[There is no dividing line between the Russian
“quasi-liberals” of the 90s and the ideology of Russian
imperialism today. They are aligned politically and economically, the
first easily spilling over over into the second.]
[[link removed]]

THE EVOLUTION OF POST-SOVIET IDEOLOGY  
[[link removed]]


 

Arseniy Krasnikov
December 31, 2022
Russian Dissent
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ There is no dividing line between the Russian “quasi-liberals”
of the 90s and the ideology of Russian imperialism today. They are
aligned politically and economically, the first easily spilling over
over into the second. _

Kremlin, by larrywkoester (CC BY 2.0)

 

TRANSLATED BY DAN ERDMAN

Unfortunately, for a long time there has been a belief among the left
that ideology is secondary, that it “does not have its own
history,” and mechanically reflects the developments of the economic
basis. Marx and Engels objected to such a simplified view in their
later works, as did Lenin, and Gramsci, and Lukacs, and Lifshitz, but
there’s still life in the old dog of economic reductionism!

In fact, ideology certainly has its own relatively autonomous history
and its own relatively autonomous logic of development. And it’s no
less important to understand this than it is to understand the logic
of the development of material production. For example, an
economically developed country could have not so significant
philosophical schools of thought, while a fragmented, semi-patriarchal
country - such as Germany at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries -
could become the birthplace of the deepest philosophical tradition,
one which conquered the minds of the intellectuals of the leading
countries of the world.

People are not guided in their activities only by selfish interests,
and this even more so applies to the best, advanced people of each
class, those who move society forward. “Sycophants were, of course,
always and everywhere,” writes G.V. Plekhanov in his classic work
“On the Development of the Monistic View of History.” He
continues: “But they did not move the human mind forward. Those who
really did so cared about the truth, and not about the interests of
the powerful of this world. So, people who move the human mind live by
ideals (albeit not always true ones), care for the truth, and not only
do not want to profit, but often risk their well-being, and are
willing to sacrifice. Moreover, ideas often take possession of people
and force them to do what they may not want, but what the very logic
of these ideas requires (according to the principle “having said A,
you need to say B”)...”

This does not mean that ideology as a whole is not connected with the
interests of any class. But the relationship between the economic and
ideological spheres of social life is far from straightforward, but is
rather bizarre, complex, dialectical. The presence of this dialectic
allows space for the freedom of an individual human personality, and
therefore for creativity, both political and artistic, philosophical,
scientific, for “free spiritual production,” about which M.A.
Lifshits wrote so much about.

Today in Russia we see the “amazing transformations” of
yesterday’s liberals and Westernizers into today’s
“ultrapatriots.” Sometimes this has a comical feel, like a former
iPhone fan’s regular swearing on Telegram. Sometimes we reasonably
suspect that a lot of money is behind such a transformation. But it
would be wrong to take all the words of our political opponents as
lies and hypocrisy. Marxist analysis shows that the capitalism that
was established in Russia in 1991 has objectively evolved to
political-military imperialism, and that the inevitable monopolization
and expansion of Russian capital could lead to nothing else (which of
course does not exclude the possibility that different variations of
the end result were possible). But the ideology of the ruling regime
also experienced exactly the same objective evolution.

PRO-WESTERN QUASI-LIBERALISM

This is the ideology that was adopted by the creators of Russian
capitalism - Gaidar
[[link removed]], Burbulis
[[link removed]], Chubais
[[link removed]] - and which was
promoted in the 90s by NTV [[link removed]], _Moscow Echo
[[link removed]]_ and _Moskovsky
Komsomolets [[link removed]]_. I would define it as a peripheral
quasi-liberalism. It should not be confused with classical Western
liberalism, which grew out of the ideas of the social contract, the
popular movements of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the
Protestant model of the relationship between God and the human person.
Such an exotic ideological flower as that simply does not take root in
our latitudes. Our quasi-liberalism grew out of the official Soviet
vulgarized Marxism - “Istmatism”. And it is no coincidence that
the ideologues and innovators of our quasi-liberalism were not
dissidents, but teachers, graduates of party schools, and members of
the editorial boards of semi-official party journals (Burbulis is an
example of the former, Gaidar the latter).

What are the main provisions of this ideology?

The first and most important are extreme economic centrism combined
with militant anti-humanism and cultural nihilism. Our quasi-liberals
(they are also former vulgar Marxists) believed in economic
development above all, as expressed in the growth of capital, GDP, and
markets, but also, and most importantly, in the growth of profits for
the capitalists themselves. Our quasi-liberals did not know pity for
the humiliated and offended, who could not withstand tough economic
competition, nor respect for culture and its institutions, nor
reverence for the values ​​of humanism. I remember, that Gaidar
did not spare any verbal poison against “Swedish socialism,”
which, he said, created obstacles for the economic activity of
“successful businessmen,” and took away a significant part of
their profits through taxes and redistribution to “economic
losers.” The ideal of our quasi-liberals is Western capitalism of
the 18th century, without old-age pensions, without unemployment
benefits, without maternity leave, without affordable education or
medical services or anything else that was brought to the West through
the struggle of workers and their political representatives; that is,
socialists and communists. The fate of Russian culture - to say
nothing of other cultures of the periphery - did not bother them
either, and so the liberal reformers of the 90s destroyed the Soviet
institutions of culture and education with the same indifference as
they did the institutions of social assistance.

From economic centrism flowed the second characteristic feature of our
quasi-liberalism - anti-democratism. Our “liberals” have claimed
the label of “democrats” ever since _perestroika_, because they
opposed the power of the CPSU and supported the transfer of external
forms of bourgeois democracy to Russia, but they were no democrats at
all. After all, democrats stand for broad popular representation, for
the participation of the masses of the people in politics. Our
“liberals” of the 90s were supporters of all this only to the
extent that it helped to eliminate the power of the Communist Party.
But when democracy and civil liberties began to interfere with the
development of capitalist markets, when the people robbed as a result
of capitalist reforms began to meaningfully oppose the oligarchy, they
immediately came out against democracy and for authoritarianism.

This was logical on their part, because, as I have already said, the
economic element is more important for them than are political,
cultural, humanistic or other elements. In order to maintain the
“free market,” they believe, it is necessary to deprive the people
of political freedoms. The most radical among them began to advocate
for a pro-American capitalist dictatorship in the spirit of Pinochet;
others, like _Moscow Echo_ star Yulia Latynina, saw a way out in
establishing a property qualification for the franchise, so that only
the rich could take part in the vote. It did not occur to Latynina
that in this case she would have to somehow deprive the majority of
its rights, requiring enforcement by the police and National Guard.
That is, the “liberal ideal” also assumed a military-police
dictatorship as the entourage of democracy, which, in fact, is what we
got.

It is interesting to note that such anti-democratic liberalism, alas,
also had its origins in the official, Soviet, strongly deformed
“vulgar Marxism.” Despite the glorification of the popular masses,
the “istmat” promoted a vision of history in which an active
minority (i.e., the party and its leaders) were the natural leaders of
the masses, who only need to obey this minority.

Finally, the third characteristic of our quasi-liberalism was extreme
Westernism, usually in the form of enthusiastic Americanism. The
liberals who came to power in the 90s presented history (again,
exactly in accordance with the textbooks on “historical
mathematics!”) as an iron replacement for the primitively depicted
“economic formations.” Only this time the highest stage of history
established not socialism, but capitalism, because it is “the most
economically successful” mode, or in any case “more successful
than state socialism,” which had ceased to be the most progressive
and was now regarded as a historical dead end. That is to say, the
liberals of the 90s were Westerners because they were economic
centrists. The main criterion for progress was not affordable
medicine, education, social achievements, the spread of enlightenment;
had that been so, the USSR, even with empty store shelves, would have
appeared as the most progressive society! Not even military and
industrial power (and in this case the USSR looked good!) counted for
anything, but only the notorious GDP, the abundance of consumer goods,
the consumer society and, as we said, the superprofits of the
capitalists themselves.

Here then are the three whales of Russian quasi-liberalism, which was
our dominant ideology under Yeltsin:

1) Economic centrism and cultural nihilism

2) Anti-democratism

3) Enthusiastic admiration for the West, and above all the United
States

FROM QUASI-LIBERALISM TO IMPERIALISM

It is generally accepted that Putin and his team abandoned this
ideology due to the aggressive foreign policy of the West, which
continued to push NATO eastward to the borders of Russia, and which
did not want to reckon with the interests of oligarchic Russia,
including its claims to be a regional superpower in Northern Eurasia
and in the territories of the former USSR. There is some truth in
this, but this is the political motives. They are, of course,
important, as are the economic motives (which, let me remind you, was
the transition of Russian capitalism into the stage of imperialism).
But we intend here to trace the inner logic of the evolution of
post-Soviet Russian ideology, which has led us to the current
anti-Americanism and the pathos of a “war against the West.” The
logic behind is quite simple. As I said, Gaidar, and Chubais, and
Latynina admired the English capitalism of the 18th century, with its
lack of social guarantees, unemployment benefits, and with its
presence of a property qualification. But the more the Russian elite
got to know the modern West (inevitably, since among its
representatives are many citizens of Western countries, since all of
them have property in the West, since their children and grandchildren
live and study in the West), the more they realized how little it
resembles their ideal society. In the modern West, there are elements
of real democracy; the presidential elections in France and the United
States, despite the imperfection of their political mechanisms, still
promise some intrigue. Western capitalists are forced to pay large
taxes to their states, which go to social programs. Of course,
recently, even in the traditionally social democratic north of Europe,
neo-liberals have become stronger, and there is renewed attack on the
rights of workers and the unemployed, but compared to Russia, and even
more so to the countries on the periphery of the planet, the position
of the lower classes of the West is still very prosperous.

This has caused sincere bewilderment among the Russian elite. After
all, Gaidar taught them that the state, which “takes away” money
from businessmen and to give to the unemployed, not only hinders the
“effective development of capitalism,” but in general is
“unfair” (of course, from their specific point of view). Let us
remember with what pride our president always boasted of the low
personal income tax in Russia (without mentioning that this is one of
the main reasons for the degradation of domestic medicine and
education), with what pomp we welcomed the French actor Gerard
Depardieu, who acquired Russian citizenship in order to avoid high
taxation of his homeland.

But the greatest hostility and even frenzy among Russian officials is
reserved for the fact that left-wing liberals in the West have
achieved some (very limited!) protections for marginalized social
groups - migrants, or racial and sexual minorities. Their ire here is
not strictly speaking about homosexuals or “cosmopolitans” (both
of which, in general, are quite a few among the Russian elite), but
more broadly against those whom this elite regards as losers who
“should know their place.”

The disappointment of Putin and his friends in America and the
European Union is because, from their point of view, the leading
Western powers have begun to resemble some kind of “socialism”
(which, of course, is a very strong exaggeration!), that too much
money is spent there to support “freaks” and “losers,” making
life too uncomfortable for billionaires there.

The current Russian government, of course, is waging a “battle with
the West,” but not for the interests of the Russian people, as the
social chauvinists from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation
inform us, and not even for Russia’s status as a world power
(objectively, Russia has become much weaker in the international arena
than it was before February 24), but for the interests of the
international club of billionaires. That is why he finds such sympathy
from Berlusconi and Trump (the last has also speculated that America
has become “practically communist”).

The Kremlin wishes to change the world order, to turn it against
Western values. But what order and what values ​​does it offer in
return? More social rights, more democracy, more freedom? Far from it.
The West, according to the Russian elites, must be defeated because it
has too much democracy, too much equality.

When Western “partners” explain to Putin and his friends that the
poor and “African-Americans” have to be supported because victory
in elections depends on this, Russian leaders are sincerely perplexed:
why are elections needed? Is it not possible to create one party that
will carry out the will of the presidential administration (for
example, the Republican-Democratic Party of the USA)? In this sincere
anti-democratism, the “Putinites” are also the heirs of the
quasi-liberals of the 90s, of Akhidzhakova, who shouted: “finally
rid us of this constitution!”, of Shenderovich, who dreamed of a
“Russian Pinochet.”

Hence the nostalgia for the authoritarian and totalitarian regimes of
the West, expressed in popular TV presenter Solovyov’s praise for
Mussolini, and top officials’ fondness for Ilyin, who spoke kindly
about Hitler.

CONCLUSIONS

So, we see with our own eyes that there is no dividing line between
the Russian “quasi-liberals” of the 90s and the ideology of
Russian imperialism today. They are aligned both politically and
economically, the first easily spilling over over into the second, and
bleeding over into the space of ideology. Putin and Solovyov have
often been accused of changing the ideals they held thirty years ago,
but this is not so. On the contrary, they developed them logically.
From this, by the way, follows a very important conclusion about our
future. If we allow modern liberals to come to power, who promise that
they will “return to democracy” and save us from the prospect of
dictatorship, in about 30 years, “all will return the same as it
was,” as Aleksandr Blok wrote. Of this there can be no doubt.

_ARSENIY KRASNIKOV 
[[link removed]] National
Research University Higher School of Economics | HSE · Department
of Political Theory and Political Analysis
[[link removed]]_

_Subscribe to Russian Dissent on Substack
[[link removed]] to get full access to the
newsletter and website [[link removed]].
Never miss an update._

* Russia
[[link removed]]
* Soviet Union
[[link removed]]
* ideology
[[link removed]]
* Liberalism
[[link removed]]
* neo-liberalism
[[link removed]]
* imperialism
[[link removed]]
* Vladimir Putin
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]

Manage subscription
[[link removed]]

Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]