HELSINGIN SANOMAT international

Russia looks to its history for direction

By Max Jakobson

The agenda for the forthcoming Helsinki meeting of the European Council is dominated by two issues: the enlargement of the EU, and the development of the Union's common foreign and security policy. For all that, it is inevitable that the subject of Russia will figure strongly in the discussions.
   The Russian Army's expedition against the Chechen people is not simply the humanitarian problem that the EU has tried to handle it as. It is a symptom of the prevailing political and intellectual climate in Russia, and as such it forces the EU to re-examine its policy towards Russia.
   The first hesitant words of this policy were voiced nine years ago at the CSCE Summit in Paris This was the occasion of the Charter for a New Europe and of the official celebrations of the end of the Cold War. The future looked bright. All the participants, including the Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, signed a resolution to "build, consolidate and strengthen democracy as the only system of government of our nations" and to act on behalf of the expansion of the market economy to embrace the entire continent.
   This was a changing of the roles on the world stage. Until Paris, the Soviet Union had regarded its own system as the rail-head for social development, a terminus to which all nations would eventually and inevitably be brought by the immutable laws of history, while the West had defended political pluralism, allowing each nation to choose its own path. Now Western democracy and the market economy were raised as the one true system, also for Russia herself.
   Since that point, events in Russia have been analysed in the West on the basis of how they affect the progress of democracy and market economics. The discussion on this issue has often resembled the family arguments between a father and a mother over how to treat a boy who has slipped off the straight and narrow. Dad chides Mum: You've spoilt him good and proper by giving him all that money. Mum defends the boy: Just give him a little more time, and he'll come back on to the right path.
   A year ago I wrote that the relationship between Russia and the West was based on mutual play-acting: Russia was pretending to be a democracy, and the West was pretending to believe it. Now the pretence has been dropped. There is no more talk of reforms. According to opinion polls, a sizeable majority of Russians blame the reforms brought by the West for the lamentable state they find themselves in now. Reformist politicians have been sidelined, and President Yeltsin now leans on strong men who have gone through the hard school of the security service.
   I am reminded from time to time of a definition put forward a couple of decades ago by a Soviet diplomat, concerning the essential difference between the Western and the Russian systems : "You (in the West) divide governments into good and bad ones, we into the strong and the weak."
   The merits of this observation are demonstrated by the near-ballistic rise of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the polls, shooting from nowhere to become the most popular Presidential candidate (without even declaring his candidacy). The war against the Chechens is his election campaign. The popularity it has gathered indicates that Russians are thoroughly fed up with the country's chaotic state of affairs, with the rampant crime and corruption, and they are calling for "a strong hand" at the helm.
   After abandoning the Western model, the Russians now look back into the past for guidance. An example of this is to be found from Yevgeni Primakov's important speech, made at the 200th anniversary of the birth of Prince Aleksandr Mikhailovich Gorchakov, a statesman who served as Russia's foreign minister during the third quarter of the 19th century. It is worth listening to what Primakov has to say, because he belongs among the spiritual leaders of those in the middle ground that has emerged between the Communists and the reformers, and next year he may very well be back in power, either as President or as Prime Minister of a coalition government.
   Primakov called to mind the fact that Gorchakov had taken up the foreign ministry post in the wake of Russia's humiliating defeat in the Crimean War of 1853-56. Many believed at the time that Russia had lost its empire, or had at least become a second-class state. Gorchakov's predecessor Karl Robert Nesselrode was indeed ready to throw in the towel regarding superpower status, and "to accept those rules by which the victors oblige the vanquished to become their vassals". Gorchakov saw that to push through internal reforms was a vital task, but felt that reform required an active foreign policy in the defence of national interests. He saw to it that, in the words of Primakov: "No single great European power having risen above the others should be allowed to establish a hegemonistic position for itself."
   Primakov clearly saw himself in the role of Gorchakov, and his predecessor Andrei Kozyrev as Nesselrode. He stressed that without an active foreign policy Russia would find it impossible to carry through meaningful internal reforms and preserve its regional unity. If the country abandoned an active role in foreign affairs, it would leave a vacuum that others would not be slow to fill. Hence Russia still needs to ensure security and stability in the areas around it. Like Gorchakov before him, Primakov rejects the "unipolar approach to world order" - in other words American hegemony, and he seeks allies from various quarters: from China, India, even from Europe, in the defence of "a multipolar system".
   Primakov mentioned as one of the most important foreign policy tasks facing Russia the bringing together of the states formed out of the breaking up of the former Soviet Union. There must be no doubting their independence, but all attempts to drive a wedge between Russia and the CIS countries must be warded off and a common economic area should be created. In other words, the region of the former Soviet Union should remain Russia's backyard.
   Primakov's vision of Russia's great power role appeals to the underlying Russian patriotism that the wetnurse attitude of the West has offended. It strengthens their sense of self-esteem without provoking the West. Primakov goes out of his way to emphasise his readiness to work for constructive cooperation with other countries.
   We should be ready to analyse Russia's policies on their own terms, and not on the basis of our own ideological hopes or expectations - in other words we should return to the respect for plurality that belongs to the nature of democracy. Differences in values have not previously stopped countries from finding a common ground and common interests.
   Nevertheless, the crisis in Kosovo revealed one very important difference between Western and Russian thinking. The concept of a humanitarian intervention is an alien one to the Russians. They label it a smokescreen, put there to disguise the strategic goals of the United States. The reasons for this lie deeper than the Kosovo incident itself. The importance accorded in the West to the defence of human rights is a product of the process of cohesion between open societies. It has not yet had an impact on Russia.

Max Jakobson is a former diplomat and Finland's permanent representative at the UN, and is probably the country's best-known international commentator and the author of several works on recent Finnish history.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 1.12.1999