THIS IS NOWHERE NEAR PESSIMISTIC ENOUGH...:

The end of Russia?: On its present course, Russia is doomed, claims the distinguished historian, Yury Afanasiev. Why did reform change nothing? Why has the wheel of history turned back to autocracy? 500 years of oppression are reaching a terrible climax. In this important, excoriating essay, he challenges his people to face the truth about their history (Yury Afanasiev, 21 - 01 - 2009, OpenDemocracy)

The particular character of Russian power is as important as eternal war, militarisation and Orthodoxy. These are the key building blocks of ‘the Russian path'. Our government could write ‘force' on one side of its calling card, and ‘occupation' on the other. For its attitude to the population of its own country is that of a foreign occupier.

This kind of power took many centuries, maybe even many millennia, to establish itself in Rus', then in Russia. There were two different cultures in the vast expanses of our ancestral homeland. There was the Forest culture, a settled way of life, that of the ploughman, and there was the Steppe culture, that of the warrior, the nomadic cattle breeder, the historical phenomenon known as the Golden Horde. Contacts between these very different types of cultures, numerous wars and mutual borrowings from each other, opposition, conspiracies, betrayals, subjugations and conquests initially in Muscovy and then in Russia led eventually to the triumph of one over all the others.

This was the power brought in by the nomadic cattle breeders and warriors. This Horde power is so entangled with our national history that it has become our own. Its defining feature, apart from the words on the calling card, there is only one player - autocratic power, monologue not dialogue, dictatorship not discussion, a complete ignorance of compromise, utter rejection of agreement as a mode of communication. It is Manichaean, lacking in what Nikolai Berdyaev called the ‘culture of the golden mean'.

The divergence of European and Russian cultures, which was much debated by 19th century historians, began much earlier. The different social dynamics of the two cultures are already in evidence in the proto-Russian space when Lithuanian Rus' and Muscovite Rus' were neighbours. That co-existence and rivalry ended with the victory of Muscovy and the creation of a Russia dominated by ‘Horde power'.

These two cultures are quite distinct. One leads to the creation and development over a long period of the freedom of the individual. In the other, the space for the personality to emerge and develop is steadily reduced.

On one side you have the Magna Carta Libertatum (‘Great Charter of Liberties') and the Habeas Corpus Act. On the other, the ‘Great Yasa' of Genghis Khan. The former cultivates personality and society, the latter prioritises the state and other institutions. The social oppositions which stem from this are endless: democracy versus authoritarianism, agreement versus force, dialogue versus monocentrism, consent versus arbitrary decisions, horizontal ties in society versus the vertical of power etc.

The Magna Carta dates from 1214 (i.e. it was signed two decades before Batu Khan invaded Rus'). A whole range of freedoms protects the individual from the state in English law. Government bodies have no recourse to arbitrary arrest and punishment, obloquy, robbery and violence. This determined the agenda of constitutional guarantees, which were the subject of disputes with the monarchy over many centuries. These guarantees found their expression in the symbolic document known as Habeas Corpus.

Genghis Khan published his ‘Great Yasa' in 1206. [...]

[T]he financial and economic crisis radically changes an already oppressive situation. It reveals the fragility of the Putin regime's strategy, and his means of governing.

Rather than revenues from oil and gas flowing in as usual, capital is flowing out. Production is dropping, unemployment is growing. Unresolved problems of health, education and housing have been drastically aggravated. With oil prices below the $70 that was allowed for in the budget, the government will have to wring money out of the population, as the reserve fund and the gold supply is not going to last long.

How is the regime going to manage to do this while maintaining its strategy of facing down the West and America? How can the population be controlled, when 40% live in poverty, and 15-20% of this 40% are practically beggars? More than 60% of our fellow citizens live in small towns and villages. It is there, on the social periphery, that paternalistic attitudes are most entrenched. This population is almost totally lacking in the material or spiritual resources, or the social means to change its position and lift itself out of its chronic depression.

This chaotic mass of people is the bedrock of our corruption. This is inevitable, constantly driven back into poverty as it is , swelling the ranks of the unemployed, lacking all political organization, sustained by none of the structures of a civil society.

Corruption is increasing almost exponentially. It dominates almost all sectors of society and all levels of power, including (so we are being told) the highest levels, headed by the president and prime minister. It is one of the most destructive consequences of the lack of structural and functional differentiation in contemporary public life.

Movement means life, as we all know. Today's "God, Tsar and Motherland" personified by Putin asks us to agree that morning gymnastics Russian-style ("rising from our knees" to drums and fanfares) means movement, life. And everyone believes them. They go through the motion of those morning gymnastics. Keeping their clenched fist in their pocket. Ready to beat up anyone who falls down.

But we're going to fall down - and we'll fall down together.

If we go on like this we will very soon bring about the end of the cultural and historical phenomenon that is still known as Russia.

....because it fails to consider the demographic implosion.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at January 26, 2009 9:54 AM