Valdai Club

The Russian-backed narrative, where Nazism is an absolute evil and the Soviet Union played a key role in crushing it, is giving way to the dominant counter-narrative promoted by the countries of Eastern Europe. The idea that the Soviet Union bears equal responsibility with Germany for unleashing the Second World War is gradually becoming pan-European mainstream sentiment, which entails important consequences for Russia’s status in the international arena.

We live on the ruins of two empires — the Russian Empire and the USSR, writes Valdai Club expert Alexei Miller. We have inherited, as the pillars of our collective identity, an unyielding desire to preserve our sovereignty and great power status. From the Soviet imperial experiment, we inherited the institutionalisation and territorialisation of ethnicity in the form of autonomous republics, which predetermines the impossibility of building a nation-state in Russia. It presupposes the need for a creative transformation of the imperial legacy in the development of future forms of political life within our country.

If we count the Napoleonic Wars, then the First World War was actually the Second. For a century after Napoleon, it was assumed that war is always limited and fighting is followed by negotiations. War was not an existential threat for the states. That came during the WWI, as it did in the Napoleonic Wars before. Napoleon was creating new states; he was reshaping borders and changing dynasties – as if he was redrawing the entire Europe anew. In the WWI, the same thing was happening. The obvious confirmation of that war’s total nature is that it resulted in the collapse of four continental European empires.

In 100 years since the Revolution of 1917, it continues to have impact on the Russian society. Divergent assessments of the Revolution and different approaches to its commemoration have been sparking off heated debates on Russia’s past and future.

It is obvious that life in large cities, including Moscow, is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for the local population, because the number of immigrants is growing, and young people who have little or no command of Russian constitute an increasing proportion among them.

The second summit of the European Union’s Eastern Partnership program got off on the wrong foot. First of all, it had to be postponed. The summit’s main declaration omitted any mention of the Eastern Partnership members joining the EU in the future despite the insistence of Ukraine and Georgia.

The break-up of the Soviet Union took place amidst ranting about the slide of the last empire into history. It would seem perfectly clear some twenty years ago that the empire, as an outdated and backward form of political organization, was giving way to the nation-state. Explanations suggested that empires collapsed because of an inability to change, adjust themselves to modern requirements and withstand pressures from national liberation movements, which ostensibly embodied progress and justice.