The West will continue to search for “another russia,” an “alternative russia,” an “other pole,” and so on. Because the West itself has for centuries been structured pluralistically. As an arena of struggle. As an agora and an agon. As Nietzsche’s clash of wills, writes Ukrainian philosopher, writer, and translator Volodymyr Yermolenko.
In this struggle of alternatives – between the pope and the emperor, between religion and the state, between kings and barons, between Catholicism and Protestantism, between capitalism and socialism, between imperialism and anti-imperialism, between empire and republic, and so on – the West crystallized. And it thinks about the rest of the world in the same way.
But russia is not like that. In russia, there is no otherness. Otherness within it is part of similarity. “Democracy” within it is part of imperialness. Religion is part of the state. “Anti-imperialism” is part of imperialism. The “proletariat” is part of the exploitation of the proletariat. “Enlightenment” is part of obscurantism.“Otherness” in russia is the tyrant’s cunning. “Opposition” is a project of the empire. In russia, there is no other pole. There is only one, the northern one.
russia has never been structured pluralistically. It has always dreamed of building monism. Total hegemony of imperial “unity.” Hence its assimilative energy. That is why any genuine otherness within it will be persecuted. And in its place, fake otherness will be created – as a tool of identity.
Through the search for an “alternative,” for another pole, the West looks with hope at russian culture and russian “spirituality.” And it does not look just now – it has been looking there for centuries! As if to say, “but there is russian culture.” From its depths, supposedly, an alternative will arise.
And then come the incomprehensible Ukrainians, who see in russian culture not a cure for the disease, but the symptoms of the disease. The diagnosis of the disease, its case history. Its self-description, its primary source base. And the West does not understand this and takes offense. How cruel you are, Ukrainians.
But Ukrainians simply have a long memory. “This has already happened before.”
The short history of russia is a history of how an “alternative” enters the stage of history only to reaffirm once again the absence of any alternative to tyranny. It is a history of how everything changes so that nothing changes. Peter the First negated the Asian Muscovite tsardom in order to create an even more tyrannical russian Empire. The Bolsheviks negated the russian Empire in order to build an even more tyrannical Soviet empire. putin negated the Soviet empire in order to build an even more tyrannical Ruscist empire.
This has happened before.
When will the West understand this? Never. Because it projects onto russia its own structures of thought, its own history.
What should we do? Show that “another russia” is possible only as “something other THAN russia.” Only as the end of the russian empire. That the countries that seceded from the russian empire of the 19th and then the 20th centuries have finally become European. Finland, Poland, the Baltic states, Ukraine, the countries of the Caucasus. Some with certain nuances, but still. We must continue working on this model further. And then we have a chance.
The other russia can emerge only if we get something OTHER THAN russia.
At least, something other than the russian empire
