Russia Profile
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June 18, 2007
Culture and Destiny
Parsing Vladislav Surkov's Latest Speech
By Alexander Arkhangelsky
On the eve of Russia Day, June 12, Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Vladislav Surkov, gave a lecture entitled "Russian Political Culture - The View from Utopia" at the Russian Academy of Sciences. The text of the lecture has not yet been published, so I have had to make do with a synopsis provided by the writer Andrei Levkin and posted on the Polit.ru Internet site. Since the author's points are expressed in such a condensed format, I can only provide notes in the margins instead of a full-fledged commentary.
One of the main problems of the political elites throughout the 1990s was their unwillingness to look beyond the narrow constraints of economics and practical ideology. To a large extent, that was due to the circumstances: There was simply no time to engage the public consciousness. The leaders of the time are wrongly criticized today by their successors, who allege that nowhere in the world apart from Russia and Latin America have all state assets been simply given away in the hope that the market alone will then transform life as we know it.
Such charges are wrong because present-day leaders remember full well why everything was given away in the first place. It's one thing to rule when the price of a barrel of oil is $70, with vast gold reserves and an economy beginning to grow. And it's another thing entirely to take risks and responsibility for a country where the treasury is empty, when no one is prepared to extend any credit and commodity prices are at all time lows.
Whether such external factors were the only cause is another question. Was it really just down to a matter of survival? Or was a Marxist approach alive and kicking in the minds of the leaders, proceeding under the assumption that if we break down the centralized distribution system and free the individual from the chains of socialist slavery, then gradually but unavoidably the country will overcome its past, entering a glittering future, becoming free, open and dynamic?
The main objective was to hold on for as long as possible in the newly created conditions, preventing a slide backwards into the past under the pressure of sluggish habits and momentary impulses. To that end, it was possible to compromise with anyone, including the secret services, as long as it was not the Central Committee of the Communist Party.
The current group of leaders has tried to take a broader approach. They have read a vast quantity of books; they have thought through what someone in power is obliged to think through. It's impossible to avoid that stage of contemplating the roots of Russian democracy - the foundations of traditions that date back centuries, the distinct national political culture, the influence of those centuries of tradition on what is happening here and now. A quote from the Surkov/Levkin synopsis: "Is Russian political culture something that has to be overcome and forgotten? In one of Dostoevsky's works, a character shoots himself because 'it is better not to be Russian.' All those who wanted to change things couldn't overcome the national. Only those reforms are passed in which 'our own' can be found."
Nevertheless, this is just a stage through which every student of the humanities passes in his first three years at university, reaching a simple conclusion with regard to the future: the cultural soil, the stereotypes of national consciousness, anchored by literature, art, everyday life and custom, should be taken into account during any changes or upheaval. In other words, the changes should proceed at an unhurried and unforced pace, always attuned to the surroundings.
In a very direct sense, the groundwork should be laid, because the matrices only become unalterable where and when the people themselves, in their own interests create the conditions for the existence of such matrices, be it tyrannical, personalized power, muted public opinion, or indifference to individuality. Not because the matrices are eternal, but because it's easy to rule this way - to cover up the shameless thievery on the part of the elites, as well as to justify one's own behavior.
As far as the country and its direction are concerned, the country is irrelevant here. If we don't want disintegration, we'll keep on moving - looking back to the past, but gradually changing it along with the present, because the past is also alterable.
This is the elementary conclusion that any ordinary student of the humanities reaches by the fourth year of his studies, before moving on to more important issues. It's another matter entirely that the student of the humanities, when going through this unavoidable stage of personal development, doesn't have the instruments of power at his disposal. He is not in a position to swoop down and smash himself against the past in the hope of slipping through into the future without prolonged, stubborn work on the modernization of culture through the replacement of its long-standing stereotypes, and he can't break the future over his knee in order to preserve illusions of some kind of immovable matrix.
Politicians, however, are no students of the humanities, neither in their educational background nor in terms of their mindset. When they belatedly immerse their consciousnesses into such issues, it is both a blessing - there is, after all, at least a chance that they will progress to the next level - and a curse, because of the great temptation to dress up in learned culturological terms widespread lies, a sham democracy and an unrestricted hold on power. And then, personal development comes to an end.
Culture is not destiny. Culture is the soil that must be protected, cultivated, but not necessarily planted from year to year, from century to century with the same weeds. Destiny implies the unpredictability of historical development; it is the force that changes circumstances and compels us to move forward. Culture is protective, fate unpredictable. They need each other badly. Without the support of gradually altering culture, quick-firing fate is left aimlessly searching, akin to rootless tumbleweed blowing across the field. Without a readiness to answer the challenges of fate, culture is a desiccated, lifeless field; only the wind brings new seeds and provides an opportunity for constant renewal.[]
Alexander Arkhangelsky is a columnist for Izvestiya. The opinions expressed are the author's own, and not necessarily those of RIA Novosti's editorial board.