AMAC Exclusive – By Ben Solis
As the war in Ukraine rages on, it is important for the West to understand that the seeds of this conflict were sown not just in the past few months or years, but in the last century, when a new world order was forged following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The situation that the world finds itself in today bears many frightening similarities to the brinkmanship that defined the Cold War period. Last week, as Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to escalate to the use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict, U.S. President Joe Biden said he saw “no reason” to meet with him, a sign that tensions are only likely to escalate in the coming weeks. In an opinion piece for the Washington Times, former U.S. Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich stated that he believes America is “in graver danger today of enduring a nuclear war than at any time in my lifetime.”
Other world leaders are concerned as well. Former Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte told the daily newspaper of Italian Bishops that the threat of nuclear war in Ukraine requires Europe and America to call for an international peace conference that would seek solutions to end the conflict. French President Emmanuel Macron has already bowed out in the face of the Russian threat, saying that France will not use nuclear weapons if Russia does.
Russian leaders, meanwhile, seem deadly serious about their willingness to deploy nuclear weapons on the battlefield. In a recent interview with Russia’s biggest newspaper, Komsomolskaya Pravda, Igor Nikulin, a former member of the United Nations Disarmament Committee, stated that nuclear attacks were justified because, although Ukraine is not a nuclear power, it is an “aggressor” against Russia. Retired Russian General Andrey Gurolyov, a member of the Duma’s Defense Committee, stated that the Kremlin believes Russia is not fighting against just Ukraine but against the West. Another Retired General, Anatoly Kulikov, the younger brother of the top Soviet military official involved in imposing Poland’s Martial Law in 1981, openly said that Russia’s existence depends on Moscow’s victory against Ukraine.
Renowned Russian politician and economist Grigory Yavlinsky, who under Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev was an architect of the economic alliance of post-Soviet states and is the founder of the opposition party Yabloko, has argued that this attitude on the part of Russian leaders – primarily Vladimir Putin – has deep roots in the years following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent failure of the new Russian state to emerge as a Western-aligned liberal democracy and free-market economy.
Yavlinsky points to three big mistakes that turned the short-lived optimism of the early 1990s into an enduring struggle for Russia.
First, Russia disrupted economic relations with former Soviet Republics, breaking decades of close bonds under the Soviet Union.
Second, counseled by Western economists, the Kremlin hurried its liberalization of the economy, boosting the annual inflation rate to as high as 2,600 percent in 1992. Yavlinsky refers to this as a “confiscation” of citizens’ savings, setting the country on a path to economic disaster and further straining relations with the West.
Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the privatization of state-run enterprises resulted in the rise of immensely powerful oligarchies that remained loyal to the state. Impoverished by hyperinflation, ordinary Russians could not afford any property, whilst the Kremlin rewarded a few individuals for their unconditional support and loyalty, Yavlinsky explains.
This bizarre mix of relics of the Soviet-era command economy combined with bribes, fraud, and semi-feudal relationships with workers rooted in Russia’s pre-Soviet history created a new business culture antithetical to the ideals of free-market capitalism and democracy. Free and fair elections, an independent judiciary, and all the other hallmarks of a functioning democracy were threats to this system because they would challenge the existence of the state-aligned oligarchies.
Because of this, Russia failed to have a national conversation about what went wrong during the Soviet era and attempt to correct it. Instead of making, as a state, the judicial and political judgment that the 1917 Revolution was coup and acknowledging Bolshevism and Stalinism as a system of terror and evil, failed Soviet leaders – like Putin, a former KGB agent who has called the collapse of the U.S.S.R. the “greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century” – began to re-consolidate power by stoking resentment against the West and whitewashing the long list of Soviet atrocities.
This lack of accountability for the Soviet era allowed Russian authorities to shape the public’s attitude toward that period, portraying it as a natural progression of Russian history worthy of continuity. In the early 2000s, Putin took power under the position that post-Soviet Russia is the successor of both the Russian Empire and the U.S.S.R.
After refusing to assess its political and legal past, Russia legalized the Communist Party, leaving a possibility for a neo-Stalinist regime to reemerge. The seizure of power via the falsification of elections, unconstitutional decisions, arrests of political opponents, political assassinations, and confrontation with Europe and the world followed.
Now, this political philosophy has translated into military action with the war in Ukraine. Alleging that Ukraine was a creation of the Russian state, Putin now says that Russia has the authority to determine the borders and independence of Ukraine.
It is unclear when the current conflict will end. Yavlinsky and a few other Russian opposition politicians are now openly calling for a cease fire and peace talks between the two countries. But unless Russia confronts the truth of its past and makes a commitment to real reform, not just a restructuring of old, failed systems, true, lasting peace will likely remain elusive.
Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.