28.01.2004
Russian roulette
Andre Glucksmann/Die Welt
My dreams? For the brave people, naive
people, cunning people, who consider themselves even more cunning than the
reality, in a word, all Westerners altogether to abandon their
Russian dream. To open their eyes and to stop imagining Russia they
want to see on the basis of their utopias and calculations.
To finally see what we have in reality and what,
in particular, raises serious questions and sometimes — deep
concerns. Liberals and opponents of globalization, atlantistes and
Americanophobes, most political activists, commentators and professional
politicians — all of them seem to be mesmerized by Putin.
George W. Bush looked deeply into his eyes and drowned in them. Berlusconi
clears him of accusations of unleashing the massacre, tortures,
destruction of Chechen towns — all that are mere «rumors»,
he asserts. Chirac admits the KGB man to "the peace
camp" — makes him a participant of the axis
Paris-Berlin-Moscow, — unrolls red carpets before the murderer and tells
stories that Moscow gallops towards «the first line of democracies."
Personal charm of the first man in Moscow plays the most
insignificant role. Over three centuries western elites have been intoxicated
and calmed by Russia’s miracle. Being a captive of its own
inventions, the miracle progresses from one fiasco to another. Peter the
Great had hardly congratulated Leibniz and invited him to his palaces when
the French Academy began weaving a garland of a «Tsar-innovator» for
him. Paris salons did not lag behind, in particular, Voltaire, who,
regardless of the past, began glorifying the tsar who had killed his
father and tortured to death his favorite heir. Only Diderot found time
and strength to visit «Northern Semiramis» and concluded that the empire
of Catherine the Great had rotten because of stick and serfdom before
becoming mature. During the following century citizens and bourgeois fell into
reveries. Paris invested into miraculous «Russian securities," as a
result of which pockets became empty even quicker. In the 20th
century the whole world crooned a sinister song, first of all engaged
intellectuals, activists of all levels. Damned of the land and
deceived by the sky they sacrificed their human senses, their courage,
their morality, and first of all many millions of human lives for the
sake of "the sun rising in the East," whereas the most prudent,
reasonable and possessed people fell into one and the same trap. Being not
ashamed, the admirable «Uncle Jo» swallowed half of the Stalinist Europe
in Yalta.
Hardly the wall fell and the Soviet empire collapsed, the western madness
reappeared again. Taking everything on trust, the Kremlin’s heirs were
indulged, as well the «Family» and mafia clans pillaging Russia’s economy
and turning to their profit the embryonic democracy which was too fragile
to resist. Having closed the eyes, the strong of our world showered
the alternating Kremlin teams with compliments and loans. The World Bank and
the International Monetary Fund spoke out against corrupted states, but that
was only an appearance. In reality a double standard was
applied. Countries having no strategic importance, such as Kenya,
were deprived of any financial assistance due to corruption, then
Russia, where corruption reached the top levels, received money constantly.
When the International Monetary Fund was made to face the reality —
billions of dollars it granted to Russia appeared on bank
accounts in Cyprus or Switzerland several days later —
it pretended the dollars were of different origin. Some people
ironically noted that the IMF could have facilitated their life making direct
transfers to Cyprus or Switzerland. (Nobel Prize winner Joseph
Stiglitz writes about it in his book «La grande Desillusion»).
We shall not think that Putin, a new strong man, has cleaned Yeltsin’s
Augean stables. During four years of his rule, having less and less limits
of his power, he has just managed to redistribute privileges
between great scoundrels. Gusinsky, Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky — the heads
of oligarchs fall, but the distribution continues. New hunters appear
at this eternal feast of clans, in this motley and therefore
dangerous capitalist-Stalinist quagmire, and they are joined by corrupted
state bodies and police. Doped by high oil prices, new Russian misters
live on lavish profits from oil business whereas most people are doomed to an
eternal post-Communist poverty and has only the right to drop eyes and
to praise masters. And the dreaming West has already exalted the new Saudi
Arabia — this one is more reliable than the old one, it can have
control over energy resources from the Caucasus to Siberia and to maintain
security and stability.
New Eurasian Eldorado arouses the boldest dreams. For many years already Prodi
and his Brussels Commission have been trying to persuade businessmen
to invest into Siberian deposits and construction of pipelines.
So far private companies have been reluctant and tried to clarify all
possible risks, make everything clear. Official Europe has stuck to its
line. Human rights, freedom of speech, arbitrary decrees, unpredictable
struggles for power in corridors of the Kremlin are of little
significance. Everything for transformations of European outskirts!
Towards partnership in the field of power engineering, nuclear
sphere, strategic partnership! The Duma has already made the decision —
the German nuclear industry saluted, and «the greens» approved. Disturbing
nuclear wastes are no longer a reason for demonstrations attracting
public attention, no one storms nuclear waste trains, there are
no hysteric scenes on the German-French border, disgusting nuclear
wastes are stocked behind the Urals, heavily guarded, we can hope,
by the efficient police state. Safety obliges! Our health demands it,
Russian children can freeze!
No sentiments. Promising neocolonialism gives zest to these dreams:
underdeveloped backyards are going to supply natural resources which they
have in abundance, to consume European goods and join the European
zone. Germany is going to take its Drang Nach Osten, but in the
sphere of economics. France is going to imagine a completion
of Napoleon’s military campaign, and the Western Europe is likely
to peacefully annex countries of the third world in its East.
There would be enough obedience for reasons of commercial
competition. Slick Chirac accompanies Putin to his plane, Berlusconi opens
the doors of his villas to Putin, Bush receives him at his
ranch, Blair — with the Queen, Schroeder — on vacations. Volodya
takes a good note of that and believes everything is permitted.
The dreaming West has crowned him a tsar.
Why shall we show concern? Under the stick of a modern enlightened
despot Russians are again promised quick transformations. A law-abiding
state and personal freedoms will appear later, as usual, some time later.
On the left, inalterable progressivism. On the right, liberal
economy. All assert that the development is unique and sooner
or later any society is going to appear among leading democratic
countries. Such optimism resembles the 19th century, «the belle epoch,"
the happy time when people believed that development of railroad networks
and exchange from the one side, and progress in solidarity and education
from the other side, would automatically lead all to peace and prosperity.
As a result: two world wars, two totalitarian states, several fascist
countries, genocide, Oswiecem, Kolyma…
Neither experience nor facts seem to trouble Europe falling asleep.
It is going to Cythere of the Urals again.
Will we finally wake up, or no? Troops robbing civilians
in Chechnya, raping and killing, turn into normal citizens not
at once. A population duped by 70 years of communism and
disappointed by subsequent shortcomings get stuck in a paralyzing
despair. An elite which grew up in the conditions
of totalitarianism with no guides risks the danger of nihilism
pierced with limits and taboos. There are two ways out from the Soviet system:
the way of Havel and the way of Milosevic. A difficult way, with
numerous obstacles, i.e. — gradual democratization. And another,
a short, militarist way causing concerns, if not the way of terrorism
and restoration of authoritarianism. If secret services, army and
representatives of nomenclature share the Kremlin among them, then any
Milosevic can take everything under control.
Every time the West puts a reckless stake on the Russian miracle,
it stumbles and appears in a black hole. Even if we only imagine
it in a delirium, a dream of reason gives birth
to monsters. Giving a carte-blanche to Kremlin’s rulers Europe
is approaching an abyss to the creation of which it contributes.
Not everything is lost, but our political leaders take a wrong
direction.
Let’s oppose another dream to it. I dream about a different
Russia. Not about Russia from the Peter the Great to Putin with numerous
tsars and communist leaders. The ruling cast deprives the West of the only
power instrument and gives up a law-abiding state, as well
as humanistic rules of the game, which help taking the authority
under control somehow. A "dictatorship of law," which
is not controlled by public opinion and free mass media, generates
a society dominated by corruption, private and public mafias, spirit
of "spetsnaz," depressions and voluntary servitude of the
majority, which Solzhenitsyn called «the psychology of submission» and
Anna Politkovskaya — «Russia’s dishonor."
I dream about Russia which attaches civilization and civility to its
modernization, human rights, European and then universal. I dream about
Russia which is always possible, which was almost established by the
beginning of the 20th century. Literature, music, dances, theater, painting,
mathematics, linguistics, philosophy, enlightenment of St. Petersburg,
Odessa and Moscow illuminated the whole continent. If not for the WWI and
the catastrophic Bolshevist revolution, in the 20th century Europe might
have declared itself culturally Russian to become even more glorious. That
Russia of enlightenment, arts and human rights, the heritage
of Pushkin, Lermontov, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky… can still
be seen under the scab of the renovated autocracy. Here, in the
West, we shall cultivate and protect this unachieved hope. Dream against
dream. We are at the crossroads.
Andre Glucksmann/Die Welt