Collapse vs. Emergence: Decolonisation as a Chance and Choice for Democracy

By Botakoz Kassymbekova, Lecturer/Assistant Professor in Modern History, University of Basel

More than three decades after the collapse of the Communist bloc it has become clear that the former peripheries of the Russian/Soviet empire – republics such as Estonia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine, and satellite states such as the Czech Republic, Mongolia, Poland and Slovakia – have been much more successful in democratisation than Russia. In fact, Russia is now one of the least democratic places in the former Soviet empire. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the West pinned all its hopes on Moscow in the transition from dictatorship to democracy while considering its former colonial peripheries to be dangerously nationalist, potentially troublemaking and therefore threats to peace, stability and democracy. In his “Chicken Kyiv speech” in 1991, US President George Bush warned about “a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred” and expressed scepticism about the prospect of Ukraine’s independence. The Western mainstream was dominated by concerns about whether and to what extent “dangerous ethno-nationalists” really wanted democracy.

From periphery to beacon: the progress of post-Soviet states

Today, it is the former Russian/Soviet imperial core that is the source of violence and danger to the world. Democracy indices show that most countries neighbouring the Russian federation, its former colonised peripheries, have made much more progress in securing individual freedom and choice. Some turned into robust democracies. This is one of the main lessons of the collapse of the Soviet empire for today. But how could it happen that the former supposedly “dangerous” peripheries offer more hope for democracy, including Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan (which, while not a democracy, scores higher than the Russian Federation), or Mongolia, landlocked between the Russian Federation and China? If countries like Estonia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova and Ukraine were still occupied by Moscow, they would not be as free as they are today – the basis of their development was their independence in 1991. Given that the Soviet dictatorship was replicated in 15 republics and given that all Soviet republics went through similar economic collapse and social issues after 1991 (in fact, Georgia, Kazakhstan and Moldova faced much greater economic challenges), why have they made more progress towards openness and freedom than the Russian Federation? Proximity to Europe and the intention to join the European Union are not the only factors influencing the democratisation of the formerly colonised and occupied, because in the case of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia, progress towards civil development has also exceeded that of the Russian Federation, which is geographically much closer to the EU. What is it about Russian occupation/colonialism and the Russian imperial centre that hampers the development of democracy?

The deeper factors at play

It would be wrong and misleading to explain the difference simply with “wrong” decisions of the regime or with “bad” leaders. Such a narrow focus cannot explain why the former colonial peripheries, sharing the same political and legal institutions and economic challenges as the former imperial centre, have been more successful in overcoming them. The problem lies much deeper than just the issue of the regime. Focusing only on freedom of the press, the rule of law, corruption or human rights will not allow to understand the historical developments of the last three decades either. It is necessary to examine the two most fundamental differences between Russian Federation and the decolonised former Soviet republics that have influenced the latter’s democratisation: territorial size and narrative. They are interrelated and must be perceived as two sides of the same coin. The Russian Federation has not distanced itself from size as a narrative (imperial greatness) and the narrative of size (the need for a large territory as condition for global power projection). The republics that gained independence from Moscow in 1991 abandoned the Russian/Soviet narratives and created new national ones.

Imperial legacies and the quest for new national narratives

In this process of reinvention, the question of the legitimacy of the new narratives was fundamental and usually had to do with breaking with the old one and integrating society into the new ones. For some, democracy was often linked to the question of security against re-colonisation or overcoming the legacies of Russian/Soviet colonialism. In this process, society could emerge in the narrative as an important independent player. This happened for some republics sooner, for others later and for yet others not at all. The decision to make the Russian Federation, but de facto Moscow, the Soviet Union’s legal successor impeded de-Sovietisation and the search for a new narrative. Moscow’s wars against Chechnya (in 1994–96 and 1999–2009) eliminated any chance of reorientation and turned its ideology towards the past. It is consistent that The Captive of the Caucasus, written by Alexander Pushkin in the early 19th century, in which Russia colonised the Caucasus but imagined itself as its victim, has been again resurrected in the 1990s as the great Russian national topoi. A very successful updating of Pushkin’s colonial story in popular films of the 1990s portrays the West and Ukraine as Russia’s enemies. Its main message to the audience has been to cultivate the cult of sacrifice for “Russian greatness’. post-Soviet Moscow chose a kind of “Soviet legacy without communist ideology’ with additional Tsarist features because this allowed it to re-imagine an empire. The claim to the right to determine world politics is another imperial legacy that Moscow established during the Soviet period.

Restoration of power: violence and centralisation in post-Soviet Russia

Crucially, this return to the story of greatness and the recreation of the dream of domination had to be based on external and internal violence. External expansion legitimised the story of a strong leader and the need for a centralised, patriarchal order. Instead of systemic change, the path taken was the restoration of an old story and an old system: ultra-centralised power, sustained by a story of enemies and martyrs willing to die for Russia’s greatness. In 2015, Joseph Stalin was the most popular figure among Russia’s population, unlike in Moscow’s former colonies. What the transformation after the collapse of the Soviet empire teaches us is that the communist system has not been the only source of Russian illiberalism, although it was instrumental in shaping its contours. Russian colonialism, not just communism, is incompatible with democracy. While the collapse of the Soviet narrative was a precondition for political transformation in the non-Russian republics, the opposite happened in Russia. The collapse of the empire allowed many new stories to emerge. A democratic Russia, on the other hand, could never emerge because the empire never collapsed there. Fear and hatred of democracy stem from this fact.