Chauvinism or Chaos: Russia's Unpalatable Choice

ABSTRACT

The author argues that the return of Crimea to Russia, events in and around Ukraine, and associated tendencies in Russian domestic politics have created a new reality for Russian society. Many liberals consider declining Russian influence in the world a necessary condition of internal liberalization, while many of those who favor an independent role for Russia in the world and the strengthening of its influence are proponents of an authoritarian or even Stalinist internal regime. As a result, Russians face the unpalatable choice between a democratic Russia that has been reduced to a junior partner of the West and a strong Russia with a dictatorial nationalist regime that is a threat to all its neighbors. The author proposes a third option that would meet the aspirations of the majority by combining a normal moderate patriotism with an equally moderate liberalism.

KEYWORDS:

• Chaos
• Crimea
• democracy
• liberalism
• patriotism
• Russia
• Ukraine

This article is the republished version of:

Chauvinism or Chaos

Notes

English translation © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC, from the Russian text “Shovinizm ili khaos: Porochnyi vybor dlia Rossii,” POLIS: Politicheskie issledovaniia, no. 3, 2014, pp. 159–71.

Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Translation reprinted from Russian Politics and Law, vol. 53, no. 1. DOI: 10.1080/10611940.2015.1042339.

Alexander Vladimirovich Lukin is Vice President of the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Director of the Center for East Asian and Shanghai Cooperation Organization Studies at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

* Literally, “state-fighting ideas” (gosudarstvoborcheskie idei).—Trans.

** Valeria Novodvorskaia (1950–2014)—one of the earliest and most radical Soviet dissidents, founder and leader of the Democratic Union.—Trans.

* A quotation from the poem “Letters to a Roman Friend” (Pis'ma rimskomu drugu” by the Soviet dissident poet Joseph Brodsky. According to legend, the Varangians were the Vikings whom the tribes of ancient Rus' invited to “come and rule over us.”—Trans.

1. [The ideology of “democratism”] is described by Ilya Smirnov, who introduced the word liberasty into circulation in a book by the same title (I. Smirnov, Liberastiia [http://supol.narod.ra/archive/books/liberast.htm]).

2. BTI 2008 Estonia Country Report (www.bti-project.de/reports/laenderberichte/ecse/est/2008/index.nc).

3. Michael A. McFaul, “Confronting Putin's Russia,” New York Times, March 23, 2014 (www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/opinion/confronting-putins-russia.html?hp&rref = opinion&_r = 1/).

4. Quoted from: Adrian Croft, “NATO Says Russia Has Big Force at Ukraine's Border, Worries over Transdniestria” (www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/23/us-ukraine-crisis-nato-idUSBREA2M0EG20140323/).

5. A.D. Sakharov, Proekt: Konstitutsiia Soiuza Sovetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii (www.yabloko.ru/Themes/History/sakharovconst.html).