COMMENTARY: Ukraine's pathological neighbor (10/10/04)

COMMENTARY

Ukraine's pathological neighbor

by Dr. Bohdan Vitvitsky

The May/June 2004 issue of the journal Foreign Affairs contains a fascinating article titled "Flight from Freedom: What Russians Think and Want." Its author is Richard Pipes, professor emeritus of Russian history at Harvard.

The article is fascinating because it highlights in a succinct fashion something that most people in the American foreign policy and academic establishments have been reluctant to see, much less acknowledge: namely, the deeply rooted pathologies in Russian political culture.

Prof. Pipes begins by reminding his readers about the dark weight of Russia's history. A history in which, until 1861, the vast majority of Russia's population was enslaved in serfdom. A history in which, up to 1917, the tsarist governments collected taxes and drafted soldiers, gave their citizens nothing in return and punished anyone who "interfered" in politics. Indeed, an entire range of activities was categorized as political crimes and resolved by arbitrary administrative procedures rather than by anything resembling judicial adjudication. A history in which private property and public justice were wholly underdeveloped and the notion of human rights altogether alien. Then came the horrors of totalitarian Sovietism.

Interestingly, Prof. Pipes suggests that because of the various social distortions referred to above, pre-Soviet Russia was not so much a society as an agglomeration of many thousands of separate villages. And, in his view, it was the "absence of social and national cohesion, the ignorance of civil rights, the lack of any real notion of private property, and an ineffective judiciary" that "prompted Russians to desire strong tsarist rule" (p. 10). Because there was little, if any, civil society to bind them, Russians relied on the state to protect them against each other and, thus, wanted their rulers to be strong and harsh.

What do Russians want and think today? A number of surveys are most revealing. Modern Russians, "like their ancestors, feel estranged from both the state and society at large. Their allegiance is to family and friends" (pp. 10-11). "Trust of outsiders, the basis of civilization in the West, is still largely absent" (p. 11). "Democracy is widely viewed as a fraud." "Seventy-eight percent of respondents in a 2003 survey said that democracy is a façade for a government controlled by rich and powerful cliques. Only 22 percent expressed a preference for democracy, whereas 53 percent positively disliked it" (p. 11). Civil rights and personal freedoms do not attract much support. A survey conducted in the winter of 2003-2004 found that "76 percent of Russians favor restoring censorship over the mass media" (p.11). Only a quarter or so of Russians view private property as an important human right.

Another survey reveals an astounding level of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and moral imbecility. In response to a 1999 survey request that they identify the 10 greatest men of all times and all nations, Russians picked Russians for nine out of the 10. The top five were Peter the Great, Lenin, Pushkin, Stalin and the Soviet astronaut Yuri Gagarin (the only non-Russian was Napoleon). When asked how they would like Russia to be viewed by others, 48 percent said "mighty, unbeatable, indestructible, a great world power." Only 22 percent wanted Russia to be seen as "affluent, civilized and cultured"; 6 percent as "educated, civilized and friendly"; and a mere 1 percent as "law-abiding and democratic" (pp. 14-15).

When Russians were asked "Do you feel European?" 12 percent said "yes, always," and 56 percent replied "practically never." Among his conclusions, Prof. Pipes notes that President Vladimir Putin is popular "precisely because he has re-instated Russia's traditional model of government: an autocratic state in which citizens are relieved of responsibility for politics and in which imaginary foreign enemies are invoked to forge an artificial unity" (p. 15).

What does all this mean for Ukraine and Ukrainians? It means, at a minimum, that it is critical for Ukrainians to become aware of the profound pathologies in Russian political culture. It means that it is critical for Ukrainians to have an extended open national discourse about whether or not these pathologies constitute a kind of convulsive dead end into which a society will repeatedly crash. It means that it is critical for Ukrainians to come to terms with whether or not it makes any sense at all to enter into a "friendly embrace" with a neighbor historically cursed by, yet seemingly unaware of, the weight of such pathologies.

Bohdan Vitvitsky is an attorney, writer and lecturer who holds a Ph.D. in philo-sophy.

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