To me, to be able to think, to feel compassion for another, is the essential element in what it is to be human. If your interests do not extend beyond filling your belly or satisfying your lust, then you may as well be a robot or an animal – and yet I fear that our capacity to empathise is being degraded.
If I met a younger incarnation of myself in the street tomorrow I would urge him to remember always that other people inhabit very different perspectives. People’s refusal to take this into account, to ignore the fact that others possess an outlook quite different to theirs, is the source of much of the discontent and friction in the world today, and prejudices our chances of emerging unscathed from the tensions that are enveloping us.
One salient example might be the consequences of NATO’s expansion in Eastern Europe. In the West this is seen as an important element in establishing collective security, but in Russia it feels like a threat.
You need to remember that in Russia we have a different relationship with history: I think perhaps we have longer memories, so we are more easily affected when current events come to resemble the past. Though our nation has been turned upside down more than once in the past century, though the Bolsheviks implemented a systematic assault on its culture and traditions, still the connection we have with the experiences of previous generations is far stronger. The West has experienced successive waves of societal and political change, with each development replacing much of what had gone before – the cord is broken. (At times this might be the result of inattention, though at others – as in the case of the Japanese government’s proposal to shut humanities departments in favour of ‘more practical’ subjects – it can be caused by a wilful impulse.)
So in England, for instance, I get the feeling that the Great Patriotic War is considered, when it is considered at all, as a long-distant triumph, like the Queen’s Jubilee or the 1966 World Cup. These events have not been forgotten, but the passage of time has rubbed them smooth. They regard them as one might a fondly remembered film. By contrast, in Russia we are still haunted by the atrocities that followed the Nazi invasion in 1941. Our territory was ravaged, towns were burnt, immeasurable cruelty meted out to those unfortunate enough to fall into German hands. The memory of these crimes still flows in our veins – it cannot be reduced to an exercise in nostalgia – so perhaps it is not so strange that we are alarmed when we see foreign tanks and soldiers ranged along our borders. (Fears that have been stoked again by the recent publication of classified documents, which reveal how little the US Secretary of State James Baker’s famous ‘not one inch eastward’ assurance about NATO expansion, which he made in a meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in February 1990, was really worth.)
I do not mention this because I wish to suggest one side is worse than another – I am sure that an American could point to instances where Russia’s actions have touched deep-rooted historical anxieties – but simply to illustrate the consequences of mutual incomprehension and the failure of empathy.[24]
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted in his essay ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren’ that, in the future, living standards in what he called progressive countries would advance to the stage where most people would have to work no more than fifteen hours a week. He believed that the population’s material desires would be met so easily that the desire to earn more money would be regarded almost as a pathological illness. Freed from the battle for survival, they would be able to devote much of their time to pleasure and self-development. He was right in some respects – we live in what people in the ’30s would have regarded as almost unimaginable luxury – and mistaken in many others.
When I returned to St Petersburg in 1991 we had very little, but we were happy. Now when I am in St Petersburg and Moscow I find myself surrounded by people who can have what they want, whenever they want it. You can find anything you want in the shops, enjoy food at some of the best restaurants in the world, stare at expensive cars and glinting skyscrapers, and yet despite these signs of conspicuous wealth, I do not believe that people are more content. Perhaps less so.
I remember how in those first years after the collapse of the Soviet Union my family and I were sustained by a belief in the future. Today has not been good, we would say, but tomorrow will be better. I thought then that people would be happier as soon as they were richer. It seems that, like Keynes, I was wrong.
The world has changed in so many ways, but I am not sure that I have changed with it, at least not deep inside, where one’s true essence lies. Sometimes it seems to me that I have been like the still centre of a storm – while everything else has been ripped up and thrown to every corner of the wind, here I am, steady, much the same as I ever was. Occasionally I wonder what the young intelligence officer who travelled with his family to New York in 1985 to defend socialism would make of the man I have become; I hope he would see that I have held on to many of the same values that he cherished, that I still believe in solidarity and respect, that my love for my family and country are as strong as they were then.
Of course, the passing of the years has taken its toll on my body and I am increasingly conscious that the time left to me is limited. I know that I may not be able to achieve all the things I want to, and as a result I find myself gripped by an urgency that I never knew before.
I started writing this book in July 2016 in what already felt like very different circumstances. It was not designed as an exculpatory exercise; I do not need to be told that I am no saint. My intention then was only to show a different perspective to Western readers, one that I hoped would be frank and insightful.
But now as I sit here in December 2017 I am as alarmed as I ever was during the peak of the cold war. Spitak, Chernobyl, 9/11, all these events taught me how fragile life is, how vulnerable we all are – and that the same blood runs through all of our veins. The way that the Americans responded with such compassion to the earthquake in Armenia, a disaster that had befallen people in a distant nation that was supposed to be their enemy was a pivotal moment for me; it helped me understand that it was possible to transcend ideology and propaganda. I worry that our capacity to do this again is diminishing with every day that goes by. I still want to help people from the West understand my country and the reasons it views the world in the way it does, though I fear that perhaps this is no longer sufficient – something more is needed.
Had you asked me three years ago if I felt optimistic about the future then I would have replied yes without a second’s pause. Now, things are different. I have to remind myself that despondency is one of the venial sins, so if you consider yourself a Christian, then you can never abandon hope, even if it seems as though the conditions for maintaining optimism are withering.
But we cannot sit idle waiting for a Messiah to come along and do our work for us. It is our responsibility, as citizens, to realise the power we possess. All human beings are able to produce something positive, to contribute to the health of civil society, both domestically and internationally. I will continue to pursue the projects I have become involved with, even if I know that they may not bear fruit until long after I have gone. There are days when these efforts can seem futile, when the effort involved outweighs the benefit accrued. But then there are other times when I see bright shoots wherever I turn. When I think about the relationships I have formed with men and women from the United States, or Britain, or Germany, or when I look around the offices of the Dialogue of Civilizations’ Research Institute and hear people from around the world talking amicably in different languages and with different accents, I know that it is possible to substitute discussion and cooperation for aggression and chauvinism.
24
You could argue that Russia’s adverse geography has also had its own role in shaping the Russian mentality, far more so than in other countries. The harsh conditions, the sheer remoteness of so many communities, implanted a sense of solidarity in the Russian soul. It is the distinguishing element in our psychological make-up. Without this emphasis on the welfare of the man next door to you, without this acknowledgement of the extent to which we depend on others, and thus have corresponding responsibility for them ourselves, people would simply not have survived.