« Russia does not end anywhere »

In a famous article, Russian sociologist G. Yudin had warned against the war, a few days prior to its unleashing. One year later in a interview with Meduza, he returns to the causes of this war, its perspectives, the passivity of the population, the nature of Russian imperialism and the resources within Russian culture to articulate its critique and offers an alternative.

(Published in French as a blog held by Delenda est Ruthena putinesca on the Médiapart website)

March 9th 2023

(Personal translation)

Q – Concerning the current Russian policy according to which, for Putin, the war has become an endless process, a view he confirmed lately in his speech before the Federal Assembly, we hear it said more and more: he did not once say a word as to what a Russian victory would consist of and what would come after it. What do you think: can Putin’s plan really  be summarized as that of a war without end ?

— Yes, I believe that this war is endless. It has no objective which, once achieved, would allow ending it. It goes on only because in Putin’s mind, we are surrounded by ennemies, they want our death, and we want theirs. For him, it’s an existential confrontation with an enemy who has decided to destroy him. We should have no illusions, for as long as Putin will be in the Kremlin, the war will go on. It will only intensify. The Russian army’s deployment is on the increase, the economy is re-oriented toward the production of cannons, the educational system is being transformed into an instrument of propaganda and military training. The country is being prepared for a long and difficult war.

— It is also impossible for Putin to win it ?

— Absolutely impossible. No one sets himself such an objective, no one goes about it without defining what a victory would signify.

— That means we can consider its true objective is to allow Vladimir Putin to hold on to power ?

— It’s just about the same thing. He thinks of his reign as one of permanent war. For a long time, Putin and those around him have been repeating that we are at war. Some have preferred pretending they didn’t hear this, but those people seriously believe  they have been involved in a real war for a long time. Simply put, this war has entered an aggressive phase from which, visibly, it will not re-emerge. For those who share this world vision, the war is almost something normal. Stop thinking that peace is the natural state of things, and you start to see the situation as they see it. As Natalia Komarova, governor of the Khantis-Mansis Autonomous District said: « The war is our best friend. »

—On February 22 2022, two days prior to the invasion of Ukraine, the website Open Democracy published an article in which you described the upcoming war and Putin’s contempt for the sanctions with which the Western countries intended to respond to this war. In the second part of this article, you declared that this war with Ukraine « would be one of the most absurd in our history. » One year into this war do you think Russia society has begun to be aware of this ?

— No, in my opinion, it has not started to understand. Many people clearly understood it from the beginning, but this category has barely increased. In Russia today, a very strong emotion dominates, and this  is one of the rare occasions when Vladimir Putin has entered into resonance with a significant part of society. Not all of society, far from it, shares these outlandish theories, but there is one point where it resonates, and even, where he sets off this emotion. This emotion rests on a feeling of being offended, a monstrous and infinite state of being offended. And nothing can ease that feeling. It does not allow thought to direct itself to setting up constructive relationships with other countries.

You know, it’s like a kid who would feel deeply offended and would take it out on everyone around him. His will to harm grows more and more and, at a given moment, he starts destroying the life of others around him, and his own by the same token. But the child is unable to realize it and to understand that he must renew his ties to others, one way or another. In Russia there is an expression that says you don’t ask the vexed ones to be the water bearers.  Some day, we will have to understand that this feeling of being offended works against us, that because of it, we harm ourselves. But for the time being, there are too many among us who experience the need to feel offended.

— By whom do Putin and the Russian society feel offended ? By the whole world ? By the West ? By the United States ?

— By the world order in general, which strikes them as unfair, and consequently, by those who have taken on the responsibility of   putting themselves at the head of this world order, the United States of America. It’s a reproach addressed to the entire world, including to human existence itself, simply because it’s poorly set up. I still recall the words Putin spoke in the summer of 2021. When nothing had provoked this, he then declared that there was no room for happiness in life. It’s a very strong declaration for a political leader from whom one would expect rather that he make peoples’ lives better, that he offer up ideals, perspectives. And here he is saying: « There is no happiness in life. The world is an evil place, filled with suffering, impossible to correct, and where the only way to survive is to struggle endlessly, to fight and, if need be, to kill. » 

This feeling of being offended by the whole world is deeply rooted in Russia and it is projected onto what seems to be the responsible party in this world, the USA. At some point, the USA took on responsibility for the world and it has not been a huge success. And we see that the resentment I’m talking about does not only exist in Russia, far from it ( where it takes on truly terrifying and catastrophic forms). A significant part of the world has legitimate grievances against the current world order and against the USA  who is taking responsibility for it, who occupies a hegemonic place and enjoys many advantages from it. We see that those parts of the world who experience this same resentment are exactly the ones more inclined to consider Vladimir Putin with a lot of understanding. The global South  has suffered from the deepening of the inequalities in the past decades and has also suffered, partly, at least symbolically, from the the crazy geopolitical adventures taken on by the USA. This also applies to those parts of the global North that feel offended and victimized. Almost everywhere one observes this resentment, one encounters a greater understanding concerning Vladimir Putin’s conduct. I wouldn’t claim that this understanding goes as far as supporting him, because Putin is not offering anything else to replace it. He is reproducing the same mistakes as those of the USA but in much more terrifying forms. One of my colleagues formulated with much pertinence the principle on which Russian foreign policy rests : « if they don’t have the right to do it, then we can do it also. » It’s difficult not to repeat the formula when one sees that Putin wants to accomplish exactly that for which he criticizes the USA. This is why the other countries have a hard time supporting him, even if many of them wish to share his feeling of having been offended.

— Was this resentment rooted in Russian society before Putin, which is to say in the 90s. Or did it develop under Putin?

— All kinds of emotions exist within any society. The politician’s task is to understand on which he will establish his base. Of course, there were a few reasons to experience this feeling of being offended. They are tied to the role as a giver of lessons that the USA and also Western Europe took on at times. From an ideological point of view, this took the form of the theory of modernization that states that  there exist developed countries  and developing countries and the developed must give lessons to those still in development, with benevolence of course, and while providing aid : « Guys, here’s what you have to reform ». Honestly, no one likes receiving lessons. And even less so a great country with its own imperial past. In reality, the situation that set itself up in the 90s was even more complicated. We must understand that Russia, after the collapse of the USSR, was invited to all kinds of international clubs, it exercised an influence on the resolution of a number of crucial world problems. Let’s remember Primakov’s about-turn over the Ocean, the deployment of our soldiers in Yugoslavia’s conflict zone, decided by Yeltsin. In a word, Russia was listened to. Those were diplomatic resources that we could, and had to, develop. But on the other hand, there was this moralizing and paternalistic tone used with Russia. It was the result of a profound ideological error: the conditions under which the collapse of the socialist project. occurred, it appeared to many that there existed only one road, the famous « end of history ». And so, yes, conditions existed for the birth of this resentment, but others existed also that could lead to the birth of other emotions. Moreover, the description and experience of the collapse of the Soviet Union did not in the least lead necessarily in themselves to a vision of a terrible defeat, because there were many other available narratives. One of them could have been that these events were a popular revolution, a glorious episode in Russian history and that of other peoples because they had vanquished a tyrannical regime. Of course, such a narrative does not lead to a feeling of having been offended.

But Putin chose to feel offended. In part, presumably, because of personal character traits. That said, access to such a position by a man with this kind of inner feeling of being perpetually offended is not a matter of happenstance. And then, Putin began to cultivate this feeling. It’s a terribly contagious feeling. It’s a comfortable emotion: one always feels in one’s right on the one hand, and on the other, unjustly humiliated.

—  You have said more than once that, in your opinion, Putin will not stop with Ukraine. What exactly did you have in mind : Moldavia, the Baltic States or a self-destructive war against the USA ?

— In its very principle, such a representation of the world pays no attention to borders. The expression has practically become official, Russia does not end anywhere. This is the standard definition of empire, because an empire does not acknowledge borders. Borders appear in Europe in 1648 with the set-up of the Westphalian system that will eventual result in the progressive disappearance of empires. There then appears the idea that there are borders between countries : « this here is my space and starting over there, is yours ». Empire does not recognize this idea : « our space is wherever we’ve reached at this point, your space is where we haven’t arrived yet. When we get there, it won’t be your space anymore, it will be ours. » In its very principle this logic does not acknowledge any border and it is not an accident if we never hear Russian leaders acknowledging the legitimacy of the frontiers of any State whatsoever. The most we hear is that expression of a circumstancial feeling that there exists a kind of West and that it is something that is probably foreign and hostile.  It is not that we give up completely on the notion of taking possession of it, but it’s a zone that would prove very difficult to occupy. Until now, the West is understood according to the categories inherited from the Soviet Union. We only need to remember the ultimatum delivered by Putin to the USA and to NATO in 2022 on the eve of the war: in it, he came close to seriously declaring, black on white, that all of Western Europe belonged to Vladimir Putin’s personal sphere of influence. How that was to come about, with or without loss of formal sovereignty had no importance whatsoever. What’s more, this zone includes East Germany, without the slightest doubt , simply because Vladimir Putin is attached to it by a few personal memories. I have trouble believing he does not truly consider these territories as belonging to him, really. Putin definitely intends to re-establish the zone of the Warsaw Pact, as for the rest, we’ll see about it later.

I often receive the objection : « That’s madness, that cannot be ! It’s irrational, it’s crazy, there is no way this could happen! » However, I remind people that not so long ago, people were saying the same thing about Ukraine. The same was being said concerning Moldavia, and we now hear that Moldavian leaders take very seriously the idea that very grave threats exist for Moldavia, just as Ukrainian and American leaders also believe.  We have already seen that Moldavia figures in the current operational plans, although it’s still out of reach for the time being. 

We must clearly distinguish between two things: on the one hand, your estimation of the probability that a decision taken by individual x will be crowned with success, and on the other hand, your estimation of the probability that he will actually take this decision. You may justifiably estimate that his action is bound to fail, but it does not follow that he will not attempt this action, for all that. And not at all because he is irrational but because he thinks, for example, that he has no choice. The Russian strategy can be summarized as follows: we nibble away a pice of territory, after which the annexation of this piece is recognized as legitimate, the next step being to use this recognitition of legitimacy as a basis for grabbing yet another piece. We start by nibbling, let’s say, Eastern Ukraine, then we obtain a truce. This allows to consolidate territorial gains and to replenish forces: large international enterprises find in this a good excuse to return to Russia (not  that many have left, in reality) while none of them will take the risk of returning to Ukraine under these circumstances. And this creates favorable conditions for further  Russian advances against Ukraine. And quickly voices will rise in Europe, saying: « In the end, those were their lands, they agreed, all’s well that ends well ».

But,  I caution, if these are « their » lands because Russian is spoken there, what is to be done with Eastern Estonia ? I’ll be told that Estonia is NATO. But will NATO go to war to defend Estonia ? Putin is convinced that is he chooses his moment well to put article 5 of the North-Atlantic Treaty to the test, NATO will disintegrate. For a very simple reason : « They know we took something that did not belong to them  and the minute the threat will get a bit serious, they’ll lose their will to fight in order to defend what they know does not belong to them. » 

If no one is found in Western Europe  ready to « die for Dantzig » ( as a reminder, this was the type of scenario in which were signed the treaties legitimizing the relinquishing of Ukrainian territories to Russia), there would remain the USA, of course. But at that time, a new President will probably have been elected and he may feel less concerned by the fate of Western Europe.

Let’s be clear: I don’t claim that what I am narrating is a plan of genius. It describes Putin’s strategy, but Putin is not the master of the world: he will obtain only what we are willing to let him obtain. But we must not think of this scenario as implausible. It does not contain any senseless suppositions. My words are entirely realistic.

— One can easily imagine Putin and his bunch sharing such ideas, say, on February 24 2022, but a year has passed, the West has not divided, quite the contrary, it is providing significant aid to Ukraine. Do you think that the events of this year, including the results of the Russia military campaign may have had an influences on the concepts you have just described.

— It’s  not only possible, it’s almost certain. I suppose Putin has definitely persuaded himself that he has done everything as he should have. Perhaps he may have entertained a few doubts on the topic in the beginning, but he now understands that they were groundless.  All the events of this year have shown him that if the West is so attached to Ukraine, this is evidence that it represents an essential region, and precisely the one from where it planned to launch an attack on him, Putin. Apart from which, in his view, it is a good thing if the problems of the army have been exposed to the light of day before the great war the Russian leaders consider inevitable. In their logic, it would have been much worse to enter this great upcoming war with an army in such poor condition. Thus, everything that has happened reinforces Putin in his beliefs.

There is common knowledge that claims that « Putin made a mistake ». We should finally stop under-estimating him. Of course, we have seen that a blitzkrieg type plan on Kyiv totally failed. But from where do you get the idea he had only one plan? They have been preparing this war for years. It would be strange if they had envisaged only one plan. That is an impossibility on the part of leaders whose sole interest is in preparing this war. Here is what they probably are telling themselves: « True, not everything is playing out according to the best scenario, but that’s not important, we will pursue our effort. We are ready to let as much blood flow as needed, and they are not ready to do so. Those lands belong to us, they’ll end up understanding they are not theirs, and they will stop sacrificing precious resources over them. » I’m not saying that this will work and lead to victory. And even if I think that Putin’s logic sentences him to defat, and that, unconsciously, he wishes to lose. The question is how many lives will be lost before this happens. But if we wish to anticipate on the situation, we must understand according to which logic are acting those in power in Russia.

— In your view, is there anything that might force Putin to change his way of seeing the world ?

— No, nothing.

— And how has the West’s views on Putin and Russia changed over this year ? Do you think we have become aware of the threats that were clearly under-estimated in 2022 ?

— For the time being, there is a recognition that the dominant representations about Russia were profoundly wrong. However, what may emerge from this awareness is not yet clear. We must understand that no one had prepared for what happened and that is why the West now is reacting rather than acting.

We can notice a kind of « February 23 party »: all those who condemn the aggression while, at the same time, wishing that it would all end rapidly so that matters could be as they were before. This is mostly the case with the great globalized capital that does not understand why it should lose money in the name of who knows what Ukraine. A significant part of the European and Western business world does not disguise the fact that this would be the best of scenarios and awaits impatiently the moment when Ukraine will finally accept to relinquish a part of its territory.

This can take the form of direct pressures on Ukraine (such initiatives are seen in Germany, although these are not the most numerous) or of simply waiting for the energy of the Ukrainian resistance to exhaust itself. The calls to negotiation have no perspective at the moment because Putin is certain he is going to win the war and has no intention of discussing with anyone. However, when he will decide that the time has come to solidify his territorial gains, the situation will change completely. He knows of the existence of this state of mind and understands he can always turn to it if need be.

Many political leaders are in another state of mind and understand how dangerous such a scenario is. However, in order to offer up an alternative, there is need for a vision about the future, and it must not only involve Ukraine, but also Russia and the entire continent. And that is where the difficulties begin. The part of Europe most directly engaged in the war maintains that Russia cannot know another future, that it is a « genetically failed » country, eternally doomed to being a danger for its neighbours. After Putin, it will always be a Putin and those who think this way agree with Volodin, the President of the Duma who declared that Russia cannot exist without Putin. Of course, the images of the atrocities committed by the Russian army can only bolster such ideas.

But what follows from this ? One could of course build a wall all around Russia and install machine guns on it. Obviously this would reduce to zero any possibility of collective security in the region, and as a result lead either to an upsurge of revanchism, or an endless civil war, with no possibility of determining which would be the worse for all. 

Reasonable people such as Emmanuel Macron understand you cannot build this collective security without taking into account Russia’s interests. However, as Macron is also convinced at the same time that in Russia, there will always be a Putin, he reaches the logical condition  – but one devoid of perspective  – that it is indispensable to negotiate with Putin. In fact, if no one truly has the intention of wiping Russia off the face of the earth, and if one places the equal sign between Russia and Putin, then we will have to make concessions to him. The fanatics attempting to convince everyone that Russia is condemned eternally to live under Putin will find themselves, predictably, with political responsibilities and ready to negotiate with Putin, while all their efforts were apparently aiming at the exactly opposite result.

It will be impossible to resolve this conundrum for as long as the question of of what constitutes Russia’s interests is not resolved. As is the case for any other State, Russia has the right to guarantees concerning its security, any other point of view can only produce instability. But of course, it is totally useless to discuss this theme with Putin. And therefore, in order to build a strategy, one must include the parameter of a Russia without Putin, of a Russia with which it is possible to negotiate, as says Vladimir Zelensky with great common sense. This would also create conditions under which the Russian elites paralyzed by fear would finally start to act. They must first of all manage to imagine that their fate does not rest solely on a single man, that Russia can go on existing for better and for worse, without Putin.

As long as Russia and its current leaders identify as being one and the same (or rather, not the leaders, but only one man who has placed his own Security Council in a lasting state of amazement by starting this war without consulting with it), we cannot envisage an exit to this situation. In the general interest, Russia and Putin must tear away one from the other. The only person interested in their remaining attached one to the other, is Vladimir Putin himself.

— How can this identification be broken? The example of Belarus comes to mind naturally : following the massive demonstrations in 2020, it is unlikely that anyone there still identifies with Loukachenko. Is a massive protest movement required ? Or perhaps a kind of government in exile that would represent the project of another Russia for the world?

— The two solutions you evoke are not mutually exclusive. Of course, a serious movement of opposition such as the one in Berarus would render the tyrannical character of this regime patently obvious, and would be terribly useful. But an alternative project for Russia could stimulate such a movement. Especially since conditions for such a project strike me as being assembled : Vladimir Putin with his paranoid vision of history and totally cut off from reality obviously does not represent Russia in its entirety. Russia is a big country, it contains many young, active and resourceful social groups that see the world completely differently. Putin is resisting with all his might against the advent of a new Russia in which he has no place.

Of course, after spending two dozen years under Putin, Russians have lost their ability to represent anything else. But reality is going to force us to make an effort of imagination. The country is in an impasse and time will slowly render an awareness of this fact inevitable.

Unfortunately, there are still a few meters to cover before reaching the bottom of the impasse and we are still sinking in it. But it is an impasse, it does not lead anywhere.

— When we discussed the themes of this exchange prior to the interview, in commenting my questions connerning the current state of Russian society, its atomization and the blocking of all collective action, you remarked that our conversation would only reinforce this feeling of imposed powerlessness, and this was not what you wished to do. Do there exist ways of speaking about the society without feeding and reinforcing that feeling of powerlessness ?

— If the dominant emotion in Russia is the feeling of having been offended, the basic affect on which everything rests nowadays is fear. An existential fear, the fear of the anger of one man precisely, or the fear of war, or the more abstract fear of chaos.  Fear, demultiplied by the certainty that it is linked to the all-powerfulness of the tyrant who, no matter what happens, will get what he wants : he always got everything he wanted in the past, there’s no reason to believe that this will change.

We must find an answer to this fear demultiplied by despair. Fear chases hope away. They are opposing feelings. We must give the people hope. In this sense the totally comprehensible and well-founded accusations hurled at the Russian population are politically counter-productive. I know, and I repeat that they are understandable, well-founded and legitimate, but they are politically counter-productive. You are dealing with people who are frightened and convinced of their own powerlessness and you dump a few more kilos of guilt on them. What result doyou expect ?

The question is knowing how to provide hope in such a situation. Hope is linked to a demonstration that things could be otherwise, that Russia could be organized differently. The truth is that as long as the awareness of being in an impasse has not occurred, there is no motivation to hear about this alternative, and it even seems rather terrifying, like a challenge to the current state of being. And it seems sufficiently threatening to convince one to keep clear of it.

And this is why all kinds of normative discourses are smothered in Russia. For a very long time, it has become difficult to ask the question of knowing how to re-organise the society, and how it should be done for things to be fair and good.  It’s been years now that when I question people on this topic in my field studies, they answer: « In Russia? That’s impossible ». The normative discourse is thus smothered for the time being, but the need for it will reveal itself as the awareness will grow of finding ourselves in an impasse. It is essential in this situation that people regain hope.

— In this life of fear reinforced by fatalism, is there not a point of no-return beyond which a word of hope can no longer be heard ? When, no matter who suggests a project for a better future, he will not be heard.

— I don’t know. In general, when we speak of affect, it does not last forever. But can we imagine an affect, pushed to its absolute limit, that ravages its environment to such a point that nothing can be rebuilt in it ? I believe in Russia. I believe in Russian culture in a concrete sense: I believe there exists within Russia culture the remedies that will allow us to resolve this terrible crisis. This is where our strength resides. Not in the fact that Pushkin is a great poet. But in that it is a reservoir of wisdom and of advice in which we can find answers to question that pain us so deeply nowadays. I sincerely believe that Russian thinkers and writers, the intellectual resources we have now, our traditions and our habits contain the answers to the challenge facing us.

— No doubt, but you are well aware of the discourse  dominating Russia culture at the moment: it is fundamentally imperialistic , it has given brith to and nurtured a servile mentality, etc.

— I also think that Russian culture contains a very important imperial constituent and that the time has come to take care of it. The collapse of the empire is a good time to do so. But does that exhaust Russie culture ? No, certainly not. That does not even exhaust the work of this or that writer. Can we find imperialistic ideas in him? Surely, and they must be denounced. But does that mean that we must forever and entirely give up reading his work. This isn’t about being married to him, where we must take him in his totality, without setting anything aside.

Culture develops by reworking itself constantly, and this also involves self-criticism. But criticism cannot consist of a total self-denial. Otherwise, it becomes impossible to understand who is criticizing whom: if one is negating one’s self, from which position can one self-criticize? A culture cannot be entirely imperialistic, or how could it find within itself this criticism of imperialism? It has to exist within this culture that makes criticism possible.

Culture itself provides the tools for its own criticism. There is nothing humiliating about this, there is no problem in seeing this imperialistic component of Russian culture, isolating it, studying how it articulates with other elements of this culture. And that does not exhaust the culture’s meaning. No more that German imperialism exhausts German culture or British imperialism covers English culture. It is present in it, it can be found there, but that is nothing terrible, this does not disqualify English culture, this does not mean that it is imperialistic from one end to the other and that we can’t find anything else there.

— Could you provide an example of this recipe from wisdom and hope from within Russian culture as you have just spoken about it, an example we could feel close to.

— The great classic of criticism of imperialism in political thought is found in Vladimir Lenin. He is the one who forged the concept of « Great-Russian chauvinism » concerning the relationship of Russia with Ukraine, in the same way he denounced imperialism in other countries. Up to this day in every university across the world, the study of imperialism begins with Lenin. I would also remind that Russia has offered to world political science the capability to think beyond the State: Mikhael Bakunin, Leon Tolstoy, Piotr Kropotkin, and in certains aspects, Lenin himself. And we could quote others. Whereas Russia has not given birth to a single thinker defending the strong State and centralism that is of world renown. All those ideas were imported into Russia. And in the other direction, of Russia toward Europe, there were rather ideals of liberty, of dignity of the person and of solidarity which circulated.

— In January, there appeared on youTube a short interview recorded at Princeton. Hundreds of comments were posted by people expressing their joy at the news you had left Russia and were in a safe location. But as far as I can tell, you did not leave and are answering me from Moscow. Which is to say that in the logic that is currently  popular which classifies us all as « those who left » and « those who stayed », you are still part of the second category.

— I’m a university researcher. University research is global, it does not happen alone in one’s corner. I’ve always travelled extensively, it’s part of my work. Today, at a time when a few fanatics would like to exclude Russia from the global world, I consider it essential to keep on attempting to build bridges, to launch common projects and to communicate with the global world. From this perspective, nothing has changed, I went anywhere I deemed necessary to be and will continue to do so.

— What are your thoughts on this distinction between those who left and those who stayed ?

— I think a great misfortune has befallen us all, and our country also. And it would be a good thing if all those who are outside Russia could think about what they can do for those who are in Russia. And if all those who are in Russia asked themselves how to help those who suffer far from their country. We will all come out of this. But we can only do so together. Only all together.