Russia seems to have a growing interest to legacy of “dear Comrade Brezhnev”, the subject of numerous jokes, whose books and party conference speeches were exchanged for paperbacks by Maurice Druon in the years when consumer goods were in constant shortage.
Photo: Yury Martyanov
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Back to Brezhnev’s Basics
The Price of the Question
The official summary of Russian foreign policy’s achievements fell on Leonid Brezhnev’s 100th birthday which is celebrated on a surprisingly grand scale. It’s hard to overlook a growing interest to legacy of “dear Comrade Brezhnev”, the subject of numerous jokes, whose books and party conference speeches were exchanged for paperbacks by Maurice Druon in the years when consumer goods were in constant shortage. At the end of 2006, Russia seems to be fascinated by the things that would earlier be labeled as the Stagnation. Yet, those years are now increasingly called the Golden Age of the great power which preceded the turmoil of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the age of a weak and lost Russia, interrupted by the return of Russia’s past grandeur under President Putin.
Russia’s foreign policy is the field which has been influenced the greatest by the Golden Age. The current external policy may be even dubbed “neo-Brezhnevism”. It does not matter that that Moscow’s relations with the West were then called “peaceful coexistence” but Minister Lavrov now mentions “fair competition” which does not imply military confrontation. It is all about the same thing. Some may say that Western nations do not compete with each other much these days either. But let’s face it: Russia means a special sort of competition. This is not a competition between partners or allies. It is a race of rivals which almost have nothing in common. Therefore, they are forced to “compete fairly”, i.e. “coexist peacefully”.
What are the features of the foreign political neo-Brezhnevism? First, it involves developing relations with the West not on the basis of trust and mutual values, but on the fact that the two parties are a rather afraid of each other and therefore do not pry into each other’s business. This does not conflict with close energy cooperation which, by the way, was born in Leonid Brezhnev’s times. In this kind of relations, frosts follow détentes and vice-versa, and handshakes do not mean the other hand does not hide anything. The second feature arises from the first one. It is the immensely highlightened importance of personal relations with Western leaders which is aimed to hide the vacuum of what is traditionally called “partnership”. The form can be different. Leonid Brezhnev used to go wild boar hunting outside Moscow with Henry Kissinger. These days, Vladimir Putin gives George Bush a ride on his old Volga 21. The contents are the same. Declaring the warmest feelings but doing everything your way because you are facing a dangerous rival which secretly means evil is the essence of neo-Brezhnevism. The third feature of neo-Brezhnevism is the evident and covert rivalry in different parts of the world, chiefly in third-world countries – be it the Middle East or former Soviet states. You snatched Georgia, but we’ll take Ukraine. Or look at what’s happening with Japan. Listen to a Duma deputy these days who says there is no “territorial dispute” with Tokyo and you’ll catch yourself thinking that this reminds you something oddly familiar. But what exactly? Yes, of course: L. Brezhnev’s interview with the Asahi newspaper, 1977. He has said everything there that we would need to know in the year 2006.
How could we have exchanged that for Druon’s paperbacks?
Sergey Strokan, columnist
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 21, 2006
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