The Imperial Mentality of Unapologetic Russian Oppositionists

25 siyrpnia 2022 Tomasz Kamusella 0 Kōmyntarzy

The Imperial Mentality of Unapologetic Russian Oppositionists

Tomasz Kamusella
University of St Andrews[1]

‘Russia Is Not Part of Degenerate Europe’[2]

Dalszŏ tajla artykułu niżyj

Already for half a year Russia has waged this unprovoked genocidal-scale neoimperial war on Ukraine, seeking to rebuild the Soviet Union or even the tsarist empire. Human cost does not matter to most Russians, as long as it is exclusively Ukrainians, who do the dying, alongside Russia’s ethnically non-Russian soldiers.[3] The Kremlin takes good care to shield the country’s elite in Moscow and St Petersburg from any fighting on the front or gruesome war images.[4] De facto censorship of all the mass and social media works well. So, Muscovites and Peterburgians now can enjoy summer, which is for visiting Spanish beaches, Parisian shopping centers, or their foreign properties strewn across Europe. In addition, they drop by some beloved Russian culinary and architectural haunts abroad, be it in Rome or Cyprus. Russians persist in going to this European Union, so much vilified by the Kremlin and its propagandists, including numerous leading figures of Russian culture. In their view such Europe is the seat of all evil, for instance, the same-sex marriage, LGTB+ rights, democracy, respect for human and individual rights, and above all, ‘russophobia.’[5]

During the past two decades, the Russian Federation has contracted much advertized strategic alliances with totalitarian China, theocratic Iran, autocratic Turkey, or for that matter, Syria and the Central African Republic, where Russian money and mercenaries buoy the countries’ bloody dictators. The Kremlin often announces Russia’s unwavering attachment to ‘healthy conservatism’ and ‘traditional values,’ so typical of Asia and Africa, meaning mainly the systemic persecution of gays and the customary trampling of human rights. Yet, members of the Russian elite do not flock to these supposedly family-friendly and pro-Russian places, which are sunnier than any Mediterranean beach in apparently russophobic Europe and more conservative (that is, authoritarian) in their politics and mores than dictatorial Hungary in the EU.

In late July 2022, Ukraine proposed that the European Union stop issuing visas to Russian citizens.[6] Finland[7] and the Baltic states[8] immediately supported this initiative. In early August, Finland and the Baltic republics proposed that the EU as a whole should ban visas for Russians,[9] while some EU member states even earlier had stopped issuing several kinds of visas to Russian citizens, for instance, Bulgaria.[10] So far Estonia has introduced the most far-reaching ban on visas for Russian citizens.[11] The initiative of a blanket all-EU quickly gained crucial support from the Union’s currently Czech Presidency.[12] The viral video of a Russian tourist in Austria, who taunted a couple of passing-by Ukrainians that Russia would win in Ukraine helped getting traction for the idea of this comprehensive visa ban.[13] Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland joined this initiative.[14] On 30 August, the EU countries’ foreign ministers will discuss this potential tourist visa ban for Russian citizens[15] at a meeting in Prague.[16]

But Isn’t Russia a European Country?

However, Berlin is infamously dragging its feet again, as in the case of time and again delayed and mired in bureaucracy promised deliveries of essential military hardware from Germany to Ukraine, all the time under the relentless Russian onslaught. On 11 August 2022, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that ‘this is Putin’s war’ and emphasized that sanctions ‘should not be imposed against innocent [Russian] citizens.’[17] But is it the Russian president who is fighting on the front or hundreds of thousands of Russian citizens, supported at home by millions of their kin and friends? If the latter is correct, one cannot say with clean conscience that it is ‘Putin’s war.’ After all the vast majority of Russians support this war actively or with their silence.[18]

Unfortunately, the sitting German chancellor’s stance reflects his party SPD’s unabashedly russophile decision not to expel former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder for his close personal and economic ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the latter’s kleptocratic and murderous regime.[19] The Russian narrative won the hearts of Germany’s top politicians and is now posed as the golden mean of ‘moderation’ in Europe.

Thankfully, Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who has the first-hand experience of Soviet totalitarianism and the current Russian regime, knows better. On 9 August 2022, she tweeted sanely and succinctly, ‘Stop issuing tourist visas to Russians. Visiting Europe is a privilege, not a human right.’[20] The looming ban touched a raw nerve at the Kremlin itself. The Russian president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov noticed plaintively on this ban that ‘any attempt to isolate Russians or Russia is a process that has no prospects.’[21] Former Russian President and Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of Russia Dmitry Medvedev launched another of his bizarre anti-Western attacks, this time on the Estonian PM.[22] From these reactions, it is apparent that, despite Berlin’s curious reservations, this visa ban for Russians may work much better than anyone could hope for.[23]

However, many members of the Russian elite – who remain silent on the subject of Russia’s war on Ukraine, or somewhat oppose it – took offence. On the social media immediately viral posts appeared that most strangely liken the situation of Russians facing a possible blanket EU visa ban with that of Jews persecuted in nazi Germany.[24]^{,[25],[26],[27]} The Russian Duma tuned in, and apart from comparing Russians to Jews in the Third Reich, they were also likened to Blacks suffering discrimination in apartheid South Africa. But somehow this situation is a ‘proof’ that it is the EU that is ‘guilty of fascism,’ not Russia.[28] Now Russian scholars and experts take cue and announce that the potential travel ban on tourists from Russia to the EU makes Russians into ‘new Jews of the 21^st century.’[29]

Getting the Record Straight

Hypocrisy and cynical reversal of meanings enabled by propaganda and enforced through censorship have been long the Kremlin’s pet instruments for shaping public opinion at home and abroad.[30] So, let us get the record straight. Russians as a nation are not persecuted in Russia, so unlike Jews in nazi Germany, they have no need to flee the country for their lives. Likewise, the EU cannot be an oppressive fascist dictatorship, if some Russians – that is, oppositionists whom the Kremlin has in its cross-hairs – intend to seek political asylum there, while average Russians want so badly to vacation there. The former actually fear repression in Putin’s fascist (rashist) Russia, while the latter do not find their own country sufficiently attractive for sight-seeing.

Russian intellectuals’ and putinists’ efforts to portray the Russians as this century’s ‘new Jews’ is beyond laughable. It is an insult to Holocaust victims and the Jews themselves, while injury to reason. In the late 1930s, sadly all the world’s countries imposed quotas or bans on Jewish immigrants from Germany and elsewhere in Europe. However, even after the introduction of the possible EU visa, Russians will be able to travel to the world’s other 170 odd countries, including Moscow’s close allies. At 7,500 and 4,200 kilometers, Russia shares the longest stretches of its state frontier with Kazakhstan and China, respectively. In comparison, the country’s 2,400-kilometer-long border with the EU is negligible. In light of these facts, Moscow and the Russians should get their travel priorities right, so that they would fall in synch with the country’s geography and politics.[31] Let them enjoy their Russkii mir, or the Russian world, of the Kremlin’s propaganda.

I repeat there is no plan on part of the EU or any other polity to exterminate the Russians as a nation. Actually, it is Russia that wages a full-scale war on Ukraine, officially seeking to exterminate the Ukraine elite and destroy Ukrainian language and culture with an eye to erasing the Ukrainian nation and Ukraine as a state from the political map of Europe.[32]^,[33] I do not remember reading anywhere that during World War II Germans and Austrians who manned the nazi factories of death would complain about visa restrictions, hampering their travel plans to Britain or the United States. Meanwhile, the EU has accepted over 7 million and counting Ukrainian refugees who flee Russian tanks, bombardment, rockets and marauding genocidaires.

Imperial Mentality

On behalf of all the Russians, including the country’s elite whom an EU visa ban may slightly inconvenience, the Russian army now kills and destroys in Ukraine on an unprecedented scale in Europe after 1945. In this situation, the Russians (that is, Russian citizens) forfeited any entitlements to enter and enjoy the EU, as long as this war lasts. Believing otherwise amounts to imperial-style arrogance and blindness, to valuing Ukrainian lives less that Russian ones, and to denying the same rights to Ukrainians, who now under Russian onslaught have no chance to enjoy safety, let alone summer holidays.

Yet, numerous Russians remain impervious to such commonsense arguments, which is a blatant insolence on their part. Their selfish and cold-hearted attitude stems from the toxic legacy of Russian and Soviet imperialism. Unfortunately, even Russian democrats share this untenable position with the average Russian citizen and Kremlin propagandists. Political systems in Russia fall or are dramatically altered, but one way or another they all have remained married fast to unrepentant imperialism for the past six centuries. To this day Russian imperialism remains the same and unaltered, a typical Russian’s sole credo of faith and life.

At present, it is Ukrainians and Ukraine who need urgent protection. Ukrainians, who now are dying of Russian shrapnel, gunfire wounds, torture, hunger, thirst, a lack of medicines, and due to hundreds of medical facilities purposefully razed by Russians. Instead of thinking selfishly about their own pleasures, the Russian elite, intellectuals, democrats, oppositionists and simply well-to-do Russians ought rather to ponder on what they could do to improve the tragic lot of Ukrainians, stop this imperialist war and rebuild Ukraine. Currently, it is the only entitlement that the Russians have, namely, their duty to serve and make amends for the genocidal-style mass killings, destruction and chaos wreaked by Russia in Ukraine.

Complaints are off the menu. Russian inconveniences are utterly incomparable with Ukrainian deaths, suffering and the loss of limbs and homes. But intellectuals and scholars are creative people and individualists, who prefer not to work with refugees and aid organizations. In most cases they are no surgeons or psychologists specializing in PTSD, either. Fine, I understand. But has any Russian musician composed during the past six months a concerto or opera on the Bucha act of genocide committed by Russian troops? Can I read a Russian-language novel or epic poem devoted to Ukrainian sufferings during this unprovoked and unjustified war, and also to the unpalatable roles played in it by Russian marauders, robbers, torturers and murderers? Isn’t Russian literature and culture sufficiently great and magnanimous to face up to this challenge of portraying and analyzing the tragic fate of Ukrainians during this Russian war? And if not, what may be then stopping Russian writers and composers t excelling in their talents in such topics? Loyalty to Putin, rashism, or in one word, their hard-to-grasp love of Russian imperialism?

For a moment let us think out of the box. Why couldn’t a Russian writer show the middle finger to the Kremlin by switching to writing in Ukrainian? If Andreï Makine (Andrei Sergeevich Makin) or Vladimir Nabkov could reinvent themselves as renowned writers of French and English belles lettres, respectively, mastering kindred Ukrainian for writing fiction should not be beyond any talented Russian author. I am sure that readers would follow, if such fiction and poetry would be interesting and inventive. After all, many Russians learned much more difficult English to improve their employment prospects and to gain access to world literature. So, should they want to shed Russian nationalism by mastering Ukrainian, they could do it faster and more perfectly.

The same is true of Russian journalists, like present-day Russia’s last independent television channel Dozhd / Rain, which the Kremlin closed down in March 2022. Afterward, the team found a safe haven in Latvia, where they obtained a broadcasting license valid for the entire EU. Quite a welcome, eh? The channel began to broadcast again in mid-July.[34] Unfortunately, on the subject of the EU visa ban, this channel’s interpretation is in full agreement with the Russian elite’s and the Kremlin’s opinion that it is a clear sign of the West’s russophobia.[35] But if the West is russophobic, how is it possible that now TV Dozhd operates from Riga, not Moscow? Or perhaps, this television channel remains wed to its team’s unrealized imperial attitudes that Russians can and should be permitted more than people of other nationalities and ethnicities?[36] If I am wrong on that, why wouldn’t TV Rain start broadcasting at least also in Latvian and Ukrainian? In this way respect would be shown to the channel’s new home country and the victims of the Russian military aggression in Ukraine. On the other hand, such a forward-looking decision would expose Russian intellectuals and dissidents to the day-to-day practice of the EU’s tolerant polyglotism and multiculturalism, which are in very short supply in Putin’s Russia.

Otherwise, during the time of this brutal Russian war on Ukraine, knowing the fascist (rashist) nature of the current Russian regime, the EU must do its best to protect the Union, its citizens and Ukrainian refugees on the EU territory from Russian undercover operatives, agents provocateurs or assassins. All these are hallmarks of how the present-day Kremlin is wont to conduct international relations in Europe. The Russian government would not try this in China. Beijing’s reply would be swift and painful, as it becomes a fellow totalitarian state. In Putin’s eyes the democratic West is weak, because it follows the rule of law and its democratic values. Now, it is high time that the EU would show resolute unity and slap a tourist visa ban on Russian citizens to protect and practice the very values on which the Union has been built and thrives. After all, in the opinion of former Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev 98 percent of people leaving Russia this year were not in danger but left ‘just because it’s uncomfortable for them’ in the country.[37] Brussels has no responsibility to worry about their comfort. Ukrainian lives and democracy take precedence.

August 2022

[1] I thank the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center at Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan for support and making it possible for me to research and write this essay. The opinions and arguments presented in this essay are the author’s, and do not represent any official position on the part of the Slavic-Eurasian Research Center.

[2] https://istina.msu.ru/download/65271732/1gJZvv:nw0dLoQTrUMEsmaSresl6LpZ0oE/

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/30/coffins-in-buryatia-ukraine-invasion-takes-toll-on-russias-remote-regions

[4] https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20220422-far-from-conflict-in-ukraine-muscovites-try-to-go-on-as-normal

[5] https://rtvi.com/news/rusofobiya-v-evrope-imeet-glubokie-korni-matvienko-o-rossijskoj-czivilizaczii-i-davlenii-zapada/

[6] https://interfax.com.ua/news/general/848950.html

[7] https://www.schengenvisainfo.com/news/finland-parliament-majority-wants-to-stop-issuing-visas-to-russians-but-not-everyone-agrees/

[8] https://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2022/07/28/7360656/

[9] https://www.euronews.com/2022/08/09/finland-and-estonia-call-for-eu-ban-on-tourist-visas-for-russians

[10] https://www.ukrinform.ua/rubric-world/3545130-mzs-bolgarii-zaavili-so-ne-zupinali-vidacu-viz-rosianam.html

[11] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/estonia-stop-russians-entering-with-estonian-issued-visas-2022-08-11/

[12] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-08-12/russia-visa-ban-in-eu-wins-key-backing-from-czech-presidency

[13] https://nationworldnews.com/ukraine-war-russian-tourists-mock-ukrainian-women-on-vacation/