Russian intellectual and social philosopher Aleksandr Sergeyevich Tsipko on June 6, 2022, wrote the following opinion piece on the Newspaper Ideas and People internet site. By utilizing the Platonic philosophy of the partıcular vs the universal, Tsipko speaks truth to power, excoriating Russia’s return to an autocratic system of government which in turn led to “war” in Ukraine. And the Russian people have only themselves to blame.

Tsipko writes:

February 24, 2022, has presented a serious problem for those of us who are living representatives of Soviet humanitarian intellectuals. Immediately after the firing on the White House [in Moscow] on October 4, 1993, I published an article in the newspaper, Trud [Labor], where I criticized Yeltsin for refusing to conduct one-time elections for president and for the Congress of Peoples’ Deputies of the Russian Socialist Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), which could have saved us from many misfortunes. Thirty years have passed since this tragedy, but the Russian people, impossible as they are to understand, like the Muscovites in 1993, are observing what’s happening with striking complacency. But today I won’t risk annotating the victories and defeats of the special military operation. The times of Stalin have not returned to us, but little remains of the democracy of the 1990s in modern Russia.

The Demon of Absolute Power

What are the main reasons for the defeat and restructuring, and the August democratic revolution of 1991? Why were we not able to finish the decommunization that was begun in 1991 and, instead, returned to traditional Russian autocracy?

The faster Russia rose from her knees, the fewer the possibilities remained for freedom of thought. The desire to turn power into traditional Russian absolute power came not only from Putin but also from the impossible-to-understand Russian people. In Russia, they don’t like people who are able to think independently, all the more those who take it upon themselves to quarrel with authority. Aleksey Navalny didn’t understand this and still doesn’t; thus, his suffering. Therefore, nor did Grigory Yavlinsky with his “Apple” [Party] and Egor Gaydar’s party, “Union of Right Forces,” have any chances for political success.

Putin doesn’t hide that he’s an autocrat. He personally decided to annex Crimea to Russia. He personally decided to start the special military operation in Ukraine. We are living in a unique period of Russian history. It would seem that it’s necessary to clarify, what in the Putin autocracy is due to the peculiarities of the Russian national consciousness and what is from the legacy of the USSR. It is imperative to understand what was unavoidable in this autocracy. Why couldn’t we preserve the new Russia? Did fate really play such a huge role? If Yeltsin had given power to Primakov or Nemtsov, there would have been no “Russian Spring” of 2014 [or] the tragic events occurring today in Ukraine. No one of those who took part in bringing about Mikhail Gorbachev’s restructuring (perestroika) supposed that everything would turn out to be a fight with “foreign agents” and the expulsion from the country of an educated, liberal opposition.

And what are those to do, like me, who don’t want to abandon their Homeland under any circumstances? I had many opportunities in the 1990s to leave the country forever. But I preferred to remain at home and participate in implementing the noble goals of restructuring and in returning it to the world of Christian humanism.

But even in the present difficult situation in Russia, the opportunity is preserved for investigating the eternal Russian riddles. No one is keeping us from transitioning from the narrative of how the special military operation in Ukraine is going or from understanding the reasons for Russia eternally intruding into the world of the unpredictable.

Sometimes it seems to me that God has abandoned us. No single country in Europe, throughout its history, has given so many human lives in the name of insane ideas. But, on the other hand, indeed, not God, but it was we who plunged ourselves into the terrible adventure under the name “Lenin October,” which cost us at least 50 million human lives. Not God, but we ourselves were enamored with the creation of a sovereign Russian Socialist Federative Socialist Republic (RSFSR), resulting in 26 million ethnic Russians winding up outside the borders of their native country. And here’s a new insanity: 30 years passed [and now] the Russians have decided to revive the “Russian world,” ready even to bury their country’s economy in order to cause a border to appear between the Donbas and Crimea.

I have overcome my fear and have begun to speak about what today is not permitted to speak of. Probably, if my ninth decade weren’t on its way, I wouldn’t be doing it. But if God leaves me on this earth and gives me the possibility to reason, I cannot be quiet. And it’s not about my personal ambitions. There’s no history as such, there’s the passing life of people; no one, except those who lived through a half-century in the USSR and not only observed the history of the USSR but, like me, took part in it, will see what I see.

Nothing speaks so clearly about the Putin autocracy as the session of the Security Council, at which the question about recognizing the independence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LNR, respectively) was supposedly being decided. Once, I was a guest at a session of the Politburo of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by Mikhail Gorbachev, where the question was being discussed of recognizing the “crimes of the totalitarian authority” (as Putin then said) in the Katyn Forest. Many argued with Gorbachev – they spoke of the unavoidable negative consequences of this decision. But, among the members of the Security Council, I didn’t see anyone who would have been capable of entering into a debate with Putin and introducing their own proposals concerning recognizing the independence of the DPR and LPR.

The Triumph of the Irrational

The ability of the present authority to adequately evaluate the situation and potential of the country worries me even more. I am still in shock from the expectation of the authority that Ukraine would be meeting the troops of the Russian Federation, which crossed its border on February 24, 2022, with flowers. Indeed, it was obvious – and employees at the embassy in Ukraine couldn’t report this up the chain – that the 8-year war in the Donbas, which led to the death of more than 10 thousand Ukrainian soldiers, gave birth among a certain segment of the population to animosity toward Russia. Yes, without doubt, close to a quarter of the population, above all Russian-speaking Ukraine, supported the party of Medvedchuk [pro-Russian Ukrainian politician; Putin’s godfather]. But it was obvious that as soon as Russian Federation troops would cross the border, and the civilian population would start to perish from the inevitable clash of the armies, nothing would be left of the Medvedchuk party that sympathized with Russia. During Ukraine’s military confrontation with the Russian Federation, the party of Medvedchuk is inevitably turning into a party of national traitors and is exiting the country’s political scene forever. Really, wasn’t the absurdity of what’s happening seen from the very beginning? Only people who have lost a sense of reality could convince Putin that it was worth it for him to speak to the leadership of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and they would immediately turn over to him their ”president-narcomaniac” [i.e., Zelensky].

I took part in discussing the question of the possibility of introducing Warsaw Pact troops into Poland, where nine million workers had already entered the ranks of “Solidarnost” (Solidarity). My note, where I showed how the ideological origins of “Solidarnost” as a workers’ party differed from the ideological origins of the Prague Spring, was relayed to Brezhnev’s assistant, Alexandrov, and he reiterated its content to Leonid Ilyich [Brezhnev]. Veterans of the KGB’s First Directorate did much to cool the impulses of the generals to introduce troops into Poland in October 1980 to suppress “Solidarnost.” They warned Brezhnev that should GDR (East German) troops be introduced into Poland, Polish military [forces] would initiate an armed resistance to an operation to liquidate “Solidarnost.” And Georgy Arbatov [translator note: an academic colleague of the author’s at the time] reminded Brezhnev that in the case of the introduction of troops into Poland, the Americans, by means of their sanctions, would close down the possibility of pumping gas to Europe.

And here, a question occurs to me: Has anyone studied seriously the consequences of our attempt to demilitarize and de-nazify Ukraine? Zelensky won in the 2019 presidential elections because he refused the program to nationalize Ukraine proposed by Petr Poroshenko; he refused to exalt the leaders of the WWII-era underground Ukrainian Insurgent Army that was prohibited in Russia, etc. Under Zelensky, they disbanded the Institute of National Memory, which was created under Poroshenko. It was exactly the opponents of the active nationalization of the Ukrainian national conscience who voted for Zelensky. I’m getting the feeling that the people who are formulating foreign policy related to Ukraine do not have the slightest inkling about its history and its problems. As a result of the special operation, something has happened that no one could have expected; not only was the Ukrainianness of ethnic Ukrainians strengthened, a Ukrainian political nation arose, which, on the basis of resisting Russia, has unified Ukrainian-speaking Ukraine with Russian-speaking [Ukraine]. And this I am observing in a change of attitude in my native, and still Russian, Odessa [bold italics mine – loc].

I never seriously studied the nature and particularities of Russian autocracy. But now, when I observe how absolute autocracy is appearing in the foreign policy of Putin, hard questions come to me. What are our autocrats, who are making the decision to begin a war* that will lead to the death of countrymen, experiencing in their souls? The terrible question comes to me: how is Vladimir Putin – a Russian and offspring from the Russian peasantry – taking the reports of the military concerning the death of Russian people? Indeed, he’s Russian Orthodox and must realize the self-worth of each human life! And probably, that’s why Putin believed that the Ukrainians would meet our army with flowers and that he dislodged from his conscience with this belief the hard thoughts concerning possible losses. It seems to me there’s no more terrible fate than the fate of a Russian leader who has started a war. Really, doesn’t the thought torture the autocrat that he has deprived, during war, the life of the same kind of people as he?

Still, Nikolai Trubetskoy, in his article “The Legacy of Genghis Khan,” wrote that our Russian absolute power comes from below and for the Russian – power isn’t power unless it is absolute. Absolute power gives birth to fear: what horror was written on the faces of the members of the Security Council during their communication with Putin! On the other hand, for the average person, absolute power is a blessing; it takes entirely from him responsibility for the fate of his state as well as his personal fate. Russian power is real drama for those who possess it. The appearance of this drama I see recently on Putin’s face as well as on the faces of those who are beside him at the heights of power. The members of our Security Council are unable to permit themselves that which is permitted in a country of the West, even what was permitted in the times of the czars, they are unable to tell Putin, “I’m tired, I can no longer be with you.” A similar action in the present situation is equivalent to political and moral suicide.

I’ll be blunt: Russian cultural inferiority is the reason for our unique autocracy. Semyon Frank said it more correctly but in his investigations of the essence of the Russian worldview, he continually repeated that our tragedy consists in the fact that Russians do not have a culture of thinking, which is essential for systematic and conceptual knowledge,” including knowledge of the world. The work of the mind is being replaced by intuition, by that which Frank calls “the irrational.” Intuition, free from a conceptual knowledge of the world, gives birth to daring and the ability to self-sacrifice, but at the same time, intuition cannot replace what is needed for a fully valued life; intuition cannot support the instinct for self-preservation, for which the work of the mind is the soil. From here is Vyacheslav Volodin’s formula “There is Putin – there is Russia, No Putin – no Russia.” Owing to the “relative weakness of a cultural consciousness,” the Russian does not have the potential to find a justification for the essence of the state, except for the deification of the Father-Czar. For the illiterate Russian peasant, Semyon Frank explained, it’s difficult to comprehend the “secular-political idea of the existence of the state,” and therefore, in its place he lets into his soul the religious idea of the Father-Czar, who personifies both the Russian state and the church as well as all Russian life. Therefore, until such time as the Russians overcome their ”relative cultural backwardness,” until the Russians allow into their soul legal consciousness and the idea of the value of human life, they are condemned to live under Father-Czars who are everything. Semyon Frank said that the relative weakness “of the Russian legal and cultural consciousness” is the basis of Communist rule. Of course, the priority of intuition over a developed system of concepts and over the work of the mind yields a series of advantages. Russian daring and dedication are generated by Russian intuition and the Russian desire to understand the meaning of what is happening as if with all his being. But an emotional perception of the world leads to the fact that very often the Russian man perceives a particular, which summons an emotional reaction with him, as a universal. As Konstantin Remchukov [Translator note: Chief editor and general director of the “Nezavisimaya Gazeta” (“independent Newspaper”)] recently said, Putin, turned a singular – 1% of Ukrainians, who bow to the heroism of Bandera – into a universal, into a characteristic of the entire Ukraine nation. But this has no relationship to reality. My sisters are, as I am also, Russian on our father’s side and they have been living for 30 years in an independent Ukraine, but there’s nothing stranger for them than all these Banderas and Shukhevichs [Translator note: WWII flashpoint figures who are considered either heroes or Nazi collaborators]. The leaders of our country should critically look at their inner emotional world, at their feelings and biases. Changing a singular into a universal does not carry a threat for the ordinary person. But the leader of a state – all the more with nuclear weapons and in conditions of Russian autocracy, when no one can say to you that you’re making a mistake – should be extremely critical of his emotions.

Lagging Behind in Culture

The problem of the influence of the peculiarities of the Russian national character on a possible Russian autocracy began to be discussed immediately after the acceptance of the new Constitution of the Russian Federation in December 1993. Political scientists Liliya Shevtsova and Igor Klyamkin in their article showed that, in essence, the new Constitution opens the road to Russian autocracy, this time – to “elected autocracy.” And, therefore, the threat exists, as many political scientists consider, that the peculiarities of the Russian national character – Russian maximalism, Russian disregard for the truth, and the Russian substitution of a feeling of justice for the law – can show up in the policy of an elected autocracy, if a purely national type would be personifying it. Here too “Russia is too serious a thing to entrust to Russians.” Nikolai Shmelyov [a fellow academic specializing in economics, now deceased] always spoke ironically concerning my dedicated patriotism and said to me: “Sasha, if your Russian patriots come to power, they will do nothing for the Russian people, for overcoming Russian poverty, for Russia as a country of outdoor toilets to come to an end. Russian patriots will decide world problems: to save the “Russian world,” saving the West from decay, philistinism, etc.” But, honestly speaking, I wanted very much to happen, what hasn’t in Russian history, that Russian soldiers would finally seize power and start to rule the country. It didn’t happen with the Decembrists, it didn’t happen with Kornilov, it didn’t happen with the GKChP [Translator note: State Committee for the Extraordinary Situation of the Soviet Union formed to prevent the dissolution of the USSR, should the signing of the Treaty on the Union of Sovereign States take place, that led to the 21 August 1991 putsch.], but now, after the arrival of Putin, it has happened. And as has been explained, history has satisfied my curiosity. But as I now understand, there is nothing more dangerous than a Russian autocracy of the military in conditions when a nuclear suitcase is nearby.

 Because of the Communist domination that continued, in essence, an entire century, in the Russian national consciousness, therefore, what would have hindered the rebirth of Russian omnipotence and Russian autocracy, didn’t appear. Still, in 1918 Sergei Askoldov warned that even if the Communists went away, one shouldn’t expect anything good until we “overcome our cultural lag.” Humanism wasn’t late because of culture lagging behind, rather we didn’t have and we don’t have culture because of the weakness of a humanistic beginning.” It shouldn’t be ignored, says Askoldov, that in our soul “there was never a humanistic pathos at all. In general, the ethical level of the Russian soul is not high.” And from here is the tragic problem, about which we don’t think seriously. As the experience of the past 30 years has shown, without absolute power and autocracy we cannot lift Russia from its knees, nor can we prevent the further collapse of the country. But, on the other hand, today it is seen that rebirth of autocracy, and all the more, the militarization of the conscience, stimulation of aggression, and hatred toward enemies are killing any soil whatever for the formulation of everything that stands for humanism: the value of human life and respect for the opinion of the other person as an equal. Indeed, behind the admiration of the Father-Czar stands that which contradicts humanism – self-abasement of personality and suppressing in oneself any worth at all. If the Father-Czar is everything, then I am nothing.

What is the way out of this situation? Indeed, the tragedy consists not only in reviving the cruel Russian autocracy with suppression of all signs of personal freedoms but also that the social base of the autocracy might be completely different. In the 2000s, Putin was close to me and close to a significant part of the thinking intellectual elite, because he personified positive changes and the growth of well-being – at that time investments in the country were growing and the need grew for the creative part of the intelligentsia. True, all this was before 2011. After this, that segment of the population that doesn’t want to take responsibility for its fate, goes with the flow, agrees with those in power, and to whose liking is the irrationality of the decisions of the autocratic power, increasingly became Putin’s social base.

The fact that traditional Russian thought, if not of an overwhelming majority, then simply of a majority [of the population], has been weighed down by the absence of a conceptual framework; and, of the ability, and especially, of the desire to think with their own brains for working out their own opinion about events that are occurring, doesn’t mean that, in principle, Russians are unable to break out to the heights of science and to the heights of humanitarian culture. Don’t forget, [there’s] Fyodor Dostoyevsky, one of the greatest thinkers in the history of humanity, born of a semi-literate mother – a Kaluga merchant. But, now it’s about something else, more important. How to achieve activating the spiritual life and Russian journalism without undermining the stability of modern Russia? In the end, it’s necessary to understand, if we are not able to overcome the traditions of Russian autocracy in a country that has nuclear weapons, traditions that are becoming ever more dangerous in the conditions of a global world, then we are depriving ourselves of the possibility of self-preservation and self-development. Semyon Frank wrote: The tragedy is that autocracy in Russia – the absence of politics as a political competition – suppresses the activity of thought, suppresses not only political activity, but also economic [activity], responsibility for one’s own fate, and in the end undermines all real conditions, not only of self-development, but also simply of the existence of the country [Translator comment: here ends the author’s paraphrase of Frank]. It’s time to realize – this is especially visible now – that if we do not overcome this policy of harsh measures and tougher discipline [literally; the tightening of nuts; i.e., in our vernacular, “putting the screws on”], of intimidating freedom of thought, if we do not overcome the anti-human aggression of our television, which considers that the only alternative of concessions to an independent Ukraine by Russia is a third world war and the destruction of humanity, then we will simply degenerate as a people, as a nation. It is a great tragedy that Russia, which, through no fault of its own, had neither an era of Renaissance nor of Enlightenment and which lost 70 years on a nonsensical communist experiment, now, instead of overcoming its cultural lag, is convincing itself that removal from Europe and from modern institutions of culture and science is our salvation.

That’s right. February 24, 2022, turned Russian history upside down. And if we don’t give ourselves over to the power of reason and common sense, but consider that our salvation is on the path of decrees of “the Russian heart” and on the path of our traditional “arbitrariness,” when everything is permitted us, expulsion from the country of “foreign agents,” as a rule gifted, smart people, then we will certainly perish. And the fault will be not a higher power, but we ourselves.

*Russian Communications Oversight considers such a name for what’s happening in Ukraine false information and prescribes the media designate this as a “special military operation.”