Once again, everyone wants to know. Where is Russia heading?
The trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the possible bankruptcy of his company Yukos, Russia's biggest company, have incited cries that President Vladimir Putin is returning the country to the bad old days of dictatorship.
But in assessing where Russia is heading, political and economic analysis are of little help.
It is Russia's social culture that is determining the country's fate. Russia's political system, indeed, is not what prevents the country from moving forward, and it never has been. Whether Russians live under monarchy, communism, former president Boris Yeltsin's cowboy market economy or Putin's supposed dictatorship of law, the result is always the same -- the system despises its citizens, eliciting an equal and opposite reaction of derision and distrust.
Russian capitalism hates the consumer as much as Russian communism did. Russia's people, whether they are waiters or waiting for service, are convinced that they will be ripped off and treated rudely, and so steel themselves with indifference.
Neither the system nor the people are to blame for this state of affairs. It arises partly from the fact that Russia is an "imitation" culture. Russia's first rulers were Nordic princes in the 860s, men invited to bring order to the country. Even then, or so it seems, Russians didn't trust themselves to rule themselves effectively. Sometimes, Russian imitation produces works of genius. After all, Pushkin and Gogol originally grew out of German and French models, although their sheer originality left the mimicry far behind.
But Russia is simply not as good at copying practical things like laws and economic models as it is at transforming cultural impulses into works of art with a Russian soul. Its practical borrowings are invariably stillborn, mostly because of the country's ingrained culture of contempt.
Consider Moscow, a highly seasoned imitator -- though nowhere in the league of St. Petersburg, that baroque Italianate city on the Neva, as an urban mimic. Moscow nowadays has all the trappings of high-end capitalism: Prada, Fouchon, Rolls Royce. Its Cafe des Artistes is as wonderful a French bistro as you will find. But something is missing, in the usual Russian way -- proper utensils. Ask a waiter for a steak knife and it's as if you've asked for a sword.
Some restaurants greet their customers with a guard who brusquely asks what they want, as if they came to buy stamps, not to have dinner. Of course, the guards know that their job is to ensure that everyone is safe and comfortable, but the Gulag notion of what a guard does is too embedded to be removed. Their real job is to be "against" -- and this time, it is the customers they are against.
The very existence of other people breeds suspicion in Russian guards, and who is to say that they are completely wrong? After all, contract killings and random shootings in restaurants are common affairs, and the idea of excessive protection from everyone goes back to Soviet days, when social contempt was cloaked in the guise of public safety.
Small wonder, then, that Russians always cut corners, jump over fences, and never follow a path designated for walking -- these paths were built not to make life easier for people, but to control them. Indeed, fences and barriers in Russia are usually built where there should be a footpath.
But perhaps the authorities are right to want to keep us in line. Anyone who has ever flown into Russia will know this scene: the moment the captain requests the passengers to remain seated until the plane comes to a complete stop, all the Russians on board will respond by immediately standing up and piling into the aisles as if it's their last chance to get out. They know in their bones that the system is out to get them, even if the system is represented by a commercial airliner from a foreign country.
The simplest things are complicated, and then destroyed, by this culture of suspicion and contempt.
I once went for lunch to a Swedish-style buffet in Moscow. The choice of food was great, a sort of postmodern typical Russian kasha: sushi, salad, borsht, meat and cabbage. But customers received only a small saucer for this feast, and the principle of the smorgasbord -- all you can eat -- was jettisoned. You were allowed to use the buffet only once. Customers -- who know what a smorgasbord is -- understandably try to stuff as much food as they can onto the tiny saucer, sushi on top of roast beef. If you dare to ask for a bigger plate or an extra helping, the waitress gives you that withering Soviet look -- you want too much.
Soviet socialism thought its citizens unworthy of any form of service altogether; Russian capitalism doubts that you can control your appetites, so it wants to control them for you. In the end, there is very little difference. And so Russia goes on, undertaking revolutionary changes and not changing at all. Incurable suspicion, mutual fear, ubiquitous contempt -- confirmed everyday in large and small ways -- are our immutable social condition.
Nina Khrushcheva teaches international affairs at the New School University in New York City.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
The conflict in the Middle East has been disrupting financial markets, raising concerns about rising inflationary pressures and global economic growth. One market that some investors are particularly worried about has not been heavily covered in the news: the private credit market. Even before the joint US-Israeli attacks on Iran on Feb. 28, global capital markets had faced growing structural pressure — the deteriorating funding conditions in the private credit market. The private credit market is where companies borrow funds directly from nonbank financial institutions such as asset management companies, insurance companies and private lending platforms. Its popularity has risen since
The Donald Trump administration’s approach to China broadly, and to cross-Strait relations in particular, remains a conundrum. The 2025 US National Security Strategy prioritized the defense of Taiwan in a way that surprised some observers of the Trump administration: “Deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority.” Two months later, Taiwan went entirely unmentioned in the US National Defense Strategy, as did military overmatch vis-a-vis China, giving renewed cause for concern. How to interpret these varying statements remains an open question. In both documents, the Indo-Pacific is listed as a second priority behind homeland defense and
Every analyst watching Iran’s succession crisis is asking who would replace supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Yet, the real question is whether China has learned enough from the Persian Gulf to survive a war over Taiwan. Beijing purchases roughly 90 percent of Iran’s exported crude — some 1.61 million barrels per day last year — and holds a US$400 billion, 25-year cooperation agreement binding it to Tehran’s stability. However, this is not simply the story of a patron protecting an investment. China has spent years engineering a sanctions-evasion architecture that was never really about Iran — it was about Taiwan. The
In an op-ed published in Foreign Affairs on Tuesday, Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) said that Taiwan should not have to choose between aligning with Beijing or Washington, and advocated for cooperation with Beijing under the so-called “1992 consensus” as a form of “strategic ambiguity.” However, Cheng has either misunderstood the geopolitical reality and chosen appeasement, or is trying to fool an international audience with her doublespeak; nonetheless, it risks sending the wrong message to Taiwan’s democratic allies and partners. Cheng stressed that “Taiwan does not have to choose,” as while Beijing and Washington compete, Taiwan is strongest when
RSS