TL;DRussia Weekend Roundup
30 July 2022: More thoughts on Russia's motives, plus texts and tunes
This weekend finds me in a place of change and continuity. Geographically, that means Durham, North Carolina, where I’m spending much of the summer. That’s the continuity part: Durham is where I grew up. The change bit is somewhere between 3,872 miles to the northeast, and 265 miles to the north. The former is the distance between here in King’s College London, where I’ve spent the last decade of my life. The latter is the distance to the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, where I’ve just signed on as director of the Democratic Resilience program. Even there, though, there isn’t too much change: I remain a professor at King’s and very much a part of the King’s Russia Institute.
In the spirit of change, though, I wanted to try something new: a weekly roundup of thoughts and discoveries to supplement whatever actual analysis I manage to get out on this newsletter. Hopefully this will be useful, and maybe even fun. Whatever it is, look for it in your inbox on Saturday mornings, and let me know what you think. Like everything else here, it’s free!
What I’m thinking about
Spurred on by Sam Charap and Jeremy Shapiro’s provocative essay in the New York Times, I put out a post here on Thursday evening, delving into the difference between national security and regime security, and arguing that Putin’s focus on the latter meant that traditional approaches to international conflict resolution — i.e., negotiations — were unlikely to be helpful.
That post, though, prompted a number of genuinely thoughtful and thought-provoking exchanges — on Twitter, oddly enough — with some of my favorite academic colleagues, most of whom critiqued my insistence on a kind of rationality in explaining Putin’s prosecution of his war against Ukraine. In a series of responses from Brian Taylor (channeling Max Ananyev), Maria Popova and Kostya Sonin, I was challenged to leave open the possibility that Putin might have in fact been motivated by something less than fully rational: i.e., by nationalist ideology and a thirst for conquest and empire.
The most interesting of these exchanges, I think, was with Maria, involving an interjection from Kostya:
If you’re interested, click on the Tweet above to follow the thread. For more, you can delve into briefer interactions with Kostya and Brian, and a separate exchange with Michael Kimmage.
I suppose I have two responses, neither of which may be fully satisfactory — but it’s what I’ve got. The first is that I don’t think the idea of regime security and the idea of ideologically driven imperialism/colonialism are mutually exclusive. My sense is that imperialists pursue empire because they think it’s important to securing their rule. (That said, I am not a historian of empire. Also, the first reader to bring Niall Ferguson into this conversation will be banned for life.)
The second answer is this:
Off to think some more.
What I’m reading
The most interesting thing I read this week was undoubtedly this article in Nationalities Papers from Tatsiana Kulakevich and Jan Kubik, meticulously comparing the trajectories of Poland’s Solidarity movement and the Belarusian protest movement that erupted in 2020. Political movements, they write, go through four stages of development: emerging, coalescing, bureaucratizing, and then either winning or declining. The Belarusian movement’s emergence, coalescence and bureaucratization has tracked closely with the history of Solidarity, Kulakevich and Kubik find. But while repression might seem to have pushed the movement into decline, the reality may not be so bleak. They write:
“…we also observe the transformative effects of these events on the (political) culture of the country. Initially incremental changes in the conceptions of national identity, accelerated during the subsequent protest waves. They were signaled by the pervasive use of symbols signifying the concept of national identity sharply opposed to the one promoted by the Lukashenka regime. Moreover, they seem to be powerful enough to sustain emotional mobilization that is necessary, though not sufficient, for achieving ultimate success: the regime change.”
Sticking with the topic of repression and resistance — though, to be honest, more of the former than the latter — it’s also well worth taking a look at the latest from Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan in Foreign Affairs, on the Kremlin’s inexorable appetite for repression:
“When the war began, the Kremlin planned to use the FSB mainly in Ukraine, as a special operations force that would consolidate a rapid Russian conquest. As those plans faltered, however, Putin crafted a different, far more comprehensive mission for the FSB: it would be at the forefront of Russia’s total war effort at home as well as its intelligence operations in Ukraine. And every branch of the service would now be involved.”
And if you need more still more light reading for your weekend, take a look at two new pieces from my CEPA colleagues — Kseniya Kirillova on the extension of political repression into Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine, and Krista Viksnins on the hurdles facing those seeking justice for war crimes.
What I’m listening to
Because sanity matters, music is a must. This week I happened upon the brand new album from Florist, which is keeping me calm. Check it out.