Richard Pipes and Russia Today?

Submitted by Ludvikus (United States), May 17, 2022 at 18:14

The danger of a nuclear catastrophe is always there - considering the number of nuclear weapons Russia and the USA have in stock. That is not what is subject to much discourse - except for the virtues of nuclear disarmament.

What is extremely interesting is your father's (Richard Pipes) long analysis of Soviet Russia and even its military doctrines. Unfortunately, your father is no longer with us, but his writing are. You references your father's article, but you did not cite its insights.

So I can only try to imagine what your wonderful scholarly father might have observed.

I think he would have seed the Reaction of Russia to it's pre-Communist (Soviet) past. In this context, it is useful to observe the 3 major European countries Revolutions and Evolutions in Liberal Democratic Republics or Constitutional Sates. England (Britain) beginning with the Civil War, France with the French Revolution, and Prussia emerging under Bismark as the German Empire.

What we see is NOT a smooth transition. Even in the case of the United States, we has the Articles of Confederation (1776) followed by the Constitution (1789) followed by the Civil War (1860-65) and the Amendments to our Constitution (13th & 14), followed by the implementing Civil Rights statutes under the Johnson Administration of 1965?

What I think your father would have observed in this Russian reaction is a partial return to Imperial Russia of 1905. At that time, the Russian Duma already existed and Russia had a Constitutional Monarchy. Currently, the Russian Federation does have a Bicameral Legislature.

However, the position of the Tsar appears to be occupied, quasi-legally, by Vladimir Putin.

At the same time, Russian Citizenship is under (dialectical?) criticism. Whether Belarus or Ukraine are distinct people is subject to discourse and attack; if they are actually Russians also, they belong as citizens to the Russian Federation. This resembles a bit our (USA) Western expansion in the 19th Century.

Furthermore, with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 or so, the Ideology which replaced Communism is the Russian Orthodox Church. Here Putin is in complete alliance with Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill who opposes the Decadence of the West with its Gay Pride Parades.

Authoritarian Autocracy appears a natural phenomena in this context - something your father would possibly elaborate on (I believe), were he alive today. So Putin appears, perhaps to Russians, as God's gift to Russia. The Irony is that this is a form of Fascism, yet Russia's partial excuse for the "special military action" in Ukraine is to rid it of Nazism (the most extreme form of Fascism).

The other molecularity of Putin's (and Russia's) analysis is the blindness to the Nature of Nationalism: The French are Franks (Germans) as are the English and Saxons (Germans). Yet they went their separate ways to form separate Countries and States. Putin, therefore, resists historical nationalists evolution and wants to "return" at least Belarus and Ukraine to "Mother" (or "Father") RUSSIA!

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