EurasiaNet Eurasia Insight - Arch-Conservative Pundits in Russia Characterize Bush Administration as “Neo-Bolshevik”

EURASIA INSIGHT

ARCH-CONSERVATIVE PUNDITS IN RUSSIA CHARACTERIZE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AS "NEO-BOLSHEVIK"
Igor Torbakov 9/28/05

Editor's Note: Updated to clarify State Department official's comments on the Active Response Corp.

As Moscow and Washington wrestle for influence in Central Asia and the Caucasus, some of the more conservative political analysts in Russia have generated controversy by citing parallels in the methods and geopolitical goals of the Bush administration and none other than Lenin’s Bolsheviks.

The consensus view in Moscow remains that the Bush administration is the ideological force behind the so-called "color-revolution" phenomenon, in which popular protests led to regime change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Washington has adamantly denied direct involvement in the revolutionary events, and US officials’ democratization rhetoric has noticeably cooled since the Andijan massacre rocked Uzbekistan in May. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. Even so, many Russian policy-makers suspect that Washington is biding its time before trying to foment regime-change elsewhere in the former Soviet Union. Attention is currently focused on Azerbaijan, which will hold parliamentary elections on November 6. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive].

Arch-conservative Moscow pundits perceive the Bush administration as guided by an idealistic notion of leading a global democratic revolution. Such aggressive idealism reminds the analysts of the Bolsheviks, who, shortly after staging their coup in 1917, vigorously pursued their fantasy of engineering a global communist revolution. Though polar opposites ideologically, the Bush administration and the Bolsheviks seem to share a zealously held belief in the righteousness of their cause, the Moscow analysts contend.

"The leader of the biggest world power [Bush] has actually turned himself into a champion of the world revolution," political scientist Boris Mezhuyev wrote in a commentary posted recently on the APN.ru website

Other conservative Russian commentators appear to agree with Mezhuyev’s assessment. The nationalist-minded analyst Aleksandr Tsipko -- writing in an article tellingly titled "The Color Revolutions or The Revival of Bolshevism," and published in the Tribuna newspaper -- explored the idealistic qualities shared by the Bush administration and Lenin’s Bolsheviks, especially concerning the "export of revolution."

The idealism that underpins the Bush administration’s foreign policy allows US officials to justify any divergence between rhetoric and action, Tsipko contends. Such was also the case with the Bolsheviks, he adds. In examining Washington’s conduct in Central Asia and the Caucasus in recent years, Tsipko pointed out that, on the one hand, US officials have been outspoken advocates of the rule of law. But when a geopolitical opportunity has arisen to achieve democratic change, the United States has sanctioned the application of "revolutionary law," Tsipko said. Revolutionary law, a concept also espoused by the Bolsheviks, allows for the use of extra-legal "crowd action" to overhaul the existing political order.

Tsipko added that in practice the United States has operated in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere, including Iraq, by relying on the quintessentially Bolshevist principle that holds "the ends justifies the means." Behind it "is the same [Bolshevist-type] system of ethics that deems moral everything that serves US interests and the same Bolshevist indifference to the value of human life," Tsipko said.

In a separate analytical piece published in the Russian government daily Rossiiskaya Gazeta, Tsipko wrote that the methods used to bring about regime-change in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan appeared to be lifted directly from the Bolsheviks’ revolutionary playbook. He pointed out that Lenin’s political works are filled with references about the need to rely on a well-organized and disciplined segment of the population to bring about revolutionary change – with a particularly prominent role assigned to young people, who serve as "the barometer of revolution" in Bolshevik jargon.

In May, Bush unveiled a plan in which the State Department’s Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization would form a so-called Active Response Corps (ARC). The corps would comprise foreign and civil service officers, who could be deployed rapidly anywhere in the world to assist countries that are striving to make a democratic transition. "To help young democracies succeed and build these institutions of liberty, we must enlist the help of many individuals and institutions," Bush said in a speech in which he outlined his vision for the ARC.

A State Department official told EurasiaNet that ARC was a concept “still under development.” Funding for the initiative in 2006 has yet to be finalized, as the US House and Senate have not settled on an allocation figure. The House has approved $7.7 million for the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization, while the Senate has allocated $24 million for fiscal year 2006. The ARC aims to make emergency response more “efficient” and “systematic,” the State Department official said, adding that the Office of Reconstruction and Stabilization’s work currently focuses primarily on two countries – Sudan and Haiti. At present, the ARC’s activities do not concern any former Soviet republic, the official added.

Immediately after Bush announced the formation of the ARC, Russian political analysts expressed the belief that ARC’s operations would be aimed at post-Soviet states, and began comparing it to the Moscow-controlled Communist International, or Komintern, which promoted the spread of communism prior to the Second World War. Vyacheslav Nikonov, the Kremlin-connected head of the Politika Foundation think tank, asserted in a commentary published by the Trud daily that Bush’s vision for the ACR "doesn’t differ much from the Komintern’s policies." The methods, instruments and even slogans used by the Bolsheviks and those employed now by the Bush administration are basically the same, Nikonov wrote.

During the early Bolshevik era, the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs sought to develop mutually beneficial relations with the world’s leading capitalist countries. At the same time, the Komintern carried out subversive activities in those same countries. For some Russian pundits, there’s a clear analogy between the Komintern’s tactics and present-day US foreign policy in the post-Soviet lands. On the one hand, they say, Washington seeks Russia’s help in the global war on terror, while on the other; US officials are keen to undermine Moscow’s strategic stature in its traditional sphere of influence.

Russian government officials have not publicly embraced or endorsed such "politically incorrect" comparisons. But they most likely share at least some of the Russian conservative pundits’ perspectives on US foreign policy. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, for example, recently reiterated that US attempts to "export democracy" to CIS countries and encourage "non-parliamentary methods of fighting" can lead to destabilization and new conflicts.

Editor’s Note: Igor Torbakov is a freelance journalist and researcher who specializes in CIS political affairs. He holds an MA in History from Moscow State University and a PhD from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. He was Research Scholar at the Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; a Visiting Scholar at the Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington DC; a Fulbright Scholar at Columbia University, New York; and a Visiting Fellow at Harvard University. He is now based in Istanbul, Turkey.

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