The War of the Soviet Succession
The Special Military Operation is the latest struggle for normative hegemony in the post-Soviet space.
Such a conflict has not been witnessed since the Russian Civil War – a century ago; and prior to that we would have to return to the competition between the oligarchic catholics of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth with the absolutist orthodox Muscovite Tsars, back in the 17th century.
After 1989 the technocratic elites of the soviet bloc were forced to conceive a political solution to the problem of internal regime change. The chinese decided to move ahead with economic liberalisation but maintain political autocracy and this model was at times similarly followed in southeast Asia, central Asia and the Balkans. The velvet republics opted for full political and economic liberalisation but were cautious to maintain cultural institutions or even strengthen them; this allowing them to maintain social order in the surrounding chaos of institutional upheavel. Russia attempted to follow the same path but the results were disastrous.
The ‘velvet model’ could not work in Russia which was a vast multi-ethnic nation and where the organic moral institutions had been purged for over half a century. Hence, social cohesion could not be kept the way it was in central Europe. Similar problems were encountered in Russia’s periphery from Ukraine to Central Asia and the Caucasus. Indeed, the Chechen Wars were a local attempt to deal with the instability stemming from the soviet breakup, by emulating Middle Eastern models inspired by Islam.
In time, the Siloviki came to the same conclusion that the KGB had arrived at in 1991: Russia as an entity does not possess a circumscribed territory to where it can withdraw in an emergency and must, therefore, make strategic depth its defensive policy; this, in turn, requires a centralized government bent on preventing separatism and secession. If the KGB had a bad reputation after ’91, with the Chechen Wars, the nomenklatura came to understand the point and Putin was eventually suggested to Yeltsin as a viable solution for his succession.
The appointment of Putin, however, meant partly ending the oligarchic model which had been entertained until 2000. Moscow was, in fact, coming around to empathising with the asian adaptations to capitalism. This realisation served Moscow well and soon the chaos was ended, the economy was made to prosper, dependency towards foreign interests subsided and a military modernisation was carried out.
Unlike Belarus and Russia though, Ukraine began to stagnate after the 2000s, precisely because part of its intelligentsia insisted on following atlanticist doctrine. Ukraine too was a multicultural state whose christian ethics had been purged and therefore, it came to experience similar problems to those of Yeltsin Russia. Viktor Yanukovych’s government programme was partly a response to this degeneration which had only worsened with the Orange Revolution. Rather than reining in the corrupt oligarchy, the weakening of the central government authority before domestic kleptocrats and foreign technocrats, was causing Ukraine to regress back to social instability and political sclerosis.
Following the Maidan Revolution, the impetus became to cement the verge westwards. As Ukraine was an artificial entity, that could only be done artificially through force but unlike other post-communist regimes, Kiev’s authoritarianism was not merely political, it was totalitarian. In pursuit of the maximalist goals of atlanticist doctrine, Ukraine would attempt to mimic the velvet model of the central european homogeneous states, parties to the Brussels institutions.
Therein lied the Faustian bargain: the homogenisation of Ukraine could only be achieved with the totalitarian methods of the ultranationalists, whereas the inflow of funds which the central europeans had enjoyed as a product of their membership and voting rights, for Ukraine were available only via the diktats of the universalist technocrats; emanating from the Brussels bubble and the DC deep states, these technocrats were even less popularly accountable and, thus, even further capriciously ideological.
The Biden clan’s infamous dealings in the region must be seen as entirely natural given the promiscuity and mutual dependence between the Beltway’s military industrial complex and the subversive Brussels elites, desperately clinging to the jurisdictional legitimacy of their transnational powers. In the absence of war, it is simply convenient to stoke friction with the most proeminent military power lacking influence in Washington. For Brussels, any crisis which serves to further justify the acruement of its authority and the reinforcement of its narrative, is worth it. Brussels’s legitimacy is procedural: once national leaders allow the eurocrats to take charge, those powers are never returned – anyone suggesting it immediately being maligned for wanting a ‘civilisational setback’ which goes against acquired rights and liberties, for defending ‘autocratic revisionism’ or ‘russian revanchism’.
In the 21st century, therefore, the struggle is between two competing models of development: on one side stand the individualist ascepticists of the demo-humanitarian Internationale, while on the other side stand the idiosyncratic conservatives of the international alliance of sovereigntists.
The current war does not confront russians and ukrainians exclusively. Kiev has managed to recruit international volunteers indoctrinated by liberal propaganda into the famous ‘International Legion’. The nazi regiments operating in the Donbass had integrated neonazi militants from around the world since 2014. Opposition russians and belarussians in exile also have their own ‘Freedom for Russia’ and ‘Kastus Kalinouski’ battalions, respectively. Chechens operate on both sides, along the same clan lines which separate them at home: the ‘Dzhokhar Dudayev’ and ‘Sheikh Mansur’ battalions are under Kiev orders whereas ‘Kadyrov Guard’ elements went to fight in Ukraine as part of the Russian National Guard (RosGvardia) mobilisation to the Donbass. In addition, balkan serbs have integrated the Donbass militias since 2014.
Lately, Ukrainian officials have been appealing to an internationalisation of the conflict with the idea of opening two additional fronts: in Transnistria and Galicia. The russian dominated Transnistria enclave in Moldova, holds a small russian garrison guarding a sizeable ammunition depot, dating back to the Cold War. If the ukrainian army were to attack it, it could divert russian attention from the eastern front, draw in NATO allies into the ukrainian quagmire as well as, potentially, supplying ammunition to the increasingly deprived Armed Forces of Ukraine. Rumours have circulated of plans for a polish-romanian task force readying to mobilise to Moldova to fight any russian attempt to defend the garrison from the ukrainians. The Galicia concept would consist of a polish military mobilisation into west Ukraine which would establish a sanctuary for ukrainian forces, under the protection of a NATO aerial defense umbrella, thus contesting russian aerial supremacy and endangering any further Moscow advances west of the Dniepr.
The peripheral successors of the USSR appear to seek the west european solution of ethnically homogeneous states connected by endless porous political networks, ultimately resulting in technocratic world government. The USSR centre conversely seeks self-reliance and strategic depth so as to resist political universalism. The moderate reasonable position is certainly the latter, while the former relies, ultimately, on maximalist goals and utopian federations of incompatible interests.
The Westphalian Post 