakovlev Law’ was passed, forbidding foreigners from adopting Russian orphans. And then came the law banning gay propaganda. There was still the hope that this resistance to change was just the result of political games; that it was propaganda for internal consumption, just an attempt to scare people after the protests that took place in Moscow in the winter of 2011–12.
Observed from outside, Russia was just another authoritarian state which habitually put pressure on the media and on dissenters but played according to global rules – carrying out IPOs; attracting investment; preparing for the Winter Olympics in Sochi and for the chairmanship of the G8; speaking at the Council of Europe and in the UN Security Council. There was some criticism of Moscow on human rights issues, but it was still possible to reach agreement with the Kremlin when it came to international affairs, Syria being a case in point. Pragmatism was the watchword in politics, and Putin gave the impression that he was a man ‘who’d backed the right horse’. Domestic policy and foreign policy were separate. At home, there were ‘spiritual bonds’ – the name that Vladimir Putin gave to traditional values – while abroad, there were credit ratings, the NordStream gas pipeline and his good friends Gerhard and Silvio.[9]
And suddenly the dam burst, and the murky waters of Russian internal policy gushed abroad, dragging Russia into the Crimean gamble, taking it beyond the boundaries of international law and starting a new Cold War with the West. The ‘spiritual bonds’ of the internal Russian product became the basis for foreign policy. The Eurasian fantasies of the philosopher Alexander Dugin, the patriotic kitsch coming from the pen of Alexander Prokhanov, the primitive geopolitics coming out of the military academies, led by retired generals: this intellectual rubbish suddenly became mainstream, resulting in an actual war, intervention in Ukraine and nuclear threats made to the West by the Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Rogozin, and the television presenter, Dmitry Kiselyov. The sound of the anecdotal stomping of cats became the clank of caterpillar tracks. In the three weeks separating the Winter Olympics in Sochi from the referendum on the status of Crimea on 16 March 2014, Russia went from being the victorious and hospitable host of the Olympic Games to an aggressor state, putting on the line its own reputation and international stability for the sake of a rocky peninsula in the Black Sea. On 16 March, Russia changed the situation at a single stroke, at the same time ending the twenty-five-year project of normalization and adaptation to the global world that had been going on since 1989, the year when Soviet troops pulled out of Afghanistan and the Berlin Wall fell. Russia found itself in this new world with an annexed territory – but with no rules, guarantees or norms of international law. The unexpectedness, sheer scale and possible consequences of this stunning transformation all put it on a par with the collapse of the USSR.
There’s no point in looking for any rational basis, or for any systemic boundaries in this revolution; the wheels have come off and it’s not clear what else it will destroy. To try to understand this you don’t need the geopolitical specialists Kissinger or Brzezinski; you need the Russian philosophers and writers, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Nikolai Danilevsky. Russian policy has been grabbed now not by the Gazprom manager with the villa in Antibes (who’s flying off on his private jet to save his shares), but by an Orthodox Chekist[10] with a slim volume by Ivan Ilyin, an émigré philosopher and monarchist. For too long, we ignored the revanchist rhetoric of ‘the Russian world’; and now that world has come to us in armoured personnel carriers.
Russian politics has passed through a Jungian revolution in which the collective unconscious, the archetype and the myth have triumphed once and for all. Having begun as trolling and political technology, the irrational has gradually burrowed its way to the very core of politics and has itself become the policy, the lens through which the Kremlin sees the world. This discourse has taken hold of the subject and brought to life a new ideological and messianic form of politics. As the political scientist Alexander Morozov writes, ‘the ideas of profit, trade, exchange, cooperation, institutional and traditional “politics of interests” – indeed, the whole discourse of Realpolitik, has given way to risk, heroism, heroic suicide and “fate”. No sacrifice, nor even the final catastrophe, will convince the initiators of such a policy of how absurd it is.’[11]
Crimea became that very ‘fate’: the moment of truth; the focal point for all the grudges of recent years; the post-imperial resentment and the wounded pride, like in Alexei Balabanov’s film Brother 2 (‘You bastards still have to answer to me for Sevastopol!’, screams the hero at a group of Ukrainians); the thirst for revenge and the search for ‘fascists’ in the neighbouring countries; the inferiority complex (‘America can, so why can’t we?’); and the global ambitions. Crimea was where the mix of complexes and fears was satiated and proved to be the crystallization of the new Russian regime. And at one and the same time, the territorialization of the collective subconscious, which found a launchpad for itself, deep in the heroic myth of Sevastopol.
8
The ‘Cat Stomping Law’ was introduced in January 2013 by the St Petersburg City Council. It levies a fine against anyone making too much noise between the hours of 2300 and 0700, by ‘shouting, whistling, moving furniture, singing, playing a musical instrument or other actions which would disturb the peace and quiet of citizens’. There were proposals put forward that the list should include, ‘loud snoring, loud sex, moving a refrigerator and a cat stomping’. These suggestions were left out of the law, but nevertheless gave it its nickname.
9
Gerhard Schroeder, former German Chancellor, and Silvio Berlusconi, former Italian Prime Minister, each of whom has forged close links with Putin.
10
The first Soviet secret police force was called the
11
https://www.colta.ru/articles/society/2477-konservativnaya-revolyutsiya-smysl-kryma. ‘The Conservative Revolution. The Meaning of Crimea’ (in Russian), 17 March 2014.