Is Russia a civilization? According to its illegitimate president, Vladimir Putin, it is. If he’s right, then Russia’s civilization is as muddled as Putin’s thinking about it.
Putin waxed eloquent about civilization at the recent meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual affair that offers Putin’s acolytes the opportunity to bask in his glory.
Putin started by saying that “civilization is a multifaceted concept subject to various interpretations.” That’s not terribly helpful, so he goes on to clarify the concept: “There are many civilizations, and none is superior or inferior to another. They are equal since each civilization represents a unique expression of its own culture, traditions and the aspirations of its people.”
Putin doubtless thinks he’s being original here. In fact, his comments are a throwback to the 18th-century German philosopher Johann Gottfried von Herder’s understanding of the uniqueness of peoples or nations, on the one hand, and the 19th-century French historian Ernest Renan’s definition of the nation, on the other.
Putin continued: “The essential characteristics of a civilization-state encompass diversity and self-sufficiency.” Note the effortless shift from mere “civilization” to something called a “civilization-state,” without realizing that, while culture, traditions and popular aspirations may comprise civilizations, states are something entirely different. They are political organizations that monopolize violence and extract resources from bounded territories.
And just how does one reconcile the fact that a civilization expresses “its own culture” with cultural diversity?
Perhaps sensing the difficulty he’s gotten himself into, Putin then tried to clarify things, but wound up descending into incoherence: “Russia has been shaped over centuries as a nation of diverse cultures, religions and ethnicities. The Russian civilization cannot be reduced to a single common denominator, but it cannot be divided, either, because it thrives as a single spiritually and culturally rich entity. Maintaining the cohesive unity of such a nation is a formidable challenge.”
It should be clear by now that “civilization” is just a fancy word with little meaning for Putin. He’s really concerned with the Russian nation and state.
Second, note that he claims that the Russian nation encompasses diverse cultures, religions and ethnicities. He would have been more accurate had he said that Russia conquered diverse cultures, religions and ethnicities. After all, it was Muscovy that expanded relentlessly in every direction and, in the process, destroyed a slew of cultures, religions and ethnicities in Siberia, Belarus, Ukraine, Poland, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Third, in this process, Russia did exactly what Putin excoriates Western Europe for having done: “There was once an outwardly colonial interpretation whereby there was a ‘civilized world’ serving as a model for the rest, and everyone was supposed to conform to those standards. Those who disagreed were to be coerced into this ‘civilization’ by the truncheon of the ‘enlightened’ master.”
Indeed, contemporary Russia’s progressive incorporation of Belarus and genocidal war against Ukraine are precisely the kind of colonial behavior that Putin’s Russia is currently pursuing.
Putin’s use of the word “ethnicities” to describe the peoples that Muscovy, imperial Russia and the USSR destroyed and assimilated is an intentional diminution of their status. Instead of full-fledged nations deserving of their own civilizations, they are now culturally quaint folk in need of Mother Russia’s welcoming civilizational embrace.
In fact, most of these so-called ethnicities predated the emergence of Muscovites and Russians by centuries.
Finally, it is absurd to assert, as Putin did, that “the Russian civilization cannot be reduced to a single common denominator, but it cannot be divided, either.” That’s either a contradiction or an example of the kind of deep, dialectical logic that only KGB agents can comprehend. But the next two lines are even worse. Thus, although Russian civilization presumably “thrives as a single spiritually and culturally rich entity,” Putin insists that “Maintaining the cohesive unity of such a nation is a formidable challenge.”
Surely, if Russian civilization thrives on its diversity, its unity shouldn’t be too great a challenge to maintain. And if unity is an issue, are the civilization and its ethnicities really thriving?
Putin, clearly, has no idea what he is talking about when he discusses civilization. This is especially evident when one considers how much hemming and hawing and the verbal equivalent of head-scratching punctuated his comments at Valdai.
One can only conclude that, whether or not a Russian civilization even exists (Russian historian Alexander Etkind rhetorically asks, “Is there such a thing as a Russian civilization?”) Putin’s use of the term is, at bottom, only a smokescreen for his veneration of the Russian state and nation — in a word, of fascism.
Alexander J. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark. A specialist on Ukraine, Russia and the USSR, and on nationalism, revolutions, empires and theory, he is the author of 10 books of nonfiction, as well as “Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires” and “Why Empires Reemerge: Imperial Collapse and Imperial Revival in Comparative Perspective.”