According to the outlook that might be described as the democracy-idealism/neoconservative-interventionist school, the only way to achieve a lasting settlement is for Russia to cease being what it is at the moment and to become instead much more like the United States. Russia should become a liberal democracy. Only then—because, as many Wilsonian idealists have argued, “liberal democracies don’t fight one another”—can the relationship be stabilized for the long term.
The theory is not entirely implausible. There are indeed forces within Russia that strongly identify with American liberal democratic values. American diplomats and journalists frequently run into people who hold such sentiments. They pop up among one’s well-traveled Russian-intelligentsia friends and are widely quoted in the articles written by prominent journalists who happen to be imbued themselves with the Wilsonian sensibility.
The problem with this line of thought—aside from the impossibility of imposing it from the outside—is that the Russian version of liberal democracy differs fundamentally from the American version.
The fact is that Russia today is already in many ways liberal. But its liberalism is of a peculiarly Russian sort. It does not deny rights and freedom, but it grounds them not negatively (in terms of what government shall not do), as does the Enlightenment liberalism of Locke and Hobbes, but rather in terms of Eastern Christianity’s image of what man is. As a result, there is no Russian liberalism, or Russian politics of any other sort—including its standard semi-authoritarianism—that separates the state from religion in the way that the United States does today.
An authentically Russian liberalism, in other words, is hardly less starkly different from our secular, liberationist order than is Russia’s present political arrangement under Vladimir Putin. The fact is that there simply is not available to Russia a political order that is aligned with the present-day American version of secular liberal democracy. Both its history and its mores exclude it. And if we try to impose it anyway, in defiance of Russian history and self-understanding, then we will find ourselves repulsed in the same way Napoleon was. As Henry Kissinger wrote, “No power will submit to a settlement, however well-balanced and however ‘secure,’ which seems totally to deny its vision of itself.”….The article is well-written and the author is very insightful in comparing and contrasting US and Russian visions and values. Worth reading the whole thing.
Much of America’s recent demonization of Russia relates to deep cultural and even religious differences between the two countries, requiring a deeper understanding of the other’s strengths and weaknesses, writes Paul Grenier.Consortium News
Like sunrises and sunsets everyday, there is never an end to the predictions of Russia’s demise. The west cannot contempt the very thought any part of the world – humanity itself – could willfully and consciously refuse to emulate its superior civilizational mission. Messianic worldviews cannot accept exceptions and anomalies. To a large degree this explains the west’s destructive obsession with Russia. This is a grave mistake and we are witnessing the consequences of this error.
Russia has its own long history and civilizational awareness, be they a hybrid of many temporal experiences. That history and civilization form the bedrock of an identity. For most Russians identity exists in the realm of the sacred. In the west national identify is deemed as an idea that is backward looking and archaic. National identity must be replaced with a civic definition of the person. Culture is consigned to the dustbin of history. Not so in today’s Russia – as anyone who is aware of the disastrous impact of western-driven globalization.
The failed Soviet experiment assaulted the Russian identity with horrific glee. Nazi invaders attempted complete destruction of it. Russian liberals of today are dismissive and loathsome of their Russian identity, admonishing their people to blindly copy their western betters. Western elites are contemptuous of any state and national expression not in compliance with their self-defined “will of history.”
All these catastrophes and threats only refined an elemental characteristic of the Russians – “we will survive.”
In the west Russia is described as the loser in the Cold War. Most Russians don’t see it that way. Did the Soviet Union lose in that ideological conflict with the west? The answer is “yes.” But that is the wrong question to ask and irrelevant today. The right question to ask is the following: Do the Russian people believe they were defeated by the west? The answer in the case is ”no.” Russia as a civilization and a very board cultural expressions were not defeated, actually both were liberated. This is something the west refuses to understand – even conceive as possible.
The west’s fundamental misunderstanding of Russia is its conception that ideology will always trump culture. The Russians see this assumption in reverse – culture will always and should trump ideology. Thinking in this way assures they survive in a very hostile world.…The Duran
Liberalism is a nihilistic ideology. It insists on liberty from any kind of collective identity, but never suggests anything positive. When in competition with the totalitarian ideologies of the past, communism and fascism, liberalism appeared to be concrete and attractive because it negated such totalitarianism while positing itself as a real alternative. But when the totalitarian competition was overcome, the nihilistic nature of liberalism came to be fully revealed. It can only negate things, and cannot affirm anything constructive. It is not the ideology of positive freedom, but of negative liberty. Although yesterday this might not have been so explicit, today it is clear.…
Liberalism has turned totalitarian. There is no liberty to not be a liberal. One must be a liberal. You can choose to be a left liberal, a right liberal, or a center liberal and, in the extreme case, you can be a far left or far right liberal, but you must always be a liberal.
If you are judged to be illiberal by liberals, then you are finished, labelled as an extremist, terrorist, and so on. The liberals can only tolerate liberally tolerant people. If you are not tolerant in the liberal sense, you are intolerable.…This is central to the paradoxes of liberalism. Anything that arises from the strict application of liberalism as negative freedom (freedom from external constraint) is regarded as being "natural."
Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense. Positive liberty is the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting — in such a way as to take control of one's life and realize one's fundamental purposes. While negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents, positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.
The idea of distinguishing between a negative and a positive sense of the term ‘liberty’ goes back at least to Kant, and was examined and defended in depth by Isaiah Berlin in the 1950s and ’60s. Discussions about positive and negative liberty normally take place within the context of political and social philosophy. They are distinct from, though sometimes related to, philosophical discussions about free will. Work on the nature of positive liberty often overlaps, however, with work on the nature of autonomy.
As Berlin showed, negative and positive liberty are not merely two distinct kinds of liberty; they can be seen as rival, incompatible interpretations of a single political ideal. Since few people claim to be against liberty, the way this term is interpreted and defined can have important political implications. Political liberalism tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state. Critics of liberalism often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals.
Many authors prefer to talk of positive and negative freedom. This is only a difference of style, and the terms ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’ are normally used interchangeably by political and social philosophers. Although some attempts have been made to distinguish between liberty and freedom (Pitkin 1988; Williams 2001; Dworkin 2011), generally speaking these have not caught on. Neither can they be translated into other European languages, which contain only the one term, of either Latin or Germanic origin (e.g. liberté, Freiheit), where English contains both.Liberalism is at the front of cultural change in the world today. I regard myself as a libertarian of the left who views negative liberty as a necessary condition for mature liberalism and positive liberty also as necessary. A concept of liberalism that is both necessary and sufficient must include the individual, social and spiritual aspects of freedom and its purpose.
Western-liberalism, rationalism, even the most strenuous efforts of Bolshevik dialectal materialism, have so far not been able to permanently destroy, but at most repress, these conceptions—conscious or unconscious—of what it is to be ‘Russian’. Spengler, as will be seen, even during the early period of Russian Bolshevism, already predicted that even this would take on a different, even antithetical form, to the Petrine import of Marxism. It was soon that the USSR was again paying homage to Holy Mother Russia rather than the international proletariat, much to Trotsky’s lament.
‘Russian Socialism’, Not Marxism
Of the Russian soul, the ego/vanity of the Western culture-man is missing; the persona seeks impersonal growth in service, ‘in the brother-world of the plain’. Orthodox Christianity condemns the ‘I’ as ‘sin’.[7]
The Russian concept of ‘we’ rather than ‘I’, and of impersonal service to the expanse of one’s land, implies another form socialism to that of Marxism. It is perhaps in this sense that Stalinism proceeded along lines often antithetical to the Bolshevism envisaged by Trotsky, et al.[8] A recent comment by an American visitor to Russia, Barbara J. Brothers, as part of a scientific delegation, states something akin to Spengler’s observation:
The Russians have a sense of connectedness to themselves and to other human beings that is just not a part of American reality. It isn’t that competitiveness does not exist; it is just that there always seems to be more consideration and respect for others in any given situation.[9]Of the Russian traditional ethos, intrinsically antithetical to Western individualism, including that of property relations, Berdyaev wrote:
Of all peoples in the world the Russians have the community spirit; in the highest degree the Russian way of life and Russian manners, are of that kind. Russian hospitality is an indication of this sense of community.[10]…
Whatever Russia is called outwardly, whether, monarchical, Bolshevik, or democratic, there is an inner—eternal—Russia that is unfolding, and whose embryonic character places her on an antithetical course to that of the USA.
In the increasingly frigid environment of U.S.-Russia relations, much attention is given to what may be seen as Russia's strategic "interests." (Of course, much of the policymaking class in the West seems to suggest that Russia is entitled to no "interests" whatsoever.) Of at least equal significance for understanding Russian attitudes, however, is a grasp of the values, the moral framework for Russia's foreign policy.
A valuable resource for this understanding is found in a recent article, "Russia's Orthodox Soft Power," by the University of Rhode Island scholar Nicolai Petro, who explores the "symphonic relationship" between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian state and the manner in which they both utilize the term Russky mir, or Russian World. For the discussion herein of what this entails, we are indebted to Professor Petro.
As Petro observes, the term Russky mir has been wrongly interpreted by some Western analysts as the "perverse intersection" between the Russian state and the Russian Orthodox Church; in reality, the term is employed differently by each party. Where the state uses it as a tool for expanding Russia's cultural and political influence, the Church views it as a spiritual concept linked to God's objective for the rebuilding of a Holy Rus.
The relationship between the two provides a popular and definable framework for Russian foreign policy. Values play a significant role in policy formulation and, throughout modern history, three constants dictate how Russia responds to Western actions: sovereignty, capability to defend that sovereignty, and loyalty to those who share Russia's sense of honor. (The 2014 conflict Ukraine exacerbated the perceived values gap between the West and Russia, yet Russia claims it occupies the higher moral ground by defending its core values of honor in the context of the unique historical, religious, and cultural bonds with Ukraine.)
In summary: The significance of religion in Russian life allows the state to garner huge social capital from having the blessing of the Orthodox Church, and likewise the Church benefits from the relationship by disseminating its message of Christianity worldwide via Russian foreign policy. For the state, Russky Mir is a political/cultural tool for strengthening domestic stability, worldwide status, and influence in neighboring states. For the Church, it is a religious foundation essential for reversing the secularization of society (which it sees as an unwelcome evolution already well underway in the West).…
