Mark Medish: Where Is Russia?
[Mark Medish, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, was senior director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian affairs on the National Security Council under President Bill Clinton.]
“We are not a member of the E.U., but we are a European country.” So spoke President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia in an interview with Western journalists last week, on the eve of the G-20 summit and a key meeting with President Barack Obama in Toronto. His words are worth thinking about.
The Russia we know today has been looking for its place in the world ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. Stripped of the shell of Soviet empire, the country’s identity has been in flux. The search is at once geopolitical, philosophical and profoundly psychological. The quest has been complicated by the fact that the world around Russia has been changing too....
The abiding trouble with Mr. Putin is that while he wants modern results, he does not limit himself to modern methods at home. Instead, faith in autocracy — which doomed czars and commissars alike — still haunts Russia....
The great Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky wrote of the 18th-century czar Peter the Great: “He did not want to borrow the results of Western technique, but wanted to appropriate the skill and knowledge, and build industries on the Western European model.” Peter himself said: “We need Europe for a few decades; later on we must turn our back on it.”
The Russian president seems to be saying something different. Only time will tell whether Mr. Medvedev can deliver. His Western counterparts, including President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, should continue to encourage the idea that Russia can become a European country.
Read entire article at I.H.T.
“We are not a member of the E.U., but we are a European country.” So spoke President Dmitri Medvedev of Russia in an interview with Western journalists last week, on the eve of the G-20 summit and a key meeting with President Barack Obama in Toronto. His words are worth thinking about.
The Russia we know today has been looking for its place in the world ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago. Stripped of the shell of Soviet empire, the country’s identity has been in flux. The search is at once geopolitical, philosophical and profoundly psychological. The quest has been complicated by the fact that the world around Russia has been changing too....
The abiding trouble with Mr. Putin is that while he wants modern results, he does not limit himself to modern methods at home. Instead, faith in autocracy — which doomed czars and commissars alike — still haunts Russia....
The great Russian historian Vasily Klyuchevsky wrote of the 18th-century czar Peter the Great: “He did not want to borrow the results of Western technique, but wanted to appropriate the skill and knowledge, and build industries on the Western European model.” Peter himself said: “We need Europe for a few decades; later on we must turn our back on it.”
The Russian president seems to be saying something different. Only time will tell whether Mr. Medvedev can deliver. His Western counterparts, including President Obama, Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Nicolas Sarkozy, should continue to encourage the idea that Russia can become a European country.