It has become almost impossible to change the vector of the strategic direction of Russia’s development set by GDP
Ten years ago, graffiti could often be seen on the walls of houses in Moscow: Vladimir Putin, with scissors in his hands, cuts off the first letter in the English word Revolution and looks with satisfaction at what remains — Evolution. But now such graffiti is practically not visible. And this has its own serious truth.
John Reed’s famous book about the events of October 1917 was called “Ten Days that Shook the World.” But Putin in February of this year managed to shake to the ground the entire world order that had developed by that time in just one day.
Photo: kremlin.ru
The motives of those actions of the President of the Russian Federation still remain a mystery to many experts.
Throughout his political career, Putin has been guided by the famous principle of Pyotr Stolypin: “They need great upheavals, we need a Great Russia.” The fateful decision of the GDP catapulted Russia into the epicenter of great upheavals. During his time at the helm of the country, Putin has always tried to ensure maximum freedom of maneuver and freedom of hands.
The great geopolitical revolution of February 2022 forced the President of Russia to act within a very narrow corridor of opportunities. But this riddle has a solution. And this clue is hidden in plain sight.
“The only constant thing in life is change.” Intending to find the author of this quote, I soon abandoned this task because of its futility. This wise thought is too universal. But what kind of “constancy of change” has been the specifics of Russian politics for several centuries?
Every new leader invariably renounces the political legacy of his predecessor. Empress Elizabeth defeated Prussia. Her nephew Peter III, with apologies, gave all the conquests back. Peter III’s wife Catherine II quickly dismissed her husband from business.
But their common son Pavel reset his mother’s policy. His son Alexander I declared that “with me everything will be like with my grandmother.” The next tsar, Nicholas I, buried his brother’s political liberalism. But liberalism flared up with renewed vigor during the reign of his own son Alexander II…
Nothing has changed after the post of the country’s leader ceased to be passed on as a baton within the same family. Khrushchev zeroed Stalin, Brezhnev zeroed Khrushchev, Andropov —Brezhnev, Chernenko—Andropov, Gorbachev—Chernenko, Yeltsin zeroed Gorbachev…
If we continue to reason within the framework of this unchanging logic of Russian history, then at the next turn of the historical spiral, a certain Mr. X, whose last name we do not yet know (or rather, we know, but not yet in this context), will invariably reset the political legacy of the current leader of the country, Vladimir Putin.
And here’s a stop. It is very possible that the notorious spiral will begin to rotate in a different direction. Much indicates that Putin managed to break the logic of the development of Russian history — to ensure the immutability of the vector of political development of the country set by him, regardless of which new leader will be in power in the Kremlin in five, ten, twenty or even thirty years.
Why Putin wanted to “break the matrix”
Towards the end of Mikhail Gorbachev’s reign, amid the growing chaos in the state, the famous Soviet scientist, academician Yevgeny Velikhov, brought Bruce Rappaport, a well-known investment banker from Switzerland, to a meeting with the Secretary General.
As Velikhov tells in his memoirs, Mikhail Sergeyevich, as was his custom, launched into long and vague rants about the great potential and great future of the Soviet Union. The Western businessman, accustomed to specifics, listened to the Secretary General with growing impatience, and then interrupted him and asked permission to tell a Jewish joke.
“A certain inconsolable widower who had just buried his wife came to the rabbi to consult how he should live on. The rabbi said to him, “Let a year or two pass. You will adapt and find solace!” The widower replied: “What will happen in a year or two, it is clear. But what should I do tonight?”
I’m not sure that Mikhail Gorbachev, with his amazing ability to ignore inconvenient aspects of reality, understood exactly what idea they were trying to politely convey to him. But Putin, although hardly anyone tells him Jewish jokes with a hint, on the contrary, constantly keeps this thought in his head.
All political leaders are divided into two categories: some live exclusively for today — according to the principle of the favorite of the French king Louis XV, the Marquise de Pompadour: “after us, at least the flood.” Others, not ignoring, of course, today, constantly think about tomorrow and the day after tomorrow.
Putin is a pronounced representative of the second category. Keeping under tight control every “tonight” during his reign, the Kremlin’s master has long been thinking in historical categories, in categories of the fate of Russia and his own role in determining and ensuring this fate. And this is how, in the light of this fact, in my opinion, one can interpret the “geopolitical revolution of February 24”: Putin came to the conclusion that it is possible to ensure a Great future for a Great Russia only if one is not afraid of great upheavals.
I will try to prove this idea with the help of past statements by the president himself. Meeting of the Valdai Club, October 2016. The British expert of Russian origin Oksana Antonenko asks Putin a question about the sentiments of Russian citizens: “Don’t you think they have a request to reduce geopolitical tensions?” The answer of GDP: “We haveeveryone has a request to reduce geopolitical tensions, but not by the way of our funeral. If the payment for reducing geopolitical tensions is our funeral, then no one will be satisfied with it, including those who express doubts about the effectiveness of the current government, or those who would like serious changes.”
What did Putin mean by “our funeral” in this case? I think that first of all, the funeral of Russia’s status as a great power.
A lot has already been said about why, from Putin’s point of view, by February 2022, the danger of such funerals as a result of targeted actions by the West has become quite real. A lot — but not all. So far, such an important factor has remained behind the scenes as the unchanging logic of Russian history described above.
In June of this year, Richard Haas, one of the most authoritative American foreign policy thinkers, the long-term president of the Council on International Affairs in New York, published a program article “Ukrainian strategy for the long term” in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Long—term planning is something that Richard Haas emphasized during his career in public service: one of his past positions is director of political planning at the State Department. And, consistently going over and then immediately discarding the options available to America, the veteran of American diplomacy eventually stops at this: the United States just needs to wait.
Wait by the sea for the weather? Not quite. Vladimir Putin’s departure from the post of President of the Russian Federation. Richard Haas: “In the end, what may be required… These are changes not in Washington, but in Moscow. In all likelihood, in order to take steps that will end Russia’s status as a pariah state, the economic crisis and the military “swamp”, it will take someone else, not Putin.
The West should make it clear: it is ready to reward the new Russian leader who will take such steps, while simultaneously increasing pressure on the current Russian leader.”
For reasons that will be described in detail later, I consider this logic of the leading American foreign policy strategist unworkable in the future. But this does not mean that it was inoperable in the past.
At one time I had a good friend, Anton Surikov, the right-hand man of the last head of the Soviet State Planning Committee, a member of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the CPSU and the first Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian Federation in the office of Primakov Yuri Maslyukov. Anton was a great hoaxer, but at the same time a very original and interesting political thinker. He especially liked to argue that modern Russia would never dare to go to a really serious conflict with the United States.
As Surikov proved to me, official Washington has too many levers of influence on the Russian elite. During Anton’s life (he died suddenly in 2009, before he even reached the age of 50) his analytical calculations on the topic of what kind of sanctions America can bring down on our business magnates and how easily it can confiscate their property seemed to me purely hypothetical, even fantastical logical constructions. But a little more than 10 years have passed, and many of his predictions have come true.
Many — but not the most important. America pushed all its possible and impossible sanctions levers to the limit, but this did not make Moscow stop. But here’s the question: why didn’t it make you? Answer: because at the head of the pyramid of Russian power is a leader in whose eyes the losses from Western sanctions are compared to the main goal — the preservation of Russia’s status as a great power — albeit painful, difficult, unpleasant, but still acceptable.
Putin weighed the pros and cons and made a decision. However, a potential successor of Putin or a successor of Putin’s successor, finding himself in a similar situation, could make a completely different decision. However, why do I use this particular verbal construction “could accept”? Probably, it would be more correct to write like this: “I would have made a different decision.”
Today, Dmitry Medvedev, an active user of social networks, almost every day proves to the public his burning “hatred” for the Western world. However, when faced with the need to make a real choice in 2011 as President of the Russian Federation, he chose to follow in the wake of Western policy on the very important and indicative Libyan issue for Putin. And this is despite the fact that the issue price in 2011 was immeasurably lower than the issue price in 2022.
There was no pressure on President Medvedev, they did not demand “by all means do it, otherwise we will bring down the ninth wave of sanctions on you!” But he still made a decision that, according to Putin’s deep conviction, did not meet Russian national interests and the criteria of a just world order — he did not block the decision of the UN Security Council pushed by the West on the right of the United States and countries to intervene militarily in the internal Libyan conflict.
Do you remember that famous public “difference of views” between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev in March 2011? Putin: “The Security Council resolution is incomplete and flawed, it resolves everything and resembles a medieval call for a crusade. In fact, it allows the invasion of a sovereign country.”
Medvedev a few hours later: “We all need to be as accurate as possible in our assessments. In no case is it unacceptable to use expressions that, in fact, lead to a clash of civilizations, such as “crusades” and so on. This is unacceptable!”
The significance of this Libyan episode in the modern history of Russia, from my point of view, cannot be overestimated. As people close to Putin told me, when handing over presidential powers to Medvedev in 2008, the GDP did not rule out the option of its subsequent complete departure from power. This option was ruled out later, when Putin came to the conclusion that his replacement was bending under the pressure (or under the influence of political charm) of the West.
And now let’s summarize the interim results. As a career intelligence officer and an experienced political leader, Putin has no illusions about human nature and its inherent tendency to “follow the path of least resistance.” Putin has no illusions about the “loyalty to the principles” of a significant part of the Russian elite.
The experiment arranged by Putin in the form of a temporary or even permanent transfer of power to a like-minded person in this part actually failed. However, this failure, of course, did not force the GDP to abandon its main task — to ensure the immutability of Russia’s political course to preserve the status of a great power.
Shortly after the return of GDP to the presidency in 2012, a new concept appeared in the Russian political lexicon — “nationalization of the elite”. And in 2022, the nationalization of the elite turned into a final fact.
The matrix is broken
In April 1991, former US President Richard Nixon decided to figure out where the Soviet Union was going and went on a visit to Moscow. Vladimir Kryuchkov, Chairman of the KGB of the USSR, Eduard Shevardnadze, former Foreign Minister, and Yevgeny Primakov, a member of the Security Council under the Soviet president, readily met with the retired American head.
But the two most important actors of our political drama of that time — Gorbachev and Yeltsin — did not have time for Nixon. Despite all his personal authority and high rank in world politics, the former US president received a polite but firm refusal to have an audience. And then, as described in the brilliant and, unfortunately, so far only English-language book by Professor Vladislav Zubok of the London School of Economics “Collapse: the Fall of the Soviet Union”, Nixon’s assistant Dmitry Simes solved the problem with a clever trick.
Mindful of persistent rumors that in the lobby of the elite Moscow hotel where they were staying, “everything is bugged and screened by the KGB,” Simes began to talk loudly about the upcoming meeting between Nixon and Yeltsin. The fish quickly took the bait. A few hours later, the former American leader received a call from Gorbachev’s secretariat and was invited to a meeting with the “father of perestroika.”
What followed was a matter of technique altogether. Simes informed the chairman of the international committee of the Supreme Soviet of Russia, Vladimir Lukin, who was close to Yeltsin at the time, that Gorbachev would still accept Nixon. And the president of the RSFSR also very quickly found time in his schedule to meet with the retired American president.
The fact that in terms of the nationalization of the Russian elite happened after February 24, 2022, somewhat resembles this story. Vladimir Putin did not have to make any additional efforts. All the work to achieve this goal was done by the one who previously partially privatized this elite — the collective West.
Article 14 of the German Constitution: “Property and the right of inheritance are guaranteed… Property obliges. Its use should simultaneously serve the common good. Alienation of property is allowed only for the common good. It can be made only according to the law or on the basis of the law regulating the nature and amount of compensation. Compensation is determined on the basis of fair consideration of the interests of society and interested persons.”
After the start of Russia’s special operation in Ukraine, it became clear that from a Western point of view, the common good requires that Russian citizens do not have any property in their countries and that they are not entitled to any compensation based on the interests of interested persons.
You can say for as long as you want that the confiscation of the property of Russian citizens is a violation of all conceivable and unthinkable norms. These conversations will not affect anything at all. In relation to the citizens of the Russian Federation, all these conceivable and unthinkable norms no longer exist.
What happened is irreversible. This unpleasant fact must be accepted. And it is also necessary to accept the fact that completely irreversible changes have occurred in other, even more important areas.
There is such a proverb: you borrow someone else’s money and for a while, but you give your own and forever. But this, of course, is nothing more than a joke. But that’s not a joke in any case — until 2014, the Russian Federation was quite an integral and established state without Crimea. But after reunification with the peninsula, it is impossible to imagine Russia without Crimea. To give Crimea to someone is now the same for the Russian state as for a person to cut off his arm and leg. When, according to the results of referendums this autumn, new territories that were previously part of Ukraine will become part of Russia, this will also apply to them.
Richard Haas hopes that some future new president of Russia will be willing and able to dismantle Vladimir Putin’s foreign policy legacy. He won’t want to. And even if he wants to, he can’t. Such a task is basically unrealizable.
The only exception to this principle is the complete collapse of Russian statehood, the total surrender of the country. Which president will want (and be able to) implement this scenario? Here is something that not everyone has grasped yet, but that will become more and more obvious with each new month and each new year: Putin has created a completely new geopolitical reality that will persist even after a new president appears in Russia. The time of the main geopolitical forks has passed. The track is selected. All foreign policy maneuvers of Russia, and the West, by the way, too, are now possible only within this track.
What exactly does this track look like? If we look at the situation from the American point of view, it is best characterized by the words quoted in Vladislav Zubok’s book “Collapse” by US Treasury Secretary Nicholas Brady at a closed meeting at the White House in June 1991: “Brady formulated with rare franknessan American strategic priority. “What is required is to change Soviet society in such a way that it cannot afford a defense system. If the Soviets move to the market, they will not be able to afford a large defense sector. A real reform program will turn them into a third-class power. This is what we want!”
These words were uttered in the midst of warming relations between Moscow and Washington. And at that time they were only one (albeit the most really influential) of the alternative points of view. But now this multivariance is finally gone. The course of turning Russia into a third—class power is for the Western elite an uncontested line of conduct for years and decades to come.
And here’s how the new geopolitical track looks from the Russian point of view. Ivan Timofeev, Program Director of the Russian Council for International Affairs, noted in an article for the Valdai Club: “Any conflict sooner or later ends in peace. This is the conventional wisdom that can often be heard from those who, in the current situation of the sanctions tsunami and confrontation with the West, are trying to find hope for a return to “normality”…
We have to disappoint those who believe in such a prospect… The contradictions between Russia and the West are persistent. An unstable system of asymmetric bipolarity has formed in Europe, in which the security of Russia and NATO can hardly be indivisible. Russia has no way to crush the West without unacceptable damage to itselfto myself. However, the West, despite its colossal superiority, cannot crush Russia without unacceptable losses for itself. Containing Russia is the optimal strategy for the West. Ukraine is doomed to remain one of the areas of deterrence. The strategy of asymmetric balancing of Western superiority remains optimal for Russia.”