An empire tries to strike back

Two articles on the fate and aspirations of contemporary Russia, here and here.

The first, by George Schöpflin on openDemocracy, argues that, domestically, Russia is a "consensual authoritarian" system, "ruled by a rent-seeking elite", and glued together with xenophobia and support from eastern Orthodoxy; internationally, the author spies emergence of neo-imperialism the country's power plays with it hydrocarbons resources and infrastructure.

Though there might be a case for seeing this as neo-imperialism—if that means exercising control through economic strength rather than directly by force—I'm not sure that there's anything wrong per se in charging market prices for your oil. (If it is possible to see oil subsidies as a means of maintaining influence in post-Soviet countries, can raising prices also be? You would have to look at the specific political conditions in each case.) Nor does there necessarily seem much of a territorial claim implicit in the phrase "near abroad".

Also: the definition of "European" as somehow synonymous with democracy seems a little strange, given that half of Europe has only established (or re-established) democratic institutions in the recent past.

The second article, by Perry Anderson in the London Review of Books, is a more wide-ranging and historically well-informed piece. It starts off with the Russian authorities' touchy relocation of the funeral of the assassinated investigative journalist, Anna Politkovskaya, to an obscure cemetery on outskirts of Moscow, which is portrayed as both shabby and fearful, then moves quickly on to a speculative, though broadly plausible, account of the basis of Putin's appeal and high ratings in the opinion polls (basic answer: he's not Yeltsin); the intimate connections, despite differences, between the Yeltsin and Putin regimes; the re-merging of political and economic power under the latter, in parallel with the fusion of the state and security apparatus; the resubordination of the media; the lamentable fate of the liberal intelligentsia (but: they shouldn't have backed Yeltsin); the widespread indifference to the horrors of Stalinism; the demographic catastrophe that looms on the horizon; and the symptoms of ongoing cultural degradation and decline (symbolised by the decadent cult of "retro-Tsarism").

Mr Anderson lays into various commentators over for their benign assessment of the state of contemporary Russia: Andrei Schleifer (neo-liberal crook) and Andrew Jack (neo-liberal dupe/ colonial apologist). Richard Pipes gets a grudging thumbs up for his theory that Russians, hemmed in by a political culture that predisposes them to favour order over freedom, don't necessarily rate democracy that highly.

In addition, the author points to a number of interesting-sounding theorists of contemporary Russia more approvingly, such as Anna Ledvna's study of the informal practices that characterise Russian political and economic life (whenever this topic comes up, I think, for some reason, of the phrase "what you call corruption, we call culture", intoned in a rasping Mafioso baritone), and gives an outline of Dmitry Fruman's idea of Russia's present-day "managed democracy" as the phase of a process that broadly mimics the phases of the Soviet era (but this time heading towards real democracy?). This looks a bit like a regurgitation of the ever-popular "cycles" theory of civilisational ascendancy and decline—a recycling, in fact.

Yet, for all its astuteness in places (on the possible factors behind Putin's appeal, which often looks like a bit a mystery to outsiders), as well as for its obvious erudition and breadth, the essay leaves a certain teenage, "not as bad as Bush and Blair" impression behind it. This impression, while perfectly characteristic of the rather degraded political discourse of the day, still seems to me a bit unseemly in a Marxist historian fast approaching 70.