Radio Free Europe: Is Anarchism Russia’s Solution?

March 22, 2010

A col­umn by Russ­ian TV jour­nal­ist Andrei Loshak is mak­ing waves in Rus­sia, with over 400,000 peo­ple hav­ing read it so far. (Read it in Eng­lish here.)

In the piece, Loshak detects a major change in the pub­lic atti­tude to the state. “Instead of anx­i­ety and apa­thy,” he argues, “wrath comes to the fore.” Fur­ther­more, he answers the two eter­nal, “cursed ques­tions” of Russ­ian think­ing about soci­ety: “Who is guilty?” and “What is to be done?”

Loshak’s answer: the state is to be held respon­si­ble, and the solu­tion, sur­pris­ing­ly enough, is anarchism.

He paints a dire pic­ture of con­tem­po­rary Rus­sia, recount­ing IKEA’s run-in with the author­i­ties, or the case of Her­mitage Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment investor William Brow­der and the sub­se­quent scan­dal that erupt­ed over Browder’s advo­cate Sergei Mag­nit­sky, who was jailed and died after one year in prison.

He also notes the decay in Russ­ian law-enforce­ment agen­cies, with its cor­rup­tion and cov­er-ups and the shoot­ing spree of police major Yevsyukov, which Loshak says marks a turn­ing point in pub­lic consciousness.

That the cor­rupt state is respon­si­ble for this mis­ery is not a sur­pris­ing con­clu­sion, but anar­chy as the solu­tion? With Rus­sia these days most­ly in the bel­li­cose con­ser­v­a­tive-chau­vin­is­tic cor­ner, sug­gest­ing anar­chism seems to be rare and unexpected.

Loshak quotes the philoso­pher Niko­lai Berdyayev who once said that “Rus­sia is the most anti­s­tate coun­try in the world. Anar­chism is a phe­nom­e­non of the Russ­ian spir­it. It is char­ac­ter­is­tic of our far left as well as our far right. The Slavophiles and Dos­to­evsky were just as much anar­chists as Bakunin, Kropotkin, or Tolstoy.”

To Loshak’s mind, cit­i­zens — with regard to the fail­ing state  — should react with dig­ni­ty to cyn­i­cism, with com­po­sure to moral decay, and, instead of cut­ting each other’s throats, should offer a help­ing hand.

But Loshak’s argu­ment makes sev­er­al blunders.

First­ly, he gross­ly ide­al­izes what he under­stands as the Russ­ian strand of anar­chism. This can be clear­ly shown by his depic­tion of a vil­lage in the Urals, which has been described as the “anar­chic ide­al of Count Kropotkin” — in some way sim­i­lar to Slavophiles prais­ing the vil­lage com­mu­ni­ty as the cra­dle of true Rus­sian­ness. (From anoth­er per­spec­tive, the vil­lage can be seen as a place of dilap­i­da­tion, heavy drink­ing, and ruth­less morals.)

Sec­ond­ly, Loshak con­fus­es two con­cepts that should be kept sep­a­rate: the state and those in pow­er. By prais­ing anar­chis­tic forms of self-gov­ern­ment, he auto­mat­i­cal­ly excludes any kind of state­hood. In an infa­mous let­ter, Leo Tol­stoy wrote:

Con­sid­er the impact if such a stance would become mainstream.

What Rus­sia real­ly needs is to rec­on­cile with the state and aspire towards a Russ­ian form of good gov­er­nance with all its nec­es­sary checks and balances.

Oth­er­wise, this strand of think­ing could well lead to what Khodor­kovsky recent­ly described as a tra­di­tion­al Russ­ian sce­nario: bot­tom-up and with blood.

– Fabi­an Burkhardt

http://www.rferl.org/archive/Transmission/latest/648/648.html

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