Counterrevolutionary Russia

For much of the 20th century Russia was a revolutionary state whose objective was the global spread of communist ideology. In the 21st century it has become the preeminent counterrevolutionary power.

.. To listen to pro-Putin Russian intellectuals these days is to be subjected to a litany of complaints about the “revolutionary” West, with its irreligious embrace of same-sex marriage, radical feminism, euthanasia, homosexuality and other manifestations of “decadence.” It is to be told that the West loses no opportunity to globalize these “subversive” values, often under cover of democracy promotion and human rights.

.. As a senior European official attending a conference organized by Harvard University’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs put it, Russia’s is a “loser’s challenge” to the West, because it has given up on modernization and globalization, whereas China’s is potentially a “winner’s challenge,” because it is betting everything on a high-tech, modern economy.

 

Nato & Russia: Border Tensions

KATARZYNA PLEJNIS TRIES hard not to think of the missile launchers, tanks and thousands of Russian soldiers stationed just a few miles from her house in northern Poland. That is until the live fire exercises wake her up in the dead of night.

“You can hear the shooting at four in the morning,” says Ms Plejnis, who lives in Braniewo, a small town a few miles from the border with Kaliningrad, the heavily militarised Russian enclave squeezed between Poland and the Baltic states.

.. So far this year, more than 20,000 Nato troops have taken part in exercises in the region and 30,000 more have been put on standby, in what Jens Stoltenberg, Nato’s secretary-general, has described as “the biggest adaptation of force structures since the end of the cold war”.

.. According to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), a pollster whose main client is the Russian government, more than half of all Russians now see war with Nato as a real threat.

.. “Fear about external threats has replaced economic concerns as the main driver of public sentiment,” says Mikhail Dmitriev, an economist and sociologist in Moscow. Pollsters say this has helped Mr Putin maintain popularity ratings at a historical high level of more than 80 per cent despite an economic slump ..

.. He accuses Nato of warmongering, citing the decision last year, to create a Joint Expeditionary Force Agreement. “They have also increased fighter jet flights close to our borders. That is in violation of everything Nato promised Russia,” he says.

.. “If only there was no war,” says Nadezhda, an elderly woman using a popular phrase that embodies ordinary Russians’ fear of conflict.