Le retour des temps barbares
“An ill wind is blowing on the world” (our translation throughout). This is the opening sentence of this work by Thierry Wolton, in which he delves into the fall of communism and the weight of the Soviet legacy in the foundations of the worsening international relations situation we are currently living through.
The war in Ukraine is the “heritage of a buildup of lost opportunities over the last 40 years. From support for Gorbachev when he aspired to maintain the communist system, even after the people of the East had had enough of it; the wait-and-see attitude – blended with fear – of many of the Western capitals’ response to the popular movements that brought down the socialist bloc in the late 1980s; from the transformation of the communist elites into false democracies without their being called upon to answer questions about their past; from blind eyes being turned to the massacres perpetrated by the Russian army in Chechnya in 1993; from what amounted almost to laissez-faire over Russia’s takeover of part of the Georgian territory (South Ossetia, Abkhazia) and then that of Ukraine (Crimea, Donbass); every step of the way, geopolitical interests prevailed over any other consideration, emboldening the Russian regime to press ahead with the rebuilding of its lost colonial empire”, the author writes.
“Blood began to be spilt as soon as Vladimir Putin came to the position of prime minister in early August 1999 (…). Once he became the President of Russia in March 2000, one of his first measures was to reinstate the Soviet tradition of the ‘Day of the Chekist’ on 20 December, thus carrying on the bloodthirsty heritage of the institution (the KGB: Ed). He brought with him to the Kremlin the methods of terror that had proved their worth in the past”, Wolton reiterates, going on to argue that in the ensuing Chechen bloodbath, “Russia started on its way towards a permanent state of war that would end up, two decades later, taking the world into a colonial conflict from another time, this time against Ukraine, with its many replicas”. “The leaden shroud crashing down on the Russian people since the beginning of the 2000s should have served as a fresh warning. How can a regime that has gradually removed all the freedoms granted to its people following the fall of communism have the slightest serious desire to reconcile with the democracies that represent (…) everything it is fighting against? The Soviet State is an embodiment of the ideological project of Bolshevism. Putin and his men are setting in place a regime in their own image, in a police-military format. A third of State spending would soon be earmarked for the siloviki, the budget of the FSB would triple from 2000, that of the Ministry of the Interior would be multiplied by 2.5, the military budget rose by 30%. A study by the Academy of Science indicates that from Putin’s first term in office (2000-2004), 78% of State civil servants are employed by a ‘force structure’, FSB, army, interior”.
The author rightly points out that the “European Union (…) is the antithesis of a monolithic Russian Federation. Moscow’s obsession is to divide this democratic Europe, for instance by using its copious raw materials, demand for which be satisfied at the price of giving up a few things”. And it does very well at this, or at least it did until the fateful date of 24 February 2022 and, in some cases, even beyond. Because, despite being forced to abandon its illusions of European peace, a Europe fragmented by nationalism has still not reached an awareness of self which is the only thing that would allow it to unite around clearly defined strategic interests.
“Taking the view that NATO’s advances on the Old Continent were the root cause of the gulf between Moscow and the democracies, going so far as to end up justifying the 2022 war on Ukraine, is an incorrect vision. If NATO has set itself up on the borders of Russia, it has in every case been by request of countries that lived through decades of Soviet occupation. In this part of the Old Continent, the danger represented by nostalgia for the Soviet imperial past peddled by Putin is reawakening memories, whilst the West cultivates amnesia”, Wolton stresses, adding: “this difference in perception of the Russian risk is the hiatus that is the greatest threat to European unity while Putin has prepared for war”.
Furthermore, the collusion between China and Russia is by no means the pretence many would like it to be. “Vladimir Putin exalts the memory of the Great Patriotic War, Xi Jinping instrumentalises the country’s secular history whilst denouncing the humiliation of the unequal treaties imposed in the late 19th century by the Western powers upon a weakened Middle Kingdom. Anti-westernism as a derivative, a guilty party can be put into the role of scapegoat, to clear the powers that be of all blame. Putin’s Russia and the People’s Republic of China use similar methods in this area, with democracies in the role of designated enemy”, Wolton writes. Their cooperation began with the signature of the Treaty in June 2001. Since 2013, Putin and Xi Jinping have met around 50 times. “The fall of the USSR led to fears in Moscow and Beijing alike of the arrival of a unipolar world under American management, with NATO as its armed wing. The alignment of convergent interests between Russia and China essentially aims to prevent this from coming to pass, not entirely unsuccessfully. Washington and its allies now find themselves up against two hostile powers trying to curtail their influence in the world”, the author notes. However, “speculating on a disagreement between Moscow and Beijing, believing that it is possible to kill off their alliance is a great misunderstanding”.
If the “realisation of the West, among leaders (principally Emmanuel Macron, Wolton quite correctly points out) and the general public alike, is probably Putin’s most significant defeat”, the author points out that the Russian President is far from being banished from humanity: “almost the entire world of dictatorial or authoritarian regimes comprises has given its backing to the war, or is cultivating benevolent neutrality towards it”. He adds that “hatred, contempt for democracy, a rejection of Western values, anti-Americanism, anti-colonialism, the stigmata of third world-ist propaganda being spread by the communist camp: these powerful feelings place this conflict within a heritage that amplifies its resonance and makes it even more complicated to resolve. New cracks appear, the old ones are getting bigger the longer the fighting goes on and aid to one side or the other becomes real. In this sense, the war in Ukraine has become globalised”.
“The de facto alliance this war in Ukraine has already facilitated between dictatorships of all stripes (Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Syria, etc.) and authoritarian regimes (India, South Africa, Turkey, etc.), on the pretext of fairer multilateralism bodes for a despotic world, particularly if it comes under the Chinese banner”, Wolton goes on to stress. He adds that the “prospect of a return to peace in the heart of Europe and the Middle and Near East in no way guarantees the advent of more peaceful relations between the nations. Although the cannons have not been silent everywhere on earth since the end of the Second World War, this situation of conflict has never presented as many risks of global consequences, driven by the alliance games the dangers of which have been largely documented by history”. (Olivier Jehin)
Thierry Wolton. Le retour des temps barbares (available in French only). Grasset. ISBN: 978-2-2468-3598-1. 221 pages. €18,50
Vladimir Poutine ou la falsification de l’histoire comme arme de guerre
The historian Robert Belot (University of Saint-Étienne) pulls off the amazing feat of providing a summary of the history of Ukraine and a well-argued refutation of the lies told by the Russian autocrat in barely 80 pages. This is an extremely useful line of argument when a not insignificant proportion (in the order of 30 to 50%) of the general public has been or still is open to Russian propaganda, which denies the Ukrainian identity and presents Ukraine as a Russian territory. But this essay, which echoes the contemporary history of both Ukraine and Russia, also reminds us how vitally important it is to mistrust all historical reconstructions and all national myths and legends.
“We know that national identities are not naturally occurring, but are ‘constructions’. All forms of nationalism create fables of a founding myth in which the facts of history are manipulated and rearranged”, the author stresses, and quite rightly so. And this is just as true in the construction of the myth of origins (with Romulus in Rome, the Gaulish ancestors of the French, etc.) at it is in the more recent stages: from Charlemagne, who is claimed by the French and the Germans as their own, to the glorious Revolution, which is supposed to have brought freedom to the Old Continent, via the inevitable Joan of Arc, who is so prized by identitarian Catholics and sovereignists all the way through to the far right or, in a completely different register, claims of apostolic succession. These reconstructions are just as effective for religious identities, as amply demonstrated by the pseudo-historical novels of the break Bible or Roman martyrology.
And in this process of constructing a national election, the Russians have faced one major concern that has become a complex: Kyiv, as a city and as a principality, is far older than Moscow. Putin, like his predecessors in the age of the tsars, therefore set out to deny the autonomy and identity of the Kyivan Rus’, to melt it into the history of the origin of the great Russian nation. As Belot stresses, “this Slavo-centric discourse omits the fact that the State (or principality) of Kyiv was formed in the 10th century by the Vikings, a dynasty originating in Scandinavia”. “Vladimir I (956-1015), the Grand Prince of Kyiv, came from this dynasty. When he was baptised in, he converted (…) the region to Christianity. But it was first and foremost a diplomatic act in which Kyiv wished to move closer to the Byzantine Empire (…) for political and military reasons. This is why Vladimir I married Anna Porphyrogenita, sister of Basil II, the byzantine Emperor”, the author explains, going on to add that “in 1051, Anne of Kyiv, daughter of Yaroslav the Wise, Grand Prince of Kyiv, Prince of Novgorod and Prince of Rostov, and his second wife, Ingigerd of Sweden, married Henri I, king of the Franks. Henri I (1008- 1060) was none other than the fourth Capetian. And so a woman from Kyiv was a Queen of France. This shows the importance of the Kyivan State, its reach and its involvement in the whole of the European Middle Ages (…). At this time, Russia was geopolitically non-existent. Ukraine’s distant origins form part of the construction of the European identity and part of the dynastic culture of those days. This is what allows the Ukrainian authorities of today to depict Yaroslav the Wise as a pioneer of Europe and the ‘greatest Ukrainian of all time’”. However, the historian points out, “Ukraine did not exist then! The Ukrainian nationalist discourse is (therefore also) guilty of a harmless capture of history, combining proto-modern geopolitical culture with modern geopolitical culture. “The fact remains, however, that Kyivan reality is involved in the historical formation of what Ukraine will become. This city of Kyiv sparkles because of its culture, while Moscow is in limbo. In the mid-12th century, it was a small village on the banks of the River Moskova. What would become Russia was under Mongolian domination. It was not until 1263 that Prince Alexander Nevski succeeded in making Moscow an independent principality that would soon rival its neighbours. The Mongolian invasion and the sharing of the Rus’ would trigger a period of decline in the 12th century and to the “Golden Horde” taking control of the eastern part of the Kyiv area until the 15th century”, Belot stresses.
Over the course of the book, the author reminds us that Ukraine was linked to Poland for longer than it ever was to Russia, that in the middle of the 18th century, before Catherine II, just 2 million Ukrainians to the east of the River Dnipro were under Russian control and that Austria took over from Poland to the south. Furthermore, Ukraine history in the second half of the 18th century and the entire 19th and 20th centuries, with brief breaks, would be marked by Russian imperialist ambition (tsars, then Bolsheviks and Soviets) and the systematic obliteration of Ukraine’s identity and culture (or of its regional identities and cultures).
Belot also criticises the claimed “denazifying” role Putin has claimed for himself, stressing that his discourse proceeds from a double inversion and a double aporia: “as a country to be protected, whose sovereignty must be preserved, Ukraine is becoming the country to subjugate, to attack, to destroy; the Ukrainian regime, accused of being ‘fascist’ and ‘Nazi’, is supposed to be rescued by the regime that embodies the ideology denounced by the other”. The better to illustrate his point, he reiterates the definition of fascism provided by the Russian Academy of Science in 1995: “Fascism is an ideology and practice that affirms the superiority and exclusivity of a particular nation or race and aims to encourage ethnic intolerance, justify discrimination against members of other populations, deny democracy, establish the cult of national leader, use violence and terror to suppress political opponents and any form of dissidence, justifying war as a means of resolving inter-state conflicts”. This is a definition that characterises both current Russian autocratism and the Russian state’s policy towards Ukraine.
That having been said, “since the early 2000s, Ukraine has engaged in a rereading of history that is akin to a ‘whitewashing operation of the OUN/UPA and the darkest periods of Ukrainian history’. The Russian attack did nothing but crystallise a relationship with history guided less by concerns of truthfulness than by the political will to create a narrative of memory corresponding to its status as a victim. The de-Sovietisation of the heritage has become an exercise in de-Russification. The bust of Alexander Pushkin is being taken down, for instance in the city of Uzhhorod in April 2002, and the government intends to ‘purify’ the public libraries. For this war is also a cultural war”, the author argues. He goes on to conclude that “Ukraine’s aspirations to join the European Union will also be assessed on the basis of its ability to accept critical analysis of its own history and to understand that ‘humanism is related to the development of critical or even self-critical rationality’ (a point made by Edgar Morin in 2012, in Culture et barbarie européenne). For, as Denis de Rougemont was so fond of saying, European culture is naturally ‘pluralist, profane, critical, personalist, pro-invention, innovation and originality, even if these are subversive’”. (OJ)
Robert Belot. Vladimir Poutine ou la falsification de l’histoire comme arme de guerre (available in French only). Fondation Jean Monnet. Collection Débats et Documents, no. 34, mars 2024. ISSN: 2296-7710. 80 pages. This essay may be downloaded free of charge from the Foundation’s website: https://aeur.eu/f/brw