Translated material
Obsession with sovereign
I finished my last article on the Faces that "to develop an adequate strategy for the future, the liberal public does not have enough sober view of the surrounding reality." I want to return to this thesis and supplement it with an explanation regarding foreign policy, especially since there is an occasion for this - the decision of President Putin not to go to the G8 summit. Among the Russian liberals, the opinion prevails that he refused cowardice.
It is significant that the liberal opposition press, as a rule, does not attack Russian diplomacy. Meanwhile, it remains the most closed area of Kremlin policy. It becomes known only to what is allowed to reach the surface. It would seem that under these conditions, judgments, hints, and the sayings of those who were entered into the corridors of the Kremlin should be especially interesting. Here we would listen to the opinion of the former adviser to Putin Gleb Pavlovsky. At one time, he unequivocally made it clear that not to be a “bunch of Euro -Atlantism” - this is the main direction of the Kremlin’s foreign policy. And now he says that, without going to the summit, Putin primarily “shows his dissatisfaction with the comments from the United States regarding the opposition rallies in Moscow and shows his dissatisfaction with the“ dead end ”in negotiations in the pro”. In fact, this is nothing but a political gesture.
The general tone of the statements of both the inhabitants of the Kremlin and pro -government experts themselves leaves no doubt that the purpose of the current Russian government is to fundamentally weaken the United States, to expand the boundaries of its influence in the world, to make Russia a place of gathering all anti -Western forces. And liberal critics constantly represent the Kremlin only in the image of thieves 'authorities, allowing its orientation only to protect national interests, and then for their own thieves' purposes. A batch of crooks and thieves, in a word! Despite the fact that the Kremlin actively operates in the international arena, its representatives are stubbornly denied their own ideas about the place of Russia in the world on the basis that they keep their capital in the West, etc. It is assumed that this regime, unlike the Soviet one, has neither ideology nor weapons in order to even claim any confrontation with the West.
Reality indicates the opposite. The mode has an ideology. This is anti -war and great -power - and, by the way, much more articulated and aggressive than during the Cold War. As for weapons, then it is in such an amount that was in the USSR, and it is not necessary if the arsenal has other means that the regime can use. And this is not only nuclear weapons, but also energy resources. Finally, this is the possession of the art of provocation. Here, the Russian leadership does not have a better teacher than comrade Stalin, who, from his presentation, is so revered in modern Russia and whose policy Pavlovsky, when he was the Kremlin adviser, called virtuoso.
Stalin was indeed a master of provocations, the largest of which was his work to unleash the Second World War. All strictly classified foreign policy activities of Stalin in the 1930s are a consistent line of preparation for the war against the Western world in order to expand its influence: the subversive activity of the Comintern in the Western countries, and the policy of the split of the anti -fascist front, which contributed to Hitler’s coming to power, and an agreement with the Nazi Germany of August 23, 1939 with a secret protocol on the division of the division of the division The spheres of influence in Eastern Europe, and the subsequent military operations. However, so far only Hitler is considered the instigator of the war, and with the consent of the West, the honorary role of the liberator is assigned to Stalin. All Russian historiography and propaganda today are literally mobilized to protect this interpretation, to glorify the victory, and the search for modern manifestations of Nazism in the countries of the Baltic states and Eastern Europe. But there was still a provocative role of Stalin at the beginning of the Korean War, which was considered by him as a stage in the preparation of a future war with America. And his followers in the USSR did not refuse the plans of the war with the West.
In my opinion, Putin and Co. not just the heirs of the KGB. These are people of ideas, and they certainly have their own idea of both the Russian past and the necessary place of Russia in the world. This is an idea of her as a great power precisely in the Stalinist sense. The idea of Great Power sounded in Russia in the mid-1990s and has been purposefully implemented. The recent steps in this direction are the proposal of the World Russian People’s Cathedral, led by Patriarch Kirill, to legally prohibit the “Review of the Great Patriotic War”, the revival at the initiative of the State Duma chairman of the Russian Historical Society to combat “falsifications of history” and the preparation of a single textbook on Russian history.
Having defeated in the Cold War with the West, the Russian special services in no way left the idea of a revenge. On the information front, the work of Russia Today, the Russian Mir Foundation, the Valda Club, the branches of the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris (Natalya Narochnitskaya) and New York (Andranik Migranans), the Russian Orthodox Church abroad, and others are working on this goal, support anti-Western regimes around the world. This is the write -off of Soviet debts to African countries, and financial investments in Western projects, including in sports clubs, like Roman Abramovich and Mikhail Prokhorov. Mafia structures are actively used. Finally, this is a systematically implemented idea of the Eurasian Union as a counterweight to the European Union. And all this happens in conditions when Russia is in a much more profitable economic situation than Europe and the USA.
Overcoming the Stalinist Great Power is the most important problem for Russian liberals. There is no question of nationalists, communists and leftists: they are hot supporters of this idea. The Stalinist idea of Great Power, like no other, is consonant with the vast majority of the Russian population. Moreover, she is rooted in his mind, this is the basis of his ideas about the world around him. This idea is consonant with the overwhelming majority of the liberal public, which is opposed today against Putin in politics. Against Putin - yes, but not against the foundations of this policy itself.