The Musings of a Scribbler, February 6, 2024
For the past week or so I have been making notes for a piece to be entitled “Russian Exceptionalism.” It opens with Michael McFaul’s account of a meeting in March 2011 between then Vice President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin, serving a term as Russia’s prime minister before in effect installing himself as president for life. McFaul, who would go on to serve as U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012 to 2014, was in the room. With the caveat that he was paraphrasing from memory, McFaul reported that at one point Putin told Biden, “You look at us and you see our skin and then assume we think like you. But we don’t” (McFaul, Vladimir Putin).
McFaul went on to discuss the theory of realism in international relations, which “assumes that all countries are the same: unitary actors seeking to maximize their power or security through rational calculations in an anarchic world.” Writing on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, McFaul was arguing against the position advocated by foreign policy realists such as John Mearsheimer who
offer several prescriptions for how to defuse the current Russia-Ukraine crisis: Freeze NATO expansion and Russia will be content. Offer face-saving concessions that give Russia tangible gains and the threat of war will subside. Don’t arm Ukraine because that will fuel escalation and trigger a Russian invasion.
The realist interpretation is flawed, said McFaul, because “Putin does not think like us. He has his own analytic framework, his own ideas and his own ideology—only some of which comport with Western rational realism.” McFaul closed his short column with the advice that we should have no “illusions about negotiating with a Russian interlocutor who thinks the way that we do. And over the long run, we also should remember that not all Russians think like Putin.”
McFaul’s conclusion is right up to a point, but it is only part of the story. Not all Russians think like Putin, just as not all Americans think like Donald Trump, but quite a few do. Among them are members of Putin’s circle and others with power and influence in political, military, and certain quarters of the intellectual spheres. Their analytic framework and ideology has deep roots in Russia’s history, traditions, and founding myths. In the nineteenth century fierce debates raged between Westernizers and Slavophiles:
"All the great debates about the country's character and destiny have been framed as questions about history. The controversy between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles, which dominated Russia's intellectual life in the nineteenth century, came down to a conflict over history. For those who looked to the West for their inspiration, Russia had been strengthened by the Westernizing reforms introduced by Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century; but according to the Slavophiles, Russia's native culture and traditions, its national cohesion, had been undermined by Peter's imposition of alien Western ways on the Russians." (Figes, The Story of Russia)
Vicomte Eugène Melchior de Vogüé was an aspiring homme de lettres in the diplomatic service who met Dostoevsky while stationed in the French embassy in St. Petersburg. De Vogüé’s conversations with Dostoevsky are preserved in his “pathbreaking study” Le roman Russe, “which introduced the great Russian writers to the Western world” (Frank, Dostoevsky). The Frenchman wrote that “literary discussions with Dostoevsky ended very quickly; he stopped me with a word of prideful compassion: ‘We possess the genius of all peoples and also have our own; thus we can understand you and you cannot understand us’” (quoted by Frank).
The Slavophile conception of national identity was based in peasant culture and the romantic notion of the village commune as a uniquely Russian institution embodying Christian moral principles based on compassion and selfless love of humanity. Against this Dostoevsky juxtaposed what he considered to be the basic idea of the bourgeoisie and the main idea in his century throughout the European world:
“Every man for himself and only for himself; all communion among people only for oneself”—such is the moral principle of the majority of today’s people, and not even of the bad people but, on the contrary, of those who labor and who do not rob and murder. But mercilessness to the lower masses, the decline of brotherhood, the exploitation of the poor by the rich—oh, of course, all these things existed before as well, and they always did, but—but they were not elevated to the level of higher truth and science; they were condemned by Christianity, while now, on the contrary, they are elevated to a virtue…What lies ahead…is materialism, a blind, carnivorous lust for personal material security, a lust for personal accumulation of money by any means… (Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary)
As far back as tenth century, the life of Vladimir I (c. 956–1015), grand prince of Kiev and first Christian ruler of Kievan Rus, was “venerated as a symbol of the empire's sacred origins and the united ‘family’ or ‘nation’ of Russians—the Great Russians, the Little Russians (Ukrainians) and the White Russians (Belarusians)” (Figes). In the sixteenth century, under Ivan IV, the tsar and the state came to be seen as united in the body of a single human being who as man and ruler was the instrument of God. The metropolitan Makary, head of the Russian church during Ivan’s reign, promoted Moscow as the last capital of Orthodoxy and the Christian faith following the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks. Moscow was the third Rome, heir to Rome and Byzantium, and the tsar was the only defender of the true Christian faith.
My “Russian Exceptionalism” was derailed last evening while perusing the new issue of The New York Review of Books that arrived in yesterday’s mail, where I found an article by Gary Saul Morson with the title Russian Exceptionalism. Morson covers some of the territory I had in mind and more besides in his review of six books dealing with the messianic spirit of Eurasianism, an idea that began a little over a century ago among Russian intellectuals in exile after the revolution and civil war, “mostly from the nobility [who] regarded recent events as a catastrophe unrivaled in history. They experienced profound alienation from both their homeland and the European world in which they found themselves.”
Pyotr Savitsky, the first leader of the movement, believed that geographical environment shapes culture, “so the peoples of the Eurasian Steppe, which extends from Hungary to Manchuria, are bound to display common psychology and therefore to have harmonious relations.”
By the same token, Savitsky reasoned, an unbridgeable chasm must always divide “oceanic” and “continental” cultures. The former embrace risk, entrepreneurship, and individualism—think of Renaissance Italy or republican Holland or imperial Britain—while the latter prefer tradition, conservatism, and collectivism. The continental world favors centralized authoritarian rule, which is why “geography itself” has preordained Russian rule over the vast territory extending from Poland to the Pacific.
Among the books under review by Morson are one by Lev Gumilev, son of the poets Nikolai Gumilev and Anna Akhmatova, who corresponded with Savitsky and “developed Eurasianist ideas in imaginative and at times ridiculous ways,” and three by Aleksandr Dugin. Cathy Young discussed Dugin at length two years ago in a piece at The Bulwark. “For more than a quarter century,” she wrote, he “has been talking about an eternal civilizational war between Russia and the West and about Russia’s destiny to build a vast Eurasian empire, beginning with a reconquista of Ukraine…his influence on the Putin-era ruling class in Russia is unquestionably real and scary” (The Bizarre Russian Prophet).
Dugin’s intellectual pretensions were honored with a royal skewering from Morson:
It is routine to refer to Dugin as “well-read,” but it would be more accurate to say “well-skimmed.” He is one of those pseudoprofound commentators who love to call things “ontological” and “metaphysical” while endlessly dropping the names of thinkers, with many of whom he has a flyleaf acquaintance. If there are fashionable terms to deploy—“rhizome,” “bricolage,” “Dasein”—he is sure to pile them one on another.
The “skimmed” include “postmodernists (Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze), French ‘traditionalists’ (René Guénon and Alain de Benoist), and various Nazis or ex-Nazis, including Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, and, of course, Martin Heidegger.”
Morson’s review adds a good deal to my previous acquaintance with the subject and is almost fascinating, well worth reading if you have access to The New York Review of Books. It is unfortunate that only the first two paragraphs of Russian Exceptionalism can be read online without a subscription.
While thinking about Russian exceptionalism, I also had in mind ideas about American exceptionalism—perhaps a topic for another day.
The Bulwark is changing. Charlie Sykes announced on February 1 that he is stepping away from The Bulwark, or as the title of his announcement put it, Getting Off the Daily Hamster Wheel of Crazy:
As much as I love putting out a 2,000-word morning newsletter and six podcasts a week—and having conversations with the smartest and most interesting people around—there’s always the risk of being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of idiocracy out there.
I do not recall how it was that I happened on Sykes, who was a conservative talk radio host in Wisconsin before becoming a leading voice among Never Trump conservatives back around 2016. The Bulwark has been a go-to resource since it was launched in 2019 by Sykes, Sarah Longwell, and Bill Kristol. Sykes’s Morning Shots newsletter will be taken over by Kristol and new White House correspondent Andrew Eggers. Other changes were laid out yesterday by Longwell and Jonathan V. Last in Some news from us: The Bulwark is growing.
The good news is that much of the content will remain free “because…The Bulwark isn’t really a business. It’s a mission. And you can’t save democracy from behind a paywall.” Not so good news is that Longwell and Last did not mention two of my favorite contributors, Cathy Young, indispensable on Russia and Ukraine, and Kim Wehle, likewise for legal and constitutional issues. Both can be found elsewhere: Wehle has her own Substack publication, Simple Politics with Kim Wehle, is a contributor to Politico and The Atlantic, and I have occasionally heard her interviewed on NPR and, if memory does not betray me, the PBS NewsHour; and Young is a weekly columnist for Newsday and a contributing editor at Reason. I hope we can continue to find them at The Bulwark as well.
The slant at The Bulwark is generally more conservative than mine. Analysis and commentary tend to be thoughtful, the sort of thing with which I may respectfully disagree, sometimes prompted to reflection and examination of my own positions on topics or issues where opinions differ. For instance, and here I will single out Cathy Young and Jonathan Last, the publication is hardline in support of Israel. As regular readers here know, I believe that the savagery of the Israeli response to October 7 goes far beyond any legitimate claim to self-defense. To be sure, Young and Last express regret for casualties among Palestinian civilians and wanton destruction in Gaza. I accept these expressions as sincere, but even so they have something of a pro forma feel to them when criticism of Israeli actions is met with the reflexive “but Hamas…” In fairness, this works both ways. Mild rebukes of Hamas by pro-Palestinian individuals and groups are almost invariably followed by “but Israel…” It happened last week during a phone conversation with an old friend. I spoke up for condemnation of Hamas and the October 7 attacks; my friend broke in, “but Israel…”
Memo from the we should expect and demand better from them department. I have in mind the Fani Willis affair and the DOJ investigation of Democratic Congresswoman Cori Bush’s use of campaign funds on security services, which included hiring her husband as part of the security team. In both cases the charges are politically motivated, and it may be that Willis and Bush are innocent of violations of law and regulation. Regardless, their actions were colossally ill-advised. They give rise to an appearance of impropriety their adversaries are all too happy to use against them. Equally blockheaded are the predictable cries of racism and sexism. MAGA operatives are out to smear Willis because she is prosecuting Trump, not because she is black and a woman. We need better from our side of the chasm that divides us.
I sometimes get carried away. Perhaps I should choose my words more carefully when I go on about blockheads, dingbats, mass hysteria, etc. Is that really the tone I want to strike at Portable Bohemia? Should I strive for a more elevated level of discourse? Then comes the Republican dingbattery in response to the bipartisan compromise on immigration that was roundly hammered today in complementary columns by the Bulwark tandem of Linda Chavez and Jonathan V. Last. Once again, the titles say it all:
Is there a Republican in Congress who is not a miserable scoundrel? Well. Perhaps a lonely one or two. After all, the articles of impeachment for Mayorkas and the standalone Israel aid bill both went down in the House today. On the other hand, does anyone believe we have seen the last of either?
Keep the faith. Stand with Ukraine. yr obdt svt
References and Related Reading
Fyodor Dostoevsky, A Writer’s Diary: Volume 2 1877–1881, tr. and annotated by Kenneth Lantz, Northwestern University Press, 1994
Orlando Figes, The Story of Russia, Metropolitan Books/Henry Holt and Company, 2022
Joseph Frank, Dostoevsky: A Writer in His Time, Princeton University Press, 2010
Eric McDaniel, Rep. Cori Bush is under investigation after hiring husband as security, NPR, January 30, 2024
Michael McFaul, Vladimir Putin does not think like we do, The Washington Post, January 26, 2022
Gary Saul Morson, Russian Exceptionalism, The New York Review of Books, February 22, 2024
Political Realism in International Relations, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, First published Mon Jul 26, 2010; substantive revision Mon Oct 9, 2023
Cathy Young, The Bizarre Russian Prophet Rumored to Have Putin’s Ear, The Bulwark, April 27, 2022