Читаем Putin's Wars полностью

When this finally happened expectations were high. At last Russia would take its rightful place amongst the ranks of the democratic countries of Europe. At last it would build a viable Rechtsstaat with an independent judiciary and abolish the almost inborn fear that the police and secret services instilled in Russian citizens. Inside, as well as outside, Russia there was a sense of relief: finally Russia would become a “normal” country. Western powers were so eager to let this transformation happen that they offered Russia access to democratic forums even before Russia had shown itself worthy of this honor and had acquired the necessary democratic credentials. Rather prematurely Russia was invited to the G7 meetings (renamed G8) and became a member of the Council of Europe. In retrospect this early embracing of a new democratic Russia was too optimistic and too hasty, granting Russia a position among the democratic nations it did not yet deserve.^[16] It was as if the West, by granting Russia the status of a fully fledged democratic state, wanted to invoke a “democratic spirit,” hoping that Russia, having been accepted as a member of the club, would automatically behave as a member of the club.

A few critical voices in the West warned against too much optimism. One of them was Zbigniew Brzezinski. “Unfortunately,” he wrote as early as 1994, “considerable evidence suggests that the near-term perspectives for a stable Russian democracy are not very promising.”^[17] Brzezinski was right. It did not take long, indeed, before the West grew disappointed. After the chaotic, but democratically still promising decade of the 1990s under Yeltsin the Russian spring turned into a chilly winter. While the façade of a multiparty democracy was kept in place, elections were falsified and stolen, corruption was rampant, democratic freedoms were trampled upon, journalists, lawyers, and human rights activists were killed, the judiciary lacked independence, and not the people, but the spymasters of the KGB—rebaptized into FSB—became the country’s supreme masters. Despite Medvedev’s repeated mantras on modernizatsiya, it was not the modernization of the country, but its own self-perpetuation that was the real objective of the regime.

Three times—in 1856, 1905, and 1917—modern Russia had tried to reform itself after a lost war. Three times it failed. The only enduring success was the abolition of serfdom by tsar Alexander II. After the end of the Cold War it had—probably for the first time in its history—a real chance to join the democratic mainstream. Unfortunately, Russia missed this unique historical opportunity. Russian despotism could be likened to a mythical monster: every time it lies down on the ground and appears finally defeated, it rises to power again. This despotic nature of the Russian polity is not only a problem for the Russian population, its immediate victim, but also for the neighboring peoples, and—ultimately—for the whole world. The reason for this is that Russian despotism is intimately linked with Russia’s imperial drive.

The Four Roots of Russian Imperialism

This “eternal” Russian imperialism has four origins:

Russia’s geographical position

Russia’s economic system

Russia’s expansionist tradition

A deliberate expansionist policy conducted by the Russian ruling elite