Is the world at the cusp of another cataclysmic change? The world order which was sketched by the collapse of the Soviet Union is up for another paradigm shift. If that happens then the uncertainty will redefine the new international norms for some time.
Every change in the world has been followed by a spell of violence and human wickedness that increases the vulnerabilities of the smaller and weaker states. Before the new norms settle down and solidify, the restlessness of the society, the anxiety of the individual and the anguish of the civilisation can always cause greater havoc.
The first and second world wars are examples and reflections of the changes that were caused by deeper anxieties. But those are tales of a century back when the world was not technologically as advanced, and neither was it so vastly open; half of the civilisation was still under darkness.
But today the world is so strongly interconnected thanks to the internet, social media and smartphones that it is creating a new puzzle. At a time when so many choices are available, when the human mind is flooded with information, then why has so much negativity and bitterness enveloped the mind space; why are the demons of hatred and selfishness ruling the human brain?
Whether it is the individual or the state, both are prey to the same thought process. Vladimir Putin in many ways symbolises the mindset that cares less of others and the deeply self-centred Russian attack on Ukraine cannot be justified by any stretch of imagination; it betrays every norm that the world had agreed upon after World War II. There is no denying the fact that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, and the Russian republic was its centre. Both existed together happily.
In fact, one of the top Soviet leaders, Leonid Brezhnev was Ukrainian. It was understood that Ukraine and Russia in the larger Slavic context were close cousins who derived their civilisational roots from the same source. But once the Soviet system collapsed, Ukraine and Russia turned into bitter enemies.
There was a time when Ukraine was a nuclear power but due to global pressure, it surrendered its nuclear advantage and denuclearised itself which is now proving to be costly for it. Putin can justify his actions by saying that the West, led by the US, used Ukraine to surround Russia. After de-nuclearisation Ukraine wanted a military guarantee for its territorial security from NATO.
This did not go down well with Putin. Instead of talking to Ukraine, Russia, like a bully, started using strong-arm tactics. First, it militarily captured Crimea in 2014, a peninsula in the southeast of Ukraine and then promoted its two Conclaves – Donetsk and Luhansk – to rebel against Ukraine. It was the same Russia that had tried earlier to browbeat Estonia and Georgia, two other newly independent republics born out of the old USSR.
This underlines the fact that under Putin, Russia has an imperial design and believes that nations situated in its neighbourhood should behave like its colonies and should not have any independent ambitions to spread their wings. Historically, Russia has been dominating the socio-political space within the larger territory, which after the communist revolution in 1917 under Vladimir Lenin’s leadership, came to be known as the USSR. Communism as an ideology never accepted nor tolerated the urges of different nationalities within its boundaries and called nationalist movements regressive and backwards-looking.
Lenin’s successor Joseph Stalin used tanks to brutally crush any nationalist assertion and ruthlessly pursued Russification. His goal was melting and assimilation of all nationalities into one soviet identity, which basically was nothing but Russian by another name. Though he himself was not of Russian origin and had been born and brought up in Georgia, such was the power of the communist ideology that he became more Russian than the Russians themselves.
Excessive centralisation of power and single-minded pursuit of Russification suffocated different nationalities so much that the minute the Kremlin weakened they all declared themselves independent sovereign countries. The artificially created Soviet identity melted away like wax and the mighty USSR disappeared from the face of the earth. Russia was in a state of shock for many years and the Russian mafia ruled the state.
A dipsomaniac called Boris Yeltsin was the president, who was a disgrace to the great Russian civilization. Vladimir Putin was his protege who once worked for the KGB – the dreaded intelligence wing of the Soviet state whose main task was toppling governments. There is no doubt that Putin crushed chaos and anarchy with an iron hand, saved Russia from further disintegration, slowly but steadily brought order to the Russian society and the State reasserted its primacy, emerging as a strong regional power over time.
Russia today is a much better country than Putin originally inherited but the problem with Putin is that he imprisoned himself in his own glory and started imagining that he is Russia. It’s more than 23 years since he became the top leader of the country, but he is unwilling to pass on the mantle to someone else.
He was once the solution for Russia but now he has become the problem. Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to bring in glasnost and perestroika in the Soviet system. He had realised that the world had changed and the mindset of 1917 would not work in the modern world.
Unfortunately, the Soviet society had lived with such desperation under the communist regime that it had no faith in Gorbachev’s reforms and freed itself from the yoke of communism and fragmented into more than a dozen parts.
Putin, despite being a saviour for Russia, has not learnt from history and has not graduated to another level; he is still being haunted by the past and in the quest to re-create Novo-Russia, is treading the beaten path. Under his leadership Russia slid into a totalitarian state; there is no democracy though elections are held at regular intervals; the voice of dissent has no place in society and opposition is crushed like ants. He is so haunted by the Cold War mindset that instead of working towards improving the relationship with the Western world and his own neighbourhood, he is on a collision path.
Like a Czar and a Soviet official, he still treats erstwhile soviet republics as Russia’s colonies. He has forgotten that they are now independent sovereign countries, not bound by the soviet yoke, who are free to make their own decisions and international mandate treats them at par with Russia. History knows that there was a chancellor in Germany, called Adolf Hitler who, haunted by the past, imagined himself as the saviour of the present. Propelled by the impulse to recreate a glorious future, he brought ruin for his country and the world at large. Hitler in his madness and Putin in his nostalgia are two sides of the same coin.
Putin’s words, when he says, “Since time immemorial, the people living in the south-west of what has historically been Russian land have called themselves Russians and Orthodox Christians. So ... modern Ukraine was entirely created by Russia ... and Ukrainian authorities began by building their statehood on the negation of everything that united us,” resonates the same mindset.
History also suggests that the world then had allowed itself to be bullied and the same is being repeated. The world at large had paid a heavy price then and will pay again.
(The writer is Editor, SatyaHindi.com and the author of Hindu Rashtra)
