...My stance on the matter is that I have no doubt that Russia is continuing to wage war on Ukraine. Actually, myself being a Russian liberal, I feel far more affinity with the Ukrainian project than with Russia’s attempt to relegate itself to and keep in the 16th century. I also understand that the current so-called ‘Minsk truce,’ as well as statements by President Petro Poroshenko, and the EU, and President Vladimir Putin are generally signs of a sort of tactical compromise that neither solves any of Ukraine’s issues, nor solves Russia’s issues. This is a situation that has arisen when we have entered a historical pause, where all the main actors are, in fact, forced to play a game of pretend, because the goals of Ukraine as a state differ from those of the Russian system.
“Meanwhile, the goal of the EU is to avoid a normative assessment, a normative approach to the Ukraine crisis. In fact, this crisis has highlighted the drama of the West, and not just Russia’s drama, by highlighting the fact that after the fall of the Soviet Union, the world, I mean Europe and the West, have entered the era of unprincipledness. This so-called Minsk protocol is a convincing confirmation of the absence of principles or watersheds, the lack of ideological definitiveness, normative values, and the disappearance of boundaries between war and peace.
Leading researcher of the Carnegie Moscow Center, Den’s contributor and lecturer at our Summer School of Journalism Lilia SHEVTSOVA celebrated her birthday this week. A native of Lviv, Shevtsova went to study at a university in Moscow right after graduating from high school, and her further activity is associated with Russia.
Shevtsova wrote a foreword to the new book from Den’s Library, Ukraine Incognita. TOP 25, which was published in Russian. In particular, she pointed out that “the Kremlin cannot put up with the Ukrainian Maidan, because there is a risk the Ukrainian uprising becomes an example for Russians. And even more so, because after losing Ukraine, autocratic Russia will be deprived of its historic legitimacy in the form of Kyivan Rus’, which the Russian government has privatized, took away from Ukrainians, and considers to be its ‘cradle.’”
The Day started an interview with the birthday girl with a question about how she and other native Ukrainians went through a process of re-discovering their homeland.
“There are a lot of us, people from Lviv, here in Moscow. But it is hard for me to say to which extent my path of coming back to Ukraine is typical for the rest, because this loose group of ‘Lviv-borns’ includes such people as Grigory Yavlinsky, Mikhail Fridman, or Yevgeny Gontmakher.
“Perhaps, Ukraine became important for me only in 2004, during the Orange Revolution. During the previous and very serious period of my life, I have apparently tried to discover Russia, Moscow, to understand at first what the Soviet Union was, and then – the Russian Federation. I was too much involved in Russia’s intellectual political field. And 2004 basically became a revelation for me. Maybe even some important point in my intellectual and even personal development. Ukraine started presenting interest as a public phenomenon. For a person who had lived in Moscow for a long time, it showed a possibility of breaking through the post-Soviet model. It was a rational academic interest.
“But a dry interest in the Ukrainian phenomenon has suddenly awakened a whole layer of living emotions, affections, empathy, and a desire to finally come back and rethink anew some cultural and civilizational phenomena, in general, everything that is related to national identity. So, in 2004 I returned to live with a part of my family. I have a lot of relatives who live mainly in Kyiv and Kyiv oblast.
“And Euromaidan, obviously, became an even stronger stimulus and triggered something more than just affections, empathy, and everything that in general really is a quest for some lost or never existing personal world and empathizing.
“Undoubtedly, the dramatic events in Ukraine make us come back to what is a cultural and civilizational layer in human life, which basically shapes and defines a lot of things, including political views.”
A lot of experts state that thanks to the recent events in Ukraine, the creation of the new nation has finally started. And this is happening against the background of Russia, in which people do not know what nation they belong to. What is your opinion on it?
“Obviously, I am in the process of learning Ukrainian history and that painful process you are undergoing now. Virtually, you are building a nation and a new Ukrainian state now, and this war turned out to be an extremely strong stimulus for your national unification, for the formation of Ukraine as a European nation. You turned out to be much more European than Europeans are, because you started demanding the application of European standards to Ukraine, while Europe and the West are rejecting these standards.
“At the same time, if we take a look at Russia it becomes obvious that the Russian system, the matrix, or the Russian autocracy of the 21st century is trying to return to the 16th century, prolong the historical pause, and get stuck there completely, board up the windows and oppose Russia’s joining of the modern world. Neither Russia’s political class nor Russian liberals, including the marginal minority which I belong to, know how to escape the trap of Russia as an empire. And it still is an empire, even without some of its pieces. We do not know whether this half-destroyed, hung up, frozen empire or half-empire will be able to transform into a national state of Russia.
“Eight or ten years ago Dmitry Furman, one of the first liberal intellectuals, was the first to ask this question, saying it would become a basic problem for Russia. And it is true. If Russia decides to transform into a national state, how should it be made democratic? Or we will have to go the path of a civic nation, but we have deviated so far from it.”
And moreover, tendencies of bringing serfdom back appeared in Russia.
“You are absolutely correct. Valery Zorkin with his nostalgic slogan that serfdom is a Russian tie shook our dead intellectual environment. I do not wish to be paradoxical, but I think it is good that it was done by Zorkin as a chairman of the Russian Constitutional Court and the main guardian of Russian constitutionality, in which European principles and an idea of the rule of law are actually present. It is good he talked about serfdom as an ideal, as a principle of organization of Russian state, because theoretically Zorkin demonstrated the state of the Russian political class, which turns out to be even more ignorant, more archaic, with a much more terrifying grin than the Russian political class of the 19th century, the majority of which was ashamed of serfdom when it still existed. Basically, he hauled us to much earlier history and demonstrated with his statement that because of its mentality, the current political class is absolutely incapable of living in a normal civilized country and ruling it. It is incapable of living in a peaceful time. It is absolutely obvious that having sunk into this war, Russia’s political elite (let’s not talk about Putin, he is the symbol of the system and personifier of the Russian political class) announced to the whole world that they cannot live in peace. Having made Russia a country of war, the Russian elite signals that the Russian political regime has entered the phase of agony. Elite retreats to such measures as war, aggression, and denial of all international rules of the game only when it is desperate and cannot find another way to survive.”
By the way, former chairman of Yukos Mikhail Khodorkovsky said recently that the crisis similar to the events of 1917 was looming. What do you think about such evaluation?
“I am now beginning to treat our ability to foresee the events with more criticism. And all kinds of historic analogies are useful to see the uniqueness of the moment. But they hardly work. In 1917, a part of the Russian political elite was ready for changes, but the society was not. And in 2014, 37 percent of the Russian society, people who say that an individual’s interests are more important than the interests of the state, show at least that this significant part of the Russian society is ready to live in a country with the rule of law. And a large part of the rest, who supposedly support Putin formally (I do not believe in this 83 percent), oppose corruption. Correspondingly, only about 30 percent favor this paternalistic uncivilized state. This is the difference between 1917 and 2014. Still, it is a different Russia.
“Perhaps, Khodorkovsky is right about a different thing. 1917 is a year of the revolution. And during the last three to five years the world has been showing us that the model of changes transformation, which has been popular during the past 40 years (the model of enforcing changes ‘from above,’ with the help of a reformist wing in the ruling elite, and also under the influence of the opposition), will hardly work. Revolutionary movements are awakening in many countries now, including Turkey and Hong Kong, and in 2011-12 it was Russia. So, Khodorkovsky might be right that the world is entering an era of revolutions in the 21st century, when ruling elites cannot initiate changes from above.”
You have already mentioned that Europe cannot give a proper name to the events in Donbas. But is it possible to expect that the sanctions imposed by the EU and the US against Russia will influence the Russian elite?
“There are various opinions on the importance of sanctions. We can remember the decade-long experience of sanctions implementation, starting from the South African apartheid, to sanctions applied against Iran. Sanctions never changed the essence of a regime, they did not change a system of a government they were directed against. Very rarely do sanctions force a country to change foreign policy. Therefore I think that sanctions cannot play a crucial role in determining Putin’s behavior.
“Perhaps, sanctions force the Russian political regime to change the forms, methods, and ways of its behavior. But they cannot force the Russian political regime to reject the paradigm of military and patriotic mobilization it has just entered. Perhaps, the Russian political regime will decide to fight for Ukraine or destabilize it by bribing Ukraine’s elite, through the Minsk protocol, by refraining from applying direct aggression. And this is the most probable course. But sanctions cannot radically change the Kremlin’s policies.
“Sanctions are tactical actions. But they are necessary, because the potential aggressiveness of the agonizing system could have been greater.”
