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From: "Vladimir Shlapentokh" <shlapent@msu.edu>
Subject: new article
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 2008

Behind the Five-Day War: The Ideological Backing of Putin’s Regime
By Vladimir Shlapentokh (Michigan State University)

The responsibility of Georgian President Michael Saakashvili for the war with Russia continues to be hotly debated in the world. The Parliamentary Assembly of the European Council devoted a two-day session at the end of September to a debate over who started the war. There is not doubt that establishing the role of the Georgian president as the initiator of the war is important for shaping policy in the world toward this politician.

Indeed, there are various views about Saakashvili’s decision to attack South Ossetia. Was he, as the leader of a small country, provoked by Moscow, which permitted (or ordered) the South Ossetian militia to shell Georgian villages? Or had he been looking for a long time for a pretext to take control over the separatists? Did Saakashvili start the conflict, underestimating the Russian reaction and overestimating the level of Western help in the case of Russian military involvement? By the end of the war, the international community was inclined to recognize the adventurous actions of the Georgian president, but put most of the blame on Moscow for its disproportionate reaction, its bombardment of Georgian cities and its occupation of Georgian territory.

Whatever the real cause of Saakashvili’s behavior, his brutal bombardment of Tskhinvali, the center of South Ossetia, on August 8, was no more accountable for the radical shift in international relations in the contemporary world than the actions of Gavrilo Prinzip, who killed Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, and was responsible for the First World War. They both triggered events of a scale that contrasts with their modest or even insignificant personalities and roles in international politics. Indeed, a Bosnian Serb student and the president of a small republic of four million people both changed the world, even if the first triggered developments of a much greater conflict (we should hope) than the flamboyant Georgian leader. The murder of the archduke was used as a good pretext for Austria­Hungary to crush the kingdom of Serbia and activate its alliance with Germany and then the Ottoman Empire. In the second case, Russia also looked for a pretext to invade Georgia and show its readiness to challenge the West, the United States in particular, which tries to prevent Russia from being treated in the world in a “respectful way,” a key term in the contemporary political lexicon, particularly on the territory of the former Soviet republics. In any case, Prinzip and Saakashvili’s role as triggers is indisputable, whatever were their motivations and whatever the forces behind them.

An Unprecedented Confrontation with the World

In fact, the Russian leaders, by crossing the Georgian borders and leaving their troops on the Georgian territory after the military hostility, showed that they are not afraid of antagonizing the world or becoming isolated internationally. As a pro-Kremlin Russian author stated in the aftermath of the war, “Moscow does not have allies today.” As a matter of fact, no one ruler in Russian history dared to confront the world in such an uncompromising way as Putin did. Never during such a critical juncture was Russia supported by so few countries as is the case now. As noted by some Moscow analysts, the Soviet Union did not experience such a high level of global hostility after the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 or the invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Soviet Union had some allies among Communist countries, as well as among countries from the Third World, with their clear sympathy for the Soviet Union as a fighter against imperialism. Moscow could also rely on the Communists and radical critics of capitalism in almost each country of the world, who helped Soviet propagandists talk about the international support of Soviet actions.

It is remarkable that Russian official media, which did its best to present Moscow’s behavior in the conflict in the most flattering way, could cite only Cuba, Venezuela, Mongolia and Syria as countries that endorsed the invasion of Georgia. However, none of these countries recognized the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Only Nicaragua, underscoring Russian isolation, recognized the independence of both entities, which was highlighted in Russian media. However, so far even the countries that supposedly maintain friendly relations with Russia are not in a hurry to show their support.

In August, Belorussia greatly irritated Russia when it took a neutral position, as declared by President Alexander Lukashenko. He offered only a few words in support of Russia in his public conversation with Medvedev and sent vague signals about the possible recognition of the two republics. It was not until early September when Belorussia, under evident pressure from Russia, promised to recognize both republics. The same position was taken by Nursultan Nazarbayev who was always touted by Moscow as a staunch ally. In order to dispel the opinion about Russia’s isolation, Moscow parsed any statement in such a way as to find a modicum of endorsement of its actions. Medvedev, after the meeting of the Shanghais group of Asian countries in late August, thanked the leaders of the summit “for understanding the objective assessment of Russia’s peace activity” in the conflict, while, in fact, none of the participants, including Iran, endorsed Russia’s behavior and none of them declared its intention to recognize the breakaway republics. Another organization that was supposedly directed by Russia ­ the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which comprises Belorussia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Tadzhikistan and Kirgizstan ­ ignored the issue of recognizing the two breakaway republics in its final declaration on September 5.

Various Types of Reactions to International Isolation

Only a few official journalists tried to simply deny or reduce the negative international reaction to “some aggressive forces” in the West. The leading reaction to the world’s hostility was formulated directly by the Kremlin. First, it tried to downgrade the scale of the international opprobrium toward Moscow’s actions. As Putin said in an interview with German TV, “Europe and the USA are not the whole world.” Some journalists tried to focus on the lack of unity among members of the European Union on its policy toward Russia and the inability of the Europeans to undertake any serious actions against the country. Second, the Kremlin, particularly in the first weeks after the war, scoffed at the international condemnation, describing it as not at all dangerous to Russia. Even if the West was hostile, as Medvedev suggested, nothing dangerous could happen. He added, “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War.” During his meeting with Russian entrepreneurs, only a few days before the start of the financial crisis in Russia, Medvedev, to the horror of his audience, challenged the importance of the global marketplace to the country and insisted that if “some markets are closed to us there will be no catastrophic consequences, neither for the state nor for business,” and that the economic isolation “will only encourage the development of the internal market.” In his defiance, Putin went so far as to downgrade the importance of a boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Sochi in 2014, a pet project in which he has invested a lot of emotion.

In August and September, the official media was full of articles that mocked the possible sanctions against Russia, suggesting that it would damage the West more than Russia. With special gusto, politicians and journalists emphasized that the West, even Europe, is not united around a policy toward Russia­a fact, which, however, does not belie the evidence that even without direct sanctions Russia is poised to suffer a lot from the international opprobrium toward its actions, particularly in the modernization of its economy.

The use of four-letter words by Foreign Minister Lavrov in a telephone conversation with his British counterpart was an unheard of event even during the harshest periods of the Cold War in Stalin’s time. This is a very serious sign of the Kremlin’s indifference toward the West’s reaction to its moves. In fact, Lavrov was following the language used by Putin and Medvedev, who vied with each other, as reported by Novaya Gazeta, in using vulgar and obscene words to insult their foreign opponents.

Hawkish journalists and politicians expressed their delight in response to the new turn in relations with the West. The pro-Kremlin journalists Mikhail Leontiev and Maxim Shevchenko extolled the various benefits of a new Cold War, such as the end of the flow of Russian capital abroad, and the replacement of imported goods with domestic products. Some went so far as to identify the five-day war, as it is often labeled by Russian media, as a powerful stimulus for the mobilization of society in defense of their interests, a further increase in the role of the state in the economy and a delay in the attack on oligarchs and their fortunes.

The Genocide of Ossetians and Security of Russia: Weak Ideological Arguments

Contrary to the Soviet times, when the Kremlin could use a powerful Communist ideology for backing up its aggressive actions in foreign affairs, Moscow today does not have such an opportunity. Now Russia, as formulated by a Moscow intellectual, is ideologically “naked,” a fact that was recognized indirectly by a high Russian official who mentioned that “the Cold War was based on a clash of ideologies,” which is now impossible (in fact, the Cold War was a fight for geopolitical supremacy, which covered an ideological battle). The absence of an official ideology that is attractive to foreigners and Russian citizens turned out to be, as the prominent Moscow political analysts Dmitry Furman noted, a great obstacle to the country’s efforts to justify its war against Georgia. The slogan “Great Russia,” which worked rather well inside the country, only aroused hostility among its neighbors and the rest of the world.

The attempt to replace the Soviet ideology with an ideology of fighting “the genocide of Ossetians and Abkhazians” did not succeed, even if Moscow, in the beginning, supported the rude falsified data about the thousands of Ossetians killed during the Georgian bombardment of Tskhinvali­in any case a deeply regrettable fact­while the actual number of victims was one to two hundred.

From time to time, Russian politicians forgot about “genocide” and talked about the necessity of “defending the interests of our citizens,” having in mind the many Ossetians who have Russian passports and the Russian peacekeepers in South Ossetia. Putin, in his typical vulgar style, even proclaimed that the Kremlin had to choose “between sausage and life.” However, both ideological arguments in favor of the invasion could not stand up to international public opinion, despite the precedent of Kosovo and the principle of state integrity. The negative attitudes of the world toward Russia’s decision to recognize the independence of both breakaway republics clearly showed how much the integrity of the sovereign state continues to be a firm principle for almost all countries in the world.

The “security argument” was used as the ideological underpinning of the war. It was addressed to foreigners, as well as to the Russian public. The security argument was framed in terms of the Cold War, which was still fresh in the public’s memory. The expansion of NATO to the east to possibly include Ukraine and Georgia was treated as a major threat to the country’s security. In fact, the actual situation had nothing in common with the Cold War when two superpowers were caught in a mortal grip and each of them expected a lethal strike from the other. We have not seen anything similar since the collapse of the USSR. No one in the United States or Russia supposes, even for a second, as the liberal Russian journalist Leonid Mlechin insisted, that a nuclear war or any other military confrontation is possible. Many Russian authors repeated, even during the military delirium in August 2008, that there is no real threat of a war with NATO.

The official media are far from analyzing the origin of the NATO expansion to the east. Only a few liberals confronted the official media with an objective analysis of NATO’s expansion. As some of them suggested, it was not the West that activated this process. Eastern European countries and Russia’s neighbors yearned to join NATO. It was the direct result of Russia’s hostility (often open, but sometimes hidden) toward these countries since the mid 1970s. If the leadership was indeed concerned about the security of the country, it would have courted its neighbors in order to gain their loyalty, which could be used in various ways, including military cooperation. Take, for instance, Ukraine. The official Russian media and the majority of the population, as noted by several liberal Moscow journalists, does not treat Ukraine as a sovereign state and constantly mocks the idea of Ukrainian independence. In the aftermath of the five-day war, Russian media went so far as to openly demand the revision of the borders with Ukraine, because the 1999 agreement supposed “a friendly policy of Kiev toward Moscow.” Since this was not the case, Russia could claim the annexation of some territories, Crimea in particular. An article in Izvestiia about Russian attitudes toward Ukraine was titled, “The Second Crimean War.”

If Moscow helped Georgia achieve the integrity of its territory, while respecting the autonomy of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, this country, with its deep economic, religious and cultural ties with Russia, would definitely be a faithful Russian ally. The proposal to join NATO would have been rejected by the absolute majority of the Georgians, always great lovers of Russia. The Baltic republics would not have been so eager to be in NATO if they were not the targets of venomous h atred of Russian official circles. To demonstrate their negative attitudes toward Poland, Moscow invented a new public holiday on November 4; four hundred years ago, in 1612, the Polish invaders were ousted from Moscow.

But even if we ignore the causes of NATO’s expansion to the East, many Russians do not take seriously the thesis about the threat of NATO to the country. Under the barrage of official propaganda in 2007, less than half of the population believed that there was a military threat to Russia.

Security has nothing to do with Moscow’s flirtation with Venezuela. During the Cold War the attempts of the USSR and the USA to expand their influence in each corner of the world had strategic meaning. It showed the willingness of the two superpowers to weaken the position of the other before a possible show down. But this is not the case now. The decision to send the Russian navy to Venezuela had no military importance. It was mostly directed to the domestic audience as another move to sustain anti-American hysteria.

Another powerful argument has been raised by Russian liberals. If the Kremlin was indeed concerned about its security (its main propagandistic card) they would not have allowed, given the massive oil revenues, the army to remain in such miserable shape, which became clear during the military campaign against Georgia. Moscow and foreign analysts are unanimous in their diagnosis of the 58th Army, which was assigned to defeat the small number of Georgian troops who were equipped with obsolete weapons. Seconding the Russian military experts, an American author summarized an evaluation of the Russian army after the war as follows: “the conflict revealed serious weaknesses in Russian military readiness. Georgian air defenses shot down at least six Russian jets, pointing to poor maintenance and inadequate training. Russians took losses because they lacked air cover as they entered South Ossetia, and a Russian general, apparently operating without sufficient intelligence, was wounded when he led a column into a Georgian ambush.” During his meeting with the military in Vladikavkaz after the end of the military hostility, Medvedev himself recognized that the weaponry of the Russian army “should not be worse than those of the Georgian army.” At a meeting with the commanders of the military districts, Medvedev again noted that “the army should be equipped with the most modern weapons.”

The Permanent Necessity of Legitimizing the Regime

In fact, the real cause of the war and the developments that followed was neither Russia’s concerns about security, the desire to protect Ossetians from “genocide” or Russian citizens in the Caucasus. The maintenance of its authoritative regime was the Kremlin’s prime purpose when it reacted to the Georgian attack and confronted the world.

The existing regime, like any authoritarian regime in the contemporary world, despite the high rating of Putin, is in permanent fear of its shaky legitimization (the last presidential election was not seriously defended by anybody in Russia including the loyalists). One of the main reasons for Putin’s hatred of Ukraine and Georgia is that presidents Yushchenko and Saakashvili went back to the “Orange Revolutions” in their countries in 2003-2004. In the aftermath of these revolutions, the Kremlin was in a state of panic, with a new fear, if mostly unfounded, that the “orange disease” would spread to Russia. For almost three years, the media lambasted Kiev and Tbilisi, declaring that the developments there were organized by the West. The idea of “sovereign democracy,” which was invented to justify the authoritarian regime, was born at this time. What is more, with its concerns about a Russian Orange Revolution, the Kremlin created several big youth organizations, such as “Ours,” which were officially ready to enter street battles against the opposition.

The Kremlin’s fear of an Orange Revolution subsided by 2007. However, Putin and his friends, with the country still under their total control, are deeply concerned about the emergence of a real opposition. The Kremlin panics at the first sign of even a weak opposition. The top elite are afraid that a mild opposition may threaten its rule and property. Even an anti-governmental demonstration, with a few hundred participants in Moscow or Petersburg, is treated as a great emergency, which prompts the leadership to mobilize special riot units, as if the crowd is planning to march on the Kremlin. The black list of people who are banned from making appearances on TV has been increasing because even the most humble critics of the regime became “enemies of the people.” Former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasianov, himself a member of the establishment, was immediately ostracized and removed from the presidential election campaign in the beginning of 2008 as soon as he declared his opposition to the regime. Even Mikhail Khodorkovsky is perceived by the Kremlin as a danger to the regime. In August 2008, the Kremlin refused to parole him after five years in prison, despite the pressures from public opinion inside and outside the country and against the expectation of even loyal journalists. Putin sees him as a potentially successful opposition leader.

Putin’s regime, like any authoritarian regime, needs to legitimize its existence in the eyes of the people. The Soviet regimes, which were much stronger politically than that of Putin, needed a permanent ideological underpinning to sustain its legitimacy in the country. The regular ideological campaigns were a fixture of Soviet society at each stage of its history.

The legitimization of the regime is accomplished with “positive” and “negative” propaganda. The role of negative propaganda, with its focus on foreign and domestic enemies, was extremely high in Stalin’s time, but positive propaganda (the achievements of the country in economy, education, science and the arts) still played an important role. In Stalin’s last report to the party congress (1939), negative propaganda (diatribes against foreign and domestic enemies) took up less than 10 percent of the text.

The role of enemies in the post-Stalin period declined significantly and the Soviet leaders and media focused on the great achievements of the country in various spheres of life. Only 15 percent of Andropov’s biggest speech as the leader of the country (he was known as the most belligerent leader after Stalin) was about foreign enemies. The Soviet leaders could indeed boast about the great successes in the building of new factories and railroads, about the pioneering achievements in science and space research, and about the successes in culture and education. In order to persuade the people about the legitimacy of the Communist Party and its leaders, they could indeed rely mostly on “positive” propaganda.

During Putin’s first term, the Kremlin had enough positive arguments to legitimize the regime. The contrast with the 1990s provided them with the possibility of focusing on the stability of society, on the regular payment of salaries and pensions, and on the rise in the standard of living. In Putin’s second term, these arguments no longer worked. He could not use elements of life that were taken for granted in any society as propaganda. Putin needed achievements in the economy, science and culture, which the regime could not supply. His regime could not boast about even one big economic or technological achievement. There were no new large factories, no successes in science and space, and no successes in health services or demography. Even the production of gas, the backbone of the economy, has not grown since 1999.

For this reason, the Kremlin did not want to miss any opportunity, even ridiculous ones, to boast of its success and prompt patriotism. The victory of the Russian football team over the Dutch team in a European competition in June 2008 was turned into a great national festivity, with millions of Muscovites celebrating the victory as if it was a Kremlin achievement (the Russian team ended up in third place). The national jubilation over a rock singer’s first prize in an amateurish music festival (Eurovideo) in May 2008 (the singer was congratulated by both Russian leaders) was another example of the Kremlin’s desperate quest for arousing a patriotic frenzy. Given the lack of opportunities to bolster the regime with its successes, the Kremlin only had one choice: increase the role of negative propaganda and focus on enemies.

Indeed, the relative roles of negative and positive propaganda in Brezhnev’s and Putin’s times were different. Compare, for instance, an issue of Izvestiia published on September 8, 2008 to the September 8, 1980 issue. In the 2008 issue, which contained 40 articles, not even one was on economic or scholarly success. Six articles talked about various problems in the economy; 14 articles talked about various enemies. The rest were about cultural and sporting events. In the 1980 issue, which included 49 articles, 19 talked about economic achievements, 6 articles were about foreign enemies, 11 articles discussed friends abroad (such materials were totally absent 28 years later), and the remaining articles were about cultural and sporting events.

The Crucial Role of Negative Propaganda

With the inability to use “positive” propaganda to legitimize the regime during his second term, Putin increased the role of the imperial and xenophobic ideology. This ideology was supported by Yeltsin’s regime in a mild form already by the mid 1990s when the failure of liberal reforms became evident to the population. Putin elevated the role of the imperial ideology in society. All elements of this ideology (negative attitudes toward the West and the United States, and hatred toward the former Soviet republics and former satellites) were leading material in Putin’s speeches and the official media before 2006.

The war with Georgia increased the imperial ideology’s impact on the public. There is no doubt that Soviet foreign policy served the goals of internal propaganda. This was particularly true in the 1920s and in the first postwar years when the idea of the besieged fortress was very important to the official ideology. However, after 1953, the struggle against the United States for geopolitical position and the real concerns about the possibility of a first American nuclear strike were dominant factors in shaping Soviet foreign actions (not the fuel for internal propaganda). The invasion of Czechoslovakia and particularly the invasion of Afghanistan were considered by the Kremlin as necessary for real geopolitical reasons. In no way can we assert that both invasions were conducted in order to influence the minds of the Soviet people and strengthen the Soviet regime, even less to enhance the prestige of the Soviet leaders or military commanders. Even if the Kremlin hated Alexander Dubcek’s reforms and their possible impact on Soviet intellectuals, its main preoccupation was of geopolitical character. Prague could have left the Warsaw pact. Moscow remembered how Imre Nagy, the Hungarian prime minister during the Hungarian rebellion in 1956, almost as soon as he became the head of state, proclaimed, on November 1, the exit of Hungary from the Warsaw pact. In 1979, Moscow was afraid that Afghanistan would fall either to the Americans or to the Chinese. However, in both cases, the Soviet leaders were not praised by the official media for initiating the actions. The Soviet media tried to downgrade the military importance of the invasions and did not hail them as a military success. The military activities during the Afghan war were mostly ignored by the media. A perusal of Soviet newspapers published in 1980-1985 showed how little the Afghan war was used for ideological purposes, particularly as an argument for praising the leadership and the Communist Party. Even in anti-American propaganda, the developments in Afghanistan were used in a very limited way, and without referring to the role of the “limited-in-size troops” (this was the official term for the Soviet army units in the country). Most of the successes in fighting the mujahedeen were ascribed to “the military forces of the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.”

What a big contrast to the description of the war with Georgia today! The media, the Duma and loyal politicians used the war and the deeds of the army, along with the recognition of the breakaway republics, to praise the Kremlin and its wise leaders. “What can Russia expect from the victory?” was a typical title in newspapers during the war. The Russian media were full of posters from World War II that directly or indirectly replaced the Nazi enemies with Georgia and replaced Berlin as the ultimate goal of the Soviet army with Tbilisi in the current conflict. At a meeting with foreign journalists and political scientists in Sochi (September 11, 2008), Putin himself compared the Georgian army with the Nazi army and the invasion of Georgia with the seizure of Berlin; both actions were necessary for punishing the enemy. Medvedev, in his turn, compared the Georgian attack against Tskhinvali with the terrorist acts on September 11, 2001. He said also that “the world after 8 August was different,” a statement that became part of everyday propaganda.

Ultimately, the five-day war was used as evidence of success in the confrontation not so much with Georgia but with the United States, the real center of hatred in the Russian imperial ideology. Since the beginning of the war, the Kremlin (see speeches by Putin and Medvedev) and its journalists insisted that the true sponsor and organizer of the war was the United States. A clear sign of the anti-American hysteria was the showing on September 12, 2008 of the pseudo-documentary movie “9/11” on the main Russian TV channel. This movie ascribes the responsibility for the terrorist acts on September 11 to American special services. Even the pro-Kremlin journalist Maxim Sokolov was perplexed by this rude and vulgar form of anti-Americanism.

The Cost of War for the Country and its Benefits for the Kremlin

The cost of war for Russia is indeed enormous. There has been a drastic increase in the world’s hostility, Asian countries included, toward the country, which comes with many negative economic and political consequences. The increased fear among Russia’s neighbors has pushed them closer to the West. The famous Machiavellian formula, “it is better to be feared than loved,” which shaped the attitudes of East European countries to the USSR, cannot be applied here. The fear of Moscow’s unpredictable behavior forced its neighbors to revise their means of protecting themselves against possible interventions. The leaders of several countries that are close to Russia expressed their frustration at a meeting of the UN General Assembly; such an event has not happened in the United Nations for a long time. The cost of Russia’s new policy also includes many economic components: a decline in the value of its stock market (the financial crisis in the United States contributed to it) and new obstacles to modernizing the economy. Even Medvedev recognized the impact of the events in South Ossetia on the market. The cost of war also includes an unavoidable growth of military expenditures and the stimulation of separatist movements among the Muslim regions in the country, particularly in the Caucasus.

The moral and intellectual cost of the war should be considered as well. The country plunged into patriotic hysteria, which downgraded the intellectual level of society and encouraged even the best journalists and writers to utter absurdities in defense of the Kremlin’s policy. Putin clearly encouraged this slide toward irrationality in the country’s political thinking when he challenged commonsense and talked about the united “propagandistic machine of the so called West,” which refused to accept the “true” Moscow version of the August events. He was seconded by his doppelganger, Medvedev, who repeated this nonsense.

The Benefit of the War: The Hardening of the Regime

The war allowed Putin, the real master of the country, to harden the political climate. As one Moscow journalist noted, perhaps with some exaggeration, “We now live in another country.” Gone is the speculation about a new “thaw” and the liberal intentions of the new president. Gone is Medvedev’s talk about the “independence of the courts” and “the dominance of law,” though he did say a few words about democracy in September. Instead, many developments in Russia in August were reminiscent of the dark days of the Soviet totalitarian past: the patriotic exuberance of the people in favor of the invasion of a foreign country, the fear of expressing views that were different from the official media, and the use of prominent cultural figures as instruments of official propaganda. One “open letter” against the “Western media,” which distorted “the truth about the war,” was signed by such highly respected people as the famous movie director Karen Shakhnazarov and musician Valerii Gergiev. A few television talk shows, which had been outlets for political discussions (for instance, “Sunday Evenings with Vladimir Soloviev” on NTV) were canceled. Vladimir Pozner, a famous TV journalist who once tried to play the role of an independent thinker, now openly licks Putin’s boots. Pro-Kremlin journalists in the aftermath of the war received new opportunities to lambast liberals who “fell into humanistic cretinism” and dared to “condemn the war” and all participants of the conflict. Today, no member of the legal opposition dares to be critical of the military actions in Georgia. Gennadii Ziuganov, the leader of the Communists, who never missed an opportunity to show his distance from the regime in the past, now vies with the leaders of the leading party Russia’s Unity in his praise of the war. Liberal oppositional parties, such as “The Alliance of Right Forces” and “Yabloko,” practically ceased to exist.

The Kremlin can also celebrate the growth of anti-American and anti-Western attitudes in the country in the aftermath of the war. In August, two thirds of the population thought that the United States is a Russian enemy.

A Shift in Mindset: Oil Revenues and a Revolution in the Kremlin

The important question is not why this shift in foreign policy happened, but why it did not occur several years earlier, when Putin came to power with his slogan about restoring the country’s geopolitical role in the world and reestablishing its control over the former Soviet republics. In fact, until 2006, Putin restrained, to some extent, the impact of the imperial ideology and anti-Americanism on real politics. He even made several moves in favor of the United States, including his offer of cooperation with America in the fight against terrorism.

We can almost identify the exact time when the rise in the price of oil and oil revenues reached a level that suddenly changed Putin’s mind and gave him the confidence to raise Russia “from its knees” (a phrase that has become a fixture in the country’s political lexicon). The price of oil had been increasing throughout Putin’s presidency, but in 2005 he seemingly concluded that the torrent of petrodollars had reached a level that could radically change foreign policy and give a new boost to the imperial mood in the country. On December 22, 2005, at a meeting of the Russian Security Council, Putin proclaimed that Russia was back on top and playing a key role on the world stage. At this moment, Putin’s oil pride spread to the ruling class. The idea that the country could now dictate its will to the world, or at least to European countries, without speaking of former Soviet republics, such as Ukraine, Georgia and Belorussia, became a major slogan in the Kremlin’s propaganda, just as victory in war and Sputnik had been the centerpieces of Stalin’s and Khrushchev’s propaganda, respectively. The magic power of oil became a major source of inspiration for imperial and nationalistic feelings. Dmitry Medvedev, the first deputy prime minister and the future heir to Putin, in a rare political interview in July, devoted two-thirds of his talk to describing how oil and gas had strengthened the country.

The Further Development of the Dutch Disease: Contempt for America

With the growing influx of money to Russia, the Kremlin began to release itself from a deeply entrenched acceptance of the United States as a country with a much stronger economy and military. In the past (whatever the Russians’ views of America) the United States was recognized as a powerful country with the biggest and most efficient economy in the world and a well-organized state machine. There were periods (if to consider history after 1917) when Moscow held very positive attitudes toward the United States: adoration in the 1920s, high respect during the war, and friendliness in the second half of the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. We can also see periods of deep hostility toward the United States: hatred in the late 1940s and early 1950s, moderate enmity in the 1960s and 1970s, high hostility in the early 1980s, and mistrust between the mid 1990s and 2007. Even if the intensity of the anti-American propaganda varied in the postwar period, one feature was typical for all Soviet regimes: the Soviet Union was economically and technologically behind the United States. This thesis was essential not only in the closed, or internal, party ideology, which was addressed to the nomenklatura through mostly secret channels of communication, but also, to some degree, in the open ideology. Praising the numerous advantages of the Soviet system over the Western one, the Soviet textbooks recognized that technologically the USSR was still behind the West. In fact, Gorbachev’s ascension to power was a direct result of the belief in the Politburo that Reagan’s Star Wars project would make the technological superiority of the United States over the USSR incompatible with the survival of the USSR as a superpower. In each of these periods, the United States was recognized as powerful.

However, by 2008, a new type of attitude crystallized that was practically unknown in Russia. The jump in oil revenues, along with a new ability to blackmail Europe with its supply of fuel, gave Putin a new self-confidence and arrogance. The oil intoxication changed the minds of the Kremlin on many issues. The Kremlin leader and the whole elite suddenly began to feel superior over the world, the United States and Europe in the first place. The various economic difficulties that the United States experienced in 2006-2008 helped convince the Kremlin that America is no longer a superpower. Putin and the elite were not confused at all by the fact that, besides oil revenues and the ability to turn off the gas pipelines, nothing happened in Russia that made it economically, technologically or militarily stronger than it was before 2005. The new image of America held by the Russian leader and his circle was conveyed to the elite and the general public. It was accepted with joy by everybody who was in line with the Kremlin, felt nostalgia for the empire and saw the United States as the major culprit of the country’s humiliation in the 1990s.

The elite’s frontal attack against America as a society (media have been doing it for a long time, particularly since 2000) was started, of course, by Putin himself. In his Munich speech in February 2007, which was deeply anti-American, he talked for the first time, with weakly veiled contempt, about those “who teach us democracy but do not want to learn it themselves” (he clearly had the United States in mind). He mocked the United States, which has gone from one conflict to another without achieving a full-fledged solution to any of them.

In the last two years, Russian media denigrated America as a weak country, with a failing economy, stupid people and cynical leaders, which is doomed to collapse. A few days before the Georgian war, the Kremlin considered it necessary, via a high-level Russian diplomat, to explain to the world what it thinks about the United States. He told a leading Russian newspaper that “the collapse of America is unavoidable.” Developing his view, this high official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs suggested that now Russia can “afford to not have any relations with the USA.” In an unprecedented way, President Medvedev rebuked America as a country that “lives beyond its means,” and suggested that the American president should “find out what is going on with the American economy” instead of meddling in foreign affairs.

Not only those who served the Kremlin, but even many liberals who were critical of Putin joined the chorus of those who taunted and ridiculed America. Yulia Kalinina, a brave critic of Putin’s regime, is convinced about “the degradation of the management system in the United States.” Another famous liberal, economist Alexander Lifshitz, suggested that any respect for the American experience in the economy is gone. Downgrading the might of America, Moscow is unique even among the greatest haters of the United States. Chavez continues to describe America as a dangerous monster and an “empire” that is able to take control over Latin America.

Russia’s Greedy Elite: A Chance to Stop the Deterioration

In using the imperial ideology and aggressive foreign policy, the Kremlin is concerned not only about public support. The loyalty of the elite is of special importance to the Kremlin. The absolute majority of the elite is politically passive and do not participate in the decision making process in the Kremlin. At best they can play the role of advisers. However, the Kremlin is deeply concerned about the loyalty of “the passive elite,” because its members help to maintain the regime, control the army and the FSB, and run public propaganda. The elite includes most of the state apparatchiks at high levels, the FSB and military commanders, the members of the parliament, and leading media figures­a group that includes no more than 1,000 to 1,500 people.

Most members of the elite clearly enjoy the patriotic ecstasy along with ordinary people. They are happy with the Kremlin’s antidemocratic actions, since only the authoritarian regime is able to guarantee their privileges and preserve their illegal fortunes. At the same time, many members of the elite are rather critical of the rude confrontation with the West. We can speculate, following the view of the famous Moscow journalists Yulia Kalinina and Andrei Riabov, that the elite, given their close material ties to the West (a Russian journalist referred to them contemptuously as the “offshore elite”) are sizzling with repressed anger against the Kremlin’s policy. These people, as Kalinina writes, not without irony, are afraid to be cut off from their “honestly acquired villas in Spain, mountain ski resorts in France, yachts in the Mediterranean, and London boutiques.” These people already, in various ways, feel the consequences of the West’s animosity toward Moscow’s policy. A pro-governmental journalist described in Izvestiia how unfriendly London became toward Russian travelers after the war.

The ability of the critical members of the elite, who hide their views from the public and perhaps even from friends, to encourage the Kremlin to change its harsh anti-Western position without endangering their positions is very limited. Only under propitious circumstances can they persuade the Kremlin, using the personal interests of Putin and his circle as an argument, to move politics in a different direction.

We can only guess what was going on behind the Kremlin walls in the last weeks of September and what persuaded Putin and his partner in power to relent, somewhat, in their aggressive tone against Europe. They continued, however, as Medvedev’s speech in Evian (October 8) showed, to lambast the United States as the major villain, accountable for all evils in the world, economic and political. Both leaders started inviting foreign media experts for various meetings, during which they tried to soften their position and presented Russia as a pure victim of the crazy Georgian president. The Kremlin showed its delight as it hosted foreign dignitaries, including the Spanish and German prime ministers. With special fervor, the Kremlin tried to foment, as Brezhnev did in the 1970s, the discord between the United States and Europe, and demonstrated good relations with Sarkozy.

The Kremlin does not miss an opportunity to declare that a new Cold War is impossible, which contrasts with what they said a few weeks before. Downgrading the shrill anti-Western tone in their propaganda, the Kremlin has not, however, retreated from its position of confrontation with the world, which is important for perpetuating its deeply antidemocratic regime. The big injection of anti-Americanism during the war will affect the minds of Russians for a long time.

Conclusion

The West should be prepared to deal with an authoritarian regime that is ready to do anything to protect itself against its internal enemies. The Kremlin will continue to need foreign enemies, and now, given its recently acquired self-confidence, will be prone to show the Russian public its success in confronting its neighbors and the United States. As a liberal journalist suggested, Russia became “an unpredictable state,” which “can defy its own international obligations.” The world can only hope that, with the lessons from the war against Georgia, the Kremlin will be more cautious when it looks for a new opportunity to show its imperial ambitions.