Russia’s Right Turn. Moscow has reclaimed its 19th-century conservative role.

An unfortunate legacy of the Cold War is the negative attitude some American conservatives yet harbor toward Russia. Conditioned for decades to see Russia and the Soviet Union as synonymous, they still view post-communist Russia as a threat. They forget that Tsarist Russia was the most conservative great power, a bastion of Christian monarchy loathed by revolutionaries, Jacobins, and democrats. Joseph de Maistre was not alone among 19th-century conservatives in finding refuge and hope in Russia.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia is emerging once more as the leading conservative power. As we witnessed in Russia’s rescue of President Obama from the corner into which he had painted himself on Syria, the Kremlin is today, as the New York Times reports, “Establishing Russia’s role in world affairs not based on the dated Cold War paradigm but rather on its different outlook, which favors state sovereignty and status quo stability over the spread of Western-style democracy.”

In his own Times op-ed on Syria, Putin wrote, “It is alarming that military intervention in internal conflicts in foreign countries has become commonplace for the United States. Is it in America’s long-term interest? I doubt it.” Sen. Robert A. Taft and Russell Kirk also doubted it.

Moscow appears to understand better than Washington that the driving foreign-policy requirement of the 21st century is the preservation of the state in the face of Fourth Generation war waged by non-state entities, such as those fighting on the rebels’ side in Syria. Russia has rightly upbraided Washington for destroying states, including Iraq and Libya.

Since Obama originally won election as an empty suit we can and have invested in him any sort of proclivity which appeals to us. I think it was Shelby Steele who treated us to the best analysis along these lines and that occurred even before the election. At any rate, I have seen analyses describing Obama as:

A communist-the product of Frank Marshall Davis.

A narcissist.

A bread-and-butter, social justice progressive.

A Muslim.

An anti-colonialist.

A committed environmentalist.

An unrooted opportunist, advanced beyond his capabilities by affirmative action.

A typical constitutional law professor of the left.

I'm sure there are a few more that do not occur as I write.

Certainly, most of these are not mutually exclusive, for example, he could be a narcissist and a communist at the same time, in fact, the more committed and the higher up the pecking order the communist, the more likely he is to be a narcissist. Anti-colonialists and Communists have been bedfellows for nearly a century. It is no longer thought anomalous for a Muslim to be a communist and the more I learn of Muslim history the more it appears that the two are compatible up to the last drama in which one must kill off the other. In any event, both are statists, neither believes in any check on the power of the state, both see the United States as the principal obstacle to their dream of world domination and both are unshakably convinced of both the righteousness and the inevitability of their cause.

It might depend on the day or the cause. For example, Obama seems to be committed to the idea of climate change but is that because he is a true green believer or because he sees the issue as a Trojan horse to "transform" America? His narcissism has been on display in his mannerisms but more concretely in his arrogant even tyrannical deployment of executive orders. If he is issuing executive orders and the cause of green goodness there is no and his self-righteousness.

That he is specifically an anti-colonialist I think explains much of his character and his administration. The most obvious example has to do with the Churchill bust. I think the D ' Sousa movie has themuch on point. Narcissism is really the obverse side of the coin of insecurity which is the natural psychological state of the anti-colonialist. Muslims and Communists are anti-colonialists but that is true of much of the left.

Whatever the cause (and that might well depend on the issue) it seems to me that we are safe in believing that he is not a patriot, indeed, he is anti-American who despises our constitutional system which leaves him free to give full vent to his narcissism, his huge resentments against America and our system, to play in international waters to consciously undermine America and weaken her in order to bring about a transformation, not just in America, but in the world.

Thank you for the kind words.

Before the Bolshevik revolution people could move freely, own guns without limit, entrepreneurial class was growing under negligible taxation and the country wielded a world class cultural influence.

Interesting. But I suspect if you add up freedom, opportunity, and standard of living, average Russians are doing better now than at any time in the county's history.

Russia always had a strong local-government democracy and with His Majesty’s political reform also had a parliament and a constitution.

I don't want to have to look all this up again, but I think the local government tradition goes back to the 1860s and the last tsar wasn't much of a fan of parliamentary government and constitutions. That's not the point I was trying to make, though.

But more importantly, Putin’s system inherits from the Soviet Union and not from the Russian Empire spiritually: it is a top-down system of one-party control and universal top-down criminality.

After 75 years of Communist dictatorship Russia didn't really have much else to build on or to start from. It's not surprising that today's Russia should be more marked by corruption and authoritarianism than other countries that were Communist for a shorter period.

Until recently it was more likely that Russian would relapse into some form of dictatorship than that it would move on to some freer, less corrupt form of representative democracy. I don't know how things are now. If dictatorship is still a real prospect maybe Putin is the least of evils. If Russian does have a good chance of moving beyond Putinism, possibly Putin deserves a little credit.

But my point wasn't to defend Putin. I was never that crazy about the guy, and I agree that he is marked by his participation in the tyrannical and corrupt Soviet regime.

What I would like to say is that our understanding of the world has been very shaped by the conditions of 1933-1945 or 1917-1991 -- that is to say, by mammoth battles between good and evil. I'd say that our situation now is more similar to how things were before 1914 -- a variety of competing regimes none of which is wholly good or wholly evil.

You could draw closer parallels between the tsarist regime itself or the German Empire of the Kaiser or the British or French Empires and states like Russia or China (or the US?) today than to those governments and 20th century totalitarianisms.

I understand very well that China is still officially Communist and that Putin's Russia is the heir to the Soviets, but the international scene is very different from what it was a half-century ago.

average Russians are doing better now than at any time in the county's history.

Better than in living memory, since the last man who actually remembered life in Russia died, like my Grandfather, in the 1980's. His memories were fond ones, and he was a barefooted factory apprentice in the Urals. He told me, simply, that all the talk about industrial tension, class struggle etc was pure bullsh-t.

However, by a proper historical standard -- comparing Russia of the first decade and a half of 20 c. to other European powers at that time, -- Russia looks far better then than it does today in the same comparison. Moreover, inlike West Europe, it was a country of rapid growth. If the rate of growth in pre-war Russia were to continue for another generation, rather than wrecked by the revolutions, it would have been a leading power in Europe by mid-century. This is an introductory text: Russia Botched Entire Century

The idea that Russia was a backwards country in need of some fixing is a bolshevik propaganda on one hand, and among the serious people it is an aftereffect of rapid growth diluted over a period starting too early (e.g. 1860) to capture the reality. In America, the notion of poor poorly governed Russia is a product of guilt over the support of the Communist regime and the natural for America aversion to monarchy.

the local government tradition goes back to the 1860s and the last tsar wasn't much of a fan of parliamentary government and constitutions.

That is all correct, however, the tradition of local government as such goes back to the Middle Age (Zemsky Sobor). The Romanovs were themselves a product of a popular election. That the Tsar dismissed the Duma was actually a good move and shows the preferability of monarchy to a democratic republic where such move would not be possible. What we had in Russia at the time as a productive cooperation of the democratic and monarchic principles. It was that functioning, living and breathing popular monarchism that was hated by the international left,-- precisely because it was successful economically, -- and ultimately they succeeded in destroying it in 1917.

I understand however, that it is not exactly the topic on hand. I just want to clarify my earlier statements, so that we both have a proper historiosophical background to Putin.

If dictatorship is still a real prospect maybe Putin is the least of evils.

Some form of dictatorship would be welcome. What Russia needs is a nationalist government focused on preserving and rebuilding specifically the Russian nation and culture, and what remains of the Russian economy. Any democratic system in Russia today will be immediately infected by the old boys of the dormant KGB apparatus, so an unpopular measure of lustrating the KGB ties would have to be taken for Russia to succeed in anything. The free enterprise system in Russia is corrupted by the same class, the Komsomol leaders of the 70's and 80's who are now at the peak of power and push their second generation of parasites forward.

The bottom line is that indeed Russian Federation is all-through socially conservative, whereas the West is torn between liberalism and tradition. However, in RF today the conservatism is not natural conservatism of a healthy nation, but a acid reflux from the conservatism of the Soviet era autocracy. It is not a genuine article. The same forces that today clamor for, for example, criminalization of mutually-consented homosexuality are the people who just as easily would ban all political dissent, free artistic expression, and generally will re-institute the USSR in all its aspects save, perhaps, doctrinaire marxism.

No, I think that the world of pre-1914 is gone forever. It is not even the same people: not the same Germans and not the same Russians. These two nations have been by and large destroyed. Well, the Germans may yet survive, but to say that RF today is somehow similar to historical Russia is grossly off the mark.

Thanks for the response. Again, what you say is very interesting.

If the rate of growth in pre-war Russia were to continue for another generation, rather than wrecked by the revolutions, it would have been a leading power in Europe by mid-century.

Discontent, though, is subjective. Countries that by objective measures are advancing quite rapidly may be very turbulent, first because change can be unsettling, and second because expectations grow faster than they can be satisfied.

That sounds like Solzhenitsyn's idea. It made some sense 30 years ago when the Communists were still in power. I'm not sure it does today. Russian is in the position of any number of countries around the world today where remnants of old dictatorships still have influence.

I don't know what advice I'd give, but returning to dictatorship isn't what I'd suggest. All the more so, since the same left-over Communist interests would worm their way into any regime. Also, any intelligent regime would make enough use of nationalist themes to satisfy a public that doesn't want major political changes. I suspect countries in Russia's position will mostly just muddle through the transition as best they can.

Any democratic system in Russia today will be immediately infected by the old boys of the dormant KGB apparatus, so an unpopular measure of lustrating the KGB ties would have to be taken for Russia to succeed in anything. The free enterprise system in Russia is corrupted by the same class, the Komsomol leaders of the 70's and 80's who are now at the peak of power and push their second generation of parasites forward.

For that very reason, it's not going to happen. Or at least not until the remaining KGBniks are very old. And as I said, the same leftover Communist forces and individual you deplore would probably make headway under any system.

I'd agree with that. I don't have any great enthusiasm for Putin or his government. My concern was just to say that the world today is very different from what it was at the height of the Cold War.

I would say, though, that at some point, the pendulum in Russia and Eastern Europe will swing back and -- for better or worse -- many Western fashions and ideas will be adopted. There may be more resistance in the East and Eastern Europe may exert a beneficial influence on the West, but I don't see Russia forever holding out against what one might call Western decadence.

Of course it's not a literal return to the ancien regime, but the world today is more about economics and power politics than about a struggle of ideologies. The aristocracies are gone. So are the Western European imperial powers. Britain and France don't have the clout they once did.

But in terms of their position in the world and their aspirations, Russia or China today has more in common with the empires of 1914 than with the ideologically inspired powers that replaced them. Even our own position in the world today may have features similar to that of the British Empire a century ago. The situation is different from what it was 50 or 70 years ago.

the same leftover Communist forces and individual you deplore would probably make headway under any system.

A positive example of that is set first by post-Nazi Germany, where the rule was simple: position of privilege under the old regime disqualifies for public office, -- and now by Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary where lustration was implemented, in various ways.

the world today is more about economics and power politics than about a struggle of ideologies.

I don't think that is exactly so. Of course, old ideologies of Marxism and National Socialism are simply not operative in a global-manufacture world. But the prevailing "end of history" thinking that built the EU and gave us Obama has no ideological monopoly; in fact its bankruptcy is becoming more and more evident. The world is always about ideology, because ideology is simply popular theology. I think that in the coming generation we shall see a direct conflict between nationalism and theistic worldview on one hand, and big government global consumerism, and scientific agnosticism on the other. I think there is a great potential that big-government technological society will turn violent before it reaches its ideological collapse.

I would agree though that, given the international left that runs the Western democracies almost without interruption, and excepting a few insignificant Marxist remnants like Chavez, and the countries under Islam, there is no opposing social model anywhere that would be adopted by a government. In other words, there is no properly conservative and theistic ideology of pre-1789 implemented anywhere. Spain resisted the longest, but fell, too.

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