#9 - JRL 2006-169 - JRL Home
Date: Tue, 25 Jul 2006
From: Andrei Tsygankov <andrei@sfsu.edu>
Subject: Witte, Stalin, and Lessons of World Wars

Witte, Stalin, and Lessons of World Wars
By Andrei P. Tsygankov
Program Chair, International Studies Association 2006-07
Associate Professor, International Relations / Political Science
San Francisco State University
http://bss.sfsu.edu/tsygankov/

Now that the days of ceremonial and largely irrelevant G-8 are behind Russia, members of its political class are back to hard thinking about future directions of world politics. The world continues to evolve in a dangerous direction. The rising violence in the Middle East is indicative of escalation of the ongoing global conflict that had been exacerbated by the 9-11 and the United States response to it. Military intervention remains the dominant component of this response with all others ­ diplomacy, ideas, economy, and finance ­ still taking a back seat. Partly as a result of such a response, the world is becoming less, not more, stable, and Muslims across the world are getting increasingly defensive about the American style of fighting the war on terror. Reverberations of this war are heard globally, and inside Russia they translate into a greater support for Islamic radicals. In a country with 20 to 25 millions population of Muslims, a growing influence of radical Islamist ideologies contributes to a politically explosive environment.

The Kremlin therefore is hard pressed to act and may be positioning itself to do some damage control. The important question is: how? As fair as it might be to recognize Russia’s regained sovereignty and policy autonomy from the West, the most pressing issue remains what the Kremlin is planning to do with its newly acquired great power status. Will it continue an essentially defensive modernization and limit its global role to that of satisfying the needs of domestic stability and revival, as it largely has been the case? Or will the Kremlin pursue a far more activist foreign policy by throwing a decisive weight on either side of the global conflict? And what are the chances that, as a result of its greater involvement in the unfolding World War III, Russia may derail its efforts to modernize or even descent in chaos and disintegration? Answers to these questions may depend on what lessons the nation’s leaders learn from participation in two previous world wars.

One way to learn such lessons is to become “helpful” to Washington thereby defusing dangers of terrorism and nuclear proliferation, as these are viewed from the White House. However, the outcomes of Russia’s previous pro-Western policies have not been encouraging, and the Kremlin has justifiably resisted this temptation. Russia’s early 20th century alliance with France and Britain, at the expense of a more even-handed policy of continental security, has contributed to the nation’s involvement in a dangerous and, ultimately, suicidal war. Isolating Germany was not contributing to peace. Yet Russia’s diplomats, military, and the Tsar himself opted for deterring, rather than engaging, Berlin. Not everything was depended on Russia, of course ­ Germany was far from an accommodationist power ­ but to the extend that it was Russia’s leadership pursued a self-defeating course of actions. The obsession with Pan-Slavism and great power prestige contributed to Russia’s one-sided policy, as the leading Pan-Slavists and advocates of derzhava’s “honor” held essentially anti-German views. One by one, influential supporters of moderate views, such as Sergei Witte, Pyotr Stolypin, and Vladimir Kokovtsev, were sidelined and replaced by ardent great power nationalists and Westernizers.

Russia did not make the same mistake in the 1930s. It stayed focused on domestic modernization and did not commit to either Germany or the liberal West. When Moscow’s attempts to engage the West in a collective security regime against Hitler resulted in Chamberlain and Daladier’s Munich deal over division of Czechoslovakia, the Kremlin quickly regrouped and made a pact with Germany. One could argue whether staying with the West longer might have made a difference or whether Stalin made a good use of the limited time he bought from Hitler. One thing is clear, however: the West was deeply mistrustful of Russia and at the time preferred Hitler to Stalin (later, of course, this preference was reversed). Russia was hardly prepared when it was attacked, but it composed itself and ultimately defeated the enemy, partly because the war was not about Pan-Slavism or great power prestige. The state and society stood united by a threat to their very survival, not by ideas of international solidarity or state status.

The lessons of domestic concentration and flexible alliances seem just as relevant today. If Russia wants to remain a vital world player, it must stay focused and not let to be involved in any kind of a global confrontation. The ongoing cultural war between Muslim societies and the West is still not a world-wide conflict. It does not require that every nation make a decisive choice ­ “either you are with us or against us” as formulated by Stalin and, some seventy years later, by the president of the United States. Iran is no Germany, and Ahmadinejad is no Hitler. Military means of addressing terrorism are important, but should not be overestimated, and the sooner Washington grasps is, the better the prospects for peace will be. In the meantime, internationalizing conflict resolution in Iraq and Israel/Palestine/Lebanon would be an essential step toward preventing further global escalation and a full blown World War III.

Under the circumstances, Russia’s role is that of a conflict mediator and a peace facilitator. Joining forces with Iran and Syria is out of the question. However, becoming a member of a self-righteous coalition that may be harboring hopes to eliminate “the evil” of “state-sponsored” terrorism once and for all would be another strategic error. Despite all the trumpets of great power revival, some of which have been recently blown by the Defense Minister and a Putin’s potential successor Sergei Ivanov, Russia remains a weak country in an increasingly volatile environment. Indicators of poverty, HIV infection, and demographic crisis are plentiful to make a convincing case for the nation’s continuous weakness. Until this is the case, and at least for the next ten to fifteen years, Russia will do well to think hard about the linkage between external war and internal instability. Its own experience speaks volumes about the linkage. Witte, Stolypin, Kokovtsev, and Stalin understood its implications. So should the Kremlin.