After This War

 

How will the Russia-Ukraine War end? What will the post-war look like?

Russian-born historian Alexander Etkind has written on Russian history and cultural memory in Eastern Europe. His latest book, Russia Against Modernity (Polity, 2023), was written over several months during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

Predictions are always problematic - all the more so in wars and especially in a war such as this one, in which almost all the pre-war predictions have proved so wrong. Before the war, many doubted that Russia would actually attack (even though this war is really in a sense just a continuation of the one Russia started in 2014). If it did attack, most assumed Russia would win quickly and easily. Hardly anyone expected that the war would accomplish exactly the opposite of Russia's aims - the at the West would rally to Ukraine's aid and that NATO would become a stronger (and larger) defensive alliance.

Etkind sets his argument is the future as a sort of retrospective analysis of a radically flawed, backward-looking, anti-democratic, environmentally exploitative Russia in conflict with the more environmentally attuned forces of democratic modernity. The author's idiosyncratic approach assumes a lot about the impact climate politics and the consequent character of environmentally attuned modern democracy. He also employ idiosyncratic ideological terminology (paleomodernity vs. gaiamodernity) that can be somewhat jarring and distracting. Such an approach seems somewhat problematic at best, But the heart of his case - that Russia is a dysfunctional petrostate in a kind of generational conflict with the future - makes certain sense.

According to Etkind, "Putin’s aim was to restore the Soviet-style paleomodernity – the reign of oil, steel and smoke, the majesty of military power, the coerced unity of the people. The Soviet Union based its power and glory on socialism – an ideal of brotherhood and the equality of all. Although it failed to materialize, this ideal was relatively effective in containing corruption. Putin and his people wished to combine the Soviet allure with post-Soviet graft. Their reenactment of paleomodernity merged legacies from the Soviet era – resource waste, cynicism and distrust – with the radical novelty of massive and ever-increasing inequality." Putin's "paleomodernity" combined all of the above with the contemporary culture war. "Along with climate denialism, other components of Putinism included cultural conservatism, homophobia, economic inequality and graft. They were all connected." Putin, prior to the war, "explained the energy transition underway in European countries by their “love of non-traditional relations,” a Russian euphemism for homosexuality; here, climate denialism merged smoothly with homophobia.20 Machismo was a persistent feature of Putin’s speeches; in August that year, he said that only masculinity could protect the governments of the world from the designs of American imperialism."

For Etkind, the generational difference constitutes a significant source of conflict. In this analysis, "the rupture of 1991 established a huge difference between generations. In both Ukraine and Russia, the cohort difference between the generations was larger than the ethnic difference between peers of the same generation." Russia's war against Ukraine "a war between two neighboring peoples of similar languages and diverging cultures," he calls "a war between generations: an Oedipus conflict of enormous scale."

Etkind sees some historical analogy also in the case of the 19th-century Crimean War. "Russia was never as isolated in its fight against modernity as in these two wars. In both, the Russian army’s logistics were poor, its weapons obsolete, its morale low, and the generation gap between its soldiers and their political masters tremendous. In both, the anti-Russian coalition was stronger, though its aims were vague. In both, Russia’s disinformation split Western pundits."

Etkind also offers some interesting historical analyses about how an "absence of meaningful differences does not decrease the scale or the cruelty of the mass murder. On the contrary, the lesser the differences the greater the genocide."

What next? Historically, the Russian Empire disintegrated thanks to World War I, while its successor the Soviet Union disintegrated thanks to the end of the Cold War. Without explicitly calling for Russia's collapse, Etkind predicts it. "Empires and federations develop in peace, consolidate in war and disintegrate after defeat." He suggests that "if Russia had not invaded Ukraine it would probably have deferred or avoided its defederation. But revanchism proved stronger than caution, and fetishism stronger than reason."

Etkind's vision of degenerated Russia may seem somewhat fantastical (although I cannot help  but recall Andrei Amalrik's Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? which turned out to b only a few years off). One observation Etkind makes, however, seems especially relevant and timely. In his imagined postwar future, Russia "would never sell oil again either: people abroad had somehow learned to live without oil. So who now needed this Federation?"

One dangerous dynamic he does not address is, of course, is the one Putin is probably counting on. If Trump returns to the White House after 2024, what would that mean for NATO, for Western aid to Ukraine, and ultimately for Ukraine's prospects for defeating Russia? Biden has allied himself with the Zelensky generation, whereas Trump seems unequivocally allied with Putin's generation. Such an outcome would be disastrous in many ways. Not least, it would negate (or at least delay) Etkind's futuristic scenario.