Russia’s Turn Toward the East

Timothy Snyder’s recent essay on the Russian émigré philosopher Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954) seeks to elucidate the ideological basis for what it sees as the recent, dramatic movement of Russian foreign policy away from engagement with the West and its values toward a new embrace of the East (Snyder; see also Boyes for a similar reading not involving Ilyin).  Although I agree with Snyder that such a movement is underway, I argue that his critique reflects a typical unfavourable western ideological disposition toward Russia that accounts in large part for the foreign policy shift it seeks to analyze.

A supporter of the whites during the civil war that followed the Russian Revolution, Ilyin was expelled from Russia in 1922 and spent the final 32 years of his life in exile.  Dead for some 60 years, he has recently been exhumed by Vladimir Putin, both body and soul.  Not only did Putin arrange to have Ilyin’s mortal remains reinterred in Russian soil, but, starting in 2005, he began to circulate his writings and to cite them in public addresses, making of him, as Snyder states, “a Kremlin court philosopher.”  

The word that Snyder consistently uses to characterize Ilyin and his philosophy is fascist.  Snyder provides interesting insights into the theological underpinnings typical of fascist movements.  In Ilyin’s theology, the perfect creator god has been excluded from the world in which he [sic] intended to reside due to its imperfection—manifest chiefly in its fragmentation.  The liberal individualism valourized in the West is a chief symptom of this fragmentation.  In Ilyin’s view, the Russian nation has a mission to perfect the world by operating not as a collection of individuals but as a single, holy totality.  He thereby provides theological justification for a divinely-inspired and holy totalitarian nation state. Such a state would inaugurate a reign of virtue, one in which, supposedly, all persons willingly would be publicly accountable for their thoughts and actions.

In Snyder’s reading of current developments in Russian foreign policy, Putin has become mesmerized by Ilyin’s vision.  In terms of realpolitik, implementing this vision has led to Putin’s concession that Russia is a state that will not be limited by the rule of law.  Moreover, according to Snyder, Putin is now deliberately seeking political and trade alliances with similar states, hence the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union as a counterweight to the European Union (for a pessimistic view of the EEU at its founding, see Standish (2015)).

This forthright abandonment of the rule of law must send a chill through the hearts of the Western liberals comprising Snyder’s intended audience.  As a principle, the rule of law is seen as a bulwark protecting individual rights against the otherwise untrammelled power of the state.  Of course, everyone acknowledges that Russia has never had a tradition of an effectively functioning parliamentary democracy.  But the question might be justly raised why it would now abandon seeking one?  Why this embrace of a Tsarist state?

To a considerable extent, the answer might lie in the specific political purposes behind the demand that Russia seriously commit to adapting itself to the rule of law at the breakup of the Soviet Union.  The shock therapy to which Yeltsin subjected the nation most certainly prescribed it.  But we go wrong if we imagine that the details of that therapy were determined in Moscow.  Those details comprise what is popularly known as the Washington Consensus, which elaborated a paradigm for the transition from socialist command to capitalist market economies.  Former Soviet bloc countries were to adopt various policy reforms, particularly in the areas of financial discipline, public expenditure, taxes, liberalization of finances, exchange rates, liberalization of trade, foreign direct investment, privatization, deregulation, and property rights (Turley and Luke 149).

The nub of the matter is that the laws intended to operationalize these reforms pertain primarily to such things as property rights and the sanctity of contracts.  The rule of law here envisioned focuses upon the individual rights (anathema to Ilyin) privately to accumulate capital that comprise the superstructure of capitalist society.  This rule of law does not include social or economic laws such as the rights to a basic standard of living, education, or medical care.  Indeed, many such rights were undermined during the Yeltsin era through putative reforms involving privatization, which led to the substantial immiseration of the Russian people.

Regardless of what one might think of current Russian developments, Snyder’s castigating Russia for abandoning the rule of law seems disingenuous, for the laws in question are principally those that would promote western interests by opening Russia up as a field for western private investment and commercial control.  This is akin to the West imposing sanctions upon Russia for defending itself against the expansion of NATO.  In much western reportage upon Russia—and, I submit, in much western policy-making concerning Russia—the deck seems to be stacked ideologically against Russia.  It will be castigated and chastised for not adopting viewpoints that primarily serve western interests.  Putin seems very awake to this dynamic.  The Russian dalliance with the West that marked the first 15 years or so of the country’s post-Soviet existence clearly seems to be over.

List of Works Cited

Boyes, Roger.  "Putin Sees Future for Russia Rising in the East."  London Times 21 Mar 2018.

Snyder, Timothy.  "Ivan Ilyin, Putin's Philosopher of Russian Fascism."  NYR Daily 16 Mar 2018. Blog. 24 Mar 2018. <https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/03/16/ivan-ilyin-putins-philosopher-of-russian-fascism/?

Standish, Reid.  "Putin’s Eurasian Dream Is Over Before It Began."  Foreign Policy 6 Jan 2015.

Turley, Gerard and Peter J. Luke.  Transition Economics: Two Decades On.  London: Routledge, 2011.