Russia’s New ‘Conservative’ Ideology To Counter Liberalism – By: Anna Mahjar-Barducci
MESOP MIDEAST : Inquiry and Analysis No. 1616 by MEMRI
Renowned Russian academic Sergey Karaganov describes Russian President Vladimir Putin’s speech at the latest October Valdai Forum as the “first major and strong call for reinventing Russian ideology for Russia and the world.” Indeed, Putin’s speech can be viewed as an ideological manifesto that tries to put Russia back in the center of the world’s political map.
Karaganov, who has been the Kremlin’s advisor on foreign policy for twelve years, explains that for many years the economy was the central factor for countries and societies (“it is the economy, stupid”). However, history proves something else. “Yes, people are driven by economic interests, but when they are partially satisfied, when at the bare minimum no one starves, they turn to other interests like security, national pride, ideological views, cultural stereotypes and needs – that is, phenomena and values of a higher order,” Karaganov states.
For this reason, Putin believes that if Russia manages to shape a new ideology, it could have the same attractive power that it had under the Soviet Union with Communism, despite its shrinking economy. However, since Communism failed, Putin needs new values and ideas to counter the West.
New Planet, 1921 by Konstantin Yuon. (Source: State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow)
‘The Conservative Views We Hold Are An Optimistic Conservatism’
According to Karaganov, the West, after dominating the economy, politics, ideology, and culture for five hundred years, finds itself in ideological decline. “All powers, if they want to be great, must have a set of ideas leading forward. When these ideas were lost, great powers ceased to be great or simply disintegrated. This happened to Rome. This happened in the 17th century to Spain. This happened to the Soviet Union when we lost the communist idea that led us. It was false, but it was there. This happened to the great European powers, which got tired and abandoned their ideas in favor of a pan-European one that pushed them forward for some time. But it has run [out] of steam now, too. And they have started to crumble,” Karaganov opines.
Furthermore, according to Putin, liberalism has failed and the new progressive liberal ideas pushed forward by the West show only a loss of values and identity. Hence, to counter the liberal elite in the West, Putin suggests for Russia to become the beacon of conservatism and traditionalism. “The conservative views we hold are an optimistic conservatism,” Putin affirmed at the Valdai Forum.
Putin further states that values are a “a unique product of cultural and historical development of any nation.” For this reason, the West should not promote in other countries values and ideas that stand in contrast with the local culture and tradition. “The social and cultural shocks that are taking place in the United States and Western Europe are none of our business; we are keeping out of this,” Putin said.
In his speech-manifesto, Putin listed point by point the ideas in the West that he challenges. In a way, in his speech, Putin tries to outline what Russian anti-liberal philosopher Alexander Dugin calls the “Fourth Political Theory.” Dugin classifies three political theories in order of appearance that characterized the 20th century: liberalism (the first theory), communism (the second theory), and fascism (the third theory). Fascism emerged later than the other major political theories and disappeared before them. The alliance between liberalism and communism, in combination with Adolf Hitler’s geopolitical miscalculations, were responsible for the demise of fascism. Fascism’s disappearance cleared the battlefield for the first and the second political theories, whose Cold War duel created a bipolar world that lasted nearly half-a-century. The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union signaled the victory of liberalism over communism. Thus, by the end of the 20th century, liberalism remained the only theory standing.
However, liberalism itself has become increasingly decadent. “Today’s liberalism is so rotten within that it’s easy enough to throw out now, because it itself has recognized progress, freedom, and development to be absolute fictions. Liberalism has recognized that it is a kind of particular totalitarian approach. Behind all these ideas of liberation, freedom, equality, individualism, etc., stands none other than the will to power,” Dugin explains. Therefore, to avoid backsliding into communism and fascism, Dugin suggests that a Fourth Political Theory is needed, based on the rejection of post-modernism, the post-industrial society, liberal thought realized in practice, and globalism. Hence, one of the first steps towards a Fourth Political Theory is the “global rehabilitation of tradition.”
Yet, Putin not only determines in his speech that liberalism is not the “end of history”, but also shows similarities between liberalism (or more accurately progressive liberalism) and communism, ironically echoing anti-Kremlin conservative Polish philosopher and politician Ryszard Legutko’s book, “The Demon In Democracy.”
This is how Legutko analyzes and criticizes communism and “liberal democracy”, which is the term he uses to refer to progressive liberalism: “It goes without saying that everything – in both communism and liberal democracy – should be modern [i.e., against tradition]: thinking, family, school, literature, and philosophy. If a thing, a quality, an attitude, an idea is not modern, it should be modernized or will end up in the dustbin of history (an unforgettable expression having as much relevance for the communist ideology as for the liberal democratic). This was a reason why the former communists… so quickly found allies in liberal democracy, where the struggle for progress animates practically every aspect of individual and collective activities… Both systems generate – at least in their official ideological interpretations – a sense of liberation from the old bonds [i.e., history] … Both want the past eradicated altogether or at least made powerless as an object of relativizing or derision. Communism, as a system that started history anew, had to be, in essence and in practice, against memory… There are no better illustrations of how politically imposed amnesia helps in the molding of the new man than the twentieth-century anti-utopias [described in] 1984 and Brave New World. The lessons of Orwell and Huxley were, unfortunately, quickly forgotten. In my country [Poland] at the very moment when communism fell and the liberal-democratic order was emerging, memory again became one of the main enemies. The apostles of the new order lost no time in denouncing it as a harmful burden hampering striving for modernity.”