Why relations between the West and Russia are deteriorating

       New conflicts are rocking relations between the West and Russia. Many people in Germany think that mutual understanding and the link between the West and the East have been lost forever. The idea of a common European home is dead.

       The new frontline passes between the European Union (EU) and three Slavic countries to the east. It is telling that arguments between the West, on the one hand, and Russia, Ukraine and Belarus do not concern geopolitics or security. The conflict is rooted in liberal values, or, to be more precise, in different worldviews. The West has long lived in a post-Christian world whereas Russia is trying to develop in a spirit of neo-Christianity after the communist persecution of religion throughout almost the entire 20th century.

       Western intellectuals do not consider it disgraceful to sneer at their own religion, centuries-long church traditions and clergymen. Liberal German legislation prohibits the religious rite of circumcision and allows newspapers to publish cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad.

       In Russia it’s different. Nobody writes that God does not exist or sneers at religion. Even Russian atheists sympathize with religion, realizing that returning to traditional roots is good for the health of the nation. The media show respect for the clergy, which are no longer called “servants of a cult.” The Russian patriarch is directly involved in foreign policy, and he has made his fairly productive visits to Syria, Ukraine and Poland.

       This is a good thing in Russia but unthinkable to the West. People in the West could not believe their eyes when they saw that hundreds of thousands of Russians came to churches to venerate the Belt of Virgin Mary from Mount Athos, a relic that has long been forgotten in the West. When Pussy Riot was on trial in Moscow, hundreds of Western intellectuals demanded their immediate release because they considered their scandalous punk protest “legitimate artistic expression.” The arguments of Christians that the punk group had desecrated with their shameful performance the holy altar where believers take the sacrament to be forgiven for their sins were interpreted in the West as evidence of Russia’s obscurantism and return to the Middle Ages.

       But the essence of the conflict lied not just in different worldviews but in the political impact of this difference. After taking power in Russia almost a hundred years ago, the communists tried to export the idea of the proletarian revolution to the West. Lenin and Trotsky strongly believed that their revolution was just and would rid mankind of centuries-old slavery. Now the West thinks it has every right to export its idea of liberal revolution all over the world. The West also strongly believes that democracy and human rights are universal human values and that freedom must be introduced by force if need be.

       Nobody in the West will admit it, but Western intellectuals consider Putin’s “authoritarian regime” to be illegitimate. They hope that a more “enlightened” generation will come to power in Russia, in which case cooperation will be resumed under the Western scenario. When the Russian elite accuse the West of undermining the principles of national sovereignty, thereby violating international law, they are met with the following answer: The world order has changed and the liberal West has now the moral right to interfere in the domestic affairs of other states to protect the weak from the arbitrary rule of dictators who violate human rights.

       Western intellectuals adamantly defend this position, without recognizing the counterargument, thus aggravating the conflict between the West, on one hand, and Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. These three Slavic nations are not simply criticized for having a political system that differs from Western democracy; they are strongly denounced, subjected to sanctions and pressured to change. As a result, instead of a common European home, the EU and Russia has frozen their treaty on partnership and cooperation for five years now. The EU has suspended Ukraine’s associated membership over the jailing of Yulia Tymoshenko, and new sanctions have been imposed on Belarus after its government expressed indignation over the provocative leaflets dropped on the country by plane. The EU refuses to show tolerance to states it accuses, in militaristic tones, of violating fundamental human rights.

       The West has elevated the fairly abstract notion of freedom to the status of a new religion complete with its own “icons” – former freedom fighters, Nazi concentration camp prisoners and human rights champions of the communist era. The new German president Joachim Gauck, a human rights activist in former East Germany, is just such an “icon” that “fought evil.” Russia, Ukraine and Belarus have followed a different path – they have chosen not to condemn what their people went through under communism. This is why they don’t have such “icons.” Whether this is good or bad is a different matter.

       There is one more substantial difference between these two camps. Recently Russia celebrated the 200th anniversary of its victory in the 1812 Patriotic War against Napoleon. And every year Russia commemorates the anniversary of its victory in the Great Patriotic War over Nazi Germany. Russia celebrates these anniversaries without the West, which has a different history. The ideas of the French Revolution – that same freedom – and the Napoleonic Code have formed the foundation of the modern democratic systems in the United States and Europe. After the victory over Napoleon, the Western powers expelled Russia from Europe. Throughout the 19th century, Russia was a bulwark of conservatism and reaction in the eyes of the West. Eventually, philosophical conflicts led to geopolitical arguments that, in turn, brought about World War I. As for World War II, the West conferred the laurels of victory primarily on the United States, which brought freedom to Western Europe after the war. The United States guaranteed Western Europe’s freedom during the Cold War, and for this Western intellectuals are willing to bow to America for a long time to come. In the meantime, Russia is being ousted from Europe once again.

       In the mid 1960s, a student revolution unfolded in Western Europe. This morphed into a broader sexual revolution. Miniskirts, pornography, and hippies became part of Western culture. In essence, the new generation in the West was fighting for complete freedom.

       This generation of revolutionaries matured into today’s European intellectuals. They have grown disenchanted with leftwing ideology and have buried communism for good, although they had sympathy for it in Soviet times. Today’s Russia – which “betrayed” Marxism and is now returning to neo-Christian, pre-revolutionary tsarist traditions and the idea of a nation state – is essentially hell on Earth for these Western intellectuals.

       How will it end? Perhaps the clash of civilizations is still in its infancy. The liberals and pro-Western politicians in the minority in Russian politics are unlikely to come to power anytime soon. The West is stepping up its efforts to spread liberal values because the European elites are seriously frightened that they may lose their political supremacy in the world due to its deepening economic crisis. Asia is getting ahead of Europe faster than Europe would like it to. In the future, “universal values” will protect Europe’s waning global influence. This does not mean that Russia should align itself with Asia against Europe in the clash of civilizations. Russia will have to modernize, but it will do so in keeping with its own traditions and values. It would be good to show the rest of Europe that Russian Orthodoxy and Russian Islam, if you will, can help build a free Europe in the future.

       This aritcle 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.