Russia is not a "normal" state

There is a pretty interesting news article that points to the unfortunate "uniqueness" of Russia. See below the excerpt from the article:

Norway urges cooler heads

Earlier, Norway's foreign minister urged all polar allies to keep a cool head and work together to solve disputes in the Arctic.

"We sometimes analyze Russia with old mental maps, with the mental maps of the Cold War, where we have instinctive reactions to what we see and hear," Jonas Gahr Store said.

"One should not put all mental maps to the shredder. But I think updating mental maps … analyzing it coolly is the responsibility of modern government."

Store didn't refer to Canada directly, but the Harper government has criticized Moscow in recent years over what it views as provocative conduct in the Far North. A Russian submarine planted a flag on the seabed of the North Pole and Moscow has sent bombers close — but never into — Canadian Arctic airspace.

"Not everything Russia does in the Arctic, not every flag they plant, which is a symbolic gesture, has legal meaning," Store said. "And the more you react to that … you give it meaning."

Valuable natural resources

As much as one-fifth of Earth's undiscovered oil and gas is believed to be in the Arctic and climate change is causing the rapid melting of Arctic ice, opening resource-exploration potential.

Store said Russia has legitimate interests in the Arctic and much of the resource wealth is in its sovereign territory, which should minimize future disputes.

However, maintaining relations with Moscow is complicated because Russia is not quite a "normal" state, he added.

"Russia is in transition, and as some of their able analysts are saying, they are lost in transition.… It is not certain in what state they will be when that transition ends.

"We are all served by seeing that transition landing softly into something where Russia can still be called a democracy with rule of law, civil society, freedom of press and freedom of expression."

Russia is not a "normal" state, indeed, as I have been arguing in a few posts here, in this blog. The Norwegian minister seems to be very insightful.

I like to say that when Europeans or Americans visit Russia for the first time they meet white people of European outlook who live in a seemingly industrialized country and think that due to surface, exterior similarity they understand the culture very well. And yet Russia seems to be so alien—and even alienated—from the European and the Anglo-Saxon civilizations (don't forget that the country was isolated from the rest of the world for 70 years during the period of Communism) that this often-occurring misleading reliance on culturally insensitive extrapolation of one's own cultural experience to the Russian culture causes a lot of trouble and misunderstanding to both sides (not to mention the fact that Russians themselves are extremely ignorant of the interiors of the Western civilization; for instance, if for Americans the complex notion of liberal freedoms and principles of healthy individualism is built into the cultural background and is perceived as a social given, for Russians these signifiers have different signifieds—something that was learned from Hollywood movies, perhaps; in any case, something far more primitive). 

In Russia, it is completely normal for owners of large and not-so-large businesses to have a personality disorder (personality disorder—or  previously psychopathy—is called a "shadow syndrome" due to a difficult diagnostics), a borderline or narcissistic condition, and so on. I have met a couple of cases (who seemed to be spiritually oriented at first but then appeared as full of lies and manipulation) which shocked, terrified me enormously. Needless to say I've had to go through a difficult period integrating such an experience. If America has long ago transcended the stage of a chaotic capitalism, Russian "capitalism" is built on lies and power struggles rather than rational self-interest. It is absolutely okay to lie extensively in each and every aspect of business, to break agreements, to make decisions according to one's short-term impulses and personal neuroses. Your business can always be taken away; law doesn't work; courts make decisions in favor of those who have the most power and bribe with the most money. Stealing is okay and is a social norm—in fact, those who don't steal are poor, those who steal are rich. Same goes for bribery. If you don't bribe, your business will most likely be closed or  invaded because no one needs somebody who doesn't conform to what everybody does. The politics works the same way.

So, you may see that figuring out the integral picture of Russia and its place in the world is one of my current fascinations. This fascination was brought forth by realization that most foreigners, even those who live here, don't quite understand the true nature of the Russian culture the way it is now in its complexity and, well, abandonment; neither Russians themselves have enough self-reflection so as to get to know what is going on better (due to so much of dissociated and undigested history, including a comprehensive and unbiased synthetic vision of the 20th century). 

As a friend of mine, Dr. Elke Fein, argues, Russian politics comes mostly from self-protective action logic, which is a very early stage of development discourse. At first, when I read her arguments, I was trying to disprove them but the more I'm looking into the data the more I feel the truth of the theory that the dominant mode of discourse in Russian society and politics is that of the self-protective level. Here is the abstract of Elke Fein's paper, highly recommended:

Adult Development Theory and Political Analysis: An Integral Account of Social and Political Change in Soviet and Post-Soviet Russia

Elke Fein

Abstract: I propose a reading of social, political and discursive change in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia which is inspired by an integral, above all developmental perspective. In view of explaining Russia’s current political trajectory, I make several arguments. First, I claim that Russian politics are still to a large extent determined by the effects of a threefold crisis of sense-making. Neither the collapse of the Soviet empire, nor the question of how to define democratic government nor the lack of a resilient national identity have so far been resolved and re-appropriated in a transformative manner. Second, I try to show how this affects various aspects and dimensions of Russian politics. Third, I engage in a brief overview of a number of adult development models, asking to what extent and how the characteristics of consciousness development, particular stage characteristics, and the general logics and dynamics of successful and unsuccessful development these models describe can be helpful to the analysis of Russian politics. Also, I discuss their compatibility and parallels with discourse theory and analysis as an increasingly popular methodology in Russian Studies. Of the developmental models reviewed, the theory of political development by Stephen Chilton and the self-protective action logic in Susanne Cook-Greuter’s model of self and identity development are particularly relevant for my purpose. On these grounds, it is argued that since Vladimir Putin’s taking office as Russian president and later prime-minister, politics and (official) political discourse have increasingly come to follow self-protective action logics as conceived by Susanne Cook-Greuter. This diagnosis, which could either be understood as a regression or as a realignment of internal and external dimensions of political development, can be explained as a reaction to Russia’s crisis of identity followed by a loss of internal stability and international influence connected to the dislocations mentioned above (Integral Review, 2010).

It is dramatic that such a great culture is in such a decline for such a long period—and there's no hope, or so it seems.