From the very beginning of his leadership Putin stressed that Russia must pursue its own path towards modernity and democracy, but he has not claimed that this path is special, in the sense that Russia represents an alternative modernity. On his return to the Kremlin in 2012 Russia’s uniqueness has been accentuated rather more.

       The idea of dialogue is at the heart of the Valdai Club, but what do we really mean by the term and can it reconcile fundamental political differences? On one level, there is academic debate between specialists, which is entirely natural and healthy, but this is not really dialogue in the strong sense, but part of a long tradition of intellectual exchange of views. At another level, there is the common sense view dialogue simply as an extended conversation, in which ideas are exchanged and ideas developed.

       There was plenty of these two sorts of dialogue at the recent jubilee session of the Valdai Discussion Club . As its name demonstrates, the aim is to bring people together to discuss issues of major relevance. Some 200 Russian and western scholars, journalists and public figures spent four days discussing issues ranging from Syria, the future of Europe and Asia, and the contours of Russian national identity and the role of political opposition in contemporary society.

       The debates at the Valdai Club were conducted in an open and ‘democratic’ fashion, with plenty of intellectual and common sense dialogue. Nevertheless, all this talk demonstrated that dialogue on its own can do little to resolve fundamentally different views about life and the world. Two fundamentally opposed visions of the world, what can be called epistemes, came into conflict. This was a type of internal ‘clash of civilisations’, with a grey area in between in which a centrist position seeks to maintain its predominance.

       The first viewpoint is political liberalism , drawing on the democratization agenda dominating since the end of the Cold War, with its representations of normality, ‘the return to Europe’, and standards of civilization defined by western norms. Most sympathisers of this tendency are economic liberals, but far from all economic liberals sympathise with its political precepts. President Vladimir Putin himself is mostly an exemplary economic liberal, pursuing neo-classical macroeconomic strategies of a sound currency, balanced budgets and international economic integration, although he also favours a relatively active role of the state in economic management. At its extremes the liberal political view is accompanied by the iconoclastic denunciation of backward Russia, with neo-Trotskyite appeals ‘to burn Russia on the bonfire of the world revolution’ so that a new and more acceptable version of the country can emerge out of the bonfire of traditionalism.

       The standard charge against the liberal episteme is that it lacks a sense of history and place; Russia emerges as a subject-less entity, with its thousand-year history denigrated and its location on the great North European-Eurasian plain, with all of the attendant threats, downplayed. The liberal paradigm tends to see itself as part of a ‘little and weak’ European Russia, overshadowed by a ‘very big’ Asiatic Russia, and thus perceives itself to be a permanently embattled minority. Even Putin began his leadership as a committed Europeanist, and gradually shifted to more Eurasian, if not ‘Asiatic’, perspectives, in both the geographical and political senses.

       The liberal viewpoint is challenged by various traditionalist ideas. The word ‘traditionalist’ is intended to encompass the broadness of the phenomenon. The category includes monarchists appealing to the imperial era, arguing that some sort of return to the moral world of the pre-revolutionary epoch could contribute to the resurrection of Russia. Groups with various neo-Soviet tendencies include dyed-in-the-wool Stalinists seeking his political rehabilitation, socialists of various stripes, those with an affective nostalgia for the comforts and certainties of the Brezhnev years, and a whole range of ‘imperialists’ of one sort or another.

       Contemporary Russian nationalism, based on ideas of national integrity and a separate developmental path, also has its roots in a traditionalist episteme. The Russian Orthodox Church expresses some of the most profound beliefs of traditionalist ideas, set in contrast to the alleged degeneracy of the West. Traditionalist ideas are rooted in historical experience and civilizational separateness.

       The key point is that traditionalism cannot be simply counter-posed to modernity, since various forms of neo-traditionalism are increasingly becoming a political inflection of modernity. Neither is it anti-modern; that is, repudiating achievements in science and technology or even the spirit of critical enquiry, which is the essence of the modern. The demand is for a more pluralistic understanding of traditionalism (as well as of modernity). In short, the traditionalist response to political liberalism is that modernisation is heterogeneous.

       Between these two epistemes is a third: the centrist ideology espoused by the Putin administration. Putin has always instinctively been a conservative, but in his third term he stated this rather more explicitly, as in his keynote speech at the Valdai meeting. He recognised the profound divisions, but insisted that ‘All of us – so-called Neo-Slavophiles and Neo-Westernisers, statists and so-called liberals [it is not clear why the liberals are ‘so-called’] – all of society must work together to create common development goals’.

       But the speech, powerful and impressive as it was, failed to give substance to these ‘common developmental goals’. In other words, the centrist perspective even here was in danger of losing its specific political weight, in the midst of all this dialogue and discussion. Faced by the militancy of some sections of political liberalism, the administration has drawn on the authority of the Russian Orthodox Church and other traditionalist forces to bolster its shaken authority.

       The centrists have no consistent economic policy of their own and thus pursue broadly liberal macroeconomic strategies tempered by the needs of the distributional coalitions and rent consumers on which the regime is based. The centrists appeal to national development but fail to enunciate a consistent vision or strategy on how this can be applied. The renewed programme of Eurasian integration tries to re-energise the centrist perspective by providing it with an economic base and a political perspective, but this is in danger once again of succumbing to the anti-European illusions of the original Eurasianists.

       From the very beginning of his leadership Putin stressed that Russia must pursue its own path towards modernity and democracy, but he has not claimed that this path is special , in the sense that Russia represents an alternative modernity. On his return to the Kremlin in 2012 Russia’s uniqueness has been accentuated rather more, to give substance and legitimacy to the move, but Putin is never one to imbue his actions with metaphysical purport. He was and remains a pragmatic power-maximising politician, and it was this that prompted some of the more radical traditionalists, like those in the Izborsky Club, to develop an agenda of their own.

       Putinite centrism is in danger of eroding from the left and right, under attack by liberals and traditionalists. In that context, it is not clear what ‘dialogue’ has to offer. Of course, talking is better than fighting, but we need to understand the sources of division – only on that basis can we begin to reconcile the very real divisions in society on the basis of ‘common developmental goals’.

       This article was originally published in Russian in Rossiyskaya Gazeta.

       Views expressed are of individual Members and Contributors, rather than the Club's, unless explicitly stated otherwise.