Russia, Byzantium and Ukraine

It has happened: as I write Russia is invading Ukraine. There is general condemnation from the West of this unprovoked attack. The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Chairman-in-Office and Foreign Minister of Poland, Zbigniew Rau and OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid condemned the launch by President Putin of a military operation in Ukraine and made the following statement:“We strongly condemn Russia’s military action against Ukraine. This attack on Ukraine puts the lives of millions of people at grave risk and is a gross breach of international law and Russia’s commitments." The United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, made an impassioned plea, “I must say, President Putin: In the name of humanity bring your troops back to Russia. In the name of humanity, do not allow to start in Europe what could be the worst war since the beginning of the century, with consequences not only devastating for Ukraine, not only tragic for the Russian Federation, but for the entire world”.

The President of Russia is not listening so what lies behind his thinking which is prepared to defy world opinion and engage in a full-scale invasion of Ukraine? Though there are economic and security explanations for Putin's policy towards Ukraine, I would argue there are deeper cultural, historical and religious factors that have influenced Moscow's aggressive behaviour. Back in July 2021, the Kremlin’s website published a piece by Putin called “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians.” The concept of Russians and Ukrainians being the same people is linked to the idea of there being several Russias, not just one single nation. This belief goes back not only to the official establishment of the Tsardom ( the title Tsar means Caesar) in 1547 when Ivan IV, the Terrible, grand prince of Moscow, styled himself “Tsar of all the Russias” but even further back when Vladimir the Great, known both as a Saint and the Baptist of the Slavs, converted to Byzantine (Orthodox) Christianity in 988. Vladimir, descended from the Scandinavian Rurik dynasty, was Prince of Novgorod and Kiev and, significantly, ruler of Kievan Rus. The claim of there being several Russias, including what Russia calls The Ukraine (not Ukraine) is the cultural, historical, and religious source of the conflict between Moscow and Kyiv (Kiev)

Despite all the relatively recent upheavals and disruption to Russia, the modern Russian story is both one of continuity and revival. With the dissolution, or you could say, ‘collapse’, of the Soviet Union after 1990, Russia went through a period of grave political and economic crisis which resulted in the financial crash of 1998. Russians were in dire straits and the country’s standing in the world seemed at a very low ebb. However, with its vast reserves of raw materials and the increasing prices for its mineral resources Russia has been able to bounce back and it is now not only exerting its economic muscle, for example with its supplies of natural gas, but also it political influence in the Caucasus, Middle East, Africa and Europe. At one level, it might appear that Russia has undergone turbulent, unstable and chaotic changes in the recent past. It can be argued, however, that the fundamental elements that have underpinned the Russian State for centuries have demonstrated a remarkable permanency and consistency ever since the founding of the Kiev and Muscovite principalities.

The political culture and social structure of the Russian State were largely inherited from the Byzantine Empire and ever since Vladimir the Great Russians have reshaped and adapted themselves quite remarkably to historical circumstances over the centuries. Even the Russian Revolution of 1917, which, at face value, might seem to be a total overthrowing of the old order and an introduction of a radical new regime, in reality, maintained deeply embedded characteristics of Tsarist Russia in a different guise.

When the Roman Emperor Constantine I founded his Christian capital on the ancient Greek site of Byzantion, it was referred to as ‘New Rome’, before it became generally known as Constantine’s city, Constantinople. After the fall of Constantinople in 1453 to the Ottoman Turks, the notion that Russia was “the third Rome”, the successor to the Roman and Byzantine empires, became part of the Russian imperial mindset. This claim for continuity started with Ivan III, the Grand Duke of Moscow, who had married a Byzantine Princess, Sophia Palaelogus, the niece of Constantine XI, the last Byzantine Emperor. Much of the Byzantine imperial court was adopted by the Tsar, including the state emblem, the double-headed eagle. Russia styled its politics and culture on its perceived inheritance from Rome and Byzantium, with the avowed mission to maintain and protect Orthodox Christianity: for example, this latter aim, of protecting Christian populations, was often a major raison d’être in a series of wars against the Ottomans from the 16th to 20th century.

Modelling himself upon a Byzantine Emperor, the Tsar espoused extreme monarchy – before the 20th century the Tsar’s powers were often described as “autocratic and unlimited”. There was no part of the lives of his subjects where the Tsar did not have total control. The Tsar was a patriarch to his people. There is a common Russian expression, literally meaning “Tsar-dear father”, which likens the Tsar to a father, and all of the subjects of the Empire to his children.

Emperor Constantine I, who made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, styled himself the 13th Apostle. Subsequent Byzantine Emperors inherited that status and were the acknowledged head of the Orthodox Church. In the same way, the Tsar was recognised as the head of the Russian Orthodox state religion and he completely controlled the Church – exercising his authority, not through doctrine, but by making and annulling all ecclesiastical appointments.

The Russian State, whether Tsarist, Communist or even today’s so-called ‘Democratic Republic’, has maintained much of its Byzantine inheritance, as a centralised, conservative, autocratic, paternalistic, and totalitarian government. After the Russian Revolution and the overthrow of the Tsar, there was a new breed of autocrats, but who were just as despotic (and as paternalistic) as the Romanovs: Lenin, Stalin, Brezhnev and so on. Even though these new rulers represented a different ideology, that denied the existence of a supreme deity, Russian communism was akin to the Russian Orthodox Church in the way it permeated every aspect of the Soviet state and thinking.

Just as Christianity was often perceived as an all-conquering religion, Russian communism was promoted as a universal doctrine, which would eventually overcome and control the whole world. I well remember the first time I travelled on the Moscow underground back in the 1970s, being struck that in every carriage, over the doors, there was a small map of the whole world (not just the Soviet Union), covered by a hammer and sickle. It was a symbol of the world domination of the Communist Party – a concept that had clearly not died with Trotsky, who was famed for his belief in proletarian internationalism. Under the Communist regime, everywhere in the Soviets and satellites, in schools, shops and offices, just like the ‘emblemata’ (the portrait of a Roman or Byzantine Emperor), or the icons of the holy family, images of the communist rulers stared down on the comrades, proclaiming the personality cult, the ‘divine authority’ of the leaders of the regime.

In reality, there was very little difference in the way the Tsars and the Communist leaders behaved; and even today, Vladimir Putin presents himself as a benign autocrat, who in reality seems to be steadily accruing more and more power. This desire for absolutism chimes with the political culture of the Russian state. Once the comic and chaotic government of Boris Yeltsin ended, many of the Russian people themselves longed for a return to a firm hand in control of government - Russian history has been about strong rulers.

The memory of absolute autocrats, like Ivan the Terrible, or fiendish dictators like Stalin, in the minds of the people has been more about strong uninhibited state control than the psychopathic slaughter of fellow citizens. This is demonstrated by the fact that there are those who would like to rehabilitate Stalin. Many Russians were appalled at the weak government of Boris Yeltsin and felt humiliated by Russia’s deteriorating economic position and loss of political influence on the world stage. They yearned for the return of the might of a superpower that had earned respect for the former USSR. Putin, thanks in large measure to the finance from mineral resources, in particular oil and gas, has alleviated the economic pressure and has restored Russia’s influence in the world.

It is also undeniable that Putin’s Russia is reverting to the heavily authoritarian style of government so familiar in the Soviet days. Prior to the Revolution, the patriarchal Tsar was painted as being responsible for all the good in his subjects’ lives, while the disasters came from meddling bureaucracy and irresponsible nobles. Vladimir Putin has characterised his role in a similar fashion. He is the one who has restored Russian power and authority at home and abroad, while the new aristocracy, the so-called ‘oligarchs’, and the old inefficient bureaucracy have held Russia back.

The Russian oligarchs are essentially business entrepreneurs who exploited opportunities first under Gorbachev, during his period of market liberalization, and then under Yeltsin. The oligarchs replaced the Communist Party apparatcheks (who had themselves previously taken the place of the Tsarist Russian nobility), though they often include among their ranks relatives or close associates of government officials, even government officials themselves, and some are, indubitably, criminal bosses. The oligarchs achieved vast wealth by acquiring state assets, buying them up very cheaply, or sometimes even acquiring them for nothing, during the process of privatization.

There is no doubt the oligarchs have become extremely unpopular with the Russian public for the way they exploited the failing Soviet economy, and are commonly thought to be the cause of much of the turmoil that plagued the country following the collapse of the Soviet Union. One British newspaper has commented that “ Putin, able to see matters rather straighter than Yeltsin, realised two crucial things about the oligarchs: that they were potentially more powerful than him, and that they were about as popular with your average Russian as a man idly burning bundles of £50s outside an orphanage “.

Many of the oligarchs are Jewish which has also made them a popular target of hatred. Modern Russia is not only still anti-Semitic but also racist, like its Tsarist predecessor, and although there are no longer any official pogroms, there are various racial tensions, which sometimes spill into disorder. Observers in Russia have reported waves of hate crimes, which threaten to upset inter-racial peace and national stability. Often these are associated with economic migration where the locals fear the loss of jobs and the migrants seldom integrate; for example the 2006 riots in Kondopoga, Karelia, when the locals attacked immigrants from the Caucasus.

Putin, ‘the patriarch’, has pursued the oligarchs for their crimes – although they are generally accused of evading taxes, their true offence is often perceived as political, falling out with the Kremlin. The star example is Mikhail Khodorkovsy, who made a fortune through Yukos oil and was arrested in October 2003. Khodorkovsy was charged with fraud and sentenced to 9 years imprisonment. However, many observers believe it was his astonishing wealth and his political opposition to Putin that made him a government target for prosecution.

Two leading Oligarchs based themselves in the UK. Roman Abramovich has become the epitome in the British eyes of a Russian oligarch, a billionaire, with a £28m pound property in Belgravia, a vast villa in St Tropez, 440 acres of Sussex, three yachts, including the 115-metre Pelorus, a private Boeing 737 and an English football club, Chelsea, plus all his wealth back in Russia. So far he has managed to avoid the ire of Putin, but that was not the case for Boris Berezovsky, who became a refugee, constantly pursued by the Russian government through the courts on charges of fraud. He lived in Egham where he was protected by ex-Foreign Legion bodyguards. He was an adviser to Boris Yeltsin and supported Putin to succeed Yeltsin, but like a resentful protégé Putin turned against him and bit the hand that fed him, so in revenge Berezovsky openly campaigned against the Russian President. He took out advertisements in the US newspapers, warning against the evils of Putin. Berezovsky also supported Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine and claimed to have substantially underwritten the Orange revolution there in 2004. Then, on 23 March 2013, Berezovsky died at his home. His body was found by a bodyguard in a locked bathroom, with a ligature around his neck. Since the blatant Russian state poisonings in Britain of Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, a defector and former officer of the Russian Federal Security Service, in 2006 and Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal, in 2018, speculation about the cause of Berezovsky's death has taken the view he was assassinated rather than committing suicide.

The Oligarchs, who very much represent the new Russia’s engagement with the commercial opportunities of capitalism, nevertheless have elements in common with the pre-revolutionary aristocracy who provided a constant frustration to the autocratic control of the Tsar. Another parallel with the Byzantine Court is related to the role of the bureaucracy and military – both powerful and significant elements of totalitarian Russia. Under the Tsars and during the Soviet period the military has had an eminence not found in western democracies. For example, the Russian military doctrine has always engaged both in the political as well as the technical side of military engagement while Western forces have often ignored the political side – someone would say to their cost: for example, in recent conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Mali. In Soviet times it has been argued that the political motivations of the military have “best explained Soviet moves in the international arena”.

Even with the stripping away of communist ideology the Russian military still operates in the old way, linking its political doctrine to its tactical deployment. Chechnya, Caucasus, Syria and now Ukraine, demonstrate this clearly in terms of military strategy that often enacted total devastation upon a civilian population (technically even its own population in Chechnya) to achieve political compliance. It is almost unimaginable that Western military commanders would consider this type of military solution to a similar political problem. A comparison might be how the British Army acted in Northern Ireland with the Russian army’s campaign in Chechnya.

Thoroughly permeating Russian political culture is the dominance of the state over the individual. Though Russian leaders, since the collapse of the USSR in 1989, have given lip service to democracy, the Russian form of government today is still very authoritarian. When under pressure for his lack of democratic methods, Putin has described Russia as “a sovereign democracy". Whatever that means, it does not seem to permit free and fair elections or protect human rights. Putin’s lack of openness and disregard of international concern about human rights, confirms that Russian democracy is more of a charade than a reality - most press is strictly controlled and the courts and parliament are weak. It is not only unwise but also positively dangerous to oppose Mr Putin.

Assassination and imprisonment are standard instruments of silencing any opposition: for example, in 2015 Boris Yefimovich Nemtsov was shot several times from behind. He was murdered less than two days before he was due to take part in a peace rally against Russian involvement in the conflict in Eastern Ukraine. Nemtsov was a Russian physicist and liberal politician who was one of the most important figures in the introduction of reforms into the Russian post-Soviet economy. Then there is the example of Alexei Anatolievich Navalny, a Russian opposition leader, lawyer, and anti-corruption activist. He came to international prominence by organising anti-government demonstrations and running for office to advocate reforms against corruption in Russia. After having received treatment in Germany because he had been poisoned on an internal flight in Russia in January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia. He was promptly arrested and after a series of farcical criminal charges the Russian prison commission designated Navalny as a "terrorist" and in January 2022, Russia added him and his aides to the “terrorists and extremists” list. In February this year, Navalny faced an additional 10 to 15 years in prison in a new trial on fraud and contempt of court charges. A prosecution witness Fyodor Gorozhanko, however, refused to testify against Navalny in the trial, stating that investigators had "pressured" him to testify and that he did not believe Navalny had committed any crimes.

Nor is Putin’s state a place where there is a free media. The state controls all areas of broadcasting, publishing, and the internet; and journalists cannot feel safe publishing uncomfortable truths, as demonstrated by the vicious killing of Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya in 2006.

Under the Tsars Russia was very much a polarised society, there were the rich aristocrats who looked towards the West, and there were the masses, who were for much of their history serfs working the land, with no education and excluded from politics. Moreover, in Russia today the population is still very much divided between the "haves" and the "have-nots". In the big cities, there is a new middle class emerging, and in Moscow - now one of the most expensive cities in the world - there are incredible displays of affluence, marked by massive building projects and the availability of western material goods. However, in the countryside, there is still extreme poverty. Because of the hardship and lack of opportunity, alongside nostalgia for the old communist system, there is despair, worthy of a Dostoevsky novel, among a section of Russian society.

Often linked to this despair is one of the worst social ills that have plagued Russia throughout its history, the love of alcohol and specifically vodka. Russia has a very high level of alcoholism, which contributes to a low expectancy of life. There are consistent reports of Russians being so desperate for a drink that they will consume any spirit, like boot polish, if they cannot get hold of vodka. There was a television program about unemployed men in the Russian city of Samara. It showed that with little or no prospect of work, in the freezing cold, the men shown on the programme spent their day in a drunken stupor. When they could not find any vodka, they would drink white spirit, in order to get a high from the alcohol.

Therefore, despite an economic recovery based upon the vast mineral resources of the country, Russian society is fractured and often demoralised, suffering from large-scale unemployment, alcoholism and sheer poverty. The effect on life expectancy in Russia is devastating with the average male only living only to 68 years compared to 79 in the UK.

A related consequence of the damaged state of Russian communities has been the sharp decline in the birth rate. The birth rate dropped as low as 1.2 in 2000, with a decline in the population of approximately 800,000. In 2006, the government brought in a series of policy initiatives including financial rewards to try to increase the birth rate.

Although ‘the Russian bear’ is undergoing severe social and economic pressures at home, Putin has engaged in a defiant and aggressive approach to foreign affairs and clearly believes that it is important to re-establish Russia as a force to be reckoned in the world. The Russian government’s attitude and behaviour, for example, towards Chechnya, Georgia, and now Ukraine, has been extremely aggressive.

Since 1994 Russia has been engaged in two brutal wars in Chechnya, which has involved massive destruction and allegations of widespread human rights abuses. As mentioned above, force has been used on a huge scale and despite much protest from the West, the Russian army has ground down Chechen resistance. A puppet regime has been installed in Grozny under Ramzan Kadyroy, who often appears more like a gangster than a legitimate ruler.

In August 2008, following a period of worsening relations between Russia and Georgia, Russia backed the breakaway regions of Georgia, the self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. When Georgia tried to claim back South Ossetia but was confronted by a Russian invasion force. After a demonstration of overwhelming air power, a ceasefire was agreed but Russian troops remained in the breakaway provinces. Despite international condemnation, the Russian parliament passed a motion, with no one voting against that gave diplomatic recognition to Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

In 2014 after fraught political upheavals in Ukraine, the country moved towards establishing a Western-style democracy. This was perceived not only as a threat to Putin's Russia but also, particularly to the Russian speaking population of eastern Ukraine known as the Donbas. At the same time armed men, without insignia, seized key buildings in the Crimea and Russia quickly sent in a 'peace-keeping' force. After a fake referendum, which claimed the people of Crimea wanted to be part of Russia, Putin annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine.

In the two regions of the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine, Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian-backed separatists broke away from Ukrainian government control, proclaiming themselves independent “people’s republics”. Since then, Ukraine claims about 15,000 people have been killed in the fighting. Russia always denies being a party to the conflict but has in reality backed the separatists in a variety of ways, including through military support, financial aid, even supplies of Covid-19 vaccines and importantly the issuing of at least 800,000 Russian passports to residents.

While Moscow constantly denied planning to invade Ukraine the build-up of troops and formal recognition of the so-call Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk herald today's invasion. Putin's approach to Ukraine is, in truth, the continuation of using military force as its main instrument of Russia's political strategy.

Putin presents himself as the reviver of the Russian Empire and sees his legacy as a unique leader who is both a unifier and a victorious conqueror. Ukraine represented a massive danger to his absolutist rule: a democratic state could not be part of 'all the Russias' so it must be brought into line. The risks are huge but to allow Ukraine to join the Western camp would be the end of Kievan Rus and that is unthinkable for the Emperor of 'All the Russias', so the country must be put to the sword.

PS. My old colleague, Chris Rolfe, has reminded me that Putin's regime is also responsible for terror tactics and war crimes not only in Chechnya and Syria but also in Europe: on 17th July 2014, a scheduled flight, Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was shot down with all 283 passengers and 15 crew being killed. The conclusion of several inquiries was that the aeroplane was most likely shot down by a 9M38 series surface-to-air missile strike and that the missile was fired from a mobile Soviet-designed Buk missile system brought into the Donbas region of Ukraine by proxy-Russian forces.