Russia in Global Affairs

A geopolitical and geoeconomic earthquake is shaking the world. Thanks largely to Russia, the West’s centuries-old military-based dominance is ending. New countries are rising, and previously suppressed civilizations are recovering. While these developments are welcomed by the majority of nations, the West’s desperate counterattack, to reverse the natural course of history, poses the risk of conflict and even world war. The international community should seek a peaceful transition to the new world order by strengthening nuclear deterrence and establishing new institutions of global governance. The West has to accept a more modest role in this new order, where Greater Eurasia will play a key role. The most important task for Eurasian nations is the decolonization of consciousness―overcoming the habit of viewing the world through the lens of Western perspectives and one-sided outdated theories.

INTEGRATION IN GREATER EURASIA

The current round of unprecedentedly fast and profound shifts—geopolitical, geoeconomic, and (so far to a lesser extent), geo-ideological—dates back to the late 1960s through early 1980s, when the first signs of a crisis surfaced in the West. Reagan tried to escape it through an aggressive attempt to restore military superiority and to sweep away the aftermath of utter defeat in Vietnam and the Arab oil embargo. Occupied Japan, still growing at a remarkable pace, was crushed by the Americans through military-political and economic pressure, a propaganda war, the yen’s revaluation, and export quotas. Japan’s growth fell to zero, and it is still struggling to overcome stagnation. Even before Reagan, the Americans had tried, with the Trilateral Commission, to consolidate stagnating Europe around the weakened U.S., just as they are doing now.

And then a miracle happened―the Soviet Union and the socialist camp ceased to exist, giving up their restraining and balancing role. China embarked on a path of quasi-capitalist development. One and a half billion low-paid workers and hungry consumers from China, the former USSR, and the socialist camp joined the global (now wholly Western) economy, structured to siphon off global wealth into the West.

The West’s blood system had gotten a powerful shot of glucose and adrenaline. Economic stagnation was interrupted. It seemed, for a moment in history, that the hitherto declining West had not only reversed its degradation but also won the final victory, achieving a unipolar world and “the end of history.”

But the deep-seated forces behind its degradation continued their work. One of the most important reasons for the crisis in the West, which appeared already in the 1960s, was the Soviet Union’s achievement of strategic parity with the West, depriving the West of the military superiority that had allowed it—through simple colonial robbery and plunder, then through neocolonialism, and recently through subordinated international institutions and regimes—to siphon off the planet’s wealth and that had supported the West’s almost 500-year-long political, economic, and cultural global leadership (Karaganov, 2019).

In the 2000s, Russia woke up from the Western delusion, realizing that its integration into this system, as an equal, was impossible. Except for a narrow stratum comprised of the comprador bourgeoisie and of the intelligentsia oriented towards and nourished by the West, Russian society began to slowly crawl out of this unbeneficial arrangement. At that time, the West, enchanted by its victory, overlooked China’s rise. The West was convinced that the millennia-old Chinese civilization-state, having embarked on the capitalist path, would become democratic, and its domestic political system would thus weaken and conform to the Western political mainstream. Still euphoric from its “victory,” the U.S. entangled itself in Afghanistan and Iraq, and defeat there punctured its supposed military omnipotence. Its huge investments in conventional forces had no political payoff.

The 2008 economic crisis, and the failure of the U.S.-backed Georgian invasion of South Ossetia, launched a new round of decline in the West’s influence, much more dramatic than that of the late 1960s-1970s. The Western economic development model was no longer attractive. Having finally recognized the impossibility of reaching an agreement with the U.S., Russia started rearming and reforming its conventional forces. But even before that, after the U.S. withdrew from the ABM Treaty (thus exposing its desire for nuclear and thus political superiority), Russia (still poor at the time) shook off its Western illusions and began modernizing its strategic forces, with results that began to appear at the end of the 2010s. The country was regaining confidence and openly questioning American-Western hegemony and expansion. The new course was de facto proclaimed by President Vladimir Putin in his well-known speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, and reaffirmed at NATO’s Bucharest Summit in 2008, when the Russian president warned that Ukraine’s accession to NATO would mean the end of Ukraine (Kommersant, 2008).

In the late 2000s, these military, economic, and political factors triggered the current global tectonic shifts that are gaining momentum before our eyes. The previous world system is being rocked by an undying earthquake. Russia, seeking to maintain its security and sovereignty, has played a crucial military-strategic role in this process, and maybe even partly triggered it, too.

Interestingly, leaders in Moscow did not and apparently still do not understand that the country has once again greatly contributed to a global geopolitical and geoeconomic revolution.

Our country is coming back home to its historical Eurasian political and social essence, by turning to the East and winding down its Petrine period of one-sided cultural, ideological, and economic orientation towards Europe and the West—but without rejecting Peter’s legacy, i.e. the mainly European roots of our high culture (while our political and social tradition is closer to the Asian type). Outstanding cultural openness, inherited largely from the Mongols, is a powerful source of ideological influence in the diverse world that Russia is pushing for.

The system of globalization that the West created since the 1980s is falling apart. Instead of the predicted world (essentially Western) government, and the dominance of (Western) transnational corporations and NGOs, we are witnessing a revival of nation-states. In the intellectual sphere, regional studies and political geography, which until recently were considered vanishing sciences, are regaining paramount importance.

There is an even more important process: the earthquake has accelerated the rise of countries and civilizations which until recently were suppressed by the power seized by the West. The completely destroyed Inca and Aztec civilizations will not be able to recover, of course. But we are seeing the great Chinese, Indian, Arab, Persian, and Ottoman civilizations regain their strength, and Central Asian civilization rising. Russia, at last, is beginning to realize itself as a civilization-state, even a civilization of civilizations, rather than the periphery of Europe. (Europe itself seems to be coming apart, which is dangerous for us―after all, we are partly Europeans.) The young American civilization—an empire in c.1945-2015 and even a hegemon in c.1989-2008—is conducting a fighting retreat. Following the West’s loss of its ability to use force almost with impunity against the “peripheries,” they have become free and rushed forward, primarily in Asia.

But perhaps the most important consequence of this geopolitical and geoeconomic earthquake is the revival of the main center of human development―Eurasia as the cradle of most human civilizations, once geopolitically and culturally connected by the empires of Genghis Khan, Attila, and Tamerlane, by the Silk Road, and by the trade route from the Varangians to the Greeks that passed through ancient Russia. The entire continent was largely marginalized by peripheral maritime powers that imposed their interests and way of thinking, such as the still-dominant view that countries controlling sea routes have an advantage over continental ones. Russia did need access to the Baltic and Black Seas, but its capital should have remained in Moscow or moved farther deep into Siberia, towards the material and spiritual source of the Russian nation and Russia’s nature as a great power.

Great Eurasian powers—and Eurasia as the global center of economic, political and cultural development—are recovering; countries and peoples are shaking off the Western “yoke,” under which most of them lived for 150-500 years. Countries that previously played a minor role in the global economy and politics are also rising. These are not only China, India, Turkey, and Iran, but also the two Koreas and Japan (the latter still under occupation). Southeast Asia is rapidly growing. Indonesia is destined to become one of the future world leaders. The economic, political, and spiritual growth of the Persian Gulf countries (where yet another center of the new multipolar world is forming) is quite impressive. Africa is developing unevenly but more and more dynamically under new leadership. Everyone speaks of Beijing’s expanding footprint in Africa. But perhaps Ankara’s overall influence there is even greater. Russia, which partly lost its strong Soviet-era positions in Africa, has followed suit, albeit belatedly. We have a good reputation on the continent, strengthened in recent years by successful operations to ensure several countries’ security. But there is a lot of hard work to do to restore thoughtlessly lost or surrendered positions.

When Russia decided to fight back against the West’s residual expansion in Ukraine—which threatened Russia’s vital security interests and very existence—Russia’s relations with the West drastically worsened, and it irrevocably parted with the more-than-300-year-old illusions of integrating “into Europe” that many of its elites had cherished. Russia is now focusing on closer relations with the non-West, which we propose to call the World Majority, whose countries seek to acquire or regain their sovereignty and their economic and cultural agency. This is the dominant economic, political and ideological trend in the world. Having knocked the military foundation out from under residual neocolonialism, Russia appears to be on the right side of history, midwifing the emerging World Majority.

The term and concept of ‘World Majority’ was coined several years ago during seminars and situation-analyses conducted by the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy and the Higher School of Economics. But it can already be found in the speeches and works of Chinese, Arab, and other representatives of the Majority, quickly catching on and responding to the needs of the emerging future-oriented world.

We should waste no time and start thinking about our policy regarding this emerging World Majority (see the report “Russian Policy Towards the World Majority,” 2023). Such considerations are accompanied and prompted by the old system’s decomposition and disintegration, including in its institutions. Old ones are dying off or weakening before our eyes, as once-dominant states cling to them. Unfortunately, this is also true of the UN, and especially the IMF, World Bank, and OECD. The OSCE is beyond hope, and the EU is rapidly declining. Only NATO has temporarily perked up by using expansion to provoke a confrontation, the basis for its existence. There are plans to create a global NATO and expand it into the Indian Ocean region. But this project will most likely suffer the same fate as its bygone predecessors such as SEATO and CENTO.

THE FIGHT WITH THE WEST

Still undecided is our current battle with the West—or rather, with its elites, who have thrown themselves into what is hopefully their last rearguard battle to avert a historic defeat. Russia could still lose its resolve to fight to the end, and thus lose the fight. But this is not only unacceptable, it is also unlikely.

The operation in Ukraine is forcibly but usefully opening up new opportunities. I think that one of its unspoken goals―and it is being successfully achieved―is to tear the Russian political and intellectual class away from outdated Western-centrism, force it to turn to new countries, ideas, and markets, and to return to itself. A parallel goal is to undermine the large comprador bourgeoisie that formed out of Russia’s unsuccessful reforms in the 1990s.

Having drawn fire upon ourselves, we have forced the West to unintentionally help us solve these two problems: intellectual and political Westernism and compradorism.

There is also a third unspoken goal, which is to be achieved through this crisis―to prepare Russia for 15-20 years of upheavals by building a “Fortress Russia” open for cooperation (Karaganov, 2022).

Russia has turned back to itself, returned—by necessity, but also as a result of having finally mustered the necessary will—to its traditional state of war against external invaders. It has thus finally begun to grow economically and technologically through import substitution. This is the path to sovereign development and to the nation’s freedom to choose its own path.

Alongside these efforts there is a need for intellectual decolonization: freedom from the Western yoke that is imposed but also voluntarily accepted. Also needed is a idea-dream: formulae that lead forward but have historical roots, are open for discussion but are promoted by the state (more on this later).

And another key task is Russia’s final return home to Eurasia through the development of all Siberia―the cradle of Russian greatness and power.

BACK AND FORTH TO SIBERIA

I had the honor and pleasure—together with my young colleagues (now prominent scholars and academic directors) Timofei Bordachev, Anastasia Likhacheva, Igor Makarov, Dmitry Suslov, and Alina Shcherbakova (Savelyeva)—to be among the initiators of the Turn to the East project that was launched intellectually in the late 2000s and politically in the 2010s. Sergei Shoigu, not yet Defense Minister, worked with a group of associates in parallel. The purpose was to integrate Russia with the economies of East and South Asia via Siberia. Some progress has been made. But it is also clear that the “turn” has not yet brought the desired results. Two reasons for that are the abovementioned Westernism and compradorism of elites who did not want to abandon the customary status quo. Thirdly, the process was managed technocratically and bureaucratically, almost entirely from the center, with only a few local actors involved. Also, it was a fundamental mistake to divide Siberia, which is actually a single historical, social, and economic entity. Contrary to most proposals, the plan did not integrate the Urals, Western Siberia, or Eastern Siberia, where natural resources, industry, and (most importantly) moral and intellectual resources are concentrated, but which suffer the most from the “continental curse”―separation from the most rapidly growing markets.

Now geopolitics and geoeconomics, and the growth of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, require a new intellectual and organizational approach to Eurasian integration. However, it should not be understood, as in the past, as integration through the EAEU. Even if we build “Fortress Russia,” which is necessary for the increasingly turbulent and dangerous world of the next 15 years, this “fortress” should be open to cooperation not only with the East but also with the South. And for that we should step up work to build transport corridors connecting Russia through Siberia with Asia through China, and finally complete the long-overdue corridor through Iran and the Persian Gulf to India and Africa. A lot has to be done in the intellectual domain. We do not know much about the East, the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, or Africa, and because of that we do not see the rapidly expanding opportunities there. I will repeat what has been said so many times at scientific conferences, in the press, and in correspondence―the most promising of the humanities now are Oriental and African studies.

Russia has long been developing its own school of economic geography that opposes the maritime powers’ geopolitics and geoeconomics (Shuper, 2021). But we need such schools in other social sciences as well. Unlike mathematics or astronomy, they have never been, and cannot be, supranational. (More on this later.)

We also need a new concept for the post-Soviet space’s integration (the previous was based on the EU concept and integration with it). It should fit into the broader pan-Eurasian or Greater Eurasian integration project, which would include communication, economic, scientific, political, and (no less important) cultural components. After all, Eurasia is a constellation of great cultures rising or recovering from marginalization, which we need to understand and work with.

TOWARDS THE RUSSIAN IDEA-DREAM

The current geopolitical earthquake, and the collapse of the old world and creation of a new one, more urgently than ever demand the country’s spiritual mobilization and an offensive ideological strategy. Investment in natural sciences is growing, and science and technology clusters are rising before our eyes. Engineers and scientists, who once formed the country’s meritocratic elite, are beginning to regain their rightful place in society. It would be nice to keep naming the multiplying signs of the revival of the country and its people. But my task is to propose policy adjustments necessitated by the challenges the country and the world are facing. Spiritual rebirth is the main answer to these challenges. It is priceless all by itself.

National and global politics are largely determined by a dialectical combination of three factors: economic development and well-being, by spiritual status and unity, and by willingness to defend interests and identity, including with military force. In 1950-2020, nuclear weapons reduced the importance of the latter military factor, temporarily obscuring the threat of war for most of humanity. Reliance on nuclear deterrence suppressed societies’ sense of self-preservation.

All this brought economic factors to the fore, especially since they emphasized the competitive advantages of Western countries, which at this stage of history leapt ahead, gaining the ability to impose their elites’ views through information dominance. The failure of the alternative economic model―Soviet communism with its strong ideological and moral components and emphasis on fairness―led to several decades of rampant consumerism. (Also, by opening new markets, it temporarily masked the flaws of Western capitalism that had become obvious by the 1970s and the 1980s. This model was losing both its Protestant ethic, and the social orientation that had been added to successfully compete with Soviet socialism.)

Communism’s collapse ushered in three decades of triumph for liberal economics and economists. The slogan “cash works wonders” was promoted in Russia almost officially. Even in Confucian and semi-communist China, welfare was and remains a priority, which is understandable for a country that was starved, humiliated, and plundered for 150 years. Man was separated from his core essence―love, the ability to create and dream, conscience, honor, and everything that distinguishes man from the animal.

Sated, and not required to fight for survival or homeland, society deformed. Post- and anti-human values have always lurked in the subconscious of some people, but now they are being generously fertilized and nurtured by oligarchies seeking to disunite society and distract it from growing inequality and other problems. Mostly it is Western civilization that is in decline, but the same may be in store for others as well.

During the ongoing and intensifying global earthquake, our national strategy should prioritize the defense and security of the country and its people, which will require their spiritual and ideological rejuvenation. The economy is still important, but economic criteria―efficiency and, even more so, profitability―should have secondary priority for at least the next couple of decades. The economy should turn from the core and master of state strategy into a respected servant. People should become the ends rather than the means of development, the purpose of state policy and public life, and not just as individuals, but as citizens ready to work for a common cause.

Military and spiritual strength will become the main factors of the country’s aggregate power, survival, and prosperity in the foreseeable future. Economic development is still necessary, especially using science and technology (including AI). But development not only in the pursuit of wealth, but for the protection of people, the country, society, and nature.

We also need a national idea-dream, rooted in tradition, based on present-day and forthcoming realities, but leading forward.

As a result of the extraordinary conditions created by the Special Military Operation, bureaucratic and elite resistance to a national ideology (resistance associated largely with the fading desire for a Western lifestyle) is diminishing. The Russian idea-dream is taking shape. President Putin presented it in his striking and unusual speech at the World Russian People’s Council on 28 November 2023, and in some subsequent statements (Putin, 2023).

A nationwide state ideology is urgently needed. Those who disagree either are intellectually and morally immature, or simply want a different ideology.

The Russian idea-dream should become a program for all those who work and want to work for their country and the state, which are one and the same in Russia, especially now during this extremely dangerous and crucial period in history.

This ideology should not be uniform; it should be the core of constant discussion in society and in the family. But if a person wants to be a state-minded citizen, he must know and understand the basic tenets of this ideology. There is no need to share all of them. But true patriots have the right to know who are our people, who are not quite ours, and who are not ours at all. The latter, of course, should not be repressed—if they do not break the law—but they should have no right to leadership positions in government, education, or the media.

Naturally, this ideology, this idea-dream, must reflect the basic tenets of traditional religions, which should enjoy state support. Traditional religions have almost one and the same moral code which the state must support if it wants society to endure and develop. Moreover, churches must be free and separated from the state. Their difficult duty is to be a moral beacon, even for unbelievers. Saint Philip Kolychev, who protested against the atrocities of the Oprichnina, and blessed Nicholas (Salos) of Pskov, who saved Pskov by offering meat to Ivan the Terrible, performed a service to the state. But the “repressions” of Ivan the Terrible were significantly less bloody than those simultaneously occurring in Western Europe. Only when the church and faith were officially suppressed did our state and its people commit many monstrous crimes against themselves.

God, and therefore faith in the higher destiny of man, should become part of the Russian idea-dream, even if someone does not believe in Him. Citizens of Russia should remember what they live for, receiving a moral and ideological compass for life. This will not only fill each life with meaning, but also strengthen us in the acute geopolitical competition of the coming decades, and provide us with friends and allies amongst all people of goodwill.

I will offer my views on how to clarify and develop a new worldview, the Russian idea-dream.

The main purpose of policy is to cultivate the best in people, the desire to serve family, society, country, world, and God (if people believe in Him). Regardless of belief, society must, through education and upbringing, cultivate a person’s divine nature, destiny, and readiness to serve higher purposes. This is the Spirit of the Russians.

Serving the highest authority is natural for such a huge country as ours, which persevered largely because it absorbed the political model of Genghis Khan’s great Mongol empire with its cultural and religious openness but enriched it with the powerful influence of Christian Orthodoxy, Islam, and Judaism.

Environmental policy should focus not only on cutting emissions but also on cultivating citizens’ love for their native land and for nature from early childhood, school, and university. Vladimir Vernadsky’s concept of the noosphere―the unity of man and nature, the former active and caring towards the latter―accords more than ever with the modern, forward-looking Russian idea-dream (Vernadsky, 1944).

I know that I will sound radical and maybe even funny, but I am quite serious. The modern public information environment requires cultivating and imposing morality, conscientiousness, love for one’s neighbor, everything that underlies the Abrahamic religions―Orthodoxy (Christianity), Islam, and Judaism―and most of the others, too.

I will share my personal experience. As a man of his generation, who grew up in the officially atheistic Soviet Union, I began reading the Bible only when I was already an adult. I bitterly regretted that I had spent a significant part of my life without this source of wisdom, historical experience, and ethical values. Recently, a good friend of mine, Siberian Kulturträger and philanthropist A.G. Elfimov, presented me with a copy of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s bible, complete with Dostoyevsky’s numerous annotations (now decoded). Dostoyevsky read it almost every day, and this was reflected in his writings. So it seems that I did not entirely understand the works of this great Russian genius. Currently I am trying to read a modern translation of the Quran―a wealth of thoughts, feelings, and wisdom. This reading greatly helps my professional development. It is impossible to write properly about war and peace without absorbing biblical wisdom, which is basically identical for Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Buddhists, although adherents of these religions sometimes feud with each other.

This idea-dream is being proposed and developed by many intellectuals and even politicians and thinking businessmen.[1]

Naturally, I do not claim that these ideas are new, but they are in the air. They have been proposed in one form or another by great Russian philosophers and visionaries such as Ivan Ilyin, Nikolay Danilevsky, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.[2]

However, this ideology is still quite vague. Many of its elements are contained in Presidential Decree 809 of 9 November 2022 “On the Approval of the Fundamentals of State Policy for the Preservation and Strengthening of Traditional Russian Spiritual and Moral Values” (Decree, 2022).

The new ideology needs to be endorsed at the state level and be constantly discussed in families, with friends, and at schools and universities. And then be creatively implemented.

Allow me to briefly outline this idea-dream:

• We—Russian-Russians, Tatar-Russians, Buryat-Russians, Dagestani-, Yakut-, Chechen-, Jewish-, and Kalmyk-Russians, and all the rest, citizens of Russia—are the people chosen by the Almighty to save our country and humanity at this turning point in history.
• We are the liberators from any yoke, having proven this to be our destiny with all our history. We freed the world from Napoleon, Hitler, and the like, and we are helping others to free themselves from the neocolonial Western liberal yoke now.
• The most important thing is the human and the human’s spiritual, physical, and intellectual development. We stand for a new humanism, against the destruction of the Human in the human, and for the development of what is best in the human―God―for those who believe in Him.
• The purpose of a person’s life is not hedonism, selfishness, and individualism, but service to the family, society, homeland, the world, and God, if one believes in Him. We stand for collectivism and mutual assistance, sobornost. A person can be realized and free only by serving a common cause, his/her country and the state.
• We are a nation of warriors and victors, who liberate from those who seek hegemony and domination, but whose primary duty is to our own homeland and state.
• We are the defenders of our sovereignty, but also of all nations’ freedom to choose their spiritual, religious, economic, cultural, and political paths.
• We are a nation of internationalists, and racism is alien to us. We stand for cultural and spiritual diversity and plurality.
• We are a unique, culturally- and religiously-open civilization-state, called upon to unite all the civilizations of Greater Eurasia and the world.
• We are a historical people; we honor and know our history, but also look forward to the future and are determined to create a new history of our country and a multicolored and multicultural world free from hegemony.
• We stand not just for conservative (not an ideal term) values, but for normal human ones: for love between men and women, their love for their children, for respect for the elderly, for love of one’s land.
• We are a nation of feminine but very strong women who have repeatedly saved our homeland in hard times. And we are a nation of strong and brave men who are ready to protect the weak.
• We stand for justice both between nations and inside the country. Everyone should be awarded according to their abilities, work, and contribution to the common cause. But the weak, the alone, and the elderly must be protected.
• We are not moneygrubbers, but we pursue deserved personal welfare. Excessive and ostentatious consumption is immoral and anti-patriotic. For us, business is a lifeway intended to make life better.
• We are a people that has not lost contact with nature. Russia is humankind’s main ecological resource. Preserving the unity of humanity and nature is a universal value. We love, above all, our homeland, and we will protect and develop it. The past, like the future, is in the unity of humanity and nature. We will cultivate what is now termed environmental self-awareness in ourselves and our children.
• Our heroes are the soldiers, engineers, scientists, doctors, teachers, and government officials who faithfully serve the people, the businessmen-philanthropists, farmers, and workers who create the country’s wealth with their own hands.
• Finally, we are a civilization of civilizations, called upon to unite those of Greater Eurasia and the world.

I repeat, without a grand idea-dream, society will not become a nation in the full sense of the word, and officials will have nothing to work for beyond their own well-being.

And without an understanding of what a war is being fought for—in this case, preserving and reviving the Human within the human, and the freedom and sovereignty of this country and all others—it will be lost or its fruits will be squandered.

Another huge task facing us and the world is finding a new economic model that is not only and not so much aimed at maximizing profits, but that improves a person’s life, environment, and self. I know that there are already many corporations in our country that live and work by these principles. Their success must be replicated. Business associations should not only advance and protect the interests of their members, but also promote such examples in their industry. Once again: the new international situation, and the exhaustion of the previous model, require a new economic paradigm. It is not the country or state that should serve business and provide it with favorable conditions, but vice versa. Business needs freedom only if it is ready to serve society and the state. A person’s desire for decent wealth should not be denied, of course, but ostentatious consumption should be socially stigmatized. A philanthropic businessperson should be a model to emulate. The tax policy should probably be adjusted, too. But I do not want to involve myself in a technical discussion of a subject with which I have limited experience. In fact, the economic policy is already being corrected and becoming fairer due to the ongoing war. These changes should be taken further, based on the new ideology of development and the proposed Russian idea-dream.

Politically, we are building not a modern Western democracy, but a meritocracy: cultivation of, and rule by, the best. Yet we do not reject democratic institutions, especially at the basic municipal level. Even the best can become the worst unless there is grassroots pressure and the opinion of the people and society is taken into account. We are a state of Leadership Democracy.

DECOLONIZATION OF THINKING

And now about a very important, overdue, but so far barely discussed aspect of the new policy. It and its success are impossible without overcoming and updating the archaic, and often undoubtedly harmful, ideological foundation on which our social sciences and (to a large extent) policies stand (see Shuper, 2022).

This does not mean again rejecting the prior achievements of political, economic, and foreign-policy thought. The Bolsheviks once threw Russian sociopolitical thought into the “dustbin of history,” and we know the result. Not so long ago we pushed Marxism aside with delight. Now, fed up with other dogmas, we have realized that this was done too abruptly, as Marx, Engels, and Lenin (with his theory of imperialism) had good and useful ideas.

Social sciences are inevitably national, no matter how cosmopolitan their adherents might seem. They grow on national historical turf and, ultimately, are intended to serve their countries and/or their ruling and proprietary classes—or supranational (currently globalist-liberal) oligarchs. Uncritically transplanting such sciences will be fruitless or lead to the growth of abominations.

After regaining relative military security and political and economic sovereignty, we will have to regain intellectual independence―one of the absolute requirements for development and influence in the new world.

Prominent Russian political scientist Mikhail Remizov was, I think, the first to call this process “intellectual decolonization.”

After decades of living in the shadow of foreign Marxism, we adopted the foreign dogma of liberal democracy in economics, political science, and even IR and security studies. This fascination cost us part of our country, its technology and those who develop it. In the mid-2000s, we started pursuing an independent policy, but we acted in many ways intuitively, without relying on clear (and thus nationally-oriented) scientific or ideological principles. We still do not dare acknowledge that the ideological and scientific worldview that guided us for the last 40-50 years is outdated and/or was originally aimed at serving foreign elites.

To illustrate this, here are some questions from my very long list.

What is primary in Man and society: the material or spiritual? In more mundane and political terms: What interests drive people and their communities―states in the modern world? Vulgar Marxists and liberals insisted on economic interests. Bill Clinton’s “it’s the economy, stupid” seemed axiomatic until recently. But in our country, it became an even worse postulate, almost an official guiding principle for the ruling circles: the above-mentioned “cash works wonders.” Once elementary hunger is satisfied (or even before that), people are driven by higher-order interests: love for the family and homeland, national dignity, personal freedom, but also power and recognition. In principle, the hierarchy of values ​has been known since Maslow in the 1940s-1950s. However, modern capitalism has distorted this hierarchy, imposing―first through traditional media and now through pervasive electronic networks―the philosophy of ever-growing consumption both for the rich at their level and for the poor at theirs. Modern capitalism, without an ethical or religious basis, pushing for unlimited consumption and removal of all ethical and geographical limits, is increasingly threatening to nature and the continuation of human life. Yet we Russians know especially well that attempting to quash desire for profit and wealth, and to get rid of the entrepreneurs and capitalists who bear these values, has monstrous consequences for both society and the environment (towards which the socialist economy was not particularly friendly).

What is to be done with the modern rejection of history, homeland, gender, and faith, or with the aggressive LGBT movement and ultrafeminism? I recognize others’ right to follow them, but they are post-human or even anti-human, and cannot be considered a normal stage in social evolution. Should we try to isolate ourselves, limit the possibility of their growth here, and wait for other societies to outlive this moral epidemic? Or should we give battle head-on—leading the overwhelming majority of humanity that supports the values that are called conservative, but are really just normal and human—further elevating the already dangerous level of confrontation with Western elites? My answer (see above) is that we should go on an ideological offensive and not shy from telling the truth, increasing our own self-respect and winning respect from the World Majority of normal people.

The modern world’s technology and growing labor productivity have satiated most people, but this very same world has brought anarchy and the loss of familiar bearings. Security interests, supported by military power and political will, are again displacing economic ones. What is military deterrence in the modern world? The threat of damaging national and physical assets, or the threat of damaging the foreign assets and information infrastructure to which the current cosmopolitan Western oligarchies are so closely linked? If this infrastructure is destroyed, what will Western societies become? Or should we aim our deterrence forces directly at the places where the oligarchies are concentrated?

What is strategic parity? Is it an absurdity—invented abroad to exploit the Soviet leadership’s inferiority complex and Barbarossa syndrome—that dragged the country into an exhausting arms race. Although we still refer to parity and symmetrical measures, it seems that we are beginning to recognize the truth.

And what is arms control, which many of us still believe is useful? Is it a way to curb a costly arms race beneficial to the richer side, and to reduce the threat of war? Or is it a tool for legitimizing this race, developing weapons, and imposing unnecessary programs on the other side? The answer is not so clear.

But let us return to higher-order issues.

Is democracy really the peak of political development? Or is representative (as opposed to direct, Aristotelian) democracy merely one tool with which the oligarchy can manage society? A tool that can be discarded when it no longer suits the situation. This is not a call for unrestrained authoritarianism or monarchy, let alone totalitarianism (Nazism). We seem to have already overdone it with centralization, especially at the municipal level. But if democracy is only a tool, maybe we should stop pretending to aspire to it, and say bluntly that we want a society of personal freedom, widespread prosperity, and national security and greatness?

But how then can we legitimize power in the eyes of people? Or should we put forward the concept of ‘leadership democracy’―the power of meritocracy led by a strong leader but enjoying the support of the majority of people? Or should we say straightforwardly that democracy is the path to anti-meritocracy, the ochlocracy (mob rule) now emerging in the West, or even decline? (Almost all democracies in history led to the disintegration and degeneration of society and the state, as in Russia and Germany during/after WWI.)

Will the state really die off, as the Marxists thought in the past, or as liberal globalists have been saying for half a century, dreaming of an alliance between transnational corporations, international NGOs, and suprastate unions? (See e.g. the recent absurd proposal of Klaus Schwab (2021). In reality, many such corporations and NGOs are now being nationalized or privatized.) We will see how long the EU lasts in its current form. Again, this is not to deny the utility of interstate cooperation to e.g. remove costly customs barriers, protect the environment, or combat epidemics. But maybe we should focus on strengthening our own state and supporting our allies, leaving global problems to those who created them? Or will those problems only cause us more trouble in that case?

What is the role of territory? Is it a diminishing asset, a burden, as some said until recently, following Westerners’ lead (Hill, Gaddy, 2003)? Or is it still the most important national treasure, especially amid climate change, worsening relative (sometimes absolute) water and food shortages, and other environmental crises?

What will happen to hundreds of millions of Pakistanis, Indians, Arabs, and others whose territories may become uninhabitable? Should we invite them now, as the U.S. and Europe did in the 1960s to reduce labor costs and undermine unions? Should we fence ourselves off? Or should we devise a model that preserves the mastery of Russia’s native peoples over their land? But the latter would mean abandoning any hope of developing democracy, as demonstrated in Israel with its Arab population. The answer is not obvious. We need to develop a theory of our own and act on its basis, rather than swinging from immigration’s maximum liberalization to its complete ban.

Will robotics in Russia finally reach the level needed to avoid labor shortages? People of Russian ancestry are inevitably decreasing as a share of the country’s population. Does the historical openness of the Russian people permit optimism regarding this? The main thing is to learn to think independently, to understand one’s place and the place of one’s country in geography and history, to grasp the roots and interests of our peoples. Then research will be intellectually fruitful and socially useful.

There are many more questions, especially in the economic domain. To achieve development and victory, we must ask and answer them as quickly as possible. We need a new political economy that is free from Marxist and Liberal dogmas, but greater than the strict realism that currently underlies our foreign policy. It should be augmented by an offense- and future-oriented idealism, by a new Russian idea based on our history and philosophical tradition. Our sciences must be woven together seamlessly. One cannot be an expert in culture without knowing history and geography, let alone an economist without knowledge of them plus international relations.

I am sure that this is the most important task for all our scholars: IR experts, political scientists, economists, geographers, and philosophers. It is a truly daunting task. We will have to break customary and comfortable habits of thought in order to be useful to society and the country. To sweeten this task, I will conclude with the half-joking idea that the subject of our study―foreign, domestic, and economic policy―is the creation of many people and leaders, and is ultimately art. Within it, there is much that is inexplicable, based on intuition and talent. Could it be that we, just like art critics, describe things, identify trends, and teach history, doing work that is useful for creators―peoples and leaders? Although we often turn into scholastics, generating theories that have little relation to reality and that distort it through fragmentation, busying ourselves with art for art’s sake.

One final point: in the study of our science-arts, the course on theories should be replaced with a course on criticism of theories―including our own. Theories cannot adequately or fully explain people’s thinking, society, or the world, and usually distort understanding and thus action. One must know theories, but be guided by intuition based on knowledge and will―human and, if possible, divine.

The original Russian-language version of the article published in: V.M. Kotlyakov and V.M. Shuper (eds.) Ноосферная концепция В.И. Вернадского после глобализма [V.I. Vernadsky’s Noospheric Concept after Globalism]. Voprosy geografii [Problems of Georgraphy], Vol. 159, pp. 28-50. Moscow: Media PRESS, 2024. Available at: https://elib.rgo.ru/safe-view/123456789/236981/1/0JLQvtC_0YDQvtGB0Ytf0LPQtdC+0LPRgNCw0YTQuNC4XzE1OS5wZGY=