Cinema, literature, music, cathedrals: you name it Alexander Nevsky it is imprinted everywhere in Russian history and culture. Saint Alexander, having been canonized by the Orthodox church. This medieval prince is today exalted by Russian nationalists close to Vladimir Putin. In a particular key: as a symbol of the «Asian vocation» of Russia, in opposition to the West.
At a time when theAmerica returns to press on China to stop supporting Putin’s aggression in Ukraine (US Secretary of State Blinken is visiting Beijing today, the Administration Biden threatens to sanction Chinese banks who finance Moscow’s war), the theme of Russia’s slide towards the East is in the foreground.
The use that the nationalist propaganda makes the figure of Alexander Nevsky interesting. In the 13th century he reigned as a prince of Novgorod, one of the states that would later give birth to Muscovy, precursor of imperial Russia. Nevsky found himself fighting on two fronts, East and West. He chose to counteract the Western enemy, that is, the Teutonic crusaders who came from Sweden. To defeat them made an act of submission towards the eastern enemy, the Mongol invader attacking him from Asia. Nevsky crossed Central Asia to the capital of the Mongol Golden Horde, and became recognized there as prince of Russia. In the Putinian revision of history, the crusaders of the Christian West wanted destroy the identity of Orthodox Russiawhile the Mongols were content with Nevsky paying tribute as a vassal.
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The lesson: as in Nevsky times today It would be better for the Russians to ally themselves with the Chineseto save themselves from a West that threatens the role and profound identity of Moscow. «All lies»comments one of the leading experts on Russian history, Stephen Kotkin, professor at Stanford and author among other things of a monumental biography of Stalin. It is Kotkin who draws attention to the nationalist revival of the figure of Nevsky, in an essay entitled «The five futures of Russia» in the magazine Foreign Affairs. He highlights the manipulation of the past. «It took centuries – he writes – before the Russians managed to free themselves from what their own school textbooks define as the ‘Mongol yoke’». Instead, Russia has survived centuries of relations with the West without ever acquiring a fully Western identity, observes Kotkin himself.
The controversy around Nevsky naturally hides a burning issue: whether Putin is transforming the Russia of the 21st century one Vassal state of China, too dependent, in a subordinate position. So whether he made the right bet, breaking with the West and turning to the East. He really gained, or in the long term Will he pay too high a price? We Westerners had some responsibility, did we push him into Xi Jinping’s arms because we didn’t give him alternatives? How should we behave in the future?
When China and Russia «divorced»
To answer these questions it is useful to remember the history of Sino-Russian relations going back to the early 1960s: that was when the two major communist powers in the world divorced. Mao Zedong and Stalin had gotten along well, at least on the surface, even if there was no shortage of disagreements among them, for example over the war in Korea. Shortly after Stalin’s death (1953), Mao contested “de-Stalinization” started by Soviet reformists such as Khrushchev in 1956. Behind the ideological schism, a geopolitical rivalry emerged, even deeper because it was structural and unavoidable, between the two major land powers of the Asian continent.
In 1969 it exploded even one mini-war between the two armies stationed along the Ussuri (in Russian) or Wusuli (in Mandarin) river in the northern region of Manchuria. That brief conflict left unresolved territorial dispute.
As Kotkin recalls, «the Russia remains the only power that controls territories taken from the Qing empire, with what the Chinese consider to be unfair treaties.” After the limited conflict of 1969 Mao feared that theUSSR could launch an offensive much more serious, even nuclear. The founder of the People’s Republic opened to America, with a foreign policy change with enormous consequences. In an anti-Soviet key, the thaw occurred with American president Richard Nixon and the direction of Henry Kissinger. Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, followed up with an even more sensational turning point, the gradual transition to capitalism.
Mending and friendship “without limits”
But the mending with Moscow it happened quite early, starting with Deng’s successor: Jiang Zemin (who had worked in a Soviet company as a young man) began to buy weapons from Moscow, helping to resuscitate a then moribund Soviet armaments industry. So Xi inherited a bilateral relationship with Moscow which had already recomposed. She gave her a formidable impetus by proclaiming her urbi et orbi as hers personal friendship with Putin. On the war in Ukraine Beijing line is perfectly aligned with the Russian justification for «encirclement of NATO»: the only blame lies with the West. If Putin didn’t have the Chinese economic giant behind him, everything would be more difficult for him. Xi repeats in the West a game played in the East for decades, where the People’s Republic is happy that the North Korea keep under tension permanent America and its allies (South Korea, Japan).
Because Russia looks more to the West than to the East
What stage is the relationship between the two countries at today? Kotkin recalls that the Russia remains a country that looks to the West, much more than in the East. As much as he may have developed rancor and resentment towards us she feels European, not Asian. Few Russians speak Mandarin, there are many more numerous English speakers. For their part, many Chinese they have a superiority complex; and their nomenclature he never forgave to the Russians it dismantling of communism.
THE bilateral economic relations instead I’m in full boom, largely as a result of Western sanctions. Compared to ten years ago, trade is more than tripled jumping from 70 to 230 billion dollars. It’s a very unbalanced relationship. There China continues to buy some weapons (military jets) from Russia, and raw materials; however, be careful not to end up in one dependent situation like the one that marked relations between Europe and Russia until the invasion of Ukraine. The construction of a new gas pipeline from Siberia to China (through Mongolia) has remained a stalled project for decades. In the meantime the People’s Republic with his global monopoly on solar panels, wind turbines and electric batteriesand with a growing market share in the construction of nuclear power plants, works to weaken Russian energy income in the long term. Putin even sell gas and oil China was forced to accept payments in renminbi, a currency that can only be used to buy products “made in China”. It’s a one-way addiction.
Xi’s “fake neutrality”.
Kotkin observes that «the Russia has never managed to be a superpower if not when it had strong ties with Europe; her future is at a crossroadson the one hand a risky shift in a Chinese hug narrower, on the other an unlikely return to Europe». It is not a favorable prospect, especially since “the only thing that Russia manages to export besides raw materials and violence are brains”. Someone in Moscow dreams of an explosion war between America and China, from which Russia would finally derive geopolitical benefits. For now it’s just a hope, while it is Xi to be in that enviable position of fake neutralityin which both sides gain many advantages while the West and Russia weaken each other.
Kotkin scenarios (and why they matter)
Kotkin belongs to the realist school. Among the five scenarios on the Russian future that he elaborates on Foreign Affairs, considers the rosiest one unlikely: a Russia that follows the path followed by ex-imperial European powers such as France, England and Germany. That is, one that manages to “sublimate” theimperial pride inside one European vocation that is, multilateralist, as Paris did after the Second World War and the loss of Indochina and Algeria. Or that he can heal from aggressive nationalism, victimized and resentful as the German people managed to do. The American scholar recommends resign yourself to the most likely scenario: that even after Putin, Russia has a nationalist leadership. The important thing is to convince this future leadership that it can entrench itself in defense of its interests without paying the prices of long-standing hostility towards the West.
Kotkin’s personal biography is interesting, it is typical of one American intellectual elite where the historical memories of other parts of the world are condensed. His father was of Belarusian Jewish family, her mother is Polish, so all her parents’ roots lie in the Russian Empire. He has no doubts in reject Putin’s theory on NATO encirclement as the trigger for the Russian aggression. He liquidates it with irony: «As if an authoritarian and repressive regime that invades its neighbors in the name of its own security were one unexpected novelty in Russian history…». He is therefore certain that the invasions “would have happened anyway, even if NATO had not expanded”. The only difference, he observes, is that “without enlargement there would be even more vulnerable nations.” Therefore he sees no other path than that of maintain coordinated pressure on Russia, while at the same time offering its future leaders “incentives to entrench themselves.” Meaning what leaving Russia in that limbo in which it has existed for many centuries: in admiration of Western progress and well-being, attracted and envious of America and Europe in some respects, but incapable of becoming one of us.
Kotkin’s suggestions are steeped in caution and skepticism. As much as the West may try to direct Moscow’s future, he himself admits that ours influence there will always be a lot about events limited. Generally, our hope of steering authoritarian superpowers like Russia and China in this or that direction has turned out to be an illusion. Furthermore we are not the only ones to play in this game. Beijing in turn will put in place incentives so that Russia continues to look East, in conditions of permanent and structural inferiority. As for the sanctions that America is threatening to inflict against Chinese banks that help Russia, I would not have excessive expectations of their effectiveness. We know that the sanctions system against Putin is a sieve. We cannot guarantee its watertight application even by Western countries.
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