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Well, this could be a short post – the earlier sentence does explain the latter one, doesn't it? Non-imperial Russian nationalist is, indeed, a rare figure, and a consistently non-imperial one is even rarer. As such, it makes perfect sense in our corner to, indeed, conflate the types. I'm not sure if I remember correctly that you yourself have talked about the marginality of Navalny in current Russia, bu many other Russians certainly have.
However, to start riffing on some other stuff I’ve been thinking about lately… (what else is this forum for than using posts made by others to riff on stuff?), that Krylov quote exactly shows what the problem is. If you're trying to analyze, say, Finnish nationalism, point 1, at least, is flagrantly, fundamentally wrong, or perhaps I just misunderstood it somehow.
Finnish nationalism precisely revolves around the idea that we are on the fringe. The Finnish self-conception, often to the point of ridiculousness, is that we are on the northernly fringe of the world, strange (due to our language, our autistic culture, our peculiar natural features like the nightless night and long winters and cities that look like forest if you fly over them), remote and unimportant. The country that foreign bands pass up when they do their Copenhagen-Stockholm-Oslo tours.
The central point of Finnish nationalism is specifically; we are small, remote, strange and weird but that’s all right, we want to stay that way, that’s what we’ve ever wanted; that is precisely why Finnish nationalism is needed, because if it’s not us working to maintain the existence of the Finnish nation, then who else? Famous former (now-deceased) infantry general Adolf Ehrnrooth put it as “Finland is a good country, it is the best country for us Finns”, and there really is something to that statement, in the sense that that is all that is necessary, nothing more is needed.
I’m not sure if this applies the same way to Baltics (well, Estonians are as fringe as us linguistically, at least), but there’s probably something similar. Just yesterday, I saw (yet another) tweet from Big Serge. I’m not sure if Serge is Russian or a Russophile, but it doesn’t matter, I’ve read the same sentiment from online Russians hundreds of times before. The quote by Kaja Kallas that he’s commenting on appears to be fake, but exactly this sort of shit can’t help but make me momentarily think that maybe it should be a true quote and, moreover, what West ought to be doing.
Yes, if you look at it from the point of view of some supposed greater world-historical purpose, Baltic states are “bereft of a raison d’etre” (lol), but that’s not their point. They very much have a raison d’etre – the existence of Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians as a nation. And that’s enough!
This is a hard mission enough as it is because they are, as said, weak – and it requires nimble maneuvering, which explains the transience. Likewise, since maintaining the existence of small nations is historically rather an uncertain a thing – as we can see from the fate of most of the Fenno-Ugric nations inside Russia, for instance, a number of them dead and others dying – there must sometimes, indeed, be close cooperation, indeed subservience to, larger nations. Russians always talk of this like it’s some sort of an own. It’s just a fact of life.
For instance, if one looks at Finnish historiography, it involves Finland being a part of Sweden, a part of the Russian Empire, several co-operations with Germany with varying levels of adviceability and now an oncoming NATO membership. All of these had their positive and negative sides. However, in the end, the Finnish nation has survived, indeed thrived, so in some sense, a mission has been accomplished. None of these eras were sufficient to destroy the Finnish nation, and at time tactical side-switching saved the nation.
What makes Russia so dangerous, from our perspective is precisely the idea that Russian nationalism (imperialism, whatever – there really is little difference, there’s so many times that scratching a Russian communist or a nationalist or a liberal demonstrates the same thought pattern) seems almost completely unable to accept or even conceive of this idea – that some nation might not be part of some great world-historical mission and might just be concerned with existing.
There’s no other way to explain why the mere existence of Baltic states seems to turn so many Russian nationalists so mad. Why would they want to be so puny and small? It’s just about wanting to feel powerful, isn’t it? Why are they so eager to cooperate with the United States, even though United States is also a big, and has messianic mission to match? (Well, duh, if there’s some state you need to co-operate with, why not choose the top dog? Especially when it’s far away, but still close enough to the closer aggressive middle dog for the middle dog to be scared enough to keep from doing some things?)
Of course, America has a messianic mission of its own, and that’s not unproblematic. For the time being, though, this messianic mission involves maintaining the current world-order, with its commitment (at least nominally) to things like small nations existing and borders of the nations not getting moved against their will and so on. The current world-order might be unfair and based on smoke and mirrors, but it’s still the best one we’ve got, as far as our national mission of survival is concerned. It allows for the normal, ie. current, ie. the one we like, state of affairs to continue.
There’s a lot of Russians (and others) who claim that this is all just stupid, naïve, ignorant, not the way the world works, the strong shall still continue to eat the weak etc. Let’s just say that the people saying this stuff, like Serge, haven’t had a particularly good track record in predicting how things have been turning out lately.
I guess that more than anything, we’d want Russia to be “normal” the same way. Democratic and liberal, yes, would be nice, but above all just a country that is content just being a middle-strength power that respects the borders of the other countries and where even a country with a large Russian minority on its borders might relax for a moment and not be on a constant lookout.
The 90s might have been shit for Russians, but they at least represented an effort by the national leadership to present an image of such normality, if one squinted a bit, at least. The Russian liberals have generally been the faction most likely to claim this is what they want –they’re very inconsistent about it, even the consistent ones don’t the impression they still quite get why this is important, but it’s a start. Navalny’s 15 points were good, we’ll see if he continues on the same lines.
Of course, expecting Russian liberals to get stronger – or promising Russian types to not fall to the familiar imperial patterns at a moment’s notice – has not typically led to joy and satisfaction, and it’s that crushing of expectations, again and again and again, which makes supporting separatism more attractive. The thought just comes to mind – maybe Russia just is too big. Like, too big on the map. Maybe it’s impossible for a country that big to really understand smaller countries. One looks at a globe, one sees all that landmass, one starts getting ideas. Maybe, eventually, a new Muscovy – without Siberia, without Caucasus, without a bunch of other regions – might understand.
I think this is foolish and a total Russian collapse would contain eminent dangers for Finland, Europe and the world (and, goes without saying, untold human damage to Russians themselves), but I understand where the thinking comes from.
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