Russian and foreign politics gathered on board the Kronstadt cruise ship on Tuesday for the 7th meeting of the Valdai Discussion Club to talk about where Russia is going. The VOR asked Mr. Dmitry Suslov, Deputy Director of the Council on Foreign and Defence Policy, to comment on the ongoing talks.
The meeting of the Valdai Club focuses on history. Strange as it might seem, the issue appears to be very up-to-date. The world is going through dramatic changes, and the main question on the agenda is whether Russia, with all its historical heritage, traditions and even phobias, is able to handle challenges of today.
The participants differed in opinions. Debates broke out about a predefined development of the Russian state as foreign experts relied on the tradition of autocracy and tried to trace the roots of this tradition.
One of the main reasons is that throughout its history, Russia repeatedly faced outside threats from the west and east alike – the Mongol invasion in the 13th century, wars with the Teutonic Order, Sweden, Poland, the Russian-French war of 1812, the Turkish campaigns in 17th and 19th centuries, let alone WWI and WWII.
Often, Russia’s sovereign future and independence were at stake. Living in constant risk of being attacked, citizens consciously ceded part of their rights to the state expecting safety guarantees in return.
It would be erroneous to think that inherence in authoritarianism runs in Russian genes. The West is partly to blame for decades of totalitarian rule in Russia. For centuries, it had been nurturing plans to conquer Russia, or when that proved impossible, to try to split it and thus subdue it.
Today, Russia is moving along the path of democracy. The past two decades saw changes that would have taken other countries a far longer time to achieve. Will this process continue and how effective will it be? That depends to a large extent on outside factors. The West is yet to overcome its “Cold War” phobias and bias towards Russia.
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