By Victor Kogan-Yasny, Chairman of the Regional Civic Initiative and Adviser to the “Yabloko” Party
A detailed description of the post-Soviet phenomenon at the end of the first decade of the present century would take much effort and room. That is why what I am going to report now will be approximate and one-sided.
The Georgian – Russian conflict along with the intention of Georgia to join the NATO has made many people say that the post-Soviet space is no more. But a closer look allows one to make an opposite conclusion. Political space is a life-style and pattern of thought in no less degree than geopolitics, frontiers and pipeline routes. It is not torn even by military confrontation.
Usually when one speaks about community in a broad sense of the word, positive aspects are meant, such as common economic development, equality in access to medicare and education and so on. However, negative peculiarities and traditions, too, form specific and substantial “community” that would be wrong to neglect and that should be better transformed into some possible positive.
Everywhere in the post-Soviet CIS and Baltic states one can observe in varying degrees proneness to populism, lack of political culture, and narrow-mindedness.
In almost all countries of the former USSR one can clearly see a new turn of neglect of the principles of open society, civil liberty as an absolutely essential tool for development. Democratic procedures are often considered as a means of solution of corporative instead of social problems.
Corruption is one of the unwritten standards of society. Corruption and administrative dependence of judiciary system block its role as a means of justice and resolving conflicts. For the same reason in most post-Soviet states law-enforcement bodies are ineffective and do not enjoy any authority in society. The Army has been traditionally misused. Adventurism and provocation often become an essential factor of policy and do not meet effective resistance.
The west offers no resistance to these dangerous phenomena. On the contrary similar approaches have become part and parcel of public life in the USA and the European Union. Civil control over power, a dialogue of power and society is reduced to the most primitive and ineffective forms.
Modern European political traditions were elaborated with great difficulty after the Second World War. Now one can see that forms of these traditions have various kinds of technologic and bureaucratic development. However, the content remains stagnant and the whole tradition is being emasculated and may fail to endure the test of the new reality.
Being a Russian citizen I am particularly worried by the policy waged by my country. Self-isolation, militarism and chauvinism thaw in a softened form and even if it is provoked by behavior and logic of others are absolutely unacceptable for us. If Russia says to the West “You have demonstrated political idiocy in one place, we will retaliate with an adequate cretinism somewhere else,” it means a dangerous and ruinous way for the future of my country. Both a victory and defeat of such a course would have destructive consequences.
I think it is high time we should discuss combining efforts of all those who realize the dangers of such a situation in a movement for peace and the rule of law in the post-Soviet region. May be we should set up an independent centre of legal and political analysis for the region that would be conducive to preventing violence and irreversible conflict situations.
The former USSR is a space of extremes. There one takes as a model everything bad happening in the rest of the world and realizes it with a particular derision, whereas one could have acted in a different way and shown a good example. The absence of any tradition of feedback between society and power and civil responsibility lead to insolubility of moral and all other social problems. The word “confidence” in this mental space exists only as an object of derision. Here thrives special cynicism and post-Stalinist attitude towards people. Here the reality is substituted for what is shown on the “box”.
Here television is understood not so much as a means of reflection of social reality rather than a method of its “forming”. Here aggressiveness and primitivism are habitually perceived as a way of achieving success be it business, home or foreign policy.
Extreme contradictions of utterances and behaviour both at a mass level and particularly among public leaders has become a standard. It hardly surprises anybody, seldom makes one think that something goes wrong here. Such standard of behaviour makes it easier to inculcate the maxim that “life should be taken as it is “ and that it is no use to oppose traditions of lawlessness.
Political speechifying of post-Soviet leaders is hard to understand due to its inconsistency even to the rather cynical representatives of the Western establishment. They cannot grasp that politicians and officials fulfill their functions in the way life-tired glamour crooners lip-sing to a recording.
Despite the differences in the social structure of post-Soviet states and irrespective of the fact which geopolitical choice has been made by their elites, the above-mentioned peculiarities in varying degrees remain common for all these states, be it the Baltic states or Ukraine, or the trans-Caucasian region or Russia, or even Central Asia – there lies paradoxical unity of the post-Soviet region, the “proof” of the fact that the post-Soviet space exists and will be existing at least as community of style. And here, in my view, emerges motivation why a considerable set of problems of the former USSR should be solved jointly and why “the external world” should not negate the existence of the post-Soviet space but should instead try to understand better this phenomenon.
It is important to understand the role and responsibility of Russia. Despite the fact that various and conflicting geopolitical vectors have been formed, the stylistic role of Russia and the Kremlin is still part and parcel of psychology and is still essential.
It is the “armies” of the Kremlin officialdom that set the tone and style of lying, arbitrary and inconsistent interpretation of both past and current development in order to support internal stability and global “raising from knees” Such policy and political philosophy could be called a doctrine of whole-sale lawlessness”. It is not just lie or political rowdyism and expansion, it is a cult of inconsistency and breaking any rules. The state interests are equated with those of officials. They “butt” with a strong opponent by giving a kick to someone third who is, whether he is right or not, obviously weaker. The world should be made to accept us only as we are and in this case we will defend ourselves and everything we possess. Such the meaning of this dangerous and peculiar post-Soviet ideology rooted in the worst aspects of Soviet history and mentality. If it is not stopped, it can bring new enormous misfortunes above all to Russia and very likely to the surrounding world. Hence, overcoming the policy and philosophy of the post-Soviet boundless lawlessness is a very important universal problem that concerns all.
The attitude to possible conflicts in the post-Soviet space sometimes is connected, as it were, with the inculcated notion of duty: it must be done, such is our role. In our childhood we played a children military game called Zarnitsa (“Summer Lightning”) We went to the woods and shot from toy pistols at our peers from a neighbouring class. Why shouldn’t grown-ups with real arms play this game if their “teachers” told them so? The game would be started and finished by order. Obvious and deep motives are irrelevant. Nothing personal. Just order.
There is a number of conflicts in the world where contradictions of the sides are so considerable (in a historical, philosophical and existentialist aspect) that their solution in the framework of any long-term political philosophy, long-term strategy of mutual peace and individual freedom is impossible in principle. It is impossible to impose a strategy of peace and freedom under such contradictions. Eighty-five per cent of Jews in Israel and same number of Arabs in the Gaza strip view their life in a mutually excluding way. Something similar can be observed in the relations between India and Pakistan. No “European idea” of improving common life can remove such deep contradictions there. That is why one will have to be content with narrow ad hoc and tactical solutions mostly far from being rational from the point of view of a detached liberal observer. Even in Europe in determining priorities of public life hatred gains the upper hand not just over humaneness but over elementary reason (Spain, North Ireland, the Balkans) despite the fact that freedom of the individual and integration of the single economic space are recognised by all as the only guarantee of development and an alternative to mass violence. It is impossible to make one person or a whole people love your neighbour and be free people.
But it is quite different matter when conflicts are only ripening, bear not a fundamental but a multi-aspect and “intermediate” character, where the atmosphere has not yet become completely closed. In such situations independent thought, monitoring, rational intervention from the outside can introduce their own necessary positive impulse. Especially if conflicts are exacerbated not so much due to their internal nature as they are provoked by cohorts of ambitious “superiors”.
Precisely such situation is observed on the territory of the former USSR: catastrophic ending is felt, but not everything has been lost, it is still possible to work out such a peaceful and “European” plan for all and that would not cause a sweeping rebuff from no public-spirited person or state. It is still possible to build “consensus framework” for the entire post-Soviet space based on the values of respect for the individual law and then to try to move gradually in this direction. It is an extremely difficult but not hopeless task.
The alternative is: either to “rise from knees” time and again and be floored or choose a way of peaceful and balanced development that will not lead to the kingdom of prosperity but will give us a chance to evade new historical catastrophes.
In 1990 the Soviet Union and the NATO member-countries signed in the OCSE framework the Paris Charter for New Europe which set a strategic task of building “bigger Europe” from Vancouver to Vladivostok in order to ensure really trustworthy and partnership relations of all sovereign subjects of this space connected through common cultural roots in the spheres of the rights of the individual, security and economy. It was the time of preparation of the first war in the Gulf and at that period the importance of partnership and unity of political approaches was sharply felt by leaders of all major countries. Unfortunately, such approaches were forgotten very quickly. It can be returned if we only return understanding of the strategic meaning of the bigger European unification and see the task of this process as the inseparability of the sphere of security and sound political and economical space. Such partnership is hard to reach, and we should form it persistently striving for establishing common base humanitarian values instead of aiming at only tactical interests of business and officialdom.
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