A Tale about the Big Bad Bear

By Ruslan Tsmokalo

Representatives of my generation are too young to remember the Red Scare. McCarthyism is something that occurred over the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, somewhere remote and distant. Anti-communist purges now remain a phantom of days gone by, engraved in print and television, that are occasionally studied by professors. Back in 1983, in the twilight of the USSR, President Reagan delivered a striking verdict on the infamous Evil Empire, declaring that “communism is another sad, bizarre chapter in human history whose last pages even now are being written”.

However, something strange has been happening for the last decade. In the face of Russia’s growing aggression, many of us find it challenging to connect the stark realities of war with the rhythms of our daily lives, discussing the latest mortality figures from Ukraine, while becoming more aware of our parents’ Red Scare memories, trying to weave them into our own understanding of Russia today. As we confront this tension, the weight of these events becomes harder to ignore. Many blame the lack of reforms, oligarchs, or corruption for the country’s current condition. These are often oversimplified or mistaken views that treat the symptoms rather than the root causes. Fundamentally, these issues are by-products of two primary factors: customs and personalism. This article aims to examine these factors in their full complexity.

Customs

Created by then-Minister of Education Sergey Uvarov in 1833, the so-called “theory of official nationality” strengthened the conservative foundation of Nicholas I’s policies. In essence, it declared three pillars upon which Russia’s stable greatness was to rest: the Orthodox faith, autocracy, and nationality. The meaning of the latter has a complicated history. Who is a Russian? The fact of the matter is that, for Russia, Belarus and Ukraine do not exist. Since the 19th century, the Russian Empire began systematically indoctrinating, on a national scale, the concept of the triune of Russian people and how the “unholy” West wanted to steal the two from them. This ideology aimed to integrate these groups into a singular Russian identity. “The Triad” remained a tool of immense socio-political power, strategically wielded over the so-called “Little” and “White” Russians. Particularly, the issue of Ukraine was persistent throughout history, at times easing, only to flare up again.

This is a clear example of a customary element. While custom can be said to be a “totality of behavior patterns which are carried by tradition”, it’s used here in a broader sense, distinct from our mundane routines. 

The national self-determination of Russians and the determination by Russians of other nations—among them Ukrainians who are considered to be an integral part of their shared historical precursor—established a custom that is difficult to get rid of, as it persists regardless of political leadership or even the state system. Similarly, the USSR continued the Tsarist policy of Russification of the former imperial-turned-Soviet territories, with Russian being the lingua franca. A heavyweight in the world of political science, Zbigniew Brzezinski, made a concise remark, which was later repeated by many, with only slight variations in wording: “Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”

The autocratic form of rule in Russia was legitimized both legally and politically, with loyalty to the ruler often superseding institutional loyalty—also known as patrimonialism. Historically, Russian authorities have conditioned their citizens to shirk civil obligations or, rather, the idea of them, in favor of submission to officials. This has contributed to widespread apathy toward domestic politics. Apart from the monopoly on violence and other privileges held by the absolute monarch, economic autocracy bred a centuries-old culture of corruption. By 1917 the wealth of the House of Romanovs was estimated to be over $45 billion. There was always an equal sign between the Tsar and the state, hence, all of the public riches were under his ownership. By the end of the 19th century, a good relationship was formed between the throne and the market, when the Romanovs started holding significant amounts of government bonds. Naturally, bribery was rampant among the bureaucratic class due to the officially low salaries. Everyone seemed to “gather” around the Tsar, having the right connections with the right princes. The same patterns of corruption and patrimonialism persisted in the Soviet Union. Instead of a dynasty came a party. The communists’ monopolized control over political power, along with the creation of a hierarchical nomenklatura system, allowed higher authorities to appoint key government officials, giving them considerable privileges. The elite members enjoyed high social status and were shielded from prosecution for criminal activities unless sanctioned by the party. The lack of political competition, coupled with the absence of checks and balances, created a system where accountability mechanisms were ineffective. As Richard Pipes observed: “Marxism in Scandinavia, where traditions of property and law were relatively strong, evolved first into social democracy and then into the democratic welfare state. In Russia, where both traditions were weakly developed, it reinforced the autocratic, patrimonial heritage.” Given this continuity, it is only logical to view the USSR as a direct customary successor to Tsarist Russia.

Since the Christianization of the Kievan Rus in the 10th century, the Orthodox Church became the central stronghold of spirituality for the Russian people for generations to follow. However, the Tsarist state always had a difficult relationship with the institution of Orthodoxy. The substitution of the Patriarchate with a state-controlled Holy Synod was a nail in the coffin for the church’s autonomy expressed by Peter the Great’s reform in 1721. Despite the Orthodox Christians’ brewing dissatisfaction, there were hundreds of churches and parishes in the capital of St. Petersburg alone as of the beginning of the 20th century. The Tsar had enough political wisdom to keep the faith as an instrument of national unification, helping to channel the notion of the ruler of Russia being a mediator between God and the people across the distant territories of the country. The Bolsheviks in turn professed state atheism and had a desire to completely eradicate the newly formed Soviet man of any religious belief. The citizens were exposed to a fierce atheistic propaganda since the early decades of the USSR. Although it was impossible to fully decimate the church, it was eventually subdued and cooperated as a spy for the KGB up until the regime’s fall. The Moscow Patriarchate survived, but the idea that the Soviet people were secular is misleading, to say the least. One might say they were as religious as their predecessors. Marxism, replacing the Orthodox faith, placed Marx and Engels in the divine positions of polytheistic gods, with Lenin being their messenger and Messiah. Every aspect of the ordinary individual’s life was infused by a relentless belief in the principles of the Communist Manifesto that served as the new Bible. All the hard work would be paid off by an ideal future of global brotherhood and camaraderie.

Personalism

“Russia at the present time is at a crossroads…If they don’t work there’ll be a reversion, not to communism—which has failed—but to what I call a new despotism, which would pose a mortal danger to the rest of the world. Because it would be infected with the virus of Russian imperialism which has been a characteristic of Russian foreign policy for centuries.” The prediction was made in 1992 by a keen examiner of international affairs, former U.S. President Richard Nixon.

Some perceive the years following the demolition of the Soviet Union as a period of purposeful transformation. Among them, optimists maintain that Russia followed the right course, whereas pessimists argue that the country was deliberately and ruthlessly dismantled. On the other hand, those who doubt that reform efforts had any real direction are split into two groups: those who fault Gorbachev and Yeltsin for their erratic approach to reforms, and those who denounce them for abandoning communist principles. With the transition to a market-based economy in the 1990s, the newly-emerged class of oligarchs capitalized on a rapidly changing system of social mobility. In a matter of few years, the state-owned property and its assets underwent privatization, which offered the shareholders a life of guaranteed financial security. In the middle of a nationwide restructuring, Moscow, in its quest for an updated identity, returned to a familiar formula—strong vertical governance, enshrined in the 1993 constitution, making Nixon’s observation a reality.

Vladimir Putin’s rise to power was marked by a moment of crisis in Russia’s political landscape. As an unknown KGB officer, he emerged at a time when Boris Yeltsin had lost legitimacy in the eyes of the Russian people. Amidst the widespread demand for strong leadership, Putin skillfully capitalized on this sentiment, consolidating power into his own hands. Riding the wave of the 1990s crisis, in a country plagued by terrorism, he managed to gain legitimacy by stabilizing the economy and pacifying separatist Chechnya. It was on this unprecedented early success that his rule has effectively endured ever since. State propaganda succeeded in portraying any alternative to Putin as a descent into chaos. The constitutional amendments cemented his legacy in the first decades of the 21st century, each one steadily expanding the president’s control over all branches of government. In 2008, the presidential term was extended; in 2014, the president’s powers were broadened further, granting him greater authority over appointments to the Federation Council and key positions in the Prosecutor’s General’s Office. In 2020, sweeping changes were introduced to the political system, the most significant of which was the “zeroing” of presidential terms. While international media highlighted this move, Russian state media did everything possible to divert public attention from it. His governance evolved into a classic personalist autocracy, where institutions became mere extensions of his will. His rule in many ways echoes the aforementioned patrimonial traditions, with corruption being woven into the fabric of governance. Just as the Tsarist state functioned through a rigid division of elites, Putin has established a neo-feudal order, where privilege is determined by loyalty, and the legal system serves as a tool to maintain kleptocratic rule. The Economist even referred to Putin’s inner circle as a “new aristocracy,” underscoring the structured hierarchy of power that mirrors the past.

Religion, too, has been instrumental in reinforcing this system. One of the earliest but often overlooked manifestations of Putin’s personalism was the unification of the White and Red Orthodox Churches, each separated by the revolution of 1917. A crucial step in cementing Orthodoxy as both a political instrument and a continuation of historical tradition. Russia, once an officially atheist state, it now presents itself as deeply spiritual. While only less than 40% of the population identified as Orthodox in the early 1990s, the figure had risen over 70% by 2015. The President understood the rise in the peoples’ longing for an updated moral compass coupled with the rise in nationalist tendencies and politically occupied the field of religion.

Over the course of his rule, Putin’s political trajectory has undergone a distinct transformation. In the early 2000s, Russia still appeared to seek integration with the liberal West. The country was admitted into the WTO and there even was an attempt to join NATO, although an unsuccessful one. However, in 2007, Putin’s speech in Munich signaled the beginning of a new doctrine, one centered on the idea of multipolarity and Russia’s role as a counterweight to Western dominance. This shift in rhetoric was soon counteracted by the Bucharest summit of 2008, where NATO openly flirted with the idea of inviting Ukraine into its ranks. Putin viewed it as a direct provocation, a red line that precipitated the conflicts that would unfold in the years to come. In his own words, Ukraine is a “a complex state formation. And if NATO-related issues and other problems are added there, it could generally put the existence of statehood itself on the brink.”

The Ukrainian problem escalated dramatically in 2014 with pro-European protests ousting their President Viktor Yanukovych, a longtime Russian vassal. The shift in Ukraine’s trajectory toward the West, provoked an immediate response from Moscow. Russia annexed Crimea and backed separatist movements in eastern Ukraine, setting the stage for a prolonged conflict that continues to this day. Putin once again exercised as a historian by publishing an article in the summer of 2021 under personal authorship, with the title reading: On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians. Its main thesis leaning on the nation’s triune nature, stating: “Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus…”. As of now, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on February 24, 2022, is still ongoing.

Conclusion

Putin acts, in many ways, as a l’État c’est moi-ruler. Each act of his is justified by the covenant he made with the Russian people. While the President sees himself as indistinguishable from the state, his rule is deeply rooted in historical precedents. As we learned, the three components of Uvarov’s doctrine—Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality—are exploited to their fullest, serving as a foundation for the personalist rule in modern Russia.

While personalism can be mitigated through reforms, the customs underpinning it prove far more resistant to change. More than once did Russia find itself at historical crossroads like these. Tsarist and Soviet regimes nonetheless upheld centralized rule despite attempts at institutional restructuring. The evolution of such customs is a long and arduous process, one that mere policy shifts cannot immediately resolve. The fact remains: Russia and the West have historically struggled to find common ground, and this difficulty will persist until a viable model for mutually beneficial engagement is established. Any genuine transformation is contingent on something greater than rhetorical commitments to democracy.

For now, in order to give an answer to the pressing question of “what to do?”, although not a

fully satisfactory one, a set of following reforms could be able to kick-start the said evolution

toward a rule of law:

− strengthening of local self-governance by expansion of regional rights and

implementation of the subsidiarity principle

− abandonment of the expansionist foreign policy

− democratization of the state and protection of citizens’ rights and freedoms

− nullification of all 2008, 2014, and 2020 constitutional amendments – but without

reverting to the 1993 Constitution, rather reforming it to enable the parliamentarization of

power

− pursuit of consistent cooperation with the European Union, NATO, and the United States

If Russia wants to integrate into the Western world, it’d have to go through a metamorphosis. A kind of metamorphosis that not only redefines its institutions but also reconciles with its historical customs and the deeply ingrained personalism that has long shaped its political culture. The proposed reforms, from strengthening local self-governance and democratizing the state to rejecting expansionism and reestablishing cooperation with the West, act as a counterweight to the traditional pattern of centralized rule that has characterized Russian governance since the Tsarist and Soviet eras. As previously mentioned, this is not a question of mere policy but of moral legitimacy. For Russians, the road ahead will be difficult, much like the paths France and Germany once took before they abandoned their seemingly eternal irredentism in favor of internal development and external cooperation. On the practical side, while lifting sanctions on Russia would pose a direct threat to Europe’s security, it could also serve as leverage for potential democratization. The future, however, is in the hands of the Russian citizens.

Post Scriptum: A Few Words on Crimea

Russia’s expansionist ambitions sustained by personalist rule, reflect a consistent pattern in the use of military force to assert dominance over former territories, be it the Chechen War under Yeltsin or Georgia (2008) and Ukraine (2014) under Putin. In this case, the West faces an inconvenient precedent. The Saar Protectorate, once under French occupation following World War II, reintegrated into West Germany through a referendum in 1957. This precedent, though rarely acknowledged in discussions of Crimea, poses a challenge to the West’s stance on international law violations, including the breach of the UN Charter, the Belovezha Accords, and the Budapest Memorandum. Since the scenario of Russia returning the peninsula to Ukraine without objections is unlikely, a referendum will have to be held under international supervision—akin to the Saar example—which would lead to a significant shift in the geopolitical framework. However, the political will to implement such a resolution remains uncertain.

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Ruslan Tsmokalo pursues a bachelor’s degree in Political Science at Stockholm University, he is the Head of the Nomination Committee of the Swedish Association of International Affairs (SAIA), an External Monitor at Utrikespolitisk Afton, and a student representative in the SUS Representative Assembly.

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