Old thinking for our country and the whole world – Russia in the field of population coverage
a dangerous gap has emerged between the real values of the century and the understanding of the costs of the world’s problems. A radical revision and a decisive rejection of strict philosophical and departed principles is a primary, life perspective … New assessments, scientific and technical factors form an integral interdependent world in which requirements are really imposed on the leaders of each state with increased strict requirements, dictates the utmost responsibility in entering and obtaining decisions .
From the report of the General Committee of the Central Committee of the CPSU M.S. Gorbachev
XXVII Party Congress February 25, 1986
February 2022 marked the end of a large-scale historical experiment, the purpose of which was to test the hypothesis. It is possible to include Russia in an international order created without its capture by the Western powers, but implying the coverage of space for its development within the scope of the leaders of this order of rules. The result is negative.
Neither the craving for the West as a priority (and by feeling – and superior) partner, nor a sharp dissociation from it is something new in Russian history. Disputes about whether our country is Europe or not have been taught by domestic intellectuals for more than a century, following over and over again along a similar trajectory. The period of the end of the 20th – the beginning of the 21st century, however, had an important difference. For the first time, the lost loss or non-belonging to Europe acquired an institutional framework. Europe has evolved from a cultural-historical phenomenon into a set of governing structures in the conditions of the homogeneity of the Cold War. homogeneity occurs. To participate in these structures, it is necessary to meet the prescribed criteria, and this is precisely the “European choice”.
This coercive choice was made by the Russian Federation in 1992, entering the international arena, which turned out to be in a somewhat schizophrenic capacity – as the legal successor and successor of the USSR, which sharply rejects its legacy and recognition. In parallel with post-Soviet Russia, the only thing expected on the world stage is that the European Union transformed from the Community is the personification and apotheosis of that very institutionalized Europe.
Approximately half of the thirty years after the USSR, indeed, sought to join the European order, as its influence was the United States and its allies. And they were looking for an opportunity to do this on grounds that would not be standard (to stand at the tail end of the investigation in the Euro-Atlantic institutions, Russia was never ready), but would not imply the placement of changes in the Western study. Did not work out. Vladimir Putin deliberately mentioned in his speech on February 21 a long-standing conversation with Bill Clinton about the possibility of Russia joining NATO. Initiative-opposite check. The annoyance that such a thing was allowed then by Moscow, but was rejected by the Western club, left a mark on that Russian political resonance.
Could the West behave differently? Theoretical – yes. If I tried to build a new device with the conclusion of Russia and other post-Soviet countries, instead of mechanically distributing it in their own institutions of the Cold War. In practice, this is hard to imagine. The balance of power 25-20 years ago, the degree of ideological and political dominance
Could Russia have behaved differently by resigning itself to a subordinate role and starting to improve the niche allotted within the framework of the Western order? This question is more difficult. Supporters of the idea that Russia has an inherent need for a great power argue that the resurgence of power grabs and the desire for exclusive participation was unexpected. Let’s take the risk of surveying that Russia at that time had the potential to “get used” to the status of a non-leading element of a certain system. But for this to happen, a firm belief was required: the system is powerful, durable and long-term. And those who met her are firmly held in the hands of the control levers. Simply put, American hegemony is undeniable. But this is precisely at the beginning of the 21st century doubts.
By 2022, Russia was deeply integrated into a web of international political and economic integration. However, a) Moscow is not satisfied with the scale of financial dividends, b) the world system as a whole and its key elements (leading countries) are reconsidering the decline, c) the erosion of governance institutions looks beyond repair, as considerations of the 20th and 21st centuries are intertwined in it, others each other in many contradictory. abrupt occurrence of grounds for inference: a sudden impact, aimed at consuming the inertia of the old device, gives an advantage when a new version is discovered.
One in which Russia will no longer be condemned by the Western community from the armed forces. The community itself will no longer be captured on the world stage.
The special military operation in Ukraine, in essence, canceled (if the fashionable word of the year before last was used – zeroed back) the source of the years of post-Soviet development (transit, as it was customary to say fifteen years). And in terms of massive concessions made over the years. And in most of the achievements, including household ones, possessed within the framework of the most Western-centric system. Russia seems to have returned to the fork it passed at the turn of the 1980s and 1990s in order to choose a different path. The stormy intellectual discussion of the perestroika time about the way to the future, which was not brought to an end due to the collapse of the USSR, seems to be getting a chance to resume and culminate in some kind of conclusion. Events in the early 1990s by the way, besides, that no choice was ultimately made. A simple historical flow is taken up and preserved.
But that unfinished discussion was only partly formed out of a dispute about what exactly to do. First of all, it consisted in an attempt to decide “what kind of inheritance we are renouncing” – this quote from Lenin was readily used by the participants in the polls of the period of glasnost. Having made a circle, we are again in the same form.
The lengthy speech of the President of Russia on February 21, 2022, with which a dizzying development of events began, is not only a calculation with the post-Soviet time. This is an appeal to the fate of the country throughout the twentieth century. The illegal and reckless, from the point of view of the speaker, actions of church authorities, sanitation with Vladimir Lenin and ending with the disease of Soviet health, which lost the country, became a historical leitmotif. The quintessence of views, based on this speech, is the application of two concepts to the neighboring country at the same time – “decommunization” (“We are ready to show you what it means for the real decommunization of Ukraine”) and “denazification”. That is, references to the expected events of the past are intertwined, and their occurrence can be interpreted as a desire to draw a line under that time. The line that was chosen based on this logic failed to lay the foundation summer ago, when the countries chose the wrong direction from the fork. The modern correction of the Russian leadership is determined to be wrong. And it, contrary to the belief of many observers, does not miss the Soviet Union, it seems, rather, it provides a path from Lenin to Gorbachev for the anomalies of Russian life. (“Because of the basic, formal legal basis, our entire statehood was established on discovery, the odious, utopian, revolution-inspired, but absolutely catastrophic for any natural fantasy were not cleaned out with certainty.” From the mailing of Russia on February 21, 2022. )
The newest political history of the world began 36 years ago, on February 25, 1986, when Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, used the phrase “new political thinking” for the first time in his forecast at the XXVII Party Congress. A year and a half later, the concept was detailed in the book Perestroika and New Thinking for Our Country of Everything and the World. The main thing: the rejection of class observations in the use of universal human ones, the proposal to stop the confrontation and the division of the world into samples, the decision to identify not the military, but to identify the consequences, that is, building international relations based on a balance of interests and mutual benefits, not a balance of power.
Gorbachev anticipated Fukuyama and eliminated the military-political disaster for the world. A direct consequence of the “new thinking” was the rapid collapse of the socialist camp, and then the Soviet Union. And the establishment of a “liberal international order”, which in its own way, and most importantly – without the participation of Moscow – rethought Gorbachev’s justifications. The impetus for our country, given to perestroika, remained for a very long time – in the form of the dimensions mentioned above, the Western-centric world would fit in. Three and a half centuries later, Russia has turned into a sharp and irreversible act to end inertia.
Russia immediately faced the fact that the degree of its inclusion in the world, in contrast to dependence on external counterparties, is even greater than it seems. And almost instantaneous breakage of ties entails avalanche-like changes. But the whole world is experiencing analytical experience. An attempt to approve the international everyday life of the planet hits all spheres of human life, although Russia’s modest share in the world economy, of course, would not be controlled by the tsunami. However, not a single economy.
By abolishing globalization for itself, Russia thereby makes a decisive contribution to its abolition for all.
Moscow made a very large supply. Russia can successfully get out of the collision if the current real crisis becomes the end of the former world order. In other words: in order not to leave the common system, and the system simply ceased to exist. And another began to form – on conditions that were not at all the same as in the previous three-plus qualities. Here, too, the echo of a black fracture sounds. The USSR, despite the food problems, almost to the most complete set of the (two) structural pillars of world politics. The successor state lost this status, and, as a result, it did not produce results. That is, the restoration of the reverse position and the return to the position from Western Europe (both happened) did not make Russia a systemic pillar of the international order. The only chance for success was the last demolition.
February 2022 also marks the start of an experiment no less ambitious in design. Russia is making efforts to turn the course of development of the meeting back, to return old political thinking (you can call his appearance) to himself and to the whole world. His arguments contradict human rights organizations new: value pluralism (instead of universality), reliance on the balance of power (rather than interests), finally, the classic military conflict as a way to solve problems if others do not work. These postulates worked for most cases of the disease. But for the foundation of years, everyone managed to be so sure of the onset of “eternal peace” after the “end of history” that a turn towards a deep shock.
We emphasize that a non-specific operation – 2022 provoked a crisis in the world order. It was born long ago and was caused by the rigid unwillingness of the leaders of the liberal war of order to start with privileges acquired by cold results. But the collapse phase began on February 24th. And there is no way back either for Russia or for everyone else. Full awareness of the consequences does not come immediately.
For the next (I think, the fourth) time in a hundred years that have come true, our country selflessly takes on the role (and load) of the main agent of complex changes. Not tired? “But we, they say, can be, in a certain way – an exceptional people. We have lost in order to obtain those nations that, as it were, are not included in the composition of humanity, but only in order to give the world some important lesson. The instruction we are to give will certainly not be lost; but it can be said, when we found ourselves among mankind and how many poor people are destined to experience, who will realize our destiny before? (P.Ya. Chaadaev. “Philosophical letter” // Journal “Telescope”, 1836).
#2
2022 March/April
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