#13
therussianissues.com
December 4, 2001
Russia To Join World Government
Vladimir Pozner's guests discuss Russia's past and future
Vladimir Pozner (ORT, "Vremena") devoted his entire program to the 10th anniversary of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia's role in the world today. Among his guests were Viktor Alksnis, a State Duma delegate; Igor Bunin, the head of Center for political technologies; Gennady Burbulis, a Federation Council member; Sergey Markov, the head of the Institute of political studies; Natalya Narochnitskaya, a historian; Aleksey Podberezkin, the head of "Spiritual Revival" movement, and Andrey Kozyrev, who was a minister of foreign affairs in 1990-1996.
One of the main questions that Pozner asked his guests was why the Soviet Union seized to exist. According to Kozyrev, "the Soviet Union became obsolete as a system. The population, the Soviet people no longer wanted to be backward: they wanted to have a standard of living comparable to that of the western world. I believe this is a true reason for Perestroika and democratization. The people expressed their will - they no longer wanted to be part of an out-of-date totalitarian machine."
Natalya Narochnitskaya points to the fact that "disintegration happened along the cuts made by the Bolsheviks in 1917. Borders of Soviet republics did not correspond with ethnic borders. Many nations, not only the Russians, but dozens of others, were artificially divided in two or made part of other autonomies or federation subjects in violation of their agreements with the Russian state… The Soviet Union was declared by the western and communist propaganda alike no a thousand-year-old state that experienced social changes over the years, but a union of entirely independent states that appeared from nowhere in 1917 and were put together by either totalitarianism or a proletarian revolution. Any struggle against totalitarianism is well deserved, while any doubts about the proletarian revolution made this union very weak."
According to Alksnis, "the events of ten years ago were a time of troubles, not the first one in our history… Turmoil happened in 1917, it happened in late 1980s and in the 90s, when the people and the leadership lost all guiding lines. As a result, we got what we got."
According to Bunin, "the paradigm of development on which the Soviet Union was based had exhausted its resources. It was historically based on four points - western threat, Orthodoxy, authoritarianism and external expansion. All these elements could no longer be preserved, new elements must have been found and a new paradigm must have been built."
Another issue discussed had to do with Russia's place in the world today and its relations with the US. According to Andrey Kozyrev, "until we continue believing that everything that is good for the West is somehow bad for us, all our normal foreign policy moves will be regarded as concessions. We must understand what our interests are. Destruction of terrorist bases in Iraq is to our advantage. If instead of treating this as a national tragedy and help the US get rid of Saddam Hussein as well, we might get a chance to get our debts - it is clear now that Hussein is not going to re-pay as anything…"
At the same time, as many analysts agree, Russia's role in the world became more significant after September 11th. According to Bunin, "the world is still unipolar, this unipolarity strengthened after September 11th, but Russia's influence has grown for a very simple reason. A unipolar world is a system of concentric circles. From a much lower circle Russia ascended to a higher one. It is almost at NATO level now. In the future its influence may continue to grow."
Vladimir Alksnis is less optimistic. "Russia no longer wants to create a multipolar world. In the name of security it agreed to participate in a unipolar world, expecting that by becoming a US vassal it can solve all its problems and become something in between Great Britain and Belgium. But what are we going to say in five years when NATO tanks are 60 km away from Pskov?"
Sergey Markov agrees that "US influence has grown a great deal. In reality, we are witnessing the formation of a world government. This would be a world government that does not resemble any national ones, more like a center of influence similar to the IMF or World Bank. A new center of decision-making with international jurisdiction is being formed, which will interfere in other countries' affairs. After Septemebr 11th, Russia has a real opportunity to participate in the formation of this world government and it must no miss it."
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