Morning Must-Read: Martin Wolf: The Creation of Weimar Russia

During the 1990s I used to say that after the “End of History” there would be smooth sailing as long as we avoided the creation of four things:

* The Islamic Reformation (i.e., another outburst of wars of religion like those that happened in 16th and 17th century Europe when a Holy Book met growing mass literacy and political and economic development).

* National Hinduist India (i.e., India replaying the “national unification via aggressive nationalism directed at an internal other”, with India’s Muslims cast in the role traditionally reserved for Europe’s Jews).

* Wilhelmine China (i.e., a social caste that has lost both its practical role and its ideological legitimation still somehow dominating the fastest-growing industrial economy in the world and attempting to hang on to power the aggressive nationalism directed at external others).

* Weimar Russia (i.e., a superpower that regards itself as not just defeated but humiliated, and not welcomed and assisted with its reforms but rather kicked to keep it down, and that then reacts in unpredictable and very dangerous ways).

Well.. National Hinduist India is still only a threat rather than a reality–albeit a threat that is much more visible than it was a decade ago…

Martin Wolf reviews the creation of Weimar Russia:

**Martin Wolf:** Russia is our most dangerous neighbour: “Russia is both a tragedy and a menace…

>…the blend of self-pity and braggadocio currently at work in Moscow… is as depressing as it is disturbing…. For Europe and, I believe, the US, there is no greater foreign policy question than how to deal with today’s Russia…. A defensive alliance defeated the Soviet Union because it offered a better way of life…. Yet President Vladimir Putin, the latest in a long line of Russian autocrats, has stated, instead: ‘The collapse of the Soviet Union was a major geopolitical disaster of the century’. It was, in fact, an opportunity, one that many in central and eastern Europe seized with both hands. The transition to a new way of life proved unavoidably difficult. The world they now inhabit is highly imperfect. But they have mostly joined the world of civilised modernity. What does this mean? It means intellectual and economic freedom. It means the right to engage freely in public life. It means governments subject to the rule of law and accountable to their people. The west has too often failed to live up to these ideals. But they remain beacons.

>In the early 1990s they were beacons to many Russians. As a great admirer of Russian culture and Russian courage, I hoped, fondly perhaps, that the country would find a way…. The alternative of continuing the cycle of despotism was too depressing. With the selection of Mr Putin, a former KGB colonel, as his successor, Boris Yeltsin delivered that outcome…. The west is partly responsible for this tragic outcome. It failed to offer the support Russia needed quickly enough in the early 1990s. Instead it focused, ludicrously, on who would pay the Soviet debt. It acquiesced in the larceny of Russian wealth for the benefit of a few. But more important was the refusal of Russia’s elite to address the reasons for the collapse, then to start afresh…. Today’s Russia feels it is the victim of a historic injustice and rejects core western values. It also feels strong enough to act. Today’s Russian leader also sees these potent emotions as a way to secure power. He is not the first such ruler. His Russia is a perilous neighbour. The west must shed its last post-cold war illusions.