I Remember When Russia Was a Great Power

Abstract

Russia is stuck in a prison of its own making. The name of that prison is great power identity. Time and again since the fall of the Soviet Union, we have heard Russians state that Russia has to be a great power, or it will be nothing. In this lecture, I will simply lay out to you how this claim has been made consistently by Russians now for half a millennium.2 When people shout about their status, one immediately knows that that status is insecure, for people who are secure in their status do not have to shout about it. As John Mearsheimer put the point in a criticism of the US invasion of Iraq, which he felt to be superfluous: If you’re the biggest guy on the block, why stand on the rooftop and shout about it? So, we have to ask, why is Russia shouting? The reason that emerges from the story I tell here is, I think, is a simple one. The Russian state is weak. In order to get things done at home, it has to shout, and in order to get recognition abroad, it has to shout. But why, we may then ask, does not Russia stop shouting, stop spending so much on the defence budgets, and start addressing the underlying problem, namely its weak social and economic power base? That, I think, is a question everybody who has observed Russia over some time has asked themselves. The answer that emerges from the story I will tell is, once again, a simple one, and time and again, it has been acknowledged by Russians themselves. Russia struggles to catch up with the political and economic dynamism to their west. Western powers keep coming up with new models for how to get society to do what the state wants them to do in more efficient and effective ways. In order to catch up, Russia has to learn. But a learner is not a great power – a great power is a power from which others learn, and not one that is itself basically a learner. So, Russia has been stuck with an historical choice: it