:: Paternalism in Russia: Myth and Facts

Prof. Yanov once gave me a book of his with this touching inscription “for my friend and yedinomyshlennik.” This last word is a tough one to translate. More ore less literally it means “like-minded person,” but it is actually deeper than that, implying serious congeniality of convictions. Alas, as I read his piece entitled “”Realists,” “Idealists” and Obama” (Nezavisimaya gazeta, 3 July, 2009; English version, Johnson’s Russia List 2009 #128), congeniality of convictions was the last thing I felt. After a certain point nearly every sentence in his discourse on the paternalist, “slavish” tradition in Russia really put my hackles up.

Alexander Yanov starts by pointing out that in the entire polemic triggered off by the “idealists’” article in the Washington Post, in which Gudkov, Klyamkin, Satarov, and Shevtsova criticized “realists” like Henry Kissinger and James Baker for putting immediate political interests first and democratic values second, the following axiom was tacitly implied: Russia had and still has just one historical tradition of politics, namely un-democratic, un-European paternalism.

Prof. Yanov explained to the polemists that, in contrast to China or, say, Saudi Arabia, Russia’s all-pervading, totalitarian paternalism was a myth; that the “contractual” (European) tradition dominated its political culture for most of its historical existence, and it was not until Ivan the Terrible’s autocratic revolution that the paternalist tradition won (as it did in Europe, let me add). In the course of time its institutional basis (Orthodox fundamentalism, compulsory service for the gentry and nobility, serfdom of the peasantry, sacral autocracy, the empire) became gradually eroded. And still, Russian mass consciousness has somehow retained, according to Yanov, powerful paternalist stereotypes that can only be overcome through a “fierce ideological war.”

Now, this latter thesis is worth looking into more closely. Let me first consider the term paternalism, which can obviously suggest various things at different levels, not all of them bad enough to merit a “fierce ideological war.” There is the basic in-family paternalism that might nowadays be called ethical: children respect their elders, the older members of the family take care of the young until the latter grow old enough to look after the elderly. Every type of church appears to rely on the paternalist principle. Some industrial companies successfully practice paternalism, too, as best exemplified by Japan. Finally, there is paternalism at the state level: the state is seen as a father figure, a dispenser of benefits to society members who, regardless of gender, age or walk of life, are all obedient children to this father figure. The state manifests itself as a sort of collective “boss” who serves the top boss (monarch, president, fuehrer, or the like) and takes care of the underlings or subjects, who in turn are loyal to their superiors.

It is this last kind of paternalism that Prof. Yanov has in mind, insisting that the paternalist tradition is still going strong in Russia. Incidentally, not satisfied with the neutral term “paternalist tradition,” he qualifies it throughout the article with the epithet kholopskaya (from kholop “slave”), these days a term of vicious abuse. Not exactly a friendly turn of speech.

In the scheme outlined by Prof. Yanov, an indestructible paternalist “anti-European fortress” was built in Russia in the times of Ivan the Terrible and later. Then came the “Russian Europeans,” and these Europeans they alone made “gaping holes in the slavery-based stronghold” and eventually destroyed “all its institutional bastions.”

This scheme appears to me to be just another myth. It leaves out the role of the masses and the struggle of the said masses against their class enemies, to use a couple of Marxist clichés. What totalitarian paternalism can there be in a country where part and parcel of its political culture has always been the culture of anarchy, of burning down landlords’ mansions (a practice poetically known as “letting loose the red rooster”), of mutiny, peasant wars, and Cossack freebooting, more academically described as military democracy? These segments of the political culture of Russia contained not a scrap of anything “contractual” or European: the only means for people who refused to be slaves, kholopy, to stay free men was the force of arms. Hence the Cossack raids as far as Persia and the tidal waves of no-one’s serfs rolling east and north as far away as the Pacific Ocean and beyond. The very emergence of Russia as the world’s largest country was in a sense a byproduct of resistance by the utterly anti-paternalist lower classes to the allegedly paternalist upper strata. Any conceptual construction overlooking this fundamental fact has to be sorely lacking in explanatory power.

Nor can one ignore this obvious circumstance: the very multiplicity of paternalisms undermines the totalitarian nature of this social institution at the state level. The loyalty of believers to their church inspired hatred for the state bent on implanting a different faith (cf. the Schism within the Russian Orthodox Church, resistance by Pagans, Buddhists, sectarians, etc., to Orthodox proselytism in the past, or resistance, overt and covert, by all believers to state atheism under the Soviet regime). Also, peasants’ loyalty to their closed community, the mir, went hand in hand with their hostility toward the state seen as the source of all things evil merciless taxation, abuse of power by the authorities, and conscription (with the length of army service amounting to 25 years, the sons of peasants recruited into the army might as well be dead). It is hardly possible to reduce such non-paternalist behavior patterns to the “European” tradition. And that puts paid to the myth of “Russian Europeans” as the main force that destroyed the paternalist tradition.

All this has to do with the past. As far as the present is concerned, Prof. Yanov believes that institutionally, state paternalism has been conquered, but Russians’ mass consciousness has unaccountably retained powerful paternalist stereotypes, which apparently enables the Kremlin to twist its people and elites round its little finger. I am quoting almost verbatim: the defunct paternalist (kholopskaya) tradition has metastasized in such a way that both the elite and the masses in Russia remain disoriented and do not understand what their real interests are.

Honestly, I never imagined Prof. Yanov capable of this kind of argumentation. Who is it, pray, that is so disoriented here as to be unaware of their interests? The elite? Twho v capable of this kind of argumentation. e and the masses in Russia remain desoriented mass consciousness of the Russiansruehat lot is anything but disoriented. Part of it is chiefly after grabbing as many assets as possible in this country only to do a bunk, disappear abroad, svalit’ za bugor, as they themselves put it; successful examples abound. The main interest of the rest of the elite lies in taking part in the perennial re-division of property here in Russia while purchasing real estate and other assets abroad where they send their offspring to study and often get permanently settled. As for the link-up with state paternalism, it runs to regular capitalistic patterns: paternalism for the near and dear, and law and order (their Russian variety) for the not so near. Like in best-regulated families, no different from, say, the United States.

As for the masses, their views of the existing state of things and their own interests are even less of a mystery than those of the elites: they have been repeatedly swindled by the allegedly paternalistic state, and their sentiments about the latter are clear-cut if somewhat gruesome. The more so since the process of swindling has entered a permanency phase, with an amazing variety of methods: the state has largely merged with business and the resulting Shylock will grab for its pound of flesh at every step. In fact, no need to bring up Shylock here: the name of Zurabov, the former social welfare minister, will do quite well.
It appears that Alexander Yanov, seeing how futile it would be to look for a “slavish,” paternalist attitude to the state on the part of the Russian masses, resorts to a couple of examples from the foreign policy area to substantiate his theses. Which he would have done well to avoid.

Example one is to do with Russia’s accession to the WTO. The Russian elite, he says, has been so badly disoriented by its “mental inertia of slavishness (kholopstvo)” that it cannot make up its mind whether to join or not. “Today it [the elite S.R.] is determinedly seeking WTO membership, tomorrow it unexpectedly rejects it.” Honestly, this is a bit over the top. Yanov’s “today” and “tomorrow” are fully 16 years apart, in which period Russia has had its arms twisted by all and sundry, including Georgia, but above all by the US and then it stands accused of shilly-shallying! Also, what is so surprising or “slavish” about the fact that so important a move always involves various “on the one hand” and “on the other hand,” and differences over this are more than likely in an elite not in the least disoriented either by slavishness or by anything else?

Personally I have never detected much servility in myself, and yet I am positive that unless Russia secures the most comfortable or at least reasonably safe terms of WTO membership, joining the organization would be the height of folly fraught with the demise of whole industries in this country. In this sense procrastination involved in the formation of the three-state customs union is a perfectly justified if unorthodox move (see my view of the issue in Russia Profile.org., 19 June, 2009).

The second swipe at the “slavishly disoriented elite” in Russia: “Today it regards America as a partner, but tomorrow it is to be denounced as the worst of enemies…” Have a heart, professor: here, too, “today” and “tomorrow” are separated by many years which have seen all manner of things: enthusiasm over the toppling of communism, rosy expectations of joining the European family of nations, with every Russian ready to sing “Umarmt euch, Millionen,” and the gradual, or at times sudden, revelation: we here thought that we had toppled communism while all the time it was “they” who had defeated Russia in the Cold War and therefore decided that it should be treated as a vanquished nation. Hence the NATO Drang nach Osten, the thrashing of Serbia, the rash of “color revolutions” all along Russia’s perimeter, letting Saakashvili off the leash, and lots more besides. The phrase “worst of enemies” comes from the vocabulary of the day before yesterday, but looking after our own, Russian, interests in relations with America or whosoever is our sovereign right, and a “slavish mindset” has nothing to do with it. Totally irrelevant, you might say.

Criticism number three is aimed at the entire population of Russia said to be absolutely disoriented by its slavishness: perfectly aware “that "normal" life and guarantees against tyranny exist in Europe but not in Russia, they nonetheless respond readily to the call of pseudo-imperial fanfares.” One can only make a guess at which fanfares are meant here. Possibly, the reference is to the sympathy our people felt for the unfortunate Ossetians in last year’s massacre and their support for the Russian army as it repulsed the aggressor and enforced peace in the region. According to Yanov, this sympathy and this support apparently came entirely from the slavish mindset of the Russian people who presumably should think of nothing else but the normal life and guarantees against abuse of power in Europe while they watch TV footage of a sleeping town being razed to the ground and Russian peacekeepers gunned down at close range with massive firepower. Odd logic, I might say, if logic of any sort was present here.

But there is no logic here; what there is in this talk of “the mental inertia of slavishness” of an entire nation (“population”) is something miles away from the standards of political correctness; rather, it smacks of common-or-garden racism. A nation massively infected with slavishness can hardly be seen as the equal of other nations, now can it. This inevitably brings to mind those who in the past used to label us Untermenschen and their unenviable end.

At the close of his article Prof. Yanov expressed the view that our “paternalism” was hardly less fearsome than Islamism and therefore Russia, in his opinion, expected Obama to deliver a “Cairo” speech in Moscow “unequivocally denouncing paternalism and giving a European vision of Russia’s future.” Sort of, the big boss will come and show us the way.

Well, Obama, a perfectly intelligent person by all accounts, came here with his whole family and a toothy grin; he had tea with Putin, made speeches and gave press conferences jointly with President Medvedev and not a word about paternalism or slavishness. His gut feeling must have been that the occasion just was not right; might get a rude retort for his pains.

Indeed, the welcome he got here was somewhat lukewarm. It’s over there in your precious West that he is the new guru or father figure; the minute he says “Change!” or “Yes, we can!”, huge Obamaniac crowds sob in hysterical admiration. A perfect instance of paternalism, what? Over here, we are in the midst of a crisis, and every toddler knows where it came from the same place from which Barack Obama came flying. We have our job cut out for us just surviving and watching out lest our beloved state together with the bankers swindle us yet again, using the crisis as a fine pretext.

No wonder people hearing this talk of paternalism and slavish metastases may just stare. Even if there was some paternalism here once, its supply has long since run out, and any lectures on the subject are simply embarrassing to listen to. Particularly from someone who used to call one a friend and yedinomyshlennik.

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