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A paradoxical situation has emerged in Russian politics today. The élite, and society at large, holds predominantly outmoded ideological notions which surfaced when the layer of communist ideology was removed. Take, for instance, the invented dilemma of “who to be friends with”—the East or the West—which echoes the futile and mainly fabricated arguments of irreconcilable people. . . . This also comes from the lack of a modern vision of the world in the absence of the all-embracing communist idea. Society and the élite have not succeeded in borrowing to any significant degree either Western liberalism or Western social democratic ideas. What we have instead are ideas about a 19th century model of a great power which, unlike communist and liberal ideologies, have nothing useful or practical for the sphere of foreign policy, and moreover, lack an international element.^[34]

Luzhkov, although himself not exactly an example of a “crystal clear democrat,” has identified very clearly here the weak spot of present day Russia: the ideological void and, especially, the lack of an international (read: universal) element.

Notes

1.

Vicken Cheterian, War and Peace in the Caucasus: Russia’s Troubled Frontier (London: Hurst & Company, 2008), 220.

2.

Igor Yakovenko, “Ukraina i Rossiya: suzhety sootnesennosti,” Vestnik Evropy 26, no. 64 (2005).

3.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” Foreign Affairs 73, no. 2 (1994), 72.

4.

It is not correct, therefore, to speak of an American “empire” as, for instance, the Marxist economists Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy did in their book Monopoly Capital (1968). They wrote: “Legitimate differences of opinion will of course exist as to whether this or that country should be counted as belonging to the American empire. We offer the following list as being on the conservative side: The United States itself and a few colonial possessions (notably Puerto Rico and the Pacific islands); all Latin American countries except Cuba; Canada; four countries in the Near and Middle East (Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Iran); four countries in South and South-East Asia (Pakistan, Thailand, the Philippines, and South Vietnam); two countries in East Asia (South Korea and Formosa); two countries in Africa (Liberia and Libya); and one country in Europe (Greece).” (Paul A. Baran, and Paul M. Sweezy. Monopoly Capital: An Essay on the American Economic and Social Order (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), 183.) Clearly this hotchpotch of sovereign countries does not make an empire. Alexander Motyl’s description of the relationship of the United States with many Latin American countries as a “hegemonic nonimperial relationship” comes closer to the reality. (Alexander J. Motyl, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 20 (emphasis mine).)

5.

Charles Tilly, “How Empires End,” in After Empire: Multiethnic Societies and Nation-Building: The Soviet Union and the Russian, Ottoman, and Habsburg Empires, eds. Karen Barkey and Mark von Hagen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997), 7 (emphasis mine).

6.

Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.

7.

Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Volume II: The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 37.

8.

In 1990 Estonia’s per capita GDP was 119.3 percent, and Latvia’s 107.5 percent of Russia’s. (Source: Statistical Handbook: States of the Former USSR, Studies of Economies in Transformation, Paper No. 3 (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1992), 4–5 and 14–15). This also occurred sometimes in other colonial empires. Piers Brendon, for instance, indicated that Hong Kong, at the time of its handover to China in 1997, had “£37 billion in reserves and inhabitants who were richer per capita than those of the United Kingdom.” (Piers Brendon, The Decline and Fall of the British Empire 1781–1997 (London: Vintage Books, 2008), 655.)

9.