Does The West Err In Imagining Russians Want To Be Degenerate Consumers Too?

turcopolier  |  Putin’s target is just as much domestic constituencies as it is the West, perhaps more so. The aim is to force Russia’s Western-leaning élites into line – and that includes the Central Bank. A total rift with the West was never going to be possible otherwise. This way he presents the split as a fait accompli and all patriots will be expected to get behind his policies. If it is successful Putin will go down in history as one of the most brilliant statesmen of all time. Judo is most certainly at play in nailing shut the door. 

For example, our sanctions on the oligarchs who stash their wealth outside the country ought to help repatriate some of that wealth to Russia. The ones who choose to stay abroad Russia does not want anyhow. Putin sees this as a civilizational war, with Russian civilization incompatible with increasingly degenerate Western values. 

My perspective is Russia is being enormously strengtened by the current reaction of the West, the same way it happened in 1941. It is a huge miscalculation and is not good.

I’m from Eastern Europe – a native Bulgarian and I also know Russian because I studied in school at the times of the Soviet Union. We are probably culturally closer to Russians than even Ukrainians in some aspects.

In the Eastern Ortodoxy doctrine, the closer to the truth you are, the closer you are to God. That means the beliefs are not oriented towards commercial success, like in the Protestant world for example, where hard work will get you closer to heaven. Only doing the right thing will grant you a path to heaven, and if you need to be poor, then so be it. Even though releigion is not something significant today, it has shaped the mind of the whole Eastern Ortodox civilization. And what it means in practice is news about markets and inflation and poverty are having much smaller effect on Russians than what Westerners think. Of course Russians are worried about inflation and price rises – but at the same time they pride themselves because of doing the right thing, and this is stronger. The recent sharp increase in Putin’s rating confirms that – no amount of misery will stop such minded people when they beleive they are on the right path.

Unlike the West, where the Law defines public truth, in the Eastern Ortodoxy it is not the Law, but your own feeling of righteousness. If the law is against your gut feeling, it is not something you generally need to do. Hence the chaos and lack of strict rule of law in the whole Eastern Ortodox world – from parking & driving, to personal quarrels. The West sees this as some form of corruption, which it is not – it is just people beleiving in their own righteousness, not in the righteousness of the law . By the way, Geoffrey of Villehardouin “On the Conquest of Constantinople” says basically the same, and he has written his book in 1204. That is in essence the dilemma of the East, the ruler is expected to be a saint, and when he is not, people are allowed to follow their own judgement.

So what is happening now is Russians are rallying around their leader and are getting enormously dedicated to destroy the “unjust” and “unrighteous”. Nuclear war is a very real option unless the West doesn’t ease tensions – it is really obvious to me. In the Russian collective mind, Realpolitic that was played was heresy.

N.B. I’m not pro-Russian – there is ambivalent relationship between us and the Russians. Going back in history, we gave them the Cyrilic alphabet (sponsored by Bulgarian king), our monks brought Ortodox Christianity there (not Byzantines, it was Bulgarians like St Cyprian that converted our wild Northern cousins in the middle ages; “Old church slavonic” is the same as “Old Bulgarian” ). In their turn they liberated us from the Ottomans, but wanted to turn us into Russians which we really hated, and then they unsuccessfully attacked us in WW1 and occupied us after WW2. I’m just saying they see things differently and I’m trying to give a perspective.

Russians are done with the West. They regard the US especially as breakers of their word, hence, untrustworthy (“agreement-incapable”), without honor, and morally degenerate”. Even Russian liberals like Medvedev are reversing course away from the West.

We can surmise that the Chinese have a similar take, but they were never Western-oriented like the Russian liberals anyway. People in the West, and in the US especially, don’t know that a core issue for Russia in the Ukraine matter is neo-Nazism because this has been suppressed in the narrative in the US. They are not kidding when they say this is about de-Nazification and bring to justice those guilty of “genocide” in Donbass, where over 10, 000 Russian Ukrainians have been killed by the Azov Battalion forces, who view Russians as Untermenschen.