Russia is a raid

We are accustomed to dividing the world into East and West or, following Western trends, into the Global North and the Global South. This division often confuses us, geography offers too broad generalizations, and parallels with the meridians begin to seem like the true reasons. Geography certainly means something. But it does not give any exhaustive explanations, or even clear coordinates.

Where apricots don't grow

Poetry is sometimes more precise than geography. “Russia begins where apricots do not grow,” writes poetess Lyubov Yakimchuk in her book "Apricots of Donbass." As the author herself, who grew up in the Donbas, explained, apricot trees disappear from the landscape as soon as you cross the border between Ukraine and Russia. Apricots are not grown in Russia.

A similar opinion was expressed by older members of our family who survived the Siberian exile. They recalled how they planted vegetable gardens between the barracks, planted potatoes and greens. “We grew such beautiful tomatoes there! What is the climate like there? Great climate! And what a lot of fertile land there! (At such moments, you clearly understand that nostalgia has nothing to do with objective life experience.) The locals looked at the exiled "Banderovite" with great surprise, because the locals themselves had never grown tomatoes. They rarely grow any crops at all.

Or here's another literary digression: approximately in the same regions where our compatriots who were in exile grew tomatoes – in the Altai Territory – the writer Pyotr Vail once visited. In his travel diary, which later came out under the title "Map of the Motherland", he left an entry: "done without love ... to this day one feels the separation of nature from the person inhabiting it. A person is not attached to his land, does not love it ... Colonization has not really succeeded.”

Russian critics agreed that it was right, they say, that the author was once expelled from the USSR. To some extent, the critics are right. The European Pyotr Vail quite accurately caught the symptom of the Russian “civilizational project” with his “heightened writing instinct”: the main thing is not apricots and tomatoes, this is just a metaphor, but the main thing is that people “do not grow from the earth”, in the sense that they do not love their land. Huge spaces were annexed to their country – where with the help of military operations, and where simply by signing the necessary papers – but no one fell in love with this new land, did not settle down on it. No one has made this territory their own. The scornful toponyms that struck the writer so unpleasantly are evidence of the age-old estrangement between the land and people who do not want to have anything in common with this land. They don't even want to have apricots with tomatoes.

In general, Putin and Co. are right: the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a civilizational one. But the difference between "civilizational projects" is not based on geographical coordinates. And, of course, this distinction can be made not by the presence or absence of "colonialism" in the historical anamnesis. And in relation to the earth. Or, in the case of the "Russian project", this distinction can be made by the absence of relations between "nature" and "the people who inhabit it."

Where memory does not grow

Those dialogues that are conducted between the officials in the Kremlin themselves unwittingly show and tell us the truth: one rarely hears from them about “Russian civilization”, much more often they talk about a special “civilizational project”. It is not a matter of modesty (a quality unknown to Russian ideologists). This is a trick. After all, the concept of "Project", in contrast to the already finished "civilization", is only a promise. That is, it is only something that can only be implemented once in the future. And often this project implementation can take place sometime in an indefinite time period. Like "communism" in Soviet propaganda. Russia, which “ends nowhere” (one might add “and begins nowhere”), is not only about geography, but also about time. Like communism, this “beautiful Russia of the future” is an analogue of the Kingdom of Heaven. A mirage at the edge of the field of vision, at the very edge of the horizon, which you can look at over your head, which you can serve and not pay attention to what is under your feet.

At this point the good Russians agree with the bad Russians. And with the Russians, who are usually indifferent too. They all dream of a "beautiful Russia of the future" that will someday come, and which (as befits a mirage) everyone has their own. But in the main thing, all Russians are quite united: in their attitude to the present – all these are “temporary difficulties”, “temporary misunderstandings”, “individual mistakes” or “intrigues of enemies”. Thus, all Russians make a deal with their conscience, at least those who still have it. It is very easy for a Russian person to separate himself from "common guilt" – simply because he has nothing in common with anyone or anything. In order to have something in common, it is necessary to feel the community – belonging, continuity. Be aware of yourself as a part of history and common memory.

And all this is an impossible task for a person of Russian culture. To do this, one would have to belong to a completely different type of civilization – a settled type of civilization. Which in the Russian Empire they tried to imitate, but in the end they could not implement. History and memory grow from the same root as apricots and tomatoes.

Having won the civilizational race, sedentary civilizations left nomadic cultures with not much space and choice. The rebellious Russian soul, with its impulse to destroy everything in its path, break the rules and make chaos, with its contempt for sowing buckwheat, growing various crops of plants and the idea of philistinism, with an insatiable passion for victories, with existential nausea from city life and systematic peaceful labor – the soul of a tramp. Even if this soul is packed in a decent European suit. The jacket is torn every now and then, the shoes are tight, and you want to strangle someone with a tie ...

According to the online edition "Meduza", citing sociologists, “Big” Russian society does not explicitly support the war, but accepts it as part of the natural social order.” This phrase accurately denotes the civilizational gap between the Russian Federation and European civilization, to which Ukraine also belongs. War as a "natural social order" sounds absurd to our ears. For those who grow apricots, tomatoes and bread, war is always a disaster and ruin. And the “natural social order” is the growth of well-being at the expense of labor and the development of available resources.

Russia is not Ukraine

Ukraine's belonging to the "victorious" civilization of farmers is something that in Russia could never be forgiven to Ukrainians. Ridicule of our “cherry gardens” and love for dumplings is a textbook example of Russian arrogance, hiding both atavistic rejection and a large amount of envy. Not for dumplings, not even for lard, but for the fact that we can live like this. And they cannot lead the same lifestyle.

However, with all the ridicule, the masters of the Kremlin agreed on one thing: without Ukraine, there is no Russian Empire, and cannot be. The success of the "Russian project" depends on Ukraine. Ukraine for Russia is both a pledge of an imperial project and a portal to that very “Western civilization”, which Russia has always dreamed of belonging to, but has never been able to “fit in” organically.

The imperial project is an inevitable condition for Russia's "geopolitical success". The Russian Federation has never had any other success, and coming up with a new strategy is more difficult than coming up with all sorts of absurd gossip about “Ukraine that Lenin invented.” Russia in its “non-imperial” state immediately has a shortage of fresh creative ideas. Almost everything that Russia has done for its petrodollars for the past twenty years in all sectors except for weapons, it has imitated.

Everything outstanding in Russia, with which both good and bad Russians want to be associated, was created during the period of the empire: nuclear weapons and the space race, the emergence of such writers as Tolstoy and Dostoevsky of the Swan Lake ballet, the Ostankino Tower and “the best cinema”. Therefore, the "beautiful Russia of the future", no matter what the liberals of Russia say about it, one way or another includes the return of the imperial project – at least symbolically.

And that means the conquest of Ukraine.

But the “beautiful imperial past”, which always stands behind the “beautiful Russia of the future”, is not the end of the matter. Just as the metaphor about the importance of the role of Kyiv as a historical center for the Russian Federation does not explain anything. Kyiv, and with it Ukraine, has always been for Russia a portal to the desired and forbidden Europe. That is, such an important portal to the club of the winners of the "civilizational race". Where Russia always wanted to be, but it never managed to do it on its own due to a deep misunderstanding of the essence of this civilization. Because the essence is “increasing the pie” not at the expense of “take away and divide”, not at the expense of expansion, robbery and raid. And due to the creative development of available resources.

Horde again

Russia's war in Ukraine strikes many with its anachronism. But more – cruelty, some incredible, atavistic passion for destruction and annihilation. Those who wage this war seem to enjoy confusing their "civilizational opponents." Missile strikes are delivered with precision and cold-bloodedness – right in the heart of this civilization: grain elevators; the dam of a reservoir that supplies water to the fields; ports through which the crop is exported; temples and houses.

There is no point in looking for answers to damned questions in Putin's "program articles –  about "artificially created Ukraine", about "reducing flight time", etc. It makes no sense, if only because the motives change all the time, and in the end it all comes down to one single explanation – "because they can."

This explanation is devoid of logic – at first glance. But it is not so.

The good news is that, judging by the massive destruction the Russians are trying to inflict on Ukraine, they have no illusions about their ability to “take Kyiv” or “build the new Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).” At least in the short term.

The bad news is that Russia will try to maximize our material losses and will spare no effort and means for this. This is what nomads always did, to whom the village refused to pay tribute - they burned fields, houses, took away everything they could carry, killed people or drove them into captivity. In place of the village and fields there was an empty place.

Turning a residential cultivated land into a wasteland, countries into territories, dispersal and assimilation of those who were rooted in this land – this is the purpose of the raid. Ukraine, and before it, Kyivan Rus', experienced this more than once in their history. The fact that another horde of nomads calls themselves "Rus" and "Russians" does not mean anything. As the proverb says, “by their deeds you will know them…”

I don’t know how things are going with the “beautiful Russia of the future” – whether it will be able to settle down (not as an empire, that is, “anchored” at the expense of Ukraine, but on its own). In addition, there is also the question of whether it can become a country, a state and a real nation. But for now, Russia is not a country, not a state, not a people. This is a raid of nomadic tribes.

Making chaos and devastation is a strategy that leaves no room for ambiguity. And this state of affairs is not only in Ukraine. Interfering in elections in the United States of America, promoting absurd conspiracy theories, turning Syria, Libya, Niger into a bloody cauldron or wherever the hands of "cooks" and other lackeys can reach – all this is the strategy of the horde. Doomed to lose in the economic, technological or demographic race, today's Russia is trying to return to the world the rules of another, very old game. In which the winner is the one who, having abandoned the cultivation of the land or the construction of factories, the development of technology or the conquest of space, uses all resources for weapons and destruction. And in those parts of the world, where the rockets will not reach (because it is very scary and they are cowards, why hide it), all efforts will be aimed at creating chaos in the meaning of words and actions, where everything is always “not so unambiguous and understandable”.

All we can do is to oppose the logic of the horde, which is difficult for us to understand, with our own "settled" logic – which, as it turned out, the raid participants would not understand either. The logic that allowed the settled farmers to win the game of "Civilization" against the nomads –  to fight to the death for their land and return to work in the field as soon as there is no water, fire or horde. The real "style icons" of this civilization, along with the warrior-defenders, are combines and tractors that drive onto scorched fields at the risk of being blown up by a mine. Or the processions of women carrying buckets full of shallow ponds to their tomatoes and apricots to water them. These are all images of the incredible resilience of a civilization that is stronger than any raid.