Source: PostPravda.info 20.01.2025
Russia Threatens Europe Again, Just as the Soviet Union Once Did. Fear of this threat prompts two opposing reactions. The first is an attempt to convince oneself that there is no danger. In this case, the West must justify Russia’s actions, as pro-Russian politicians do. The second option is to find a true explanation for Kremlin policy. However, this requires accepting a dark reality, as analyzed in PostPravda.Info by Prof. Nikolai Karpitsky, a Russian opposition figure who fled Siberia in 2015 and settled in eastern Ukraine.
After the publication of the article “War as an End in Itself: Why Russia Won’t Run Out of Volunteers to Die in Ukraine?”, I received a question from Mr. Michał Talma-Sutt of Berlin, asking whether feudalism, deeply rooted in Russian history, is the best explanation for the “Russian fatalism” I had written about. This framing of the question reflects the perception of those in Europe who see a real threat from Russia. I am grateful to Mr. Michał for the opportunity to give a detailed answer, not just to him but to all representatives of European culture trying to understand Russia.
Is Russia’s Unresolved Feudalism a Relic of the Past?
Mr. Michał proposes explaining the dehumanization and aggressiveness of the Russian regime as manifestations of ancient feudalism. According to him, this reference does not fully explain the brutality of the current regime in Moscow, but it can partly describe its structure. Every political leader – whether a warlord or a feudal lord – irrevocably and unquestionably decides the fate of the people. He chooses who should live and who should die.
In Mr. Michał’s view, this unresolved feudalism, deeply embedded in Russia’s history, has led to the current power hierarchy in the country, with the main feudal lord – Putin – at the top, the master and ruler of life and death for those under him. The relationship between the lowest and highest levels of this pyramid is based on bribery – the modern equivalent of feudal tribute. This system, Mr. Michał writes in his letter, is quite terrifying.
Such an interpretation of the current Russian system indeed looks terrifying to a modern Western person, but from my point of view, it is overly optimistic. After all, by speaking of feudalism, Mr. Michał was referring to an archaic phenomenon. If this is the case, then Russia is moving against the tide of history, which means that time is on our side and works against Russia. But if it turns out that Russia’s current regime is not a relic of the past but a new historical phenomenon, then there is no hope that history is on our side.
Of course, Mr. Michał was referring to feudalism not in the strict historical sense but in a broader sense, as a manifestation of archaic relations based on non-economic coercion towards people of lower social status. The dictatorship in Russia is based on such relations, but it must be emphasized that these are characteristic of the entire post-Soviet space.
Although Ukraine is a democratic country, such archaic relations are also characteristic of Ukrainian bureaucracy and even academic circles. I was surprised to learn that in Ukraine, it is considered inappropriate if a scholar defending their doctoral dissertation does not pay a substantial sum of money to their academic supervisors. My Ukrainian colleagues did not see this as a bribe but as a completely justified tribute that a person must pay to move up the social ladder.
Since this is indeed a manifestation of archaic behavior, there is hope that the situation will change in the future. However, I believe that, unfortunately, the dictatorship in Russia is not a relic of the past but a modern phenomenon, although built on archaic relations.
Is There Social and Spiritual Progress in History?
Let’s imagine that we are not talking about states, but about small human communities. Take, for example, a gang of criminals willing to kill for money and, on the other hand, a group of volunteers who selflessly help people in need. They both seem to be representatives of the same species, homo sapiens, yet they are so diametrically opposed in every way, it’s as if they belong to different classes.
If we assume that the gang of criminals is archaic, a relic of the past, then there is hope that it will gradually disappear. But how would that happen? Would criminal organizations transform into charitable or volunteer organizations? We have to admit, that sounds absurd. Therefore, we might assume that criminal gangs existed and will continue to exist—not because they are remnants of the past that we haven’t yet shaken off, but because specific individuals choose to become criminals.
Becoming a criminal or a volunteer is a matter of individual free will. Unfortunately, most people are unaware that they have free will, and thus they make decisions inertially, adapting to the circumstances and social structure around them. However, the more rigid and aggressive that structure is, the more a person loses their independence, becoming just a function of that structure. Regaining independence is possible only by renouncing attachment to one’s social status, which provides normal living conditions. Few people are capable of this.
Therefore, if a criminal social structure already exists, one should not expect to be able to convince anyone within it to engage in charitable activities.
This illustration helps us understand why brutal despotisms have, for centuries, coexisted alongside cultured and free states. This has been the case throughout history, both in feudal times and in the present. In medieval Europe, there were kings and independent cities that enjoyed Magdeburg rights. There were ruthless despotisms like the Tsardom of Moscow, but there were also republics with a high level of socio-cultural development, such as the Novgorod Republic.
Even today, alongside modern civilized democracies, barbaric dictatorships exist. Unlike the obvious progress in technology, we do not see progress in humanism. Cruelty and violence are reproduced in each new era. This happens because technical knowledge can be accumulated and passed on to future generations, but values are only reproduced through free self-determination, and each generation must choose them anew. This is why different people choose good or evil, and based on that choice, incompatible social systems arise: a gang of criminals and a volunteer organization, the dictatorship in Russia and Western democracy. This has always been the case in human history.
Archaic relations persist in our lives as remnants of the past, but they can also mutate into entirely new phenomena. Indeed, today’s Russia is genetically derived from the cruel, archaic despotism of the Tsardom of Moscow, which saw its mission in “gathering lands,” that is, building an empire through ruthless conquests.
In the modern world, there is no place for such archaic societies, so at the beginning of the 20th century, the Russian Empire was replaced by a totalitarian dictatorship. The communist ideology of seeking class enemies caused a mutation of Russian imperial consciousness into a new form based on totalitarian ideology. The secret services, which carried out this terror, were indifferent to specific types of ideology. They lived in a world where absolutely anyone could turn out to be an enemy or an informant, even a close friend.
In 2000, it was none other than these very same people who ultimately and once again seized power in Russia. This led to the second mutation of Russian imperial consciousness into a new form – necro-imperialism. Its signs are that human life loses its value, personal identity means nothing, and death and destruction are seen not only as means but also as ends in themselves.
Attitudes Towards Good and Evil
In the face of the diversity of historical concepts, the average person doesn’t know whom to trust, and so begins to see historical teachings as an abstraction. Therefore, I propose looking at this problem on a personal level, which allows us to discuss the relationship to good and evil in history. Every individual and every generation makes its own choice between good and evil. Parents can influence their children’s choices through their authority, but they cannot make the choice for them. Historical inertia influences generational choices, but each generation must make a new decision between good and evil. The past is merely the material from which people build their own lives.
A generation’s self-determination begins with the choices made by individuals. Sometimes this happens as early as childhood. It can happen, for example, that a good school is located next to a school where bullying has become the norm because two or three students imposed this practice on everyone else. The rest agreed to participate in order to maintain their place in the social hierarchy. This is a form of adaptation. In a more supportive school, they would behave in the opposite way. This is exactly what is happening across Russia now.
Everything starts with an individual’s self-definition, through which a person realizes who they are. From this, their orientation towards good or evil is revealed, contributing to the formation of a social model of relations. The nature of this model determines what kind of social structures will emerge based on it. This could be a criminal gang or a group of volunteers. Moreover, these communities involve indecisive individuals in their activities, creating social inertia that influences generational choices. Based on these choices, some countries follow the path of civilized development, while others fall into dictatorship.
At what point did the wrong choice of generation lead to dictatorship in Russia?
The pivotal moment when a generational choice led to dictatorship in Russia occurred during the late 1990s. Throughout Russian history, inertia toward dictatorship had consistently gained strength, but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a brief opportunity to reverse this course. This could have happened if the generation of the 1990s had made the right choice. However, it required substantial effort, and that opportunity was ultimately lost.
In the autumn of 1999, Russian citizens were gripped by fear due to a series of terrorist bombings targeting residential buildings. People were dying in the night, before they had a chance to wake up. The terror subsided only after the Moscow branch of the FSB was caught in the act, attempting to plant explosives in an apartment building in Ryazan. Russian society struggled to process this information.
Of course, it’s terrifying to fall asleep knowing your home could be bombed by terrorists, but there’s some comfort in hoping that security services might protect you. Far more terrifying, however, is the possibility that the security services themselves could blow up your home—and that no one could protect you from them.
This fear led us, the Russian people, to place our trust in a representative of those security services—Vladimir Putin. A few months later, he was elected president. This generational choice was an act of betrayal, because those who voted for Putin betrayed the future of their children. It was this betrayal that catalyzed the second mutation of imperial consciousness and directly paved the way for the war with Ukraine. A generation that betrayed its own children will tolerate any crime to avoid the shame of waging a genocidal war against a neighboring nation.
The idea of historical progress, while offering hope for the future, can also lead to misguided political strategies. After all, if the current regime in Russia is seen as an archaic manifestation standing against the tide of history, wouldn’t it make sense to gradually civilize it by fostering cooperation with civilized nations?
This was the thinking of many European politicians before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It’s akin to trying to civilize a gang of criminals by inviting them to the theater or ballet. However, if we recognize that Russian necro-imperial despotism is a new historical phenomenon, one that can only be defeated through force, this realization might motivate the civilized world to unite and fight to dismantle the criminal social system in Russia.
