Russian Paradoxes - take 3, over and out...

I’ve been thinking of how to wrap up this serial blog about Russia for quite some time now, and fortunately stumbled upon two impulses that fit very nicely into where I’d like to take this. So yes, I am aware that this is a very biased way of selecting your data (whatever fits in with your preconceived ideas), but hey, this is my blog. You don’t like it, just go back to surfing porn or eBay… or was it porn on eBay you were surfing? Anyways…

The first impulse was a blurb that Reuters put out from Medvedev’s recent Far East visit (think he was out in Kamchatka or sth) – quoting him as saying that Russia must reform its power structure, seeing that currently too much authority and responsibility is centered in the Kreml. Say what?! Exactly.


The second impulse was a pretty mediocre, yet quite intuitive interview in Hospodařské noviny with a Russian (almost nameless) sociologist, carried out by Czech TV’s Moscow correspondent, Jozef Pazderka. Though not too well structured and not too carefully thought-out, it still resonated with my own impression of the present situation. To wit, that underneath the big macho façade and the verbal (and not only verbal) muscle-flexing, there’s a lot of nervousness and uncertainty among Russia’s top-notch movers and shakers.
So without any further ado, I’d like to slowly but surely tear apart and contradict everything I’ve written in the previous blogs (well, maybe not everything), and put it all back together again, in a way that further highlights what I really think should be guiding us when thinking about the recent developments in Russia.


Dissociative Identity Disorder, or, Russian Quadrophenia
In practically every news item or analysis piece that you read about the invasion of Georgia (or for that matter, about practically any political event/issue), commentators inevitably fall into what I would like to term the falacy of the unitary actor. I say inevitably, because the tendency to do so is a well established convention, not only in political science, but also in language in general. That is, people consider each and every state as one single, unified, uninterrupted whole. No creases, no cracks, no bumps, no soft spots – just one single and coherent agent. [Russia], [the US], [France]; or, in case they feel like putting a face to the name (or is it a name to the face they’re trying to put?), then they say [Putin], [Medvedev], [Bush]. Within each state, news and politics are always more diverse and multifarious – you have the government, then the parliament and the opposition, you have big business, the army, various groups within the population, the media, civil society or some modicum thereof, as so forth. However, externally and internationally, each and every state is reduced to a single face, a single voice, a single agency. I would claim (and I probably ain’t the first one to do so) that this metonymic technique of reporting, which is at one and the same time also a way of understanding political events, works on the basis of the same displacement of the acting/speaking subject that makes possible the custom of saying “the White House”, when you actually mean the US executive. Not only is it convenient, but it is also a precondition of the rational-actor paradigm (it’s hard to be rational and predictable when there’s more than one actor involved) and in general, it helps to keep things tidy – in the news, in history books, and in people’s minds.


But nothing could be more removed from reality than this unitary-and-rational actor model, as the case of Russia (and please forgive me for lumping it up into a single Rus-sia again) clearly demonstrates.

First of all, you have to consider the inherent structural duality of the regime, which introduces some multiplicity or at least duality into the equation. While this duality could be somewhat discounted by the fact that Russia is indeed a federal state (which lends a factual, objective license for some degree of polyphony), its formal federalism still does not account for what lately appears to be an orchestrated effort to speak in (not always harmonic) two distinct voices. I can’t possibly be the only one who still recalls how Medvedev was marketed as the soft-spoken and sensitive counterbalance to the roughshod Putin, when the former was inaugurated as president. So from the start, there is this Good-Cop/Bad-Cop twist built into the whole set-up. So a strcuturally two-tiered government takes a degree of potential duality and carries it all the way to a dissonant and idiosyncratic executive dichotomy. Hardly your normative federal power structure.


And apropos the Mellow Medvedev hype, I was thinking of squeezing in here a comparison with another at-the-time semi-unknown politician, who entered the spotlight of haut politics among a general murmur to the effect that surely he won’t be as raucous as all that… but then I realised there is a fundamental flow in the analogy. Because the cocky von Papen marketed his young “Drummer” to Hindenburg under pretence he (von Papen), as by-far the more experienced and seasoned politician, would personally rein in the young maverick, tone him down, and merely use him to giddy-up the masses and gain favor for the conservative government in the eyes of the public. Whereas Hitler was a radical who was expected to mellow out as he stepped into office, the allegedly mild Medvedev was packaged as a pussycat who was expected to remain a pussycat following his inauguration. “He’s only Putin’s puppet, perfectly harmless,” the foreign correspondents and so-called experts insisted. So yes, the comparison is somewhat flawed, but, two things: (1) is the assumption that pussycats always and ever remain pussycats any sounder than the assumption that mavericks mellow out? What we are asked to believe (and this is essentially the same as what von Papen asked Hindenburg to believe in), is that a strong and experienced politician can surely handle the younger, unknown statesman that he is introducing into high politics; (2) maybe it’s me, but some of the satements Medvedev came out with during the invasion of Georgia sure didn’t sound all that mellow to me, so I’m not sure ‘moderate’ would be the most suitable adjective for the current president of Russia. And how about the way Medvedev chose to welcome Barack Obama into office as the US president elect? Looks like it’s just a matter of time before this moderate nut takes off his shoe and start knocking on his desk in the UN Assembly… And who will rein in the not-so-moderate Medvedev in case he feels like taking a walk into wilder territory? Putin? Heck, Putin is more likely to match and top any belligerent move Medvedev could come up with. But I digress…


Second, I couldn’t help noticing that despite the constitutional/structural guidelines that should regulate the president/prime-minister division of labor, Vlad and Dima are very fond of crossing-over when it comes to their duties. Two examples would suffice here. As noted by Petr Kamberský in Hospodařské noviny, the first official reaction to the Georgian crisis (i.e. the first public appearance of a high-ranking Russian official after the invasion of the Russian army into Georgia) was made by Putin on Russian state TV. Which was in fact strange enough, since Putin is the prime-minister, and therefore you would expect him to worry mostly about internal affairs, and leave foreign affairs to the president. Kamberský saw this as proof that the Russians don’t really consider Georgia to be an object of its foreign policy, but rather an internal issue – and the tone of some of Putin’s and Medvedev’s comments were in fact often very “hey, this is our business, you guys in the West, butt-out!”. A few weeks later, again, it’s prime-minister Putin who goes out to rub cheeks with Timoschenko, the blonde Princess Lea look-alike from the Ukraine, with whom he discussed the Krim peninsula situation and how the Ukraine should (in its best interest, of course, wink-wink, nudge-nudge) revert its gaze towards its long-term Eastern ally. So I’m no expert on Russian constitutional law, but isn’t this sth the president should be doing? And don’t tell me that prime-minister Putin had nothing better to do, with foreign capital flying out of Russian banks faster than the speed of light, and the Moscow stock-exchange going roller-coaster way before Wall St. sent the cue for the full outbreak of the global financial crisis.


So they are a priori presented as two complementing opposites, they have a tendency to seriously trespass into eachother’s responsibilities, and now Dima goes one about how too much power is concentrated in Moscow (which is not a very subtle way of criticising Putin’s way of running the show).

So what is one supposed to make of this schizophrenic word salad?

They say one thing (territorial intergrity, no to Kosovo), they mean another (go ahead and take Kosovo, we'll take Georgia); the guy who's supposed to take care of internal affairs goes on diplomatic missions abroad; the guy who's supposed to be moderate show his teeth; they flex their muscles and then cave when the stock exchange goes kybosh and oil prices plummet.

So what am I saying here and where is this blog going? Not sure, but I'll wrap up by listing the questions that interested me when writing this up.

First of all, is there something - anything - specifically Russian about this, or is the incongruence of words (statements, but also constitutions, laws, etc.) and deeds an inherent trait of any state? I would say YES. It is a general trait of the fairly loose organization commonly known as a state; and it's only the current situation in Russia that makes it more clearly visible.
What do I mean by the current situation? Well, for starters, they've been (or to be more exact, they were) on the horse financially for the past several years. And their inflated oil money $$$, coupled by the perceived decline of US power, are now traslated into new political ambitions. Or in other words, they've become a little too big to fit into their old, post-1991 borders. And as they spillover, the many cracks and fissures in what we nonchalantly and everyday call The State are made visible. And as they spillover, they rely on the already-crumbling-and-irrelevant notions of The State, and simultaneously negate these very foundations. They go across official borders, in order to defend unofficial borders (spheres of influence, client states); "We will have no foreign intervention here!" they say, while intervening abroad; "We'll turn off the faucets!" they say, and globalized economy turns the faucets off on them.
Second, when we say [Russia], [the US], [Sarkozy], we're basically saying so because we want to make things easy, and not have to say: "If there are states, and if states are unitary actors, and if Russia/the US/Sarkozy is one..." every single time we observe, report, discuss and act upon events that occur around us.
Third, would it be useful, or even possible, to talk about the psyche or the Self of a state, or a nation, of a culture? We do so every day, with the simple and familiar noun acting as the placeholder for amorphous thing that we call a state. In the same manner that we use the simple noun or name, in place of the amorphous thing that is the Self. So if we refer to the Self of a state, would it make any sense to conceived of this Self as anything other than a de-centered, split Self? I think not, and the Russian case, with all its sympotms, is what I got going for me.

Russian Paradoxes - take 2

It was a cold February night in Moscow. On the outskirts of the metropolis, immigrants from the Kavkaz were huddled inside old crumbling paneláks with no heating and cardboard boxes for windowpanes, while packs of starved dogs roamed the dark side streets. On the broad avenues in the center of town, silver and black Jaguars and Benz limos were zooming to and fro, terrorizing the few pedestrians that dared to venture out onto the frozen boulevards.

In the depths of the Kreml, behind thick, heavy wooden doors, sprawled out on big leather armchairs, Dima and Vladya were caught in somnolent conversation when the doors flew open and a flunky in a black tux approached the two titans with a timid step. A bevy of tall, slender and breathtaking Slavic beauties, scantily clad in no more than Gucci belts, D&G sunglasses and Dior shoes, slouching and giggling as they were around the two men, stopped short in their chatter and looked at the flunky as he stood a few feet away from his superiors, wearing an expression of anxious yet diffident excitement. The men looked up. Vladya waved in disgust and busied himself cutting another line of coke. Dima brushed away two beauties from off his lap and went over to the flunky, a half-empty bottle of Stolichnaya in his hand.
Dima wrapped his hand around the flunky’s shoulder and turned him away from Vladya and the girls. “Thank god”, said Dima, “I thought I’m gonna have to listen to more of his stories about the university years in Leningrad, uff.” The flunky smiled. “Anyway, Valery, it’s good you came. What’s up?” The flunky’s smile withered, and the anxious look crept back into his eyes. “It’s the Kosovars, sir. They’ve declared… they’ve declared their independence from Serbia,” blurted the flunky earnestly. Dima shrugged, “Ay ay ay… well, at least we don’t have to listen to any more of them Leningrad university years gavnoyis, ah?” He chuckled and patted the flunky on the back. “Go, go, eh, I will tell Vladya, yes, OK? Thank you, Valery.” The flunky gave a quick bow and made for the door.

Dima turned back to his armchair. The girls were louder and laughing now. Vladya finished making two more long lines of coke on the table. He threw a look back at Dima, “Eh, Dima! Pchol, davay!” and ducked to snort one of them. Dima took a swig of his Stoli and crashed back down into the armchair. “Vladya, listen,” he looked at his bloodshot companion, “it’s the Kosovar… they’ve declared independence from Serbia.”
Vladya waved in disgust again.
“Aahhh, xuy blat”, he said, and dived in to snort the other line of coke.

Now let’s suppose we could teleport ourselves back in space and time to that very night in the Kreml, which would put us in the right mood and in the right spot to draw the outlines of the two additional perpectives through which people read and perceive Russian foreign policy in the context of Kosovo’s independence and the invasion into Georgia.

The Evil Genius
Not too far removed from the above mentioned dupes who’d like us to believe their two-bit schizophrenic nonsense, are those commentators and observers who, rather than staying on the surface of things (or, god forbid, try and dig deeper), prefer to see spooks and ghosts everywhere; and whatever they can’t explain, they just sprinkle with a heavy coat of conspiracy and sinister ingenuity.

When asked to explicate the seeming contradiction in Russia’s stance on Kosovo on the one hand, and on the secessionist regions of Georgia on the other hand, this lot will tell you (with a sufficient dose of equivocal winks, nudges and c’mon-ye-can’t-be-that-naïve-eye-rolling), “of course they said that and went ahead and did sth else… get real, this is what politics is all about”. Rather than being too gulible, the members of this here bunch are a little too smart for their own good. The problem is, again, that if you really follow their logic to its fullest extent, you only end up with more contradictions and questions than when you started out.

So they’re likely to tell you that Russia was only making the most out of the international circumstances, in both cases.

In the first case, they spoke out against Kosovo’s independence, fully aware that it will happen anyway. Why would they do that, the less savvy observer may ask? Simple, the sly and slick proponent of this worldview will tell you – to achieve several goals at once: to continue Russia’s traditional policy line in the Balkans and former Yugoslavia (don’t forget that the Russians are only too happy to play the role of consistently aiding the poor small Slav nations against the big superpowers in the West, as they have allegedly done since WWI, throughout the 1990s, and everafter, it seems); to send out a clear message to all the provinces of the Russian Federation that would like to toy with the idea of also declaring independence; to tell the world off and go against the general “Western” stance, so that later on, they could again paddle against the stream on a policy issue that they actually care about, and say “well, you went the other way when it suited you, so now you got to give in to us, so that we’re even”.

Then in the second case, Russian aggression was masked by Putin’s heartfelt (NOT!) comments about the acts of genocide perpetrated by the Georgian armed forces against the (here it goes again…) peace-loving people of South Ossetia. “Could we have sat aside indifferently and let the murderous Saakashvili attack the city of Cchinvali while its citizens were asleep in their beds?” asks Medvedev, coy as a choir boy caught stealing from the charity box.

-That’s what politics is like – you do one thing, and say sth else.
-Why?
-Cos you got to, you have to give a good diplomatic cover to your violent actions. That’s REAL politics for you. I mean, c’mon man, you never heard of Machiavelli?
-So they didn’t really mean it?
-Of course they didn’t!
-Uh-huh.

The problem is, this again raises several bothersome questions.

If the Russians didn’t really mean it, why did they give us all them glib lies about geonocide in South Ossestia and cultural oppression in Abchazia? To mask their true intentions? Well, lemme tell ye, I might be the naïve guy in this story, but you would have to think the Russians are very unintelligent if you could imagine them believing that these 3rd class Soviet propaganda lies could really ever convince anybody. From the most vehement Chechen patriots (who once had the pleasure of finding out how deeply emotionally touched Putin is by acts of genocide), to the most patriotic Russians (who’d like to sock it to the Georgians as much as possible, and were lined along the border, volunteering to enlist and join the Russian “Peace Keeping” forces occupying Georgia), EVERYBODY knows that the Russians don’t really mean these mock human-rights statements. If anything, these statements only serve to make their actions seem more cynical and sinister. In this particular case, the mask only serves to tell us more about the real person behind it, than that person’s actual face – as Žižek says (secondum Lacan), there’s more truth in the mask than in the subject’s real-life persona.

So what do the Russian statements about Kosovo’s independence and about genocide in South Ossetia really mean? What do the words mean – i.e. how should we read, interpret and understand these statements? What does the fact that they’re saying sth they don’t really mean tell us about them? What does the fact that they’re saying sth they don’t really mean tell the Russians about themselves? And finally, what does the fact that the Russians are saying sth that they don't really want to say (assuming they would be happier if they could let loose and say "Kibinimat, these Georgians think they can do whatever they want? They forgot they need to think about their good neighbor Russia before they talk to their American friends...") tell us about the Russians in particular and about current international politics in general?

And if you’re feeling a pestering would-be realist inside you saying “but that’s what diplomacy and politics are about – saying stuff you don’t believe in! everybody does that… like, Machiavelli, man…”, all I can do is again repeat and emphasize the following: OK, so they don’t trully believe in what they say. But they did feel obliged to say it, and they did choose their words freely (i.e. free of any direct coercion).

As to the former – the compelling need of excusing their acts by the most blatant and transparent cynical lip-service: Russia’s acts radiate of complete and unlimited sovereignty, but like it or not, the Russians are still caught in the web of language. They do not only act, but also speak. And on this turf, they are not entirely sovereign and never can be. Back to Lacan via Žižek – the Big Other is forcing Russia to say sth, and not to leave their acts without commentary. Just like when we say “oops” when we see somebody trip and fall. Our words neither add nor alter anything about what objectively happened, but we still feel compelled to register our experience in the realm of words and signs.

As to the latter – choosing their own words:… and here’s the cute thing about psychology and structure: if the Russians made these statements at a time in which they let their emotions get the better of them, they’re caught out; that is, they give us a peak into what’s going on inside their heads. On the other hand, if the Russians painstakingly thought it out before they made these statements – they’re caught out, once more, as they are trying so much to hide sth, masking it, shaping it, honing it, that they end up leaving more traces of their real persona than they would have left in more spontaneous and less orchestrated statements. In fact, the more cold and calculating their enunciations, the more they give themselves out.

And just to put another sock down the throat of that pesky realist inside your head, telling you lies and deceit are part and parcel of the instrumental logic employed by politicians - those who actually bothered to read Machiavelli's Prince, rather than just read about it, must have felt troubled by the last chapter of the book. After going on and on and on about necessita and about how the ruler should do whatever circumstances call for, and leave values and morals to the philosophers, Machiavelli let's loose on the true reason he wrote his book: to inspire the young Medici to get his act together and kick all the no-good scummy Germans, French, Austrian, Swiss... mo-fo's out of Italy. Fuori e barbari! Which just goes to show you that even behind the most instrumental and calculating of all realists and scheming bastards (as popular history would like to portray good old Nick), there's an idealogue and a nationalist after all (and I guess this is where I should give a shoutout to Martin van Creveld, my slightly nutty yet brialliant professor of political thought).

I think that the material cause of the current Russian pathology and seeming schizophrenia is the fact that Russia’s borders have become evermore porous by Russia’s very own actions. Its sovereignty has been detracted by the invasion of Georgia (exceeding and transgressing the boundaries of its own geographical body); by the recognition of Abchazia and South Ossetia as independent regions (giving all the secessionist regions of Russia a symbolic ground to base their claims on); and by unofficially extending the limits of the Russian Federation to include these two (in)dependent regions, South Ossetia and Abchazia. They actually called their own bluff – where does Big Mother Russia really begin and end? Answering that question is not as simple as it seemed to be several months ago.

Russian Paradoxes

They needed Kosovo's independence to be recognized by the world, but they still spoke out against it. THIS is the true contradiction

There’s been a lot of talk juxtaposing the recent Russian invasion of Georgia and its quasi-annexation of the irredentist regions of Abchazia and South Ossetia, with the secession of Kosovo from Serbia. In fact, not only commentators and “Western” politicians have been prone to see a linkage between these two events, but also and especially the Russian “evil twins” Medvedev and Putin have spelt out the connection explicitly. Echoing the choir of “told-you-so” that could now be heard from all those who had opposed the independence of Kosovo, Medvedev aimed the cold blue blast of his gaze at the CNN reporter and said “Well, the West claimed that Kosovo was a special case, and now we tell you that Abchazia and South Ossetia are also special cases.” You could almost hear the nya-nya-nya-nya-nya. Subsequently, further commentators and politicians retorted by expatiating how Kosovo and the rogue regions of Georgia and not alike, and how the comparison is cynical and unfounded.

However, what I find most interesting about the debate in general and about Russia’s stance in particular, is what certain observers perceive as the contraditory character of Russian policy, or at least of the Russian rhetoric. How could they oppose Kosovo’s independence and acknowledge Abchazia and South Ossetia? How could they sanctify territorial integrity and sovereignty in one case, and completely violate it in another case? How can they grant Abchazia and South Ossetia what they’ve persistently and violently denied Chechnia? Searching the entire planet for examples and counter-examples in which International Law (whatever that means) would “justify” or legitimize the claims for independence of certain regions – Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Balkans, Palestine/Israel, Cyprus – everybody is real busy trying to enforce the illusion of universal and categorical rules on a world that insists to work through instances of actors breaking the rules rather than adhering to them.

The way in which various people perceive this alleged paradox of Russian foreign policy is quite telling. It is indicative not only of what goes on inside Russia, but also of the current perspectives through which the rest of the world sees Russia. I think you could basically group these perspectives into several typical tendencies –

Russian Schizophrenia














This perspective is most characteristic of your average conservative and slightly gullible political theorist/commentator. These people analyze reality through the prism of rational, utility maximizing unitary actors. Therefore, when Russia refuses to acknowledge Kosovo’s claims to independence due to the infringment of Serbian territorial intergrity and the breach of the principles of internationl law; and then turns around and invades a sovereign Georgia and proceeds to acknowledge the independence of Abchazia and South Ossetia – you have these people jumping up’n’down like a bunch of trained chimps, going “Oooh-oooh-oooh, foul ball! Foul ball!” This kind of understanding doesn’t even scratch the surface of things. All this bunch can do is state the obvious by saying that Russia’s previously proclaimed stance clashes with its current actions, and infer from this seeming contradiction the moral inferiority of the Russian position, seeing that their actions are in conflict with what they’ve claimed in the past. Russia’s behavior doesn’t make sense; it implies a “double standard”; therefore, it isn’t moral nor “fair”; therefore, they’re in the wrong and they are the bad guys.

Problem is, this perspective overlooks many aspects of the issue.

First of all, “double standards” have been a standard element of foreign policy at least for the past 25 centuries. I won’t fall down the slippery slope of comparing Russia with other global superpowers, like, say… the US for instance, and the latter’s inclination to act in ways that suggest a double standard. Rather, I’ll just cite one classic example – the violent takeover of the (heck, let’s add some pathos) “peace-loving people” of Melos by the professed democracs and good guys of the Athenian/Delian League, who wanted to “protect” the island from potential Spartan aggression. So if you take Thucydides’ word for it, democracy, sovereignty and non-violence at home (one standard), were perfectly compatible with tyranny and unilateral military intervention abroad (another standard). So please guys, spare us the gasps of astonishment and the self-righteous jabber.

Second, and this is where things start to get interesting, these people don’t even stop for a moment to think how to reconcile the Russian stance in these two contradictory cases.
Did the Russians really mean it when they swore by international law and territorial integrity in the case of Kosovo? If they did, how could they have turned round so fast and trampled those very principles? If they didn’t really mean it, if it was just hot air and empty statements (sure didn’t look like it), then why did they say it at all?

Let’s assume for a moment, that the Russians (or at least their bloated leaders) are the proud, self-important characters that they make themselves out to be. That would mean that they don’t just say things – they take themselves seriously, and they’d like others to take them seriously too. If we accept that, it would entail that from the Russian point of view, the most desirable reaction of the rest of the world would have been to say “oh, ok, if the Russians say that recognizing Kosovo's independence is a bad idea, well, we don’t want to upset them… let’s forget the whole thing.” If the world had done that, then Russia would have been in the pits when it came to Georgia, now wouldn’t they? As they would have had no recourse to the Kosovo argument, how could they have justified their recent moves in Georgia? And let’s not forget, widespread opinion has it that whatever the Russians are up to, they definitely did mean business when it came to their move on Georgia; and, what’s more, everybody seems to think that they’ve had this planned for quite some time now – even before Kosovo.

So if the Russians planned their invasion of Georgia a long time ago (at least as long ago as FEB 2008, when Kosovo declared its independence); and if they didn’t mean no bullshit when they were saying NO to Kosovo’s independence; and if they would like the world to take them seriously – then why did they risk preventing Kosovo from happening, by standing out so resolutely against it? They needed Kosovo to happen, so that they could use the “right to self-determination” nonsense that Medvedev is now reciting like a lil-goody-two-shoes schoolboy who’s read the UN Charter, in order to justify the Russian acknowledgement of Abchazia and South Ossetia as independent, sovereign regions. They needed Kosovo's independence to be recognized by the world, but they still spoke out against it. THIS is the true contradiction, not the usual double standard shyte.
But more about that next time. Nighty-nite…

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