Who would have thought that we would live to see a time when a slogan that we used to scrape laboriously and secretly on our desks as high school students would become unexpectedly relevant – secretly because it was clearly “a strike at national alliances”. This slogan, at which we laughed boisterously at the time, read: “Long live the Polish-Chinese border in the Urals!”, and its discovery on the green surface of the desktop threatened a teacher’s investigation, although its consequences could not have been as serious as they had been a decade or two earlier. In a world a sixth of which was proudly ruled by the Soviet Union, that catchphrase was sufficiently absurd to captivate the minds of sixteen-year-olds.

Of course, it was not so much a question of rapprochement with China, about which we knew little, but that the Soviet Union would finally stop littering the globe with its presence. None of us imagined at the time that, a dozen years later, the invincible motherland of the world proletariat would crumble, Andrei Amalrik’s essay [written in 1970, the Russian dissident’s text entitled “Will the Soviet Union Survive Until 1984?” – ed.], after all, had not yet reached us. Even less could we have imagined that, after another few decades, commentators and political scientists would be seriously talking about the possibility of the break-up of Russia, the mighty remnant of the Soviets. And yet here we are.

That Vladimir Vladimirovich has greatly outbid himself is obvious even to the biggest Russland-Versteher a year into the war. Just a year ago, he might have expected his empire to be enriched quickly by a large chunk of Ukraine, what was left of it would be his political spoils, and Russia would spend the next few years quietly digesting its gains. Now commentators are considering the scenarios that might follow a Russian defeat. A defeat that hardly anyone doubts.

Generally speaking, there are two schools of thought here. One, which advocates maintaining Russia’s integrity, draws on the fear of instability, that is, the belief that a disintegrating nuclear power could be a threat to world peace. The master of this school of thought is Henry Kissinger, an almost 100-year veteran of diplomacy and political science, who – although he has long been out of the political game – is listened to attentively by all and his voice counts as a point of reference.

We remember the enthusiasm that his speech at Davos aroused when he made his famous volte-face and granted Ukraine the right to apply for NATO membership, which it had previously been denied. The enthusiasm was so great that the enthusiasts overwhelmed by it failed to notice that Kissinger did not retract a single word from his article published in mid-December last year in the British Spectator, where he wrote:

“Russia’s military setbacks have not eliminated its global nuclear reach, enabling it to threaten escalation in Ukraine. Even if this capability is diminished, the dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum. Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons which make Russia one of the world’s two largest nuclear powers.”

The clou of his argument, then, is the conviction that a civil war in a disintegrating Russia could be fought with nuclear weapons, and that once these got into the hands of rival groups, one never knew against whom they might be used. It is hard to deny the rationality of this view, but it is juxtaposed with a view of Russia’s role in the world political system that is quite bizarre from the point of view of people even slightly familiar with European history:

“The preferred outcome for some is a Russia rendered impotent by the war. I disagree. For all its propensity to violence, Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be degraded.”

Ah, so the Partitions, the deportation of entire peoples and the consequent subjugation of more and more countries to the empire was simply an important contribution to the global balance of power... Poles, Balts, Finns, Ukrainians or Caucasian peoples may have a different opinion, but the guru of world diplomacy saw fit to justify the need to save Russia from the consequences of its actions in this way. Quite bizarre.

Kissinger is the best-known exponent of the conservative view of Russia’s disintegration, but he is not the only one. From time to time, in reputable American journals, one can encounter articles in a similar vein warning of “chaos in Russia”, to mention the writings of the well-known and influential political scientist Walter Russell Mead, who is of the opinion that, however much we may dislike its internal politics, “a stable Russia is hugely preferable to a zone of anarchy stretching from Ukraine to the Pacific and from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea.”

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  A similar conviction shone through the famous speech delivered by George W. Bush in August 1991, at the dawn of Ukrainian independence, when, in the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian Socialist Republic, he warned against breaking away from the USSR and spoke of “suicidal nationalism”. The speech earned the nickname “chicken Kyiv speech”, given by the famous conservative commentator William Safire, and three weeks later, the same council before which the American president was speaking declared Ukraine’s independence.

It can be said that those events almost immediately verified negatively the policy of supporting the territorial integrity of the Soviet Union. Will this still be the case now with regard to Russia?

If we assume that the number of commentators and experts supporting a view means something, then we can conclude that now, more than three decades after the infamous Kyiv speech, the dominant view in the West has become that the mistake made at the time must now be rectified. The ranks of supporters of the view that Russia is falling and disintegrating and, at the very least, should not be prevented from doing so, are growing.

Recently, Janusz Bugajski, a prominent British-American expert with Polish roots working for the well-known Jamestown think tank, published an article on Politico with the telling title: “The benefits of Russia’s coming disintegration.” In this way, the wider public learned that he had published a book with an even more emphatic title a few months earlier: “Failed State: A Guide to Russia’s Rupture.” He described in it how such a process could occur and what the collective West should do to ensure that the process occurred in a controlled manner.

Another expert, Luke Coffey of the Hudson Institute, even wrote with some emphases that Western decision-makers should not overlook this “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to contribute to the dismemberment of Russia. A vociferous proponent of the thesis of Russia’s decline is Alexander Motyl, a well-known American historian and political scientist of Ukrainian origin. Even French expert Bruno Tertrais of the Montaigne Institute, although one would hardly expect similar enthusiasm from him, has seriously contemplated Russia’s collapse and its permanent isolation from the West. There are more voices on this issue.

Recently, another voice has appeared, which ostensibly concerns a different aspect of Russian reality, but I am of the opinion that it is crucial for answering the question posed in the title of this text. It is a book by Piotr Skwieciński entitled “Koniec ruskiego miru? O ideowych źródłach rosyjskiej agresji” [The End of the Russkiy mir? On the ideological origins of Russian aggression].

While the authors writing about the collapse of Russia, led by Bugajski, treat this process as in a sense natural, that is, as one that can happen, that is possible and that does not break the rules governing the world, I have the impression that Skwieciński senses as if we are stuck with Russia. Not, of course, for the mere existence of a state called Russia inhabited by people calling themselves Russians and speaking Russian. Such a state will exist and such people will live. It is not about annihilation.

Reading Skwieciński’s book, however, left me with the impression that he was referring to a different Russia. A Tutchevian Russia [Fyodor Tutchev was a 19th century Russian diplomat, supporter of Russian imperialism, demonstrating in his publications a fanatical aversion to Poland, he described Poles as “Judases of Slavdom” – ed.], in which one can only believe.

One that naturally tends towards self-rule and feels good only when it reigns over others, and kills its own as easily as it kills strangers, leaving them, however, with the satisfaction of serving the empire. The satisfaction that, admittedly, they are slaves, but slaves of the “Tsar of the Universe”. A Russia that feels badly in the time of troubles, invariably considering “troubles” those times when it is not ruled by a strong hand. One for which Putinism is a natural state.

“Bolshevism was Russia’s choice and Putinism is Russia’s choice too – Skwieciński writes, crowning the thought of Russian historian Vladimir Buldanov, whom he quotes as saying that “liberals do not understand that the Russian people create for themselves exactly the kind of power that suits their imaginations.”

Such a Russia rejects democracy, as Skwieciński writes: “reflexively”, disbelieving it and associating it with uncontrolled anarchy, tragic for all, which can only be prevented by a strong power controlling the life of the nation “to the farthest corners”. Such a Russia is convinced that only the possession and realisation of a great idea makes the existence of the country and the nation worthwhile. Without this great idea, that is, without the imperial idea, the idea of conquering the world, the Russian sees no point in the existence of his country.

The Russia to which the world would be condemned if this terrifying vision were true is in fact a vision of a cancer on the body of the world. A cancer that will either take over the world or destroy it – or destroy it having taken over. In this sense, their fates are intertwined not in the same way as those of other states and nations, but are intertwined in a particular, existential way. This was emphatically expressed by one of Putin’s propagandists when, shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began, he threatened Russia’s enemies with nuclear annihilation by exclaiming on state television: “Why do we need the world if there will be no Russia in it?”

If Russia is indeed inhabited by such a species of people, then any change will be impossible, because after even the worst revolutionary convulsions, the monster will emerge again from this society wanting to embrace other peoples with his possessive love – and if they refuse, then he will want to annihilate them. Being stuck with Russia, we must suffer it, and suffer it in the literal sense.

Meanwhile, Janusz Bugajski treats Russians as normal citizens, equal in terms of aspirations and consequent decisions and behaviour to other citizens of other countries. As citizens who, in principle, are capable of shaping their political environment. Indeed, a Russia ruled in an imperial style, seeking to subjugate other nations is not a normal state and should cease to exist as such.

But in its place, in his opinion, Russians and other peoples living in the Russian Federation will be able to establish states similar to other existing states in the world. They just need to be helped to do so.

The key question, then, is: who are the Russians? Are they mentally immersed in self-rule and possessed of a desire to participate in the machine of destruction, even if only as its screws, so long as they are aware that they are co-creators of an idea that engulfs the whole world? Was indeed both Bolshevism with its crimes and Putinism their choice, as Skwieciński writes?

Or, as Bugajski would have it, are they essentially normal people and, as soon as they are given the opportunity and are freed from dictatorship, will they be able to build a normal state, or states like many on the planet?

I think a lot depends on the answer to this question.

– Robert Bogdański

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and journalists

– Translated by jz