From Belgrade to Kiev:
The Hard-Line Nationalism and Russia’s Foreign Policy
By Andrei P. Tsygankov
In Russian Nationalism and the National Reassertion in Russia, edited by Marlene Laruelle. London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 187-202.
Word count: 7,300
1. INTRODUCTION
Throughout the post-Soviet era, a number of scholars and politicians predicted the rise of hard-line nationalism in Russia, which would then be reflected in radical changes in the country’s domestic and foreign policies. Despite multiple political crises in Russia, those predictions are yet to come true. Changes in leadership have not led to a fundamental revision of Russia’s national identity and interests, and various groups of hard-line opposition—from Gennadi Zyuganov’s Communist Party to Dmitri Rogozin’s Rodina—have remained marginalized in the national discourse.
This paper concentrates on attempts by hard-line nationalist (HLN) opposition to influence Russia’s foreign policy, and it asks why HLN has failed in to change the official course. The HLNs, or those who advocated restoration of an empire and international alliances against Western nations, have been active participants in foreign policy discussions and, indeed, have been successful in introducing and circulating a number of concepts, such as “geopolitics,” “Eurasia,” and “Athlanticism,” within the elite circles. Yet the practical impact of hard-liners has been rather modest. This could be explained by a combined effect of three forces that have undermined the appeal of the HLNs—Russia’s leadership, the general public, and policies of Western governments. The former two have found the hard-line initiatives to be financially costly and politically confrontational, and the latter remained engaged with Moscow thereby restraining aggressive nationalist reaction inside Russia.
The paper selects three foreign policy crises—Yugloslavia/ Kosovo in 1999, September 11, 2001, and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, 2004—to investigate manifestation and causes of the HLN’s failure to challenge the official foreign policy course. These cases are sufficiently diverse and range in Russia’s material strength, interests of ruling coalition in power, and a nature of Russia-West interaction. Obviously, three cases are not sufficient to allow wide-ranging causal generalizations, but they are suggestive as to the proposed explanation and further investigation of the issue. The paper first sets a theoretical framework for understanding relationships between the HLN and foreign policy in Russia. It then explores the three selected cases in greater details and concludes by summarizing the argument and some of its implications.
2. HLN AND FOREIGN POLICY MAKING IN RUSSIA
National Identity, Coalition-Building, and Foreign Policy
What is the mechanism, through which nations develop their foreign policies? The key variable this paper emphasizes is national interpretation of the world challenges and its formulation into a dominant ideology. Adopted by the state, such ideology eventually becomes specified as a concept of national interest and guides policy makers in their practical decisions. Before it happens, however, a society goes through a process of contestation of various ideologies. At this stage, various ideologies compete for achieving hegemonic status or ability to shape public discourse. These ideologies hold different images regarding nation’s identity, nature of external world, and appropriate policy response. Promoted by various politico-economic coalitions in both public and private spaces, ideological contestation is especially intense until one of the available ideologies becomes predominant. Activities of political entrepreneurs, appropriate material and ideational resources, institutional arrangements and historical practices can considerably facilitate this process of persuading the general public and elites. When this persuasion part of the process is complete, the state appropriates dominant national ideology as a guide in policy making.[1] Although many other factors and influences may interfere with a decision-making process, others being equal, one can expect a reasonable degree of policy consistency based on an adopted image of national identity.
The Soviet collapse of 1991 presented Russia’s new liberal leadership with an opportunity to fashion a pro-Western foreign policy course. President Boris Yelstin and his foreign minister Andrei Kozyrev pursued policies of strategic partnership and integration with the West and its institutions. Externally, they were inspired by the Western promises of support, and they expected to “join” the West within a few years. They saw the West’s victory in the Cold War as the promise and the opportunity of the new liberal era. Domestically, the Westernizing coalition included—in addition to liberal-minded leadership—intellectuals, human rights activists, and new pro-capitalist elites particularly those with export interests in the West. The new identity coalition pursued a revolutionary agenda of transforming the old Soviet institutions into those of a pro-Western nation-state. It seemed as if the new liberal identity was finally to be established in Russia.
Yet the new post-Soviet identity became deeply contested, and the liberal momentum did not last. Soon the pro-Western policies were met with a formidable opposition and replaced with promotion of state identity and interests. The new Statists acknowledged the necessity to build market economy and democratic institutions, but saw those as subjected to the main objective of strengthening the state. The new Statist coalition included military industrialists, the army, and the security services—those who only saw marginal benefits in adopting the “Western” model. Led by presidential advisor Sergei Stankevich and then the Chief of Foreign Intelligence Yevgeni Primakov, the new Statists insisted that the national interest had not changed in a principal way and still had to do with defending Russia’s great power status. Over time, this reasoning proved to win the support of elites and masses, and the state had to adopt the Statist concept of national identity. Primakov—now Russia’s newly-appointed foreign minister—argued for more restrained relations with the West and for a more “balanced” and “diverse” foreign policy. Primakov believed that Russia’s new liberal values did not abolish the need to maintain a status of a distinct Eurasianist great power, and he proposed that Russia develop a strategic alliance with China and India.
The arrival of Vladimir Putin as the new president signaled yet another change in policies and a renewed interest to engaging the West. Although Putin insisted on Russia’s priority to preserve great power status, his strategy of achieving this objective differed from that of Primakov considerably. Instead of continuing the policy of balancing against the West, Putin explicitly sided with Europe and the United States and insisted that Russia was a country of European and Western, rather than Asian, identity.
Therefore, Westernizers lost their battle, but not to ideologies of the hard-line orientation. The HLN advocated a full-fledged imperial restoration and Soviet-like security alliances (see below for elaboration); instead, relatively moderate Statists came to dominate in the national discourse and shape the country’s international policies. Statists were able to defeat alternative ideologies because of the historic power of the Statist identity and several domestic and external developments that played to strengthen the new discourse. Domestically, Statists benefited politically from the failure of Westernist radical economic reform. Externally, newly emerged instabilities and conflicts in the former Soviet republics and inside the country (Chechnya) in the early-mid 1990s made it extremely difficult for Westernizers to sustain their policies of disengagement from the periphery. Importantly, the West—Russia’s significant Other—greatly strengthened the Statist discourse by making a decision to expand NATO eastward and excluding Russia from the process. This strengthened the sense that Russia was not being accepted by the West as one of its own, and Westernizers lost public support in order to reduce the power of Statists.
On the other hand, the HLN ideas did not come as particularly attractive to the elites or larger society. The mainstream political class typically viewed these ideas as dangerous and extravagant to be implemented. The society, too, had little faith in the imperialist policies. The HLN therefore remained relatively marginalized in the Russian discourse.
The HLN and Its Foreign Policy Beliefs
A broad group that united communists and supporters of a more ethnically homogenous Russia, or the so called alliance of “red” and “white” nationalists, the HLNs differed from both Westernizers and Statists in their core beliefs. In particular, the HLN groups consistently advocated restoration of a West-independent empire through international alliances against Western nations. Neither Westernizers, nor Statists were committed to a similar zero-sum vision. The former supported integration into Western politico-economic institutions, and the latter were planning a limited cooperation with Western nations for the sake of rebuilding Russia’s economy and material capabilities (please see table 1 for comparison of the groups’ views).
[TABLE 1]
The end of the USSR did not change the HLNs, who still refused to part with the core principles of the Soviet society. One group—National Communists—was merging some old communist ideas with those of nationalism and was particularly influenced by Joseph Stalin’s doctrine of “socialism in one country,” which acknowledged the need for Russia to focus on developing military and economic capabilities within the Soviet boundaries. The most active promoter of this group’ ideas was Gennadi Zyuganov, the leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation.[2] Another HLN group referred to itself as Eurasianists, and viewed the world in terms of geopolitical struggle between land-based and sea-based powers. Unlike National Communists who portrayed themselves as adherents to conservative beliefs such as religion and social stability, Eurasianists argued that conservatism was not enough and advocated the notion of a “conservative revolution” and geopolitical expansion.[3] While National Communists had no ambitions beyond restoring the Soviet Union, Eurasianists wanted to build a larger geopolitical axis of allies—such as Germany, Iran, and Japan—in order to resist the American influences. They attracted some support from hard-line military and nationalist political movements, such as Vladimir Zhirinovski’s Liberal Democratic Party. Other less influential hard-line groups insisted on Russia’s imperial restoration based on principles of Orthodoxy and Slavic unity.[4]
The HLN groups attacked official foreign policy course as serving the interests of the West at the expense of Russia. To them, Russia’s national interest was, almost by definition, anti-Western. They had no regard for market economy and political democracy and viewed Russia’s institutions as diametrically opposed to those of the West. The West’s liberalism, they argued, was nothing more than U.S.-based unipolarity in making. Russia’s adequate response should include rebuilding military capabilities, reforming the economy following the Chinese gradual state-oriented style, and preserving control over Eurasia or the post-Soviet world. In the words of the conservative periodical Molodaya gvardiya, “The historical task before Russia and other nations of the world is not to allow for the 21st century to becoming the American century.”[5]
When Statists defeated Westernizers, the HLN groups welcomed the new course and the second Foreign Minister Yevgeni Primakov’s concept of multipolar world. Yet they challenged Primakov to go farther in resisting Western influences and to adopt a more radical notion of multipolarity. The new minister planned to pursue a moderate course and consolidate Russia’s position by cooperating with the West, where possible, and by avoiding confrontation, where such cooperation was not an option. Aware of the scarcity of available resources, he saw a multipolar world as a desired objective, rather than a fact of life. To the HLNs, on the other hand, the notion of great power implied restoration of the Soviet Union, and multipolarity meant isolation from and competition with the West.[6] To them, Russia was a unique civilization that must be isolated from the West to survive and preserve its uniqueness. For example, Zyuganov never made his peace with the dissolution of the Soviet empire insisting that the Soviet Union was a “natural” geopolitical form of “historic” Russia, whereas the current political boundaries of the country are “artificial” and imposed by the West through covert actions. To “return” to the world politics and build a genuinely multipolar world, Russia must accomplish politico-economic autarchy (samodostatochnost’) and enter a strategic alliance with China.[7] What Statists saw as Russia’s special geographical and ethnic features, the HLNs developed into the principal line of cultural confrontation with the West.
3. FAILURES OF THE HLN: THREE ILLUSTRATIONS
Throughout the post-Soviet era, the HLN groups sought to challenge existing foreign policy course. This section considers in greater details how nationalist opposition attempted to influence Moscow’s handling of three foreign policy crises—Yugloslavia/ Kosovo in 1999, September 11, 2001, and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, 2004. In each of the identified cases, hard-liners had their distinct foreign policy preferences, which differed sharply from those of other political groups. In Kosovo case, nationalists wanted Russia to provide military assistance to Serbia, rather than limit its role to negotiations. In the post-9/11 context, their preference was for building a strong alliance with China and SCO at the expense of relationships with the United States. Finally, in case of the Orange revolution in Ukraine, the HLN groups favored severing all official contacts and supporting separatist trends inside Ukraine with the idea of making its leadership to comply with Russia’s demands (please see table 2 for a comparative summary of their positions).
[TABLE 2]
Three factors are helpful in understanding why the HLN groups proved unable to challenge either Westernist or Statist official foreign policies. First, the general public was preoccupied with issues of economy and domestic security and unwilling to support any foreign policy adventures at the expense of domestic reconstruction. Second, and related, a generally pragmatic Russia’s leadership was well aware of the country’s limited resources and needs to cooperate with Western nations. Finally, the West itself, despite a number of steps perceived by Russians as containing their influence, generally abstained from hard-line actions toward Russia. Over time, this helped to keep the HLN groups at bay and limited their potential appeal in Russia.
Yugoslavia / Kosovo, 1999
As soon as NATO had launched its air strike on Yugoslavia, it became the central issue of Russian foreign policy. Despite a number of important disagreements between Russia and the West about ways of handling Balkan affairs, the decision to intervene militarily came as a shock to Russia’s mainstream foreign policy community. This is illustrated by Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov’s decision to cancel the upcoming negotiations with the US and the IMF in Washington on March 24, 1999. Although his airplane had already approaching the US, he ordered it to return back home. Russia’s official policy toward the resolution of the conflict in Yugoslavia was to insist that the war to be stopped as soon as possible and a settlement with Yugoslavia to be reached by political, and not by military means. Yeltsin’s government was ready to contribute to the peace negotiations by serving as a mediator between NATO and Yugoslavia. It empowered Yevgeni Primakov and, later, Victor Chernomyrdin to serve as Russia’s envoys in the search for a peaceful settlement of the conflict.