I will start with what seems to be the most important.
According to Putin, peace has come. It came with the seizure of Crimea. First it was Russia in Putin’s interpretation, now it is peace in his interpretation. The starting point of all discussions must be changed, otherwise we will all become walking anachronisms. One can be left out of time if they live in the past. I repeat once again: I am talking about the change of the starting point of all discussions and plans. The sooner, the better. And it is not just you or me, not just Russians and Ukrainians. It applies to the whole world. Otherwise it will do without us.
This is my warning. It is unpleasant, because it disputes daily routines and usual conversations, that is why I take the aggression I face for granted. But I consider this topic to be the most important now.
In order to understand peace in Putin’s interpretation, we must deal with Russia in Putin’s interpretation. Actually, any other name could have been here. He is just an executor. Russia’s current cycle is 75 years. This is how much time has passed since the USSR, along with the Nazi Germany, started World War II, implementing Russian program of imperial expansion, growth of the Russian world. And it does not matter that it happened in an alliance with Hitler then and was continued after he was defeated. And the communist cover is absolutely irrelevant, there can be any cover. The main point is expansion, imposing Russia’s development model, its worldview to other nations. Even family heredity can be traced: Molotov’s grandson Viacheslav Nikonov is now one of the ideologists of Russia’s expansion.
The Russian matrix, which came from Byzantium and was enriched with the Horde’s experience, is working. I will repeat what I said above. In my opinion, the notion of the Russian matrix implies a set of prejudicial stereotypes that do not need and deny rational reasoning. They form a basis of a worldview, national identity, system of values and behavior standards based on it that are used while socially and nationally important tasks are set and solved.
The adoption of these stereotypes, that is, the implementation of the matrix, occurs in the process of an individual’s socialization, in which various social institutes participate, from family and kindergarten to army and jail. And now mass media, from newspapers to social networks, play an increasing role in this process.
Attention should be focused on this fact. Not on military reports and incantations for the imminent fall of Putin’s regime, which is organic to Russian society and even the non-existent Russian opposition. There is one socio-cultural matrix for those who are ready to destroy each other, but not the matrix itself. Totalitarianism is a result of joint efforts of the whole society. Over the past 30 years the opposition has been doing everything but not the most important thing: it did not question politics in post-Soviet countries, it could not understand that totalitarian restoration started with the support of Transnistria, Abkhazia, and Crimean separatism.
And it was the mass media, where representatives of the progressive public and now Russian intellectuals worked, who legitimized the current war. We found this out during a conversation with a Ukrainian woman, who thought that an official declaration of war would turn all Ukrainians into enemies, not just the Kyiv junta and Banderovites. My answer was: “Relax, everything is much worse.” Russian media made institutional legitimization of the war absolutely unnecessary by turning Ukraine and Ukrainians into devils incarnate and monsters of the human race.
Earlier the same has been done to America and Europe. And even in the most difficult times, anti-Americanism and xenophobia have not been that total. In Konstantin Simonov’s The Russian Question and in Grigori Aleksandrov’s film Encounter at the Elbe progressive, honest, and likable citizens of the US were present. Now, in the best case, they all are “dumb Americans.”
So, Russian intellectuals cannot avoid the responsibility.
Judging by information mainly from Ukrainian media, Russia is gaining victory by using its usual style – neglecting the losses. Heroes will be made out of zinc coffins content. And Afghanistan should not be remembered, because contract soldiers are fighting now. They were not brought to war by conscription slavery. Social life is arranged in a way that pushes men to war.
This is a crucial theme, connection between imperial expansion with peculiarities of social organization and economy. The range of specific problems is enormous, but no one goes into researching them. And I will only try to define them here.
Russian invaders in Ukraine are a part of a common social system. They are combat-ready and trained, they do not have moral boundaries. Tales about an army that is falling apart, which are popular in mass media and social network, describe exactly the opposite of what the situation is. Western analysts know that. I will not refer to the fact that the Russian army has accumulated huge experience of military actions, that a lot of money is invested in it, that it matches quite nicely the technological and intellectual level of modern military science. The Russian army, and this is the most important, is as organic to the social, political, and economic organization of Russia, as it was during the reigns of Peter I, Catherine II, Stalin, and Brezhnev.
During the Soviet time, the army performed socializing functions for the whole male population of the country. It preserved them now, but it separated them from purely military ones, which strengthened it considerably. Contract soldiers, who replaced draftees during the First Chechen War, formed a special social caste.
Russian press explains the motivation of contract soldiers is accounted for by the inability to find a job. There are many objections to that: there always are jobs. This argument is useless, since it brings everything down to one primitive question. And it is a part of a general problem, the problem of socialization, correspondence of property and social statuses, which are not always in direct relation. In a patriarchal society this can be seen on the example of millionaires in merchant Muscovy, in a more advanced society these are mafia dons, moneybags who burst with money but are not allowed to be a part of the establishment.
The whole Russian social system is deeply militarized, it works for the sake of war. And this militarization is not always obvious. Property stratification of the society is on the verge of polarization and pushes people to join the army. Thus, they are driven out of social and political space. This cause receives contributions from the absence of social protection institutes, pettiness of trade unions, which are still groveling to the state, media with their cult of violence and war in everything: from information programs to TV series and even entertainment shows.
The system does not need total mobilization yet, but it carries out the selection of empire’s soldiers quite successfully.
It is one of the kinds of imperial expansion, by using social politics. But there is another one, connection to business on various levels and scales. The main type of business, budget development, is on the highest level here. I repeat once again: the seizure of Crimea also implies relocation of the whole system of Sochi taxpayers’ money development to the annexed territory. They even kept the same curator, Dmitry Kozak. But it is just a tip of the iceberg.
Since 1992, all conflicts in post-Soviet countries have a business compound. It can be criminal or not, budget and commercial, large or small-scale. Ruined Transnistria, rotting Abkhazia, poverty-ridden South Ossetia are the result of this business activity. Crimea has the same prospects.
And this is deliberate policy of the Kremlin, which refuses to recognize the full sovereignty and legal personality of former Soviet republics. Creation of a separatism, instability, and poverty belt was started by Anatoly Lukianov, who united MPs representing autonomies and pro-Moscow movements to oppose Soviet republics. This consolidation was called “Union.” Putin did not come up with anything new. It is the same kind of succession as succession of surplus-appropriation system, the first experiences of which date back to 1916. And of course, the same succession as Bolsheviks’ suppression of national movements in a much more bloody and resolute way than it was done in times of autocracy. The Russian matrix.
There is one more type of business which flourished in pre-war times: elections in post-Soviet countries. It is business and politics at the same time. Let us remember Georgia. Putin can now come to peace by taking Donbas from Ukraine and start a war on a different front, in elections. Gleb Pavlovsky and Marat Gelman are already bustling and giving interviews to Ukrainian mass media. It is quite probable they will be summoned again, as it happened in 2004. However, the Kremlin has better political technologists now. One can see the opening of electoral front behind the military reports.
All these are individual observations of the unity of organizations of Russian society and Russia’s actions. Such research should be continued, of course, because it looks like Putin decided to get on a bike. A strategy he chose can be called a bike strategy: if you stop, you fall. It applies to external aggression and holding power within the country.
Dmitry Shusharin is a Moscow-based historian and political journalist
