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Moscow letter: why Russia critiques the West

Beyond condemning the invasion of Ukraine, there is also a need to understand why Russia thinks what it does, explains Malcolm Rogers, the Anglican chaplain in Moscow.

The Rev Canon Malcolm Rogers is Chaplain of St Andrew’s, Moscow, an Anglican church serving the international community in the Russian capital.

A view of Moscow

On 24 February 2022, Russian tanks crossed the border of Ukraine. President Putin believed that the ‘special operation’ would be swift, that Ukrainian resistance would crumble and that the Russian soldiers would be welcomed as liberators. It will go down as one of the most catastrophic failures of intelligence in history and, as a result, tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people have died, and the lives of millions of people have been devastated.

There can be no justification for the invasion of Ukraine. But if there is to be any lasting peace in the future, and if Europe is to live even in an uneasy peace with its eastern neighbour, then we need to hear the Russian critique of the West. We may well not agree with it, but unless we engage with it and try to understand where people are coming from, we are storing up yet more trouble for the future.

Sir Laurie Bristow, the former ambassador in Moscow, was often asked what Putin was thinking. His answer was simple: 'Listen to what he says’. People have mocked the long historical narratives in his speeches, but they are not to be ignored. There is no reason not to assume that Putin speaks what he believes. The conflict, certainly in his mind, is not economic but ideological.

The points below are a summary of some of the criticisms of the West that have been expressed in his speeches, in the Patriarch’s addresses and views published in Russian state-controlled mass media. It is possible that these views are now held, at least tacitly, by about 70% of the Russian population.

Putin’s defensiveness

Putin’s first criticism of the West is that NATO was planning to expand into Ukraine and place nuclear missiles there.

NATO, it is claimed, is an anti-Russian alliance, whose ultimate goal is the fragmentation of Russia. Russia, with its size, natural resources, military might and influence is too much of a threat to Western (US) hegemony.

NATO went back on an agreement given to Gorbachev in 1990 that it would not expand beyond its current borders. Since then, it has grown from 17 to 30 countries, and has steadily expanded East, incorporating the Baltic States, and offering promises – although vague – to Ukraine and Georgia that they would one day be able to join NATO.

How we tell history matters. The story deep within Russian consciousness tells of how Russia, as a nation, was held together by the Orthodox faith and by the ‘heroic’ defence of the land against invaders. In the centre of the new main Cathedral of the Armed Forces (consecrated in June 2020, and a powerful symbol of the union of army and Orthodoxy) there is an icon of Christ the Saviour. Around it are four scenes depicting the defence of Russia against the Mongols, Swedes and Poles, Napoleon and Hitler. It must not be forgotten that 26 million people from the Soviet Union died in the second world war and Hitler intended to turn the Slav peoples into a slave people.

The current conflict has become part of this narrative. Ukraine has become the Western Trojan horse. Many Russians have never thought of it as an independent country; for many Kyiv is their physical and spiritual mother. But after Maidan in 2014, which it is claimed was facilitated by western money and information, it is considered to have become a western puppet. As a result of the revolution, a democratically elected pro-Russian president (Yanukovych) was replaced by a pro-western president (Poroshenko), and it has followed an increasingly anti-Russian and pro-Western line. It was therefore only a question of time before, whether openly or in secret, nuclear weapons directed at Russia would have been placed there.

In September 2022 the Patriarch spoke of how Russia, in her history, has only engaged in defensive wars: the ‘special operations’ are perceived by the leadership as defensive. This was a conflict, it is claimed, that needed to be fought now, in order to prevent a bigger war in the future. They are necessary to secure the future of Russia against an aggressive NATO, who have always wanted to break up Russia, and are now showing their true colours by fighting a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. There is a current poster on billboards which shows a Russian soldier superimposed on the image of Alexander Nevsky, who defeated the invading Swedes (1221-1263). Underneath is the slogan, “A time for heroes.”

A cultural conflict

Putin’s second position is that Russia is standing up against an arrogant, even satanic, West which wishes to impose its economic, cultural and moral values on Russia and on other nations.

In his speech to the Federal Assembly on 21 February 2023, Putin spoke of how the West has lost touch with its moral and spiritual roots, has rejected ‘traditional spiritual and moral values’. It has replaced Christian tradition with what is called totalitarian liberal individualism. There is bemusement about gender debates (it is not illegal in Russia to practise homosexuality, but it is illegal to promote it), and a perception that in the West the rights of small minorities have come to dominate public debate and set the public agenda. Western Churches are accused of having sold out to the agenda of liberal individualism, and of losing their spiritual foundations. It is said that, having sown the wind the West will, in time, reap the whirlwind.

Nevertheless, it is claimed, because of its economic power, the West has been successful in exporting liberal individualism and has trampled over other cultures and value systems. Globalisation is perceived as Americanisation. Putin regularly speaks of wishing to create a multipolar world, not dominated by the hegemony of the United States and the dollar.

This is an argument which is persuasive in many parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America. It is noteworthy that of the 180 nations who were eligible to vote in the UN resolution on 23 February 2023, 141 nations demanded that Russia should immediately leave Ukrainian territory, but 39 countries either abstained or voted against the resolution, including China and India. There has been no change since a similar resolution in March 2022. About 40 countries have introduced sanctions against Russia, representing only 16% of the world’s population (Wilson Center). It is difficult to imagine, given the virtually universal opposition to the invasion in the West, that there is a deep global divide which is growing. As Russia’s doors to the West close, they are opening to the East and South. At St Andrew’s Anglican Church in Moscow, our western members have left the country, but they are being replaced by increasing numbers of people from India and Indonesia.

Meanwhile the conflict is spoken of in church circles in increasingly apocalyptic language, as Armageddon, or pre-Armageddon, a ‘war of the army of the Archangel Michael against the devil’, a Holy War for the defence of Orthodoxy and traditional values against ‘liberalism, globalism, secularism and post-humanism’ (Alexander Dugin, 27 Oct 2022).  Both President Putin and Medvedev have at times used this apocalyptic language, declaring that Russia is engaged in a war against satanic forces. 

Understanding Russophobia

Putin’s third criticism is the West is Russophobic, and has neglected the fate of Russians – particularly those in the Donbas, and is guilty of double standards.

In his book on the origins of the first Crimea war, 1853-6, Orlando Figes writes that the immediate cause of the conflict was a dispute between church wardens over some keys (to the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem). Of such things, history is made! But he also partly blames Russophobia in both England and France for stoking the conflict. He writes of tracts and articles written at the time, “The stereotype of Russia that emerged from these fanciful writings was that of a savage power, aggressive and expansionist by nature, yet also sufficiently cunning and deceptive to plot with ‘unseen forces’ against the West and infiltrate societies”. That could have been written today. For many years, long before the current war, the stereotype of the bad guy in films has either been a Russian or eastern Slav.

Russia’s foreign policy has done nothing to counter Russophobia. There is an understandable huge fear of Russia in Eastern Europe, and Moscow has never recognised or acknowledged any of the atrocities committed in the Soviet era (although, to be fair, it has taken the UK about 100 years to begin to recognise some of the harm that the British empire inflicted on its colonies). And certainly some, at least on the surface, relish in the Russophobia. A man I met in the supermarket (this was just after the Salisbury poisonings) said to me, ‘You don’t need to be afraid of me. I’ve tied my bear up outside.’

The accusation of Russophobia is often levelled at any criticism of the Moscow regime, but among other things, Russophobia is blamed for what is perceived as the neglect of the role played by the people of the Soviet Union in defeating Nazi Germany. That may sound strange to us, but it is a huge thing in Russia. For the last ten years, on Victory Day, after the tanks have rolled through Red Square in the morning, there has been a far more significant event in the afternoon, usually neglected by western media. Up to 2 million people have gathered in Moscow, and similar numbers in other Russian cities, for the march of the ‘Immortal Regiment’, to commemorate those who died in the second world war.

Russophobia is also blamed for the fact that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia was treated as a defeated enemy, and never given sufficient respect. It is blamed for the neglect of the fate of Russians left behind on the wrong side of the border after the collapse of the Soviet empire. That was particularly true after 2014 in Ukraine, when it is claimed that Russian majority areas such as the Donbas and Crimea were discriminated against. Kyiv refused to implement the Minsk agreement, which would have allowed elections of self-determination and which would almost certainly have been pro-Russia (Kyiv’s response is that Moscow had invaded Crimea, destabilised the Donbas and did not implement its part of the Minsk agreement). Certain incidents in which Russian speakers were targeted by Ukrainian nationalists were widely reported, as were the anti-Russian views of some of the right-wing nationalist groups in Ukraine, such as the Azov Brigade - which has led to Putin declaring that this is a war against Nazis. Putin has said that he will stand up for persecuted Russian minorities.

There is also the accusation of double standards. While the West has condemned Russia’s special military operations, which Russia claims is to guarantee its security, de-nazify and de-militarise Ukraine and protect the predominantly Russian population in the Donbas, the West has embarked on its own military expeditions, most notably in Iraq, Libya and Syria, justifying them in terms of either guaranteeing its own security or extending democracy.

On the edge

Perhaps the Russian critique of the West can be best summarized by Sahid, a taxi driver from Dagestan. We’d arrived in Moscow, a couple of weeks ago, after one of our epic journeys from the UK back to Russia and were exhausted. But he was very talkative! He defended the ‘special operations’: ‘Imagine that you are a peaceful guy, wanting to live a peaceful life. You are sitting on a bench. Someone comes and sits next to you. And then they start to push you to the edge of the bench. At some point, however peaceful you are, you are going to have to do something. You are going to have to either push back or be pushed off the end of the bench’. In other words, Sahid was saying what many Russians are saying to the West, you have pushed us so far, and we are not going to take any more. The tragedy is that, once again, the Ukrainian people – the border, edge people – are paying the price.

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Belief
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6 min read

How to navigate a culture war

Blaise Pascal shows us what really underlies our contemporary battles.

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Two goats lock horns.
Maxime Gilbert on Unsplash.

We often say these days that we are more polarised as a society than ever before. But we're wrong. Maybe the USA is experiencing a particularly sharp divide right now, but they have had their own, much more violent troubles in the past. And in Europe, and especially in Britain, we know a fair bit about culture wars that were literally that – wars.  

In the 17th century, we English had our own civil war where we literally killed each other over religion and politics. We even killed a king. The French did something similar and even more vicious just over 100 years later. That is real polarisation. However spiteful Twitter/X arguments may get, I don't think Charles III or even Kier Starmer is quaking in their beds expecting to be put on trial for treason.  

So maybe our history has something to teach us about how we navigate culture wars.  

The literary critic Terry Eagleton once wrote of our age:  

“the world is accordingly divided between those who believe too much and those who believe too little. While some lack all conviction, others are full of passionate intensity.” 

 We tend to think our contemporary divide between left and right, progressives and conservatives is something new. But we can find echoes of this in previous times.  

A case in point was the mid-17th century – the time of many other upheavals in Europe. Part of the febrile atmosphere of the time saw fierce arguments between rationalists and sceptics.  

There were at the time, two broad strands of thinking about the human condition. On the one had there were the ‘Dogmatists’ who were sure that they knew everything through use of reason or the application of philosophical or scientific method (like René Descartes). On the other hand, there were the ‘Sceptics’ who thought everything was random, or custom, and there is no final Truth to be found (like a figure from the century before – Michel de Montaigne). 

Of course, our own time has its fair share of people with an overwhelming confidence in the power of human knowledge, and the physical sciences in particular, to unlock the secrets of life, the universe and everything. The ‘new atheist’ project of Richard Dawkins and friends was hugely confident in reason and its capacity to tell us all we need to know, dispatching religion to the dustbin of history and instead placing an unshakable faith in the empirical methods of science. It had - and has - definite similarities with this picture of human knowledge.  

Yet on the other hand we also have, in the progressive postmodern project, those who reject any kind of underlying rationality or sacred order either above us or beneath us. For them, there is no underlying Truth to be discovered, and they delight in revealing the instability and illusory nature of any claim to truth. It sounds very much like the culture wars of our time. 

One enigmatic 17th century figure charted a way through this dilemma - Blaise Pascal. When he looked at his century’s culture war, he thought both sides had a point. There is, he observed… 

…open war between men in which everyone is obliged to take sides, either with the dogmatists or with the sceptics, because anyone who imagines he can stay neutral is a sceptic par excellence…. Who will unravel such a tangle? This is certainly beyond dogmatism and scepticism, beyond all human philosophy. Humanity transcends humanity. Let us then concede to the sceptics what they have so often proclaimed that truth lies beyond our scope and is an unattainable quarry, that it is no earthly denizen, but at home in heaven lying in the lap of God, to be known only insofar as it pleases him to reveal it. 

So far, he says, the sceptics, like Montaigne, are right. Truth is beyond our grasp, it does not reside here on earth, openly obvious and ready to be found. If it exists, it exists in some world above us, beyond our reach. How do we even know if we are asleep or awake, given that when we dream, we are as convinced that we are awake as we are when we are truly awake?  

And so, modern progressives, looking to dismantle the assumed results of previous understanding, due to its inherent colonial, patriarchal or abusive past, delight in showing how random and arbitrary is so much of what we take for granted from the past. And, Pascal would add, they have a point. Many of our legal, political and cultural assumptions are purely cultural and arbitrary, and sometimes simply serve to the advantage of the rich and powerful rather than the poor and marginalised. 

Yet on the other side, the ‘dogmatists’, like Descartes, have their strong point, which is that we cannot doubt natural principles. The acids of deconstruction can only take you so far. The most sceptical philosopher still puts the kettle on assuming that it will boil to make a cup of tea. She gets up in the morning assuming that the sun will rise and set again at the end of the day. Despite the corrosive effects of scepticism, Pascal wrote,  

“I maintain that a perfectly genuine sceptic has never existed. Nature backs up helpless reason and stops it going so wildly astray.”  

Despite all our doubt, we still live in a world with order and predictability. Scepticism keeps bumping up against reality.   

So, modern conservatives point to a deeper ‘givenness’ to things, an order within the natural world that we did not create, and yet, mysteriously, seems to be prearranged before we got here. Scientific exploration does make sense. There is a regularity to nature that we can, indeed have to, depend on. Sexual differences exist and can’t be ignored. We are not entirely free to override the natural order of things - there is a deeper rhythm to nature and its capacity for renewal that we only mess with at our peril, as climate change has taught us. As a result, the age-old battle between rationalists and sceptics, progressives and conservatives, will never find resolution, as the arguments flow back and forth.  

Christian faith includes both progressive and conservative impulses. It can make sense of both of them. Christians are aware of the brokenness of the world and therefore long to see it changed. The progressive impatience with the way things are, and the yearning for a better world has its roots in Christian faith.

Yet at the same time, Christianity discerns a divinely created order to the world, a rhythm to the natural world, that cannot be broken and needs to be respected. Therefore, an inherent conservatism is part of Christian faith as well. In other words, the Christian story can explain both and offer a bigger picture than either.  

For Pascal, Christianity offers a diagnosis for this mystery of the human condition, the complex mix of grandeur and misery, infinity and nothing, sceptic and rationalist, in the simple, yet endlessly generative idea that we humans are gloriously created, deeply fallen and yet offered redemption through Jesus Christ. Our sadness is heroic and tragic. In Pascal’s suggestive image, it is “the wretchedness of a great Lord, the wretchedness of a dispossessed king.” 

“We show our greatness,” says Pascal, “not by being at one extreme, but by touching both at once and occupying all the space in between.” For him, the very existence of such culture wars points to the truth of the Christian diagnosis of the human condition. 

Pascal offers us a way between the Scylla of Progressivism and the Charybdis of Conservatism – or perhaps better, to embrace the best of both. Culture wars are tricky to navigate. Yet they might find resolution if we allow them to point us to a deeper reality - our strange mixture of greatness and sadness. And not losing sight of either side of this enduring truth.  

 

Graham Tomlin is the author of Blaise Pascal: The Man Who Made the Modern World  (Hodder) £25.  

Watch Graham explain why he is fascinated by Pascal.

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