Window on Eurasia

Russian Political Culture Will Help Reintegrate Eurasia, Putin Aide Says

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 7, 2006 – The three component parts of Russian political
culture – its etatism, its romanticism, and its inclination to cognitivism – will not only help the country recover from its recent upheavals but also contribute to the reintegration of Eurasia, according to one of President Vladimir Putin’s assistants.

In a speech to a conference on that subject in Volynsk on June 30 that
was posted on the Kreml.org website yesterday, Dzhakhan Pollyyeva
discussed each of them in some detail. Because of her position,
Pollyeva is likely expressing views that are currently circulating in the
Kremlin [http://www.kreml.org/opinions/], July 6.

Russia’s tradition of etatism began when Muscovy found itself caught
between the Livonian knights in the West and the Golden Horde in the
East, Pollyyeva said. And to cope with the situation, she continues,
the Russian princes “first reached an agreement with the Kazan khans”
in order to create an ideology capable of defending the country.

Her comments on this point may explain more than the invocation of
Eurasianism does why President Putin has talked so often about the
close links between Moscow and Kazan and more generally between Orthodoxy and Islam, a position that puts him at odds with some Russian historians
and many Russian nationalists.

This etatist ideology, she continued, has promoted an extraordinary
deference to the Russian state among the people, contributed to an
acceptance of “governmental paternalism,” and allowed Russia and
Russians regularly to repulse and recover from challenges that might
have destroyed others.

Romanticism is the second and closely related aspect of Russian
political culture, Pollyyeva added. Not only does this romanticism
predispose Russians to talk about the future and about often extremely
lofty national goals, but it also helps to explain both the desire and
the need of Russians for a national idea.

“Ideology is an instrument without which neither the government nor
other political forces in the country can survive,” she said.
“Without it, a dialogue between the government and society is
impossible.” Moreover, this need helps to explain why many elements
of such an idea continue to surface, albeit in new combinations.

Indeed, she insisted, such a “productive conservation of theoretical
ideas” is the “obverse” of this aspect of Russian political
culture.

And finally, she pointed to an inclination toward cognitivism as the
third element of Russian political culture, an element that she argued
was reflected in the fact that “many both in the current elite of
Russia and in the elites of CIS countries consider themselves as none
other than ‘practicizing philosophers.’”

That is, these leaders want to base their actions not just in narrow
political calculations but within a broader ideological framework. And
she argues that “one must say in any case that it is all the same
better when a political elite is formed on the basis of an intellctual
one.”

Pollyyeva argued in conclusion that these three aspects of Russian
political culture are strong not only in the Russian Federation but
across much of the former Soviet space. And because that is so, she
said, this underlying cultural syndrom will help Russia to recover and
this broader space to reintegrate in the future.

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