Introduction: Eurasia, the storm is strange. Since 2020, the region has seen a series of major events, including electoral turmoil in Belarus, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, changes in the Kyrgyz government, the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan, unrest in Kazakhstan, and tensions in Eastern Ukraine that continue to burn to this day. A large part of this overlaps with the so-called "former Soviet space." In this series of changes, the outside world is groping for Moscow's "new rules" to deal with it. At the same time, coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the statements of Russia's top leaders and political elites have made the outside world wonder what the connotation of "Russia" is in their context. At the beginning of the new year, Russia held three talks with the United States, Europe and NATO on security guarantees, facing the core concern of russia - NATO's eastward expansion and its "erosion" of the space of the former Soviet Union. So the question comes back to how Russia now views the historical problems left over from the Soviet era, and even its entire history, which in turn is related to how Russia today conceives its own state and world order. The following is an interview between the Observer Network and Zhang Xin, deputy director of the Russian Research Center of East China Normal University. Provide the reader with a comprehension perspective.
【Interview/Observer Network Zhu Minjie】
Observer Network: Hello Teacher Zhang, thank you for accepting the interview of Observer Network. First, about the mode of interpretation of the collapse of the Soviet Union. From that moment on, people were analyzing this great historical event, and every once in a while there were always new interpretations. Standing at the point of 30 years in time, when looking at these different interpretation paradigms, what is the new understanding? Which framework of interpretation is more relevant?
Zhang Xin: Regarding the explanatory framework, as far as my own limited reading is concerned, the 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union have not changed much compared with 20 or 10 years, at least not a systematic new theoretical explanatory framework. Of course, with the change of history, our understanding of the event of the "collapse of the Soviet Union" has become richer, there is no doubt about it.
As far as I understand it, this richness includes several levels, of which the particularly obvious is to view the "collapse of the Soviet Union" as a long-term process, not only focusing on the point in December 1991 when the Soviet Union disintegrated, but also in China, Russia, the former Soviet Union region, and european and American academic circles.
In terms of specific practice, historians may have done more, viewing the process from the late Soviet Period to the disintegration of the Allied States as the final result as a process of gradual accumulation of social and economic contradictions, and finally leading to the final outbreak of the "collapse of the Soviet Union" in the sense of "collapse of the Allied States".
For example, the process can be divided into several stages, and Gorbachev's reforms are often seen as the first.
The second phase was marked by the departure of Eastern European countries from the Soviet Union as a "quasi-empire" or "quasi-empire" system in the second half of the 1980s, in the sense that 1989 and 1991 were two related but distinguishable processes, namely the gradual liberation of Eastern European countries from the control of the original Soviet quasi-imperial system, including German reunification and the substantial end of the "Cold War" in the geopolitical sense, which actually predates the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of 1991.
The third stage was the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a confederate state of 15 republics.
These stages are interrelated but relatively independent processes.
Recently, there is also a type of research that shifts the perspective from the perspective of high-level political elites to the micro-social level, or introduces the research perspective of social history and material history. This may be the last 20 years about the collapse of the Soviet Union, the history of the Soviet Union, and the field of Eastern Europe, especially in the European and American academic circles, which also provides a very important dimension for understanding the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The study focuses not only on Gorbachev, Yeltsin, Reagan, Kohl, Nazarbayev, but also on a small number of national leaders or the political elite at the top, as well as on the masses at the bottom, the bureaucratic cadres at the middle and lower levels, etc., especially the latter as the middle and the end of the Soviet political system, the cognitive changes and behavioral changes in the entire disintegration process, these smaller but more numerous individual behaviors add up to constitute a very important participatory force for the final narrow sense of "Soviet disintegration".
There are also some new studies that are directly related to the "30 years" time point. On the one hand, 30 years is enough to constitute the "medium-term" time dimension, so that many of the expectations, speculations and policy expectations of the transformation results before the transformation of that year have the possibility of a medium-term investigation, and a huge social experiment has reached the time when the actual results can be partially seen.
On the other hand, usually 30 years is also an event that can enter the node of traditional historical research, so that some issues sandwiched between history and current political hotspots in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe can reasonably enter the category of historical research. Another "30 years" related to this is that many national archives have a confidentiality period of 30 years, so in recent years, a number of archives in the late 1980s and early 1990s have been gradually declassified and published, providing us with a lot of new historical details for us to understand the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changes in the entire Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
For example, the geopolitical relationship between the Soviet Union and the United States, the Soviet Union and European countries and NATO, specific to the late 1980s to discuss whether the Soviet Union should withdraw its troops, how to deal with the two German issues, at that time, whether the United States and Europe or NATO made a commitment to the Soviet Union and later Russia that NATO would not expand eastward, and so on.
In the past three or four years, scholars and researchers have made a systematic use of this batch of new materials, and a number of research results have appeared in many fields (history, political science, international relations, etc.), many of which are also of great significance to the current political reality.
In addition, another approach similar to the long-term period and phased stage mentioned above is to subdivide the Soviet system and the Soviet system according to the policy dimension, and to recomplicate the understanding of the disintegration of the Soviet Union from the perspective of policy space and institutional space.
For example, we often equate the collapse of the Soviet Union with the collapse of the Coalition States in late 1991, but in fact, from the perspective of institutional changes and policy changes, this process covers at least a few basic dimensions below the "Soviet system". The first is the socialist revolutionary concept and communist ideology, the second is the institutional arrangement of the CPSU, including a set of organizational concepts and practical operations, the third is the economic system with public ownership and planned economy as the core, and the fourth is the most directly related to the narrow sense of "disintegration of the Soviet Union", that is, the Soviet Union, as a multi-ethnic federal state, finally forms a geographical space with economic mutual cooperation and military Warsaw Pact as the organizational axis, that is, a quasi-empire or quasi-empire that transcends the borders of the Soviet Union. Therefore, if we divide the dimensions according to the system or policy space, the collapse of the Soviet Union actually includes systematic and large-scale changes at these five levels.
It's worth noting, though, that changes at these five levels don't necessarily have to be exactly synchronized. Gorbachev's reforms were really aimed at preserving one part of it and reforming the other part to a limited extent, and its starting point was not to hope for revolutionary changes at the same time at all levels. Therefore, how to understand the relationship between the five levels of the Soviet system and the multiple possibilities of change under specific space-time conditions has also opened up new perspectives at this point in time.
In fact, whether in theory or from the practical attempts in history, there are many possibilities for the relationship between these five levels. Recently, a very important highlight of the study on the transformation of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe is to show that the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe once had its own "globalization" system (especially compared to the so-called "globalization" after 1991, which we are now accustomed to), and that the reform of the region in the 1980s actually discussed and tried many different solutions, although in hindsight, we may only observe one or two of them.
When we open up the multiple dimensions of the "Soviet system," we provide important clues to understanding the collapse of the Soviet Union, the nature of the Soviet-Eastern transformation, and how the transition process has shaped a series of new changes in the region in the last 20 years.
Observer Network: After listening to your explanation, I realized that there is an ethnic issue in the outline of the interview given to you before, and I am afraid that I have made a mistake, that is, many times when understanding the collapse of the Soviet Union, I think that the collapse of a multi-ethnic confederation state is not due to the construction of the national community, in fact, after the reform issues at several institutional levels are linked, in fact, it is not simply a question of whether the community is built well or not, but when it begins to reform, the linkage of many elements may be beyond the scope of control. This, coupled with some subsequent changes within these member states, has led to problems with the entire system.
Xin Zhang: Possibly. In fact, the Soviet reformers of the mid-1980s wanted to move else, but not the framework of the multi-ethnic coalition state. For example, ideological adjustments can be made, liberal elements can be introduced, geopolitical concessions can be made with the West, troops withdrawn from Eastern Europe, Germany can be allowed to reunify, basic control of Eastern European satellite countries can be basically relinquished, etc., economically a little capitalist stuff can be done, and such changes can be. But at the beginning, not only Gorbachev, but also the reformers of that era did not regard the multi-ethnic alliance state as the object of reform, or felt that this level would not move at all, and hoped to maintain this level through reforms at other levels.
Incidentally, of the five levels of the Soviet system mentioned earlier, I think the historical entanglements left over from or the medium- and long-term effects left over from the level of the multi-ethnic coalition state are the most far-reaching, and the other levels may have changed and entered a new era, but this level is not, whether you call it regret or entanglement.
This is also linked to the issue of ethnicity that you mentioned. Putin had a quote in his 2005 State of the Union address – also quoted repeatedly – that "the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century." However, when quoting this sentence, people often quote only the first half of the sentence, and the second half of the sentence is omitted, and his second half of the sentence says- it is necessary to quote the original text - "As for the Russian nation, this has become a real dramatic event." Tens of millions of our citizens and compatriots find themselves outside russian territory. In addition, the disintegrating epidemic has also infected Russia itself. [Note that putin's "Russian nation" here uses российский in the political sense, rather than руский in the ethnic sense. What Putin thinks in his heart, we can't confirm, but at least the literal meaning of this passage tells us in which sense Putin mainly understands the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In the latest documentary " Russia : The Latest History " , which aired on Russian state television , Putin also said again about the 30 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union: "What is the collapse of the Soviet Union? It is the historical separation of Russia in the name of the Soviet Union." He also emphasizes the sudden and dramatic separation between people, peoples and political units, including geographical units, which is his central concern for the changes of 30 years ago. In other words, he did not complain too much about the absence of communist ideology, or the absence of the CPSU, or the collapse of the planned economic system.
That's why I would emphasize the division of these five levels of the Soviet system — of course, one person might divide it into six or seven — primarily to illustrate the complex relationship between institutional or policy dimensions and the multiple possibilities of theory and practice.
Putin is interviewed in a documentary about his personal experiences in the 1990s
Observer Network: Indeed, Putin has not shied away from the Soviet Issue, you mentioned that he called the collapse of the Soviet Union "the disintegration of Russia in history" in a recent documentary, how to understand Putin's words, and what is the connotation of "Russia" in his context? What kind of Russian history is behind this description, and of course this construction itself should also involve a narrative of national identity?
Zhang Xin: This is indeed a very interesting expression, including the launch of this documentary. On December 12, 2021, Russia-1 aired the well-made documentary "Russia: The Latest History," which focuses on the dark, chaotic, and tragic situation that went through russia and beyond throughout the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union. How was this chaotic situation after 2000 gradually contained under the new leadership and system? The subtext is that there is no going back to the chaos of the '90s. This also corresponds to the article Surkov mentioned later in the interview outline.
In this documentary, Putin emphasizes that the collapse of the Soviet Union is the disintegration of historical Russia, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union is actually a Russia that has interrupted history. I have the impression that Putin seems to be using this expression for the first time. This expression, in words that we can more easily understand, is to some extent the effort of russia's top leaders and some political and cultural elites to "integrate the three unifications" of their own history: an attempt to build a link between three historical traditions and three main historical stages, that is, the Tsarist Era, the Soviet Era, and the New Russia from 1991 to the present.
Of course, there are subtleties in the historical continuity of this "unification of the three unifications": for example, the 1990s were a new "chaotic period" to be criticized and avoided now (to borrow the "chaotic period" in Russian history during the end of the Rurik dynasty in 1598 to the founding of the Romanov dynasty in 1613), but how to transcend this era to construct historical inheritance and continuity? Russia's top leaders now believe that the collapse of the Soviet Union has interrupted historical inheritance or historical continuity, but they are increasingly harshly criticizing the radical nature of the Bolshevik Revolution, so they hope to selectively retain and emphasize those parts that can contribute to historical continuity after removing the communist ideology of the Soviet Union, the CPSU, and other elements.
An important effort to construct historical continuity is the discussion of the "Russian world", that is, the concept of a broad and loose community of Russian civilization. This concept is certainly not a new creation, even if only the new Russia after 1991 is considered, in fact, it has been passively used in the mid-1990s. After 2000 Surkov was directly involved, giving it a new meaning. This is an important channel or dimension for the above construction of historical continuity. In connection with Putin's quote "the greatest geopolitical catastrophe," the geopolitical tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union is a reaction or secession of the history represented by the "Russian world."
Therefore, it can also be understood that the launch of this documentary and the promotion of the historical concept behind it represent Russia's new history education, which itself is reviewing the chaotic situation after the dissolution and establishing historical legitimacy for the entire set of institutional models, ideologies and choices of national development paths since the 21st century.
Observer Network: So it sounds like the concept of "Russia" seems to be a bit close to the meaning of "Chinese civilization", to some extent, "Russia" is no longer a simple concept of the country, but a framework similar to civilization?
Zhang Xin: Yes, this is also an important background for the rising interest in "civilized countries" in Russia. At the end of last year, some of Putin's statements at the annual press conference were also more eye-catching, and if you look at it on the basis of the so-called modern nation-state, it will even make people feel disgusted and even dangerous. Putin has repeatedly emphasized that Ukraine and Donbass are inherent territories of Russia in history. "Russia" here is a broad concept, the "historical Russia" that we quoted earlier as he said has been perpetuated. The implication is that we have endured the fact that we have been divided before, but this historical fact has not changed, and thus he also emphasizes that Ukraine is a country created by Lenin, not an independent country.
Whether it is the "Russian world" or "historical Russia" as a civilization, there is a broad historical inheritance, which is the basis for the possibility of running through its three historical stages and unifying the three traditions.
Of course, what I have just quoted is the expression of the supreme leader of Russia and the small circle of political elites around the supreme leader, and to what extent such ideas and expressions represent the consensus of the entire Russian society and are willing to put it into practice, I think it is still a question mark.
For example, the russian public as a whole is generally indifferent to and even disgusted with the recent question of whether Russia will go to war with Ukraine. Various polls show that the current people are mainly concerned about domestic livelihood issues, such as inflation, employment, epidemic prevention and control, etc., rather than relations with NATO or war with Ukraine, and the support rate for a full-scale war with Ukraine is very low.
The Russian public had previously had high support for the repossession of Crimea, but once the bloody reality of the War in Ukraine emerged, Russian society quickly shifted to a defensive attitude, denying that Ukraine was a real war, dismissing Russia from its involvement and pointing criticism at the U.S. and Ukrainian governments. For now, if there is a full-scale war between Russia and Ukraine, it will be difficult for Russian society to reproduce the cross-class consensus that revived the original patriotic upsurge in Crimea.
Observer Network: Since you mentioned Surkov, it is time to talk about an article he recently published, which has also been noticed by the domestic media. He mentioned a few problems in the text, which I couldn't understand, but I thought it was very interesting.
The first is that he talks about "if the 'ideology of silence' is ignored, it will eventually disrupt the existing order of things, which is exactly what happened at the end of the Soviet Union", so what was overlooked 30 years ago? And he said that the current government needs to pay attention to what people are silent about, so what is he worried about, or have they smelled the undercurrents in society?
The second is to talk about external exports, he believes that this disorder will be exported in some way, but seems to avoid talking about the expansion of actual sovereign territories, the so-called borders have become very virtual, but very broad; he even thinks that Russia will expand, not good or bad, but a kind of physics, how to understand his words?
Putin and Surkov (pictured, right)
Zhang Xin: Speaking of this article, jokingly, this can be seen as Surkov's "old three": the first is "a hundred years of loneliness", the second is "Putin's long-term country", and the third is the recent "Where has the chaos gone?" ”。 There are also connections and continuations between the three articles.
In a recent article, Surkov borrowed the concept of thermodynamics to emphasize that entropy in a closed system will continue to rise, and the state is mainly a tool for reducing entropy. Surkov asked: If in the first 20 years of the 21st century, the chaotic period that began with the high "entropy" value of Gorbachev's new thinking reform was brought to governance, then where did the entropy and chaos that did not disappear go? And he worries that now that Russian society has reached a stage where entropy is rising, accumulating, and likely to explode, the most immediate response — as has been the case in history — is to let entropy break through the closed system like steam and release outward.
By "ideology of silence," I understand it to mean the forces unleashed by mass politics, but these silent forces are released (according to Surkov) "unstructured, dark, and self-consistent," in the form of the political needs of the masses released during the Gorbachev era that "don't really know what they want." History has repeatedly proven that liberal experiments against the "silent ideology" of domestic politics are very dangerous, so the response strategy is to "export chaos" to the outside world.
The combination of strategies such as "uniting oneself internally" and "separating external opponents" has been tried and tested by many empires in history in Surkov's view, and Russia has relied on such strategies to survive. The sentence at the end of his article is particularly blunt: "Russia will expand, not because it is good or bad, but because this is physics." ”
Of course, Surkov does not hold official positions at this time, so you can think that this is purely his personal expression, but he still has a certain symbolism and influence.
Your question is good: what exactly does Surkov mean by the value of "entropy"? Or rather, what exactly is the ideology of silence? He is a direct example of the political needs of the masses that were unleashed in the 1980s and 1990s, which are blind, disorderly, and thus dangerous. Then, internally, Russia's historical continuity was broken by the collapse of the Soviet Union in a broad sense, and many Russians suddenly found themselves no longer in their home country — a somewhat Zionist narrative — so that what most people are dissatisfied with now, the ideology of silence, may be to rebuild our world, including the return of ethnic groups, ideologies, specific geographical boundaries. Such "silent ideologies" can naturally be linked to the recent tug-of-war between Eastern Ukraine, Crimea, and the Black Sea, as well as with the United States and NATO over the European security system. This may serve as a commentary on the so-called "silent ideology" of the moment.
I have said before that one of the social bases of the current Russian top leader (especially after his second term) is that he awakens the "silent majority" in Russian society. Within the original political system and elite leadership order, the ideas and pursuits of these silent majorities are not represented, and political leaders like Putin "awaken" these people.
Surkov took the problem a step further: "after awakening", what about these disorderly, chaotic needs? I think it's a possible understanding, but his original expression is very vague.
Of course, this is also the interesting thing about Surkov himself, who sometimes likes to play the role of a philosopher and express his ideas in this seemingly philosophical way. He held key positions in the Russian government for a time, and in the early days he was mainly responsible for the Kremlin's external public relations, shaping the ideological and political space, such as participating in the formation and operation of the "United Russia Party", was the initiator of the youth organizations "Come Together" and "Our Homeland", and proposed and developed several major political ideas, including "sovereign democracy" and "Russian world".
After the 2011-12 political cycle, he briefly left the political center but was later pulled back into the small circle around the president, including as a personal adviser to the Russian president on ukraine, South Ossetia, and Abkhazia.
Surkov, "Where did the chaos go?" ”
Given his personal political resume, especially his most recent official post, his current writing of such an article would naturally provoke much imagination from the outside world.
His articles certainly also provide us with an understanding of the continuity of Russian history. In his vision of a future world, contemporary powers, including Russia, will have a similar tendency to explode in internal entropy and to seek to release pressure from the outside — some of which have been practiced for years, and then only some equilibrium of great powers that mutually recognizes the sphere of influence is a guarantee that the future world will avoid self-explosion; and in the process, Russia will regain its place in the "Third Rome" or "Third International" period — a very small number of promoters of globalization. Such a "victory in chaos" idea is certainly not uncommon within Russia.
Observer Network: These narrative narratives, combined with the series of turmoil surrounding Russia since last year and its actions in Central Asia, what is Russia's view of the post-Soviet space and what kind of order is it trying to construct? Earlier this year, at a lecture on the Observer Network, you used the phrase "Goodbye Empire?" when talking about Russia and the "post-Soviet space." "Is there any change or response to this topic now?"
Zhang Xin: The last offline event was indeed a very preliminary idea, "Goodbye Empire? The title is actually a borrowing of a judgment of Dmitry Trinin, a very influential figure in Russian strategic circles at the time: represented by the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict in the Caucasus in 2020, the political changes in Belarus, and a series of changes in Central Asia, one sign revealed at that time was that Russia was somewhat unable to deal with affairs in the post-Soviet space or in its own "peripheral" ("near-abroad") region, which was somewhat inadequate, costly and difficult to maintain. Appropriate contractions, even partial tolerances, of Turkey's entry into transcaucasia during the recent Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, were previously unimaginable.
On March 21, 2021, the author participated in the "Guan Academy" event and made a speech entitled "Goodbye, Empire? " speech.
There is also a lot of discussion in Russia about these possible new principles. For some of Russia's elites, recent facts have shown that it is neither possible nor necessary to return to the Soviet-era imperial system (one of the five levels) or the Tsarist Empire 200 years ago, nor can it be expected to maintain ties with these countries in the same way that the soviet-era maintained central-local relations.
At the end of last year, just before the 30th anniversary of the dissolution of the Russian Valdai Club, it released a report entitled "Space Without Borders", written by the Russian scholar Timofe Bordachev (or translated as "Bordachev"), who has since published a long article on a similar theme in russia's influential political magazine "Russia in Global Affairs", which comprehensively sorts out a "median" view of the Russian political elite on how to deal with peripheral relations. (Note: A link to Timofe Bordachev's article is at the end of this article.) ）
The basic meaning is that Russia should be more intelligent in its use of its limited resources, and on the premise of fully acknowledging the fact of the collapse of the Soviet Union, it must also be fully aware of its irrevocable geographical relations and common and special historical relations with its neighboring countries (mainly the former Soviet space, or the "Eurasian space"); it is neither possible nor necessary to return to the Tsarist Empire or the Soviet era, but these facts cannot erase the special continuity of Eurasian space in time and space. At the same time, Russia's territory, population, geographical location within Eurasia and comprehensive capabilities based on military power in Eurasian space cannot be changed. In other words, it is impossible and unnecessary for Russia and its neighbors to establish relations of complete equality, independence and consistency between the state under ideal conditions, and relations with neighboring countries Russia must also make more flexible and diverse arrangements according to the characteristics of each object. Both Russia and its neighbors should consider their relations with each other on the basis of this basic understanding.
Of course, there are some things that Bordachev's article does not say directly. For example, in the case of Ukraine, is it possible that the so-called flexible treatment will somehow establish a substantial neutral state? Established in some form of treaty?
At the same time, the situation in this space has changed very quickly in the past year or so, and there are many situations that were not expected a year ago. For example, after the ups and downs of Belarusian politics in the past year, Russia has greatly reduced the space that Lukashenko used to maneuver on all sides, pulling Belarus closer to its own control track. In the regional conflict over Ukraine, Russia also unexpectedly proposed two draft agreements on European security to the United States and NATO last December, and the Russian-led collective security organization that just sent peacekeeping troops to Kazakhstan in January. These are all possible manifestations of special and flexible relationships.
In the draft security agreement proposed by the Russian government to the United States and NATO, Russia's most important demand is clear: the United States and NATO promise that NATO will not expand eastward and refuse to admit the former Soviet republics to join NATO. Specific demands to restrict the deployment of specific levels of weapons and military exercises by both sides in the relevant areas are equivalent to retreating from the existing "control areas" and creating a buffer zone. This approach is not one side's complete control over the other, and does not involve the "return" or "annexation" of territory, but it also recognizes the particularity of Russia and its neighbors in history and space. On this basis, the parties can make some flexible arrangements, including, for example, the eventual de facto "Finnishization" of Ukraine.
On January 10, 12 and 13, 2022, Russia held security talks with the United States, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. The picture shows the scene of the US-Russia talks on January 10
These approaches and assumptions are somewhat like a state of affairs between an ideal "empire" and an ideal sovereignly independent "nation-state." The former is a blurred and expanding boundary, allowing multiple and complex identities internally, and does not require strict and absolute identity allegiance, while internal governance maintains diversity in response to the heterogeneity of people and regions. The latter is a sovereign state in the modern sense under the ideal state, with a single and clear internal identity and loyalty relationship, homogeneous governance, clear external borders, and equal coexistence between countries, and these absolutes and equalities of sovereign states are safeguarded through international law. Russia now hopes to find some kind of middle state between the two, not even a middle state, but a concept and institutional arrangement for self-positioning and handling relations between states beyond the dichotomy of "empire" and "nation-state".
The concept of the "Russian world" that we talked about earlier is actually related to the above ideas. Related to this is a lot of discussions in Russia about "civilized countries", which aims to argue that Russia has similarities with modern China, India, Iran, Turkey and other countries, to some extent, they are all civilized countries, and they cannot be completely framed by the ideal system between the modern nation-state and such a country in an ideal state, nor are they fully integrated into the Western world. So, Now Russia is not about to return to the Empire, but the internal and external political order behind the civilized state is certainly different from the system between the ideal nation-states.
The "Russian world" is also, to some extent, an element of such a civilized state, and there is an overlap between the two. Russia in this worldview is based on the civilization as the core, and you can accept my civilization as a part of me, not a narrow definition of race or descent, nor a simple definition of political identity in geographical space, and the definition of identity in both dimensions is relatively vague and open. This is what I understand to be the meaning behind some of the words of my Russian counterparts and the russian supreme leader.
In fact, these ideas have been partly reflected in the complex changes in Russia's relations with different countries and regions in the former Soviet Union space in the past two years, and it is difficult to say how far it can be pushed forward in the future. Because this set of theoretical interpretations of political identity, ethnic identity, and national borders, under the premise of incorporating many pre-modern elements and emphasizing the continuity of pre-modern history, is actually some postmodern meaning. By the way, Surkov himself likes to play with this set of things, and has always wanted to do some conceptual theory in this direction.
Of course, the corresponding greater challenge is its undefinability, because within the framework of the postmodern worldview and discourse, there is no absolute truth, and everything is conditional and can be reinterpreted, which brings a lot of space, freedom and flexibility to understanding reality or imagining the future, but it will undoubtedly also bring great uncertainty and even confusion.
Part of the result of such "chaos" is that neither the collapse of the Soviet Union nor the end of the Cold War may have completely changed a set of longer-term historical laws and cycles. Some people joke that the modern symbols we see now, such as nato's eastward expansion or the bipolar hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union, have not essentially changed the geopolitical competition in Europe for two hundred years, and the basic logic of geographical map and inter-ethnic relations has not changed much. So many Westerners criticize Russia: Your view of nationality, your political concept of internal and external affairs, is completely back to the 19th century, do you want to return to the imagination space of the 19th century?
But at the same time, many people believe that this set of things after the Cold War is not the "status quo" that Russia wants to maintain at all, and Russia's practice is not to simply return to a historical origin, but to construct a postmodern internal and external self-definition that has not been practiced before, in a sense. Russia today may be in a painful struggle, and it is not known how these abstract things will be concretely presented.
Residents of the Donbass region apply for a Russian passport. In 2019, Putin signed a decree relaxing restrictions on citizenship applications for residents of Wudong. Pictured from Reuters
Observer Network: A modern nation-state, historically existing in the era of too large empires, or periods of continuous territorial expansion, its legacy may be very far-reaching, and this influence may also be natural. In fact, my initial understanding was that the chaotic state after the WITHDRAWAL of the United States from Afghanistan gave Russia some room for maneuver, but after listening to your recent moves in Dealing with Eurasian Affairs and the logic behind it, I need to revise my understanding. Bordachev's statement about how Russia should deal with peripheral affairs is strategic, practical, and can only do so at this stage, but like Surkov or Putin talking about "Russia", it is to describe the "Russian world" in a broader and vague space, but back to reality, they are very pragmatic in dealing with the problem, while maintaining a relationship with the surrounding space.
Zhang Xin: It can be understood that in fact, Surkov's previous articles have similar statements: Russia now does not have such capabilities and does not have sufficient resources, and no longer has the luxury of returning to the imperial era, and it needs to be admitted that important changes have indeed taken place in the Soviet space and Eurasian space in the past 30 years, and a group of independent countries have emerged. Russia must reconsider its flexible relationship with each of its neighbors, with the limited resources and capabilities available to them. Bordachev said that what is now being constructed is not Russia's "sphere of influence," but the common "sphere of interests" of Russia and its neighbors.
Some countries inside and outside this space are worried that one day, Russia's capabilities and resources will rise again, and the relationship between the two may not be so "flexible". In fact, there are some Eurasianists in Russia now, and their ideas are very straightforward, to rebuild Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Empire to some extent, to really return to the big political map, of course, it is possible that the three Baltic states are no longer in their consideration.
By the way, at Putin's annual press conference at the end of 2021, he mentioned that the Soviet Union was divided into 12 units in the 1990s. That's interesting, which 12? At that time it was 15 republics. One of the most plausible explanations is that he "kicked" the baltic states out, but he is not sure whether Putin's expression is some kind of signal release or subconscious blurted out.
Again, however, the set of expressions we are discussing – including the "Russian world" – has instrumental significance and can be used and reinterpreted. These concepts and concepts are not actually only proposed now, or even mentioned in the Putin era, as early as the middle of the 1990s, and at first they were often discussed more often among intellectuals, and then politicians began to consider how to apply it to reality.
For example, the meaning of the concept of "Russian world" in the mid-to-late 1990s is very different from what it means today: the meaning of "Russian world" at that time — in academic terms — was "de-territorial/decentralized", which was actually very pessimistic, corresponding to the imaginary picture of the "Russian world" after the Soviet Union like a group of lonely archipelagos scattered everywhere. After 2000, this concept, combined with such things as "sovereign democracy", began to take on the meaning of sphere of influence. Later, the "territoriality" of the concept was reintroduced, and in the process of further politicization, it even took on a Zionist color. Until recently, the "Russian world" has largely evolved into an alternative, that is, to treat the Russian world in a broad sense as an alternative "non-Western modernity."
In early 2022, riots broke out in Kazakhstan, and President Tokayev asked for CSA assistance. Russian peacekeepers travel to Kazakhstan. Pictured from the Red Star Terrace
We can see that in recent years, Putin and some Russian elites have also become more and more blunt in their public statements to express their so-called moderate and healthy conservative positions. In essence, such conservatism is also in line with the "Russian world", constituting a set of ideological combinations at home and abroad.
Sometimes jokingly speaking, this is also the source of the current Russian institutional self-confidence and cultural self-confidence, that is, the Western world no longer represents modernity, so it does not occupy the moral high ground, because the economic neoliberalism you are now engaged in, the cultural "white left" cultural pluralism, and the interventionism of national sovereignty in the name of human rights in international relations is no longer the liberalism that was closely integrated with modernity; you have gone too far, and my conservatism constitutes the classic modernity. So it is up to me now to protect the orthodoxy of modernity. This set of ideas can be linked to nationalities, borders, identities, internal economic development, and the handling of peripheral relations.
Here, of course, we also see tension between the discourse of "moderate conservatism in Russia defending modernity" and a certain postmodern discourse that transcended nation-states and empires before.
Looking back at the Soviet Union, there was a similar tension. There were two sets of modernization efforts in the Soviet Union before: one modernization was the whole system of industrialization, urbanization, and the modern state, but the other modernization was extremely transcendent—the Soviet Union was neither a Russian state nor a nation-state, but remained revolutionary and open, and all revolutionary forces could join, an alliance of all socialist forces in the future, which at that time was a modernization imagination that had never been practiced in past history. It is precisely this set of things that constitute a complex tension with modernization in the sense of industrialization and modern state building, and the two have been tearing each other apart, and finally the disintegration of the Soviet Union is closely related to the collision and entanglement between these two sets of modernization.
In fact, this set of tensions is also reflected in the current Positioning of Russia, including political positioning, civilization positioning, ethnic relations, and understanding of the relationship between neighboring countries, on the one hand, to retain the hard core of conservatism, to be the defender of classical modernity; on the other hand, on the basis of historical continuity, it hopes to practice a set of flexible relations beyond the imagination of empires and modern nation-states. The relationship between the two is interesting.
Observer Network: When will this theory be brought out, when will it return to the level of very pragmatic policies, and it seems to switch freely?
Zhang Xin: Because what we see is mainly the expression of a small number of political elites and a part of the intellectual elite, it is difficult to say whether the general public in Russian society and the middle and lower classes in the state apparatus accept it or whether they can switch back and forth between several sets of narratives and several imaginations with the same freedom.
Like the two modernization struggles mentioned earlier, at the level of industrialization and urbanization, what is needed is a set of scientific and rational economic production and management methods, but at the level of open and alternative modernization, it is ultimately to cancel the market, strangle the drawbacks of modernization, and surpass the class society brought about by industrialization and urbanization. In this way, this set of contradictions is a bit like the dispute between China's two lines in those years.
On the one hand, the current Russian elite hopes to save a modern society that it seems to have been biased by the Western world, but also wants to use historical resources, including pre-modern empires and the Soviet Union, to build a transcendent and alternative system, rather than simply returning to the inter-state and international system at the level of the imperial system.
While Bordachev talked mainly about how Russia deals with its relations with its neighbors, Surkov talks more about historical inheritance and continuity, both of which include some understanding and practice of modern social and political relations or political civilization that transcend the current Western world. In other words, both of them may ask: Why is the "century-old governance" of a strong leader not a modern civilization? Why is the inner cycle not globalization? Why is this the only one you are talking about called modern civilization? This alternative modernization of mine may be more just than yours.
Observer Network: It is true that we can see Russia's flexibility, its instrumentality, but in the eyes of some countries or people, it is dangerous, even a little disgusting. Of course, we acknowledge that this approach and the logic behind it are relevant, but does it really represent an imagination of the future world pattern to some extent?
Zhang Xin: In fact, similar situations exist in other regions and countries. A recent paper I co-authored with several scholars is a comparison of how contemporary Russia, China, and Turkey have selectively used their historical legacies in response to the decline of U.S. hegemony in Eurasia in the post-Cold War era, and how to present similar efforts to "connect the three unifications" (trying to link up the experience of pre-modern empires, the experience of nation-states after the dissolution of empires, and then to a similar contemporary process of liberal reform).
For example, Turkey's recent push for the further upgrading of the Turkic State Committee into an "Organization of Turkic States" can be seen as a response to dissatisfaction with the status quo on the basis of historical heritage, seeking to restore the reimagining and arrangement of the surrounding areas based on ethnic, religious and other elements of civilization. There is historical continuity in this, but it is not (and impossible) to return to the Ottoman Empire, and this discourse construction is also somewhat transcendent.
From November 11 to 12, 2021, the 8th Summit of the "Cooperation Council of Turkic-Speaking Countries" was held in Istanbul, Turkey, and the leaders of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Azerbaijan announced that the "Cooperation Committee for Turkic-speaking Countries" would be renamed "Organization of Turkic States (Alliance)". Of these, Hungary and Turkmenistan are observer States.
Observer Network: If that's the case, will geopolitical changes now or for some time to come highlight the imperial nature of hundreds of years ago, or at least not ignore the influence of this layer?
Xin Zhang: Of course, this is a possible trend, but there will be other factors that affect this trend. For example, changes in the technical and military fields. Historically, the emergence of nuclear weapons has had a fundamental impact on the shape of war and on the nature of geopolitical competition. In the near future, we will see that the Eurasian region itself has become a testing ground for military technology and war forms.
The former includes the extensive use of drones in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict and the Wudong War; the latter, such as the ongoing Wudong War, can be said to be a "post-modern war" of the 21st century: after eight years of fighting, it is still debating what kind of war it is, while saying that it is a civil war, while denying it; saying that Russia participated in the war, but there is no Russian regular army in military uniforms and formal logos, and the Russian government has always denied that it has troops to participate in the war.
Therefore, in the "Normandy negotiations" model of the Wudong issue, Russia has always insisted that it is not a participant in the Conflict between Wudong and the Minsk Agreement, but a mediator and supervisor. On the one hand, Russia has not allowed the Eastern Region to "return" to its home country as Crimea, and the borders and borders between Russia and eastern Ukraine have not changed, but it has issued Russian passports on a large scale to local residents of Donbass – as in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. New technological means and operational arrangements such as these may partially modify the nature of the political struggle in Eurasia over the past two or three hundred years.
Moreover, the conceptual basis of the international system is also changing, such as the understanding of the justice of war, such as the conditions under which national self-determination is allowed. In the hundreds of years of practice and experimentation, at least some of the rules have been recognized by most people, and even though the interpretation and use of these rules are often highly politicized, they are different from those of that era two or three hundred years ago. Just as the United States is now being blamed: What did you do in Kosovo? Russia's accusations of U.S. hegemony in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and other countries also have broad international support.
So at least one set of international rules and mechanisms can be used to measure your behavior, and whether the party claiming it can also discipline itself with the same standards is another question. But rules and norms are inherently there, and they become richer and more nuanced. These will also form a certain constraint on the international political form. I'm not sure if the world will return to the era of imperial competition you mentioned earlier, but the Eurasian region, including Russia, is certainly the most important space to examine this trend.
concentrate:
Timofe Bordachev: The Last Empire and Its Neighbor: Russia's Peripheral Security and Regional Order, in Russian Studies, No. 3, 2021.
Timofe Bordachev: Neither biological nor stepmother – Russia and its neighbors: Between geopolitics and history, translated by WeChat Eurasian New Watch.
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