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russian social science review, vol. 49, no. 6, NovemberDecember 2008, pp. 8197. 2008 M.E. Sharpe, Inc. All rights reserved. ISSN 1061-1428/2008 $9.50 + 0.00.

VladislaV surkoV

Russian Political Culture

The View from Utopia
First, I would like right away to ensure that the word lecture and our location at the Academy of Sciences do not lead us into delusion. My discourse will be unscientific and in places, perhaps, even antiscientific in character. Although I have great respect for science and, as will become clear, consider it an important sector for Russias further development, I also beg your indulgence for not managing to avoid certain words that as an official I should perhaps not uttersuch words as holism, archetype, and others of that ilk. But as you know yourselves, in talking about culture its hard to keep within limits. So lets get started. The curious among us are in luck. We live in times of immense changes and great novelties. For twenty years we have witnessed and taken part in a troubled and impressive transformation of the Russian world. The differences among what was, what is, and what, we may presume, will be are so striking that we often call our country the new Russia, as though this were a New Worldor a new home. We do not live, however, over the sea; we have not changed our place of habitation. The new building of Russian democracy is constructed on the
English translation 2008 M.E. Sharpe, Inc., from the Russian text 2007 Izdatelstvo Nezavisimaia gazeta. Russkaia politicheskaia kultura. Vzgliad is utopii, in russkaia politicheskaia kultura. vzgliad iz utopii. lektsiia vladislava surkova. Materialy obsuzhdeniia v nezavisimoi gazete, ed. Konstantin Remchukov (Moscow: Izdatelstvo Nezavisimaia gazeta, 2007), pp. 621. Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield. Vladislav Surkov is deputy head of the Administration of the President of the Russian Federation. English-language quotations retranslated from the Russian.Ed.
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historical foundation of national statehood. We may argue about specific features of layout and decoration. Some like the imperial and others the petty bourgeois [meshchanskii] style; yet others are keen on futuristic experiments. But whatever changes we may make to the design of our home, its main proportions and distinguishing features are, it seems to me, predetermined by the fundamental categories and matrix structures of our history, national self-consciousness, and culture. The new democratic order has its origin in European civilizationbut in a specific Russian version of that civilization. It is viable to the extent that it is naturalthat is, national. Our democracy is viable if it does not reject Russian political culture but is part of it, developing not in defiance of but together with it. Democracy in our country is in some ways like democracy everywhere and in some ways uniquejust as the models of the most successful democracies of America, Europe, and Asia are universal and similar to one another but at the same time unique. To understand how democracy will develop in Russia, what sort of modification of it is applicable here in practice, it is necessary to define the archetypical and ineradicable properties of Russian political culture. Political culture is one of the manifestations of culture as such, in the broad and lofty sense. The stereotypes of contemporary politics are reproduced from the unique matrix of the national way of life, character, and worldview. Let us try to clarify what this matrix is like. To what form of consciousness does it correspond? What mode of recognition and transformation of the world does it generate? In short, what is Russian culture? Many answers are possible, but I do not venture to give any of my own. I cite the definition of Ivan Ilin, which is astonishing in its brevity and profundity: Russian culture is contemplation of the whole. We find something similar in [Nikolai] Berdiaev: It is the mission of the Russians to give . . . a philosophy of the whole spirit. . . . If a great and original culture is possible in Russia, then it can only be a religious-synthetic and not an analytic-differentiated culture. [Prince Evgenii] Trubetskoi agrees: More characteristic of the Russians is knowledge of the world through religious intuition as an organic whole, in contrast to the West, where philosophers have penetrated the mysteries of the world by breaking it down rationally into components for analysis. Joseph Brodsky spoke of a Russian chiliasm that assumes the idea of change in the world order as a whole and even of the synthetic (more precisely: nonanalytic) essence of the Russian language. So we see that the Russian cultural consciousness is portrayed as clearly holistic and intuitive and is contrasted with mechanistic, reductionistic consciousness. Typically, albeit controversially, the Russian mode of thought is

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contrasted not simply with reductionism but with reductionism as a Western mode of thought. In other words, there is a geopolitical subtext. According to this version, in our intellectual and cultural practice synthesis predominates over analysis, idealism over pragmatism, imagery over logic, intuition over rationality, the general over the particular. This, of course, does not mean that the Russians lack analytical capabilities or that the nations of Western Europe lack intuition. It is a matter of proportion. Let us put it this way: the Russian is more interested in the time and less in the design of the alarm clock. Thus, our culture is based on perception of the whole and not on manipulation of particulars, on gathering together and not on dividing up. Let us use this assumption as an axiom in determining the parameters of real politics. In my view, this fundamental given invests Russian political practice with at least three clear features. First, we have a striving toward political wholeness through the centralization of power functions. Second, we have an idealization of the goals of political struggle. Third, we have a personification of political institutions. Once again, all these things also exist in other political cultures, but in ours to somewhat more than the average extent. Through the centuries a strong central state gathered, consolidated, and developed an enormous country, stretching broadly over space and time. It conducted all significant reforms. The holistic outlook of Russian culture enabled it to interact flexibly with the cultures of the other peoples of Russia: to integrate, without destroying, all the diversity of their customs, to preserve the wholeness of a variegated shared world. In our day and age, the shift of power to the center has stabilized society, created conditions for the victory over terrorism, and supported economic growth. It is not so important whether Russias model of the centralized state was a consequence of a monocentric archetype in the national unconscious or whether this archetype itself took shape under the pressure of historical circumstances. In any case, today, too, the majority views the presence of a powerful center of authority as a guarantee of the preservation of Russias wholenessterritorial, spiritual, and every other kind. In practice, the goal of pulling Russian lands in toward the center and welding the state into a single whole is served by the presidential appointment of governors, by the administrative apparatus of federal districts, and by the centralizing tendencies of interbudgetary relations [between different levels of governmentTrans.]. The proportional model of parliamentary elections ensures the merging of disparate politically active groups into large national

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parties. The ban on the creation of political parties on a regional, religious, or occupational basis emphasizes that parties must not only divide voters in accordance with their views and convictions but also unite them around shared values. To divide the electorate but unite the nationsuch might be the principle of a Russian multiparty system. The president, situated at the center of the democratic system, is the guarantor of the democratic constitution and of a balanced separation of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. Disturbance of this balance or incautious and untimely decentralization will always weaken Russian democracy, generating chaos and degrading social institutions and the structures of democratic authority. These structures will then, as in the past, be displaced by oligarchic cliques and foreign organizations. In practice, the concept of a center of authority, methods of centralization, and means for preserving wholeness all change over time. They become nonlinear, softer, and more complex. But in certain political cultures the central government invariably plays a major rolein France, for instance. In the United States, too, there is a real cult of the institution of the presidency. There the head of state is often called the most powerful person on the planet. It is simply impossible to reach the highest state positions without tying your career to one of the two eternally ruling parties, which possess an impenetrable political duopoly over the federal center. A free society, it seems, has an interest in a strong and stable central government. The personification of political institutions is obvious. People say that in our country personality displaces institutions. It seems to me that in our political culture the individual personality is an institutionby no means the sole institution but a very important one. The holistic outlook is emotional. It demands the literal embodiment of images. Doctrines and programs do, of course, matter. But they find expression, above all, through the image of a charismatic personality, and only then with the aid of words and syllogisms. In practice: the largest political parties are hardly distinguishable from the persons of their leaders. We say Party and we mean So-and-so.* The largest public organization in the country, United Russia, regards the president as its leader and calls its platform the Putin plan. Certain parties cannot even be imagined without their leaders. That, perhaps, is why these leaders so rarely change. Ziuganov has headed the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and Yavlinsky Yabloko for over fourteen years; Zhirinovsky has led the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) for about seventeen years.
*Surkov is echoing a line, much quoted in Soviet times, from Vladimir Mayakovskys poem The Party [Partiia]: We say Party and we mean Lenin.Trans.

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[I would like to say] a few words on Russian idealism. Idealism is the main thing that, in the future as in the past, willit appearslaunch the Russian world into new orbits of development. If the ideal goal is lost from sight, social activity is slowed down and disorganized. Intrinsic to the Russian outlook, I would say, is a romantic, poetic longsightedness. It has an indistinct perception of what is nearbya rickety fence, a bad road, the litter in the nearest gatewaybut a detailed knowledge of what shines in the distance, of mirages on the horizon. Paying more attention to the wished-for than to the real, this view of things leads to a quest for the sole truth, for supreme justice. It creates a sense if not of exclusivity then of being special, different from ones neighbors. This sense of being different is both appealing and extraordinarily inspiring. This search for a special truth of ones own, this need to live by ones intellect, compels one to act with marked independence. The whole history of Russia since the reign of Ivan III [14621505] is a demonstration of intellectual independence and state sovereignty. Intrinsic to idealism is the desire to turn to ones faith, messianism. The Third Rome and the Third International were messianic conceptions. To be sure, messianism is now irrelevant to us, but the mission of the Russian nation requires clarification. Unless we affirm a role for Russia in the community of nations (whether a modest role or a prominent one is a matter for discussion), unless we understand who we are and why we are here, our national life will be deficient. In practice, in May of this year, the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM) conducted a sociological survey whose results showed that the level of public trust in political institutions directly depends on the degree to which they are personified and on how close they are to the supreme center. Thus, 55 percent of respondents trust the president, who stands right at this center, more than other authorities. Twenty percent prefer to count on the leader of their oblast, krai, or republic. A mere 8 percent place their hopes for a better life on the head of their town or settlement. The almost faceless courts fare even worse. At the same time, 1011 percent trust the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Courtfive times more than trust raion and oblast courts (2 percent). The legislative branch, whose image is indistinct, enjoys the least trust by comparison with other authorities. But here, too, the Federal Assembly (4 percent) is significantly more popular than local parliaments (2 percent). So the higher and more remote an authority, the more it is trusted. Our people place no special hopes in the authority that is close by and accessible, possibly because it is more familiar to them, because it is prosaic. Conversely,

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a high and remote authority is easily mythologized, idealized, personified, and incorporated into a monocentric model of political space. If we recognize centralization, personification, and idealization as three special characteristics of our political culture, then let us consider how we, being special in this fashion, are to live with all this. In everyday consciousness, the word culture is associated with something categorically good and intelligent. Conversations about Rakhmaninov are cultured. Up-to-date health resorts are very cultured. An evening at the opera is very, very cultured. Culture and civilization, however, extend far beyond museum halls and theater buffets. Systems of coercion, apparatuses of manipulation, wars, chronic social pathologies, prejudices, idiotic theories, ruinous adventuresthese, alas, are also part of the package. For people and for their communities, culture is fate. Fate may take shape in different ways. As is well known, there is no escaping it. It is necessary to use the opportunities and advantages it offers. It is possible to argue with it, influence it, achieve changes in it. But the prohibitions and constraints that it imposes cannot be ignored. Culture is manifest both in what people say and in what it is not customary to talk about. At each interval of time, it creates and encourages certain behavioral stereotypes while destroying and suppressing others. It panders to certain of our drives and blocks others. Those who understand culture as a sphere of play know that the purpose of any game is not only entertainment and instruction but also experimentation. Likewise, our political culture not only gives society means of relieving stresses and solving problems; it may itself generate stresses and problems. Its properties, including those noted above, are neither good nor bad. They are simply what they are. We ourselves make them useful or harmful. All of them are poisons, and all of them are remedies. It is a matter of dose and appropriate application. For example, centralization may bring enormous benefit, as I have already explained. But centralization that is excessive, untimely, or unnecessary may distort the system of state power and weaken private initiative, and with it the foundations of parliamentarianism and of local self-government. A century and a half ago, [the writer Nikolai] Gogol predicted the minimal 24 percent rating for trust in the legislative branch discovered by FOM: In general, we were somehow not created for parliamentary sessions. . . . In all our gatherings, . . . if there is no single person in charge of everything the result is an awful muddle. It is hard even to say why this is so; clearly we are a type of people such that our only successful conferences are those convened to feast or make merry. This also accounts for the excessive personification of collegial structures. Strong personalities often compensate for the inefficiency of collectives, for

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a lack of mutual trust and self-organization. For, in my opinion, Russian supercollectivism is pure invention. In practice, if any of you have tried just once to persuade the residents of neighboring apartments to share the cost of installing an entry phone, you know how difficult it is to bring about even the smallest collective action. How do we drive vehicles? Across the street, in the wrong direction, in a drunken condition, senselessly and mercilessly.* A collectivist does not drive like that. He respects other members of the collective. It seems to me that individualists predominate in our society. From time to time, people have, out of necessity, taken refuge in the collectivefrom the state, from responsibility, from forced labor. As for our idealism, applied in daily life in full force and without pragmatic grounding it is unreliable and sometimes even dangerous. If you think rationally, you divide the world, as it were, into parts. From these parts you then assemble something of practical use, in the process inventing missing components. That is how rationalism acts. Idealism acts differently. When the image of the world is whole and indivisible, there is need for faith, emotions, intuition. If the faith is extinguished and the image breaks apart, the idealist does not spend time mending the world. He immediately renounces this world in its entirety and thinks up for himself a new world that is equally whole, splendid, static, and motionless. That process gives rise to the next faith, a new passion. At one time we had to build communism. We thought: now we build, and afterward we will do nothing. But we must build communism rapidly so we can do nothing as soon as possible. This is precisely how the average person conceived of communism: as a place where everything is available with no need to do anything. Now people talk about democracy in exactly the same way. I often hear them say: we have to build democracy. Such phrasing presupposes some sort of end point: now we have democracy, it has happened, and we can all relax and enjoy ourselves. It is like saying: now we have to build a human being. A human being is always developingfor worse or for better is another question. He is not static, and nothing is static. But such is the idealistic approach to lifeto think up worlds and try to establish them on earth. Our contemplativeness, sometimes taken for laziness, leads to a failure to analyze nuances, details, particulars, tedious calculations, and mechanisms of implementation. The future must arrive in a flash, all at once, and how to get there is a matter of detail. Why stuff your head with such things? Its all
*A reference to Pushkins famous expression a Russian revolt, senseless and merciless.Trans.

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trivia by comparison with the world revolutionas our idealistically inclined cutthroats used to say. One acquaintance of mine says, What you cant do in two weeks, you can never do. Thats very much our way of thinking: everything, at once, here and now; two weeks, five hundred days, communism in 1980.* If it doesnt work out, the idealist gets angry and falls prey to depression and to the cynicism of disillusionment. The Petrine reforms, the reveries of February 1917, Bolshevik megaprojects, perestroika [fall into this category], as do the liberal reforms, dreams of the marvelous Kitezh** of Russian capitalism. All are conducted in haste, bedazzled by an idea, in extraordinary irritation with viscous reality; in despairing certainty of the approaching collapse of the old world (the monarchy, bourgeois democracy, the Soviet regime) with its tedium, violence, poverty, and injustice; in naive hope of a splendid new life in which everyone will lie down for a well-deserved rest (earned through suffering)leaving all work and all worry to the almighty doctrine, the world revolution, universal human values, the invisible hand of the market, and other magical spells. Such is the simple eschatology. Hence the cramps and convulsions of great leapsan unpleasant way of moving. Even today there are those who promise to increase pensions fourfold or wages fivefold right away. Others demand yet more democracy, while poorly understanding what democracy is. They have thought up their own simple image and want reality to correspond to itand without delay. Do it quickly, give us the soonest possible relief, so that we can return to contemplative torpidity. In general, the primacy, intrinsic to our political culture, of the whole over the parts, of the general over the particular, of the ideal over the pragmatic and practical has led more than once in our history to the neglect of such particulars and details as human life and freedom, the dignity and rights of man. Conservative and paternalistic moods have become too strong and suppressed the active public milieu, leading to dysfunction of the institutions of development. Possibly this is why many liberals today make the sweeping judgment that Russian political culture is an archaic product of ignorance and backwardness, that all our political habits and customs without exception burden our way of life and hold back progress. Even having sunkas many haveto such a point of view, we must pursue the argument further. We must answer the question of whether in this case Russian political culture must without fail be overcome and forgotten.
*Five Hundred Days was an economic reform plan announced in 1990. The goal of building communism by 1980 was set by Khrushchev.Trans. **Kitezh, is a magical city of Russian legend.Trans.

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It seems that Rousseau reproached Peter the Great in retrospect with trying to turn the Russians into Dutchmen or Germans instead of allowing them to be Russians and develop as Russians. It is well known that Paul I wanted to make Prussians of Russian soldiers. The Bolsheviks tried to reprocess a hundred ethnic groups into a Soviet community, while the leaders of perestroika tried to turn them into a hitherto unseen race of universal human beings. The reformers of the 1990s were wary of the words Russian and national. Try as they might, none of these rulers, great or not so great, was able to overcome the national, all too national elementif only because they were themselves part of Russia. Their reforms succeeded only insofar as they were perceived as native to Russia, as acceptable to Russian culture. Anything incompatible with the life of our culture or harmful to its foundation was painfully rejected. Is it worth trying again? Shall we imitate the Dostoevsky hero who shot himself after deciding that it is not worth living as a Russian? Each of us has, and all of us together have, many possible futuresbut not infinitely many. The range of possible futures is limited by the genetic formula of our national culture. Certainly, a culture is a living organism. Its boundaries, its inner space, and even its foundations are elastic, mobile, and permeable. But the unique combination of certain of its qualities is invariably and persistently reproduced on all scales and at all levels of society, and at all times. I repeat: culture is fate. God commanded us to be ethnic Russians [russkie] as well as citizens of Russia [rossiiane]. Such we shall remain. We will take the problems into account and exploit the advantages of our national character and our political culture to create a competitive economy and a viable democracy. Let us take an impetuous, enthusiastic person endowed with a rich imagination. We may call him impractical, inconsistent, lazy, and changeable. Such people are not hired as bookkeepers. The same person may be called a creative personality, determined to achieve important goals, ambitious, energetic, and self-sacrificing. He is suited to manage projects, to experimental and creative work. Such a person may become a poor bookkeeper or a good theatrical director. In either case he must work on himself, develop his character, or even acquire new qualities while, perhaps, restraining certain other qualities. But he will be working on himself, not renouncing his basic identity. Let him decide for himself who to be. At the same time, let him ponder in what kind of work his personal qualities will assist him and in what kind they will hinder him. Similarly, in choosing paths for the development of our democracy and economy, we must ponder which of these paths best suits the special traits of our national character and culture.

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We may take pride in our political culture. It prefigured and brought Russia democracy. It has sufficient potential to develop a democratic model for Russiaa political vocabulary that will be our own but will nonetheless be comprehensible to othersand to communicate to ourselves and to the outside world the images and meanings without which a nation has no historical existence. We can then talk about our own experience of democracy in our own words, because he who does not speak listens, and he who listens obeys. We should take an understanding attitude toward the grumbling and yelling from abroad regarding our internal affairs. The grumblers and yellers need the kind of democracy in our country that would enable them to live better. You and I need the kind that will enable usour whole nationto live better. We wish the same for other nations. Some say that in the 1990s Russia was regarded as a democracy in the West. Their memory is defective. Of course, the West encouraged the weakness and muddle-headedness that we showed at that time. But weakness and muddle-headedness do not amount to democracy. In practice, in 1994 the international Herald Tribune declared: The regime [in Russia] is not moving toward democratic transition, which presupposes a market economy and political democracy. In 1998 the washington Post called the system in Russia a disintegrating, unpredictable autocracy, while the washington inquirer called it an undemocratic regime. The next year, Forbes called Russia a state of gangsters. Long ago, [the Pan-Slavist philosopher Nikolai] Danilevskii wrote that the foreign public does not know Russia, or to put it better, they know [Russia] as they want to know itthat is, as it corresponds to their preconceived opinions, their passions, their pride and contempt. The idea that the current unprecedented pressure on Russia is due to the defects of our democracy is nonsense, stupidity. It makes much more sense to discern behind these complaints another motive and goalto wrest control over Russias natural resources by weakening its state institutions, defense capability, and independence. But this, too, somewhat simplifies things. Iver Neumann, a contemporary investigator of problems of identity, writes: Whatever social practices may have acquired importance at one time or or another (religious, bodily, intellectual, social, military, political, economic, or any other kind [I would adddemocraticV.S.]), Russia is invariably regarded [by the West] as an anomaly. He adds: Inasmuch as exclusion is an essential component of integration, . . . the temptation arises to emphasize the differentness of Russia for the sake of integration of the European identity. All that we now see in real politics, all these expanded NATOs and antimissile defenses that absolutely have to be deployedthis, of course, is being done largely to consolidate Western and Central Europe around a singleextra-

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European, by the waycenter. This process requires a myth about some sort of suspicious element on the peripherybarbarians who prowl along the border and wave their Asiatic fists from afar. Our difficulties with the West, it seems to me, are difficulties of translation, difficulties in communication among European cultures that have the same roots but are profoundly different in spirit. The causes of these difficulties are complex; they are not simply economic, simply military, simply stylistic, simply political. Negative information about Russia has always been more easily assimilated in Western Europe than positive information. For centuries distrust has permeated our relationship. Concealed behind the faultfinding, sermonizing, and lamentations over issues of the day are fundamental misunderstandings, a conflict of archetypes, cultural dissonance. A long history as neighbors and a vaguely sensed distant kinship in the realm of religion merely exacerbate hostility. As is well known, disagreements among close relatives are more intense than those among strangers, who are indifferent to one another. Can cultural tensions be overcome? Not completely, but rapprochement among cultures is possible and necessary. Russia has an interest in such rapprochement because it appears impossible to create an innovation-based economy without access to the intellectual resources of the West. Rapprochement among cultures does not mean their unification or renunciation of their diversity. Who needs a world in which all people, nations, and democracies look alike? Such a place would be drearier than communism. Yes, democracy in Russia is imperfect, but where is it perfect? Yes, it lacks a great deal, and we do have something to learn from the Westin terms of modernity, humaneness, and spontaneity. Local self-government in our country is somewhat sluggish. Our power hierarchy could use improvement. The civic consciousness of our society is weak. Our corruption is not very elegant: he stole, drank too much, and ended up in jailrather simple stuff, not as subtle as in more advanced countries. Even so, these are our problems, and no one will solve them for us. As long ago as 1951, the outstanding American political thinker George F. Kennan wrote: The paths by which nations achieve a decent and enlightened state order are the deepest and most intimate processes of national life. These paths are often incomprehensible to foreigners, and foreign interference in these processes can do nothing but harm. Not everyone in Washington, it seems, has read Kennana pity. Through its culture, each people obtains a unique access code to the future. We must seek answers to the questions of how to enter and live in the new century within our own cultural space. If we do decide to borrow some things

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from outside, then let us borrow ideas and not stereotypes, living thoughts and not dead modelsthings that will nourish and enrich our culture, not stifle it. To get a sweet taste in your mouth, you have to eat the candy and not its wrapper. To assimilate freedom, you have to extract the essence and utility from foreign experience and not chew, with the tragic mien of a hired human rights defender, the wrappers and price lists of imported democracy. Russia has no future beyond the bounds of its own culture. Russian democracy is not a foreign castoff. The will to freedom and justice that underlies democracy develops and grows as a natural property of the national character. Here I would like to insert a small advertisement [for my own ideas]: the concept of sovereign democracy most closely corresponds to the foundations of Russian political culture. This is because: (1) it justifies centralization, concentration of the nations material, intellectual, and power resources for the purposes of self-preservation and successful development of each citizen in Russia and of Russia in the world. It synthesizes, brings together, and unites ideas and concepts that are counterposed to one another in daily political debate. Freedom and justice, rights and duties, competition and cooperation, the individual and the national, globalization and sovereigntythese are all compatible and attainable without division; (2) the project of sovereign democracy envisions social change that will make Russian society more flexible, dynamic, and receptive to positive changes. Loosening of the political structure will enable it to develop not in leaps and bounds, as in the past, but by meansif I may put it this wayof topological changes, that is, without breaks and losses that would damage the wholeness of Russia as a nation; (3) the text of sovereign democracy is personified, inasmuch as it interprets the course set by President Putin; and (4) in foretelling a harmonious future for Russia and the world and encountering skepticism and misunderstanding, this concept seems idealistic, perhaps even utopian. What is the use of utopia? Where is the profit in it? Let me clarify. By utopia I do not mean a situation that does not and cannot exist; I mean a situation that does not exist but is desirable and in principle possible. One official American document cites the following motto: our goals are idealistic, our means realistic. It is, in my opinion, precisely the difference between the potentials of the existing and the desirable, of the real and the ideal that creates the exertion of human efforts that results in the rise and development of culture and civilization. Mechanistic views of culture reduce it to the sum of accumulated information, material values, and works of art. They treat it as a tradition or legacy obtained from the past. In fact, culture exists on both (more precisely, all) sides

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of the present. The future is incorporated into its space as visibly as the past. Cinema and literature, philosophy and religion, economics and ecology are full to overflowing with projects, presentiments, visions, and investigations of the future. For some reason, nevertheless, it is usually thought that we know much less about the future than we do about the past. Due to this partly disputable assumption, past experience, as a rule, exerts overwhelming influence on the organization of current activity. Someone once said that generals are always prepared for the last war. In orderGod forbidnot to give offense to any general, let us admit that many of us civilians also view the present from the perspective of the past and in making current decisions take hardly any account of possible configurations of the future. For this reason, we have long hung about in the industrial era, placing all our hopes on oil, gas, and iron. We are constantly trying to catch upwith America, with ourselves as we were in 1989, even with Portugal. We chase the pastsometimes a foreign past, sometimes our own. But if the limit of our dreams is Soviet wages or Euro-renovation,* then we are the most unfortunate of people. To make our plans more interesting, ambitious, and realistic, we need a new method. We need the future to exert on current policy a stronger influence than the past. We need to diagnose and correct the existing situation from the perspective of the future situation. Let us call this method of assessing and setting tasks the view from utopia, from a desirable future. What kind of future is desirable? (In parentheses and with regret, I note that among the popular futurological brands of recent decadespostindustrial society, the end of history, the flat world, third-wave civilization, and othersnot one is of Russian origin.) I think that everyone (well, almost everyone) would like a world without war, a community of sovereign democracies, prosperous and living by just laws, in which, as Pushkin wrote, nations, strife forgotten, will unite in a single family. True, there are radical dreamers who say that nations themselves will no longer exist. There will be total globalization. Perhaps they are right, but personally I am not interested in a future from which everything Russian has disappeared. A future without Russia is not worth talking about. As a compromise, let us dream of a global federation based on treaties among free nations. All the units of such a federation must be equal. This does not mean that the federation will be culturally and economically homogeneous: some units will be more equal than others. As a unit of a utopian global federation, I would like Russia to be a donor region, a leading nation, one of the centers of
*The replacement of Soviet goods with West European-style furnishings and decorations.Trans.

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intellectual life. This goal raises questions for us all. Do we want to become part of the so-called third-wave civilization? Or shall we continue to rust at the industrial stage, in the backyard of the global economy, until the century ends and the oil runs out? Do we want to strive persistently for softer manners in politics and daily life, or do we prefer to march in formation? If we wish, then let us take a look at ourselves from the perspective of the best futurea future in which Russia is a globally significant national economy of intellectual services, a flourishing sovereign democracy. What will we see? We have a rapidly expanding bureaucracy coupled to oil pipelines. Few of the people in leading positions in our society, in both the private and the state sector, are oriented toward the third wave. Raw materials are valued more than knowledge. Culture and education have not yet become the basis of the economy or of politics and as before are regarded as unprofitable social programs, peripheral to the raw-materials complex. There is no understanding that political, economic, and military advantages have no separate existence: they are always components and consequences of cultural superiority. Let us consider the world economy as a large factory. In this factory there is a workshop for primary processing, where unskilled workers toil in the midst of dust and fumes. There is an assembly shop where people in white coats, the workers aristocracy, produce completed articles. There is a bookkeeping office and a design bureau, where specialists with a higher education work. There is a management and board of directors. Here sit the most intelligent individuals. Where is our place in this international enterprise? It is unlikely that anyone in the world would turn to us for new technology, high-quality financial services, efficient management, movies that will be successful at the box office, or fashionable clothing. People come to our country to buy oil, gas, and the notorious round timber. Thus, in the worldwide division of labor we are not the engineers, the bankers, the designers, or the producers and managers. We are the drillers, the miners, the lumberjacks. So we are rather dirty-faced fellows from the working-class suburbs. Of course, any kind of labor is honorable, but all the samewhy? After all, we consider ourselves a highly educated and highly cultured nation. What are we, with our education, our cum laude diplomas, doing feeding the mosquitoes in the oil-bearing swamp? We are such cultured and talented people, compatriots of Nikolai Gogol, Igor Stravinsky, and Ilya Prigozhinto be sweating in the quarry and at the coalface. Perhaps we have not grown to the heights of our national culture. Perhaps not all is well with education. The head of one of the largest energy corporations was telling me that until recently (possibly even to this day) no higher educational institution in

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Russia had a single specialist on steamgas electricity generation or a single installation for hands-on study of this technology. Without going into detail, however, we must note that this technology is quite commonplace and is applied widely today throughout the developed countries. What on earth are students being taught? They have no opportunity not only to look into the future of the energy sciences but even to acquire an intelligible picture of their contemporary state. One governor discovered an agricultural college where the students learn about tractors from machines retired in the 1960s. In other words, our educational system, with few exceptions, is producing specialists for the economy of the last century. In general, from the perspective of the future we can see in present-day life much that is dismal. But also much that is hopeful. Daniel Bell, author of the concept of the postindustrial society, recently predicted that once Russia achieves internal stability it will be ready to enter the postindustrial age sooner than any other country. If he thinks so, then why should we not agree with him? We can see that this is real. We can and must become the white-collar workers in the worldwide division of labor and occupy an important place in the global hierarchy. We can see that for this a number of things are necessary: (1) we must pragmatically pursue idealistic goals, learning to act in a prudent and balanced fashion without losing boldness in thought; (2) in fulfilling the presidents parting words about improving the efficiency of our use of natural resources, we must keep in mind that the nations most precious natural resource is its intellect. We must concern ourselves with what people have in their heads, which is worth more than oil, gas, and round timber. Culture, science, and education must be recognized as leading forces of production; intelligent, healthy, and free people are the countrys most important possession; (3) we must chart our political course in such a way that the ruling majority, in its own interests, will facilitate the growing influence and activity of the advanced minority, namely: entrepreneurs, scientists and engineers, scholars in the humanities, people in the arts, managers, and the new generation of politiciansthat is, the countrys creative stratum; (4) we must not forget that it is insufficient merely to finance culture and science; we must learn how to apply their achievements in practice. Our country must become attractive to innovators and profitable for scholarly work; (5) we must establish stable cooperative ties with the worlds leading economies in the sphere of innovation. Stable here does not mean simple. Perestroika and the period of the first reforms showed that unilateral concessions in international affairs have no positive effect, even a negative effect. Not only do they not lead to answering concessions; on the contrary, they

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provoke even greater pressure and a demand for even greater concessions. Nevertheless, although a limit should be placed on the price of constructive relations, a price has to be paid. Everything comes at a price. We need foreign specialists at enterprises, foreign scientists and lecturers in the structures of education and science. We also need industrial cooperation in the intellectual sphere. In practice, China, for example, managed to secure the agreement of General Motors to set up a corporate research and development center and transfer the latest technologies, making this a condition of access to its market. At one time Japan, too, did something similar. Why we confine ourselves to assembly plants is hard to understand; and (6) we must understand that such trivial words as modernization and diversification are not adequate to describe the dramatic tasks facing our nation. We do not need modernization. We need a shift in our whole civilizational paradigm. The shift, of course, must be properly phased, so that it does not overwhelm us. But it really is a matter of a fundamentally new economy and society. We need a new projection of Russian culture onto future history. Moreover, future history will not be simple. It will be a history of complex systems. Democracy is a political system that functions at the limit of complexity. An innovation-based economy is impossible outside a freethat is, unstable and dynamic by definitioncreative milieu. In our country, at present, an excess of money and bureaucracy exists alongside a shortage of complexity and creativity. Primitive structures and linear methods of management predominate; the speed of information processing and the social mobility of the population are extremely low. We need to emerge from our stupor and overcome the shock and confusion that struck our society on encountering its own future. We are like those fellows from the working-class suburbs when suddenly they find themselves in the business district of the city: noise, lights, people rushing all about uscon men and smart alecks, traders and speculators. We, like suckers, fall back in dismay, open-mouthed and goggle-eyed. We put up our defensesjust so they dont swindle us. They will swindle us for sure if we remain open-mouthed and goggle-eyed. We must become accustomed to life in a complicated, open, unstable, and fast-moving world. In this world any equilibrium is dynamic, any order mobile and flexibleif equilibrium and order even exist. The consolidation and centralization of power were necessary to preserve the sovereign state and turn it around, away from oligarchy and toward democracy. But already today, and all the more so tomorrow, they can be justified only to the extent that they facilitate Russias transition to the next stage, to a qualitatively new level of civilization.

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At the same time, from the heights of utopia we clearly see that the old liberal dogma of liberating creative energy exclusively by means of the mechanistic fragmentation, division, and dismantling of social structures is not wholly correct, that the holistic approaches and methods of social synthesis, preservation, and unification intrinsic to Russian political culture are also suited to the development of democracy. We see that the inevitable complication and differentiation of social institutions are balanced by the opposite process of the reintegration of fragments into a complex whole. We see that culture is of significance, of decisive significance and Russian culture predetermines a worthy future for Russia. One last quotation: there wont be any more. Commenting on the disagreements between Slavophiles and Westernizers [Alexander] Herzen said: We were opponents, . . . but we shared a single love, . . . a single strong feeling of boundless . . . love for Russian life and the Russian cast of mind. I am sure that the unifying work of President Putin is successful and widely acclaimed precisely because it is guided by a Russian mind, respect for Russian political culture, and love for Russia. Selected by Richard Sakwa Translated by Stephen D. Shenfield

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