“Easier to spot a splinter in another’s eye than a log in one’s own” –Russian proverb
Sometimes this blog gets accused of being too soft on Russia, despite my consistent criticism of its government’s political ideology, human rights abuses, authoritarianism and economic, social, journalistic, cultural, education, environmental, law enforcement, religious and foreign policies.
Yet what these accusers actually take issue with is this blog’s perceived drawing of a ‘moral equivalence’ between Russia and the West.
Which brings up the all important question: why read, or write, about Russia at all?
A shot of post-Cold War schadenfreude?
A little Roman holiday from our Western malaise to jeer at that vanquished basketcase Russia – the pathetic neighbourhood bully with its smooth-chested comedy-villain president and imperial nostalgia, its impotent bluster, violence and weird taxidermy fixation, its Oriental backwardness – hoping the freak show would make us quit worrying and love our tolerant, peaceful, democratic, free-market selves?
If that’s your bag, then this blog will disappoint; Anne Applebaum and her ilk have long since cornered that used car market.
By contrast, this blog has tried, however incompletely, to understand why Russia does what it does, rather than simply condemn its actions as the work of some irrational Other.
That is understand, not excuse.
Such an approach frightens those people who equate empathy with sympathy; those who see it as a gateway drug that would turn us into Kremlin-operated Manchurian candidates, or those American exceptionists who fear it will erode their faith in ‘my mother – drunk or sober’.
But this blog is empathetic, not sympathetic.
It emphathises with Russia’s rejection of democracy and capitalism after a decade of untold suffering at the hands of Yeltsin, his free-market cronies and their Harvard mentors; without sympathising with its embrace of Putin’s macho authoritarianism.
It emphathises with Russia’s sense of betrayal over Clinton and Kohl’s broken promises over Nato’s eastward expansion; without sympathising with its meddling in the Baltics and Eastern Europe.
It emphathises with Russia’s anger at Western recognition of Kosovo, without sympathising with its retaliatory occupation of Ossetia.
It empathises with Russia’s perception that the Western media is biased against it, without sympathising with its own attempts to curb freedom of speech or deploy government propaganda.
It emphathises with the 15 year tragedy of the Caucasus, carpet bombed into oblivion by Yeltsin, finished off by his protégé Putin and raped some more by Putin’s protégé Kadyrov; without sympathising with the suicide bombings or increasing religious radicalism.
It emphathises with socialism’s promise of justice, equality and compassion, without sympathising with the methods and policies employed by the USSR in its name.
Yet if empathy need not always lead to sympathy, it always takes introspection and imagination.
As the late, great British statesman Michael Foot said of Margaret Thatcher: “She has no imagination, and that means no compassion”.
And that’s where this blog’s alleged ‘moral relativism’ fits in.
Better understanding Russia’s actions involves deploying imagination to draw a parallel with one’s native America, to create the effect of putting oneself in another’s shoes.
It is obvious, except perhaps to Catherine Fitzpatrick, that such comparisons between the US and Russia require an act of imagination precisely because the two countries are very different. One is a developed (/decaying?) democracy and the other is a developing, still-authoritarian state.
But the two countries are neither so different nor act so differently as to render such comparisons absurd or false.
Both are sprawling, multi-ethnic, culturally formidable and militarily assertive nuclear-armed capitalist powers of European extraction, with wide spheres of interest and global reach.
Both struggle with high levels of inequality, racism, cultural arrogance and insularity; both imprison more of their own citizens than any other country; both contain oligarchic tendencies and a residual belief in manifest destiny, bully their smaller neighbours, invade Muslim lands and suffer the terrorist consequences.
Of course America’s mistreatment of its minorities, dissidents, women and immigrants, or its army’s mistreatment of foreign civilians, is nothing as bad as Russia’s. American CEOs are not neatly as ruthless as Russian oligarchs. America uses smarter bombs on her enemies and her soldiers don’t (any longer) rape widows or steal the watches off the dead bodies. America silences her critics by ignoring rather than poisoning them. America executes her death row inmates only after anaesthesia, rather than with a bullet to the head. America’s gulags are cleaner than Russia’s ever were.
Yet these differences, significant as they are, are mainly of degree; quantitative (America tortures fewer people than Russia) rather than qualitative (America is nicer than Russia).
Rather than making us feel smug and superior, seeing the crimes and abuses of Russia – which does its dirty out in the open for all to see – should impel us to scrutinise our own countries, whose crimes and abuses are all too obscured behind the walls of development, democracy, wealth, media bias and the our universal human preference of criticism to self-criticism.
To channel Steven Lukes, Russia’s ugly first face of power is a reflection of our ugly third.
Thus, these parallels are not designed to excuse or explain away Russia’s crimes, not to be less harsh on Russia so much as impel us to be harsher on ourselves; so that by studying Russia, the West can confront many things about itself, and, hopefully, improve.
In a previous post, I insisted that the things observers “criticise in modern Russia are not some kind of gross aberrations from Western norms: instead, they lay bare the problems and contradictions of Western society, civilization and culture”.
“The suffering of Russia”, writes British academic Peter Duncan describing the idea of Russian messianism, “just like the suffering of Christ or the suffering of the Jewish people, leads to the redemption of the world as a whole. In its more moderate forms, it can mean that Russia simply exists to show the rest of the world a lesson which can be either how to do things, or how not to do things”.
Russia is no messiah. But for the West, it can serve as both a mirror and a warning.
That’s why we ought to care about it.
