Russia in Global Affairs

Will a multipolar world not turn into an arena of war if not of all against all, then of many against many, a global war, which will be fought again not as stasis but as polemos to dehumanize and exterminate the enemy, while being portrayed, at least by one of the warring parties, as a battle of civilization with barbarians?

The state has restored its power over the physical and symbolic space, and through it over the bodies and souls of the people inhabiting this space. The pretty much forgotten right of the state to such power remained in its arsenal all along. Like a regalia, a palladium, and a fetish.

The only problem is that Orthodox canon law is extremely archaic (largely dating back to the times of Ecumenical Councils), confusing and ambiguous, and there is no generally recognized authority in the Orthodox world that could provide firm, reliable and binding interpretations of this law.

We have almost forgotten that politics should have a value component (the fascination with perestroika proved to be short-lived). The absence of value guidelines beyond accounts of benefits and costs turns politics into a nasty parody of itself and deprives it of power and functionality.

Until a method is found in Russia for generating a non-Soviet (different from the restoration of the pre-Soviet) central system of values, democratic institutions and practices will remain weak. Moreover, the vectors of movement for post-Soviet polities, which twenty years ago were labeled as a “democratic transition” in a burst of overly audacious hope, will remain forking paths.