In the West alarmed voices are ringing: gentlemen, Putin has NATO as his aim, he is going to radically change the entire system of international relations, alliances, and treaties. In a word, they woke up. But it is only experts who woke up. The decision-makers are still living in a world of illusions.
There is a paradox of the recent 25 years. Vladimir Nabokov’s assumption came true. He said: “I cannot predict anything though I certainly hope that under the influence of the West, and especially under that of America, the Soviet police state will gradually wither away.” It did wither, indeed. Yet, just as I wrote 20 years ago, “the best-educated, intellectual part of Russian society decided to give up the communist ideology not so much for ethical reasons – due to its barbarity and inhumaneness – as for purely pragmatic considerations, because in late 20th century bolshevism stopped meeting their ideas of their own respectability.”
That is, there were external reasons, just as Nabokov predicted. The prerequisites of the liberation of Central Europe were also external. One of the eternal themes is the causes and circumstances of velvet revolutions and other changes. Minds are dominated by cliches of heroic dissenters who shook the foundations, Solidarity, and so on, and so forth.
The weak point of all these speculations is impossibility to reveal the real links between freedom-lovers and changes. And all because Central Europe had a socialism based on tanks. And when it became clear that in no case could Russian tanks appear on their streets like they did before, then came an end to the collaborationist regimes. This was the one and only factor.
The fate of the East European countries was decided before perestroika, when Jaruzelski asked to follow the Czechoslovak recipe. But Brezhnev agreed with Andropov’s opinion: the victory of Solidarity in the elections would be a lesser evil than a military intervention of the USSR. In the late 1980s this formulation not only underpinned the policy in the socialist camp, but was even made known to the population in the countries of tank-backed socialism. Of course, it was not openly proclaimed to them, but Moscow’s standpoint was made clear. Hopes were pinned on it as well.
So the merits of Central European oppositionists were just the same as those of some apparatchiks: they were able to take a part of the power which Moscow had given them. Meanwhile, they made no contribution to the weakening of the regime just for the same reason: it was an occupation regime. Nor Soviet dissidents made such a contribution. Moreover, they were even unable to grab the power. Despite being mixed by nature, the new elite had a politically-technological attitude to democracy, regarding it purely as a tool. If we need it, we will use it. If we can do without it, let it lie.
In Central European countries it happened in a different way. As it turned out, the national elite could comprise dissidents, former apparatchiks, and experts who served the latter, so that they were nationally oriented and would not associate their countries’ future with Russia. All of them proved efficient. Their main objective was to do away with the Russian factor.
It went away on its own, in order to regroup and launch a reaction against national renaissance in the USSR. After the velvet revolutions followed a brief, but bloody period in the history of the Soviet Union. It was not protected, either. Union republics acted as the external force on Russians and Russia, and the Ukrainian referendum became a crucial point.
Russians immediately started to restore their empire, only this goal was not always top priority. Now it is mostly associated with the internal evolution of the regime which, after the consolidation of elites and concentration of power, came to need a consolidation of the population and an isolation of the country.
Despite all attempts of Russian and Ukrainian progressive communities to convince themselves that Putin’s regime is collapsing, that it belongs in the past, while the civilized world belongs in the future, everything is developing just the contrary. In Russia an intrinsically new regime arose, which synthesized the features of its many predecessors. It is that very steel rat, bred by the Kremlin’s genetic scientists: an exceptionally mean and loathsome beast, but virtually invulnerable.
The past grabbed the civilized world, which all these years had been trying to adjust the NATO, EU, and UN to the new conditions. Especially NATO, which was turning into an anachronism not due to the absence of Russian threat, but because the latter was growing and remained unnoticed.
It became obvious that from the very start, as early as in 1949, NATO was not meant for real war. The Alliance arose as a peacemaking organization. Peacemaking, yet not pacifistic, for si vis pacem, para bellum. NATO was getting ready for war, demonstrating this readiness and keeping an eye on the military parity. Its main occupation was the arms race, not war.
Yet the arms race was won. And the winners, as it is always the case, started preparing for the past war. They did not even notice Russia’s new war doctrine, which stipulated for a preventive nuclear strike. They would not see the rearmament of the Russian army, which had been waging wars non-stop all those years. They were blind to the fact that Russia had lost the last trace of former rhetoric: pacifism and struggle for peace, which had occupied such an important place in propaganda ever since Stalin’s times.
The result is deplorable. It is the civilized world which stuck in the past, just like it happened at the beginning of the Second World War – and not totalitarian Russia. NATO was not even preparing for war, it was only busy with self-service, just as any bureaucratic organization, like the EU and UN. And now a trifle remains for Russia: to set up something similar to the proverbial hybrid war (a Russian know-how which caught everyone by surprise) against one of the eastern NATO members. In other words, it has to create a situation in which the Alliance must fight. And if it does not dare do it, it is finished.
Many rejoice at the consolidation of Central European countries. But, firstly, their military and political potential is negligible compared to that of Russia. Not just the political one, but military and political: it is measured not only by the quantity and quality of arms, but also by the political will in the ruling elite, the consolidation of the nation, its diplomatic positions. Secondly, this is one of the ways to split NATO and the EU.
And this split is becoming ever more likely. The resignation of Sikorski from the post of Poland’s foreign minister, and the looming resignation of Karl Bildt show that Europeans are getting rid of politicians who dare call a spade a spade. Sikorski spoke not only of the defeat of Ukraine and Europe, who gave in to the pressure of Russia dictating its own terms of European association; he also said that Europe is using Central European countries as an anti-tank mine.
Or as a sanitary zone. Or as buffer states. That is, Europe is ready to negotiate a new division of Europe with Russia.
“Again, nations are but a target
In Europe’s shooting gallery
Europe’s anthem now is
The flight of Valkyries,
For the ninth to return,
Like in May,
First the seventh has
To be heard.”
