Oligarchs in Support of Russian Imperialism
What makes up the core of Russian imperialism? The sociologist Igor Eidman wrote a short reflective piece about this, which I reonate with. Check out his opinion piece or watch a video that is based on it. Mr. Eidman was raised in the Soviet imperial and ideological paradigm and in his self-reflective soul searching he uncovers some ways how this imperialism largely undetected seeped through cultural iconic figures of Russian culture.
Eidman points out some core ideas of Russian Imperialism like so:
“For decades, Russians were taught in school, broadcast from TV and radio, that …
— other nations were “united forever” by their “Great Rus’”,
— Russians founded the greatest power,
— they are the elder brother to other nations and people, and
— Russia is the “generous soul” that protects everyone and helps everyone.
And from the queues, trolleybuses, smoking rooms, another, more frank, rushed:
— the national people are animals, they are crazy,
— we are feeding everyone, etc.
Moscow still had its own imperial pathos
— be proud that you are Muscovites, residents of the capital of a great superpower,
— Kyiv or Tbilisi – this is our province.”
Russians are a great nation – Russians represent the Good, the Light
We help other people.
We protect other people.
We liberate other people.
Anyone willing can verify that such core ideas are not rare in Russians even today.
(At the same time, most Russians are quick to move away from historic tragedies such as the victims of the gulag system, the lack of freedom or the imperial occupations of the USSR. “What good is it to harp on these things? They happened and we came out of it, it will just divide us now.”)
Imperialism, Supremacy, and the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
A scholarly article by Kseniya Oksamytna, University of London, takes another deep dive to uncover the imperialist particularities of current Russian politics and culture.
Putinism – Contemporary Russian Imperialism 2023
In a speech held in late November 2023 Putin outlines once more his imperial wishes for Russia. Instead of hearing the call of the majority of the United Nations for Russia to adhere to international law and respect territorial integrity in general and more specifically, he calls the West for acceptance of Russia’s action by using the term “russophobia”. He stipulates that Ukraine and Belarus are part of Russia, which is not true and which is not the view of the majority of Ukrainians and Belarusians.
Russian Imperialism – I too am partly responsible for the war
A column by Mikhail Zygar
September 16, 2023,
Pushkin, Gogol and Dostoyevsky – they all helped create a Russian culture that made the invasion of Ukraine possible. And our author also feels guilty. An excerpt from his new book.
It’s time for a confession. I plead guilty to not recognizing the signs sooner. Because I too am partly responsible for Russia’s war against Ukraine, as are my contemporaries – and our ancestors. Russian culture also made the horrors of war possible.
Many Russian writers and historians are complicit in this war. It is their words, their thoughts that paved the way for Putin’s fascism – although quite a few of them would be horrified today if they could see the “fruits” of their work.
We Russians did not realize how deadly the idea of Russia as a “great empire” was. (Certainly every empire, every “empire” is a calamity, but other historians may judge other empires.) We have deliberately overlooked the fact that the “great Russian culture” despised, oppressed and destroyed other countries and peoples for many centuries.
In order for a Russian culture, freed from imperialism, to continue to exist, we must act. We must first clearly understand the truth about our past and our present.
Russian history, Ukrainian history and, indeed, the history of any people contains myths. Unfortunately, our myths have led us to the fascism of 2022. It’s time to expose them.
Pushkin’s guilt
After Russia attacked Ukraine in 2022, statues of Alexander Pushkin, the greatest Russian poet, were destroyed in many cities. Many Russians were outraged by this, believing that Pushkin had nothing to do with the war. But that’s not entirely true.
In the 19th century, this greatest of Russian poets, Alexander Pushkin himself, helped create one of the most famous works of anti-Ukrainian propaganda.
After spending a few years in exile, he learns that members of secret anti-government organizations – who went down in history as the “Decembrists” – staged an uprising in Saint Petersburg that was suppressed.
Pushkin is friends with some insurgents; five of his friends are sentenced to death and the rest are exiled to Siberia for forced labor. Not long afterwards, Pushkin himself was summoned to the capital. He is sure that he too will now be brought to trial and convicted. But the new Tsar Nikolai I allowed Pushkin to return from exile. Although he does not exempt the poet from censorship, he promises to personally read his writings and decide for himself.
Patriotic poems in praise of the state
So Pushkin knows that in order to please the authorities, he must write patriotic poems in praise of the state. And so he writes a poem called “Poltava” about Peter the Great and his oppression of Ukraine. The Russian emperor, according to Pushkin, is a hero and a genius, but the leader of the Ukrainians, Ivan Mazepa, is a traitor who tried to secretly ally with Sweden behind Peter’s back.
In his description of Mazepa, Pushkin does not skimp on insults: “evil old man,” “destroyer,” and “evil apostate” are just a few of the names.
From the perspective of today’s historians, Mazepa finds itself in a classic dilemma: on the one hand, there is autocracy in the form of Peter the Great, who forges his empire without considering the costs. On the other side is the enlightened West, which appears to Mazepa to be much more democratic than authoritarian Moscow. In the end, he wants the Hetmanate ( the Cossack Empire on what is now Ukraine, editor’s note ) to endure. Whatever decision he makes will have harsh consequences.
Mazepa’s defection to the Swedes and their defeat at Poltava is a pivotal moment in Ukraine’s history. Because the theme of betrayal resonates through the centuries to this day: from the point of view of Russian historians and propagandists, Mazepa has become the epitome and symbol of betrayal. Ukrainian historians, on the other hand, emphasize that despite his loyalties vacillating between Peter and Charles, Mazepa never betrayed the interests of the Ukrainian people, and that is what ultimately counts.
Ukrainians need to forget their native language
There are many Ukrainians living in 19th century Saint Petersburg, and some of them reach top positions in the government or the army. However, they are all ashamed of their roots and want to become “Petersburgs”; Russian is the only language they use. That’s actually the most important requirement: the only way to get a promotion is to abandon your Ukrainian background and fully russify yourself – a decision that many make without a doubt.
One of them is a young writer named Nikolai Gogol. He moves from Ukraine to Saint Petersburg, dreams of meeting his idol Alexander Pushkin and writing romantic poems.
And Gogol himself speaks and writes exclusively in Russian. But he quickly discovers that he can put his Ukrainian heritage to good use. His exuberant stories from the southern reaches of the empire are no less popular with the residents of cold, dark Petersburg than Lord Byron’s exotic oriental (Greek, Turkish, Jewish) motifs are with Londoners.
From Gogol’s pen flow phantasmagoric stories about the magical land of Ukraine, inspired by folk tales and customs that he heard and learned in his childhood. He populates his homeland with mythical creatures: wizards, witches, demons, supernatural beings. Gogol is not the inventor of the myth that Ukrainians are not an ordinary people, but through his stories he reinforces the impression that they live in a magical, paranormal, mysterious world.
Poems in Ukrainian – a scandal
But the cliché that a Ukrainian can only be successful if he forgets his native language is shattered by Taras Shevchenko.
A talented artist and a freed slave, he published the collection of poems Kobsar in April 1840 – it contained eight poems in Ukrainian. The cycle of poems provokes a scandal: in Saint Petersburg it is not acceptable to write literary works in Ukrainian, let alone publish them. On this issue, the Russian state has a clear opinion: there is no Ukrainian language, there is only the Russian language, which has several dialects – Great Russian, Belarusian and Little Russian (Ukrainian).
Nevertheless, Shevchenko’s poetic work evokes very different reactions. The most famous literary critic of the time, Vissarion Belinsky, praised the collection of poems, although only hesitantly: it could “bring great benefit to ordinary readers in the south of Russia.” But most other critics trash the poems. “It is a shame to see how Mr. Shevchenko mutilates the spirit and the Russian language by imitating the Khokhol style” (Khokhol: a contemptuous Russian term for Ukrainians), writes the literary magazine “Syn Otetchestva” (Son of the Fatherland). “He has soul, he has feeling, and his Russian poems could probably make a contribution to our true Russian poetry.”
But Shevchenko ignores the critics: he continues to write in Ukrainian and is further humiliated by the demanding critics.
Despite all the criticism, his fame continues to grow. He is a welcome guest in the capital’s most fashionable salons, and the St. Petersburg chic crowd vie for his friendship. He receives bags of mail from his readers in Ukraine, who praise his works and complain about the low circulation. His popularity continued to grow: in 1844, the influential St. Petersburg magazine Sovremennik compared Shevchenko’s fame in Ukraine with Alexander Pushkin’s reputation in Russia.
In 1845 he died of pneumonia and said goodbye to life. The poet writes a short poem which he gives the title “Legacy”. He asks to be buried in his home country of Ukraine, on the banks of the Dnieper. And he swears that he will only leave the “mountain and steppe” (meaning his grave) when the “Dnipro and its rapids […] wash enemy blood and enemy corpses” away from Ukraine into the sea – the blood of the hated enemies, with which the Russians are meant. Only then will he be able to pray again, because until that moment there is no God for him. In the last verses, the poet urges his compatriots to break their chains, to shed the “bad blood of the enemy” and to remember him “with a quiet, good word” on the day when they regain their freedom.
In fact, Shevchenko doesn’t die at first. Two years later he was arrested, convicted and sent into exile because of his poems. He is forbidden to write or paint. And he will never return to his homeland. Even after his pardon, he will have to spend his last days in Saint Petersburg.
Dostoyevsky sees the Russians as a “God-bearing people”
Probably the most famous imperialist of the 19th century is Fyodor Dostoyevsky. After his return from exile, he became one of the most popular writers and journalists in the country. He argues that Russia’s historical mission was to protect the Slavs from the Ottomans. Therefore, in the interests of the Slavs, all Slavic territories would have to be conquered. In general, his mindset is strikingly similar to the rhetoric of 21st century Russian propagandists, for example when they call for Ukraine to be defended against “the Nazis.”
In his novel “The Demons” (1873), Dostoyevsky presents one of the most notorious postulates of Russian nationalism: the Russian people are a “God-bearing people,” as he has one of the protagonists, Ivan Shatov, say. Although the author portrays this character with a certain irony, according to Dostoevsky’s contemporaries, Shatov expresses the author’s thoughts.
Ultimately, according to Dostoyevsky, the people of Russia would have a huge advantage over the Europeans: the Russians “possess such a spiritual unity that of course does not exist and cannot exist in Europe.”
Strikingly similar imperial ideas were being advocated by British scholars and writers at the same time. Historian John Seeley writes a monumental work, The Expansion of England, in which he argues that Britain occupied India for its own good. And Rudyard Kipling would further develop this idea in his poetic manifesto “The White Man’s Burden” in 1899:
Take up the White Man’s Burden –
send out the best whom you educate –
Banish your sons into exile
to serve the needs of your prisoners.
Such racist attitudes toward ethnic groups supposedly in need of “liberation” by Russia were widespread in the 19th century, later in the Soviet Union, and even in the 21st century.
But not all popular Russian writers of the 19th century are imperialists. There are also some who mercilessly mock the very idea of Russian exceptionalism.
The most famous of these authors is the satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin. He wrote a whole collection of short stories known as “The Gentlemen of Tashkent,” in which he rejected the propagandistic claim that Russia was bringing civilization to its neighboring peoples. In his opinion, the Russian colonizers’ primary concern is to “eat more.”
The drug of imperialism
Many are still stunned, intoxicated by the greatness of imperialism. We have consumed this drug for centuries and nurtured our own vanity. We absorbed the myth of our greatness, got it straight into our bloodstream, and got high on it. We fled from reality, no longer saw what was happening around us, lost our empathy and our human side.
It’s time for withdrawal. Because we are a danger to others and to ourselves. Imperial history makes us sick, it is an innate addiction. The withdrawal symptoms will be severe. But there is no other way. We have to come back to reality and realize what we have done.
We must learn this lesson. We need to stop believing in our uniqueness; stop being proud of our vast territory; stop believing that we are special; stop seeing us as the center of the world, its conscience, its source of spirituality. This is all nonsense.