Three prominent Russian émigrés – the dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov, the writer Boris Akunin and the economist Sergei Guriev – have the club “True Russia” (“True Russia”) founded. In an interview with ntv.de, managing director Oleg Radsinski talks about the goals of the organization. With Putin’s war in Ukraine, “Russia stopped being an empire,” says the 63-year-old writer and son of famed Russian historian Edward Radzinski. “What can the regime offer now? Just a model of a wartime empire like Genghis Khan’s.”
ntv.de: “True Russia” was founded in March, shortly after Moscow started its major offensive in Ukraine. What are your goals?
Oleg Radzinski: Our motto is: “Against war, for democracy”. Our first reaction to the events in Ukraine was emotional. We wanted to help people who are in great need because the country whose culture we feel connected to attacked its neighboring country without any provocation and destroyed people’s lives there.
“True Russia” has started a collection campaign. In the meantime, more than a million British pounds have been raised. Where is the money going?
It ends up in the charity’s accounts Disasters Emergency Committee in London and then distributed to Ukrainian refugees as part of the Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.
Do you have any other initiatives planned?
Yes of course. We also want to support people fleeing Putin’s Russia. Many academics are now deprived of their livelihood. More than 200 journalists have fled Russia and have no access to professional activities. Together with the European Endowment for Democracy, we would like to set up training courses on practical governance in a democratic state. They will be aimed at young people who left Russia but would like to return there one day. We will also collect information about democratic and anti-war initiatives on our website. We are now seeing the first offshoots of “Real Russia” springing up all over the world: in Silicon Valley, in Spain, in the Netherlands, in Poland. In Germany we want to work with the director Alexander Smoljanski, who has lived in Berlin for over 30 years. It is about showing that the real Russia is a Russia without an imperialist consciousness. It is non-aggressive and based on liberal values. And above all: it is not archaic, but capable of modern thinking.
With all due respect, many people today would find it difficult to believe something like that. The Ukrainian philosopher professor Vakhtang Kebuladze said in an interview with ntv.de: “We should stop distinguishing between Russian culture and Russian imperialism.” What “we understand today as Russian culture is toxic and xenophobic,” says Kebuladze.
After what Russia did on February 24, Kebuladze’s view is completely understandable. The only way we can change this perception of Russian culture and the people who belong to it is through action. Because after the massacre in Ukraine, after the destruction of Mariupol by Russian troops, words and explanations are simply not enough anymore.
Do you feel personally responsible for the actions of Russia in this war?
I am not a citizen of Russia [Anmerkung: Oleg Radsinski hat die Staatsbürgerschaft der USA und des Vereinigten Königreichs]. I have never voted in elections in Russia. So I have no guilt. But I feel responsible. Not in the sense of collective responsibility. Rather, it is my personal responsibility in the face of the regime that has bloodied the culture I belong to. It is my responsibility to counteract this. I must now take a bucket and a rag and begin washing the bloody stain from Russian culture.
They were convicted in 1982 of spreading “anti-Soviet propaganda”. In 1987 you left the USSR. In your opinion, how did emigration at that time differ from today’s flight from Russia?
It was extremely difficult to leave the Soviet Union. Today, the state is not preventing people from leaving the country for the time being. On the contrary, he is pleased about the emigration of the “traitors to the fatherland,” the “fifth column,” as he calls them. The Soviet Union was an empire where everyone counted because he or she was a cog in the system. Russia, on the other hand, is an autocracy. It does not need people who serve the country, only people who purposefully serve this form of rule. Loyalty is the quality Vladimir Putin values most in those around him.
In the Soviet Union, emigration was an act. Today it is comparatively easy. Doesn’t that put the whole message associated with it into perspective?
Many of those who emigrate today know what to expect; they have been abroad before. We, on the other hand, had no such information. For us there was no turning back. When I left, I couldn’t stop looking through the plane window at the snow outside, thinking I’d never see that blanket of snow again. Many people today think they are only going away temporarily. They would put their lives on hold for a while and wait abroad until they could return.
Back in 2018, you spoke of the possibility of war. In your view, what changed in Russia’s status quo when it actually began on February 24?
Russia has ceased to be an empire. The building of an imperial mentality began in earnest in the 17th century with Peter the Great and lasted about 300 years. What an empire absolutely needs is a mission. Either a civilizational, an administrative-economic or a messianic task. Thus, the concept of communism was attractive to many in the USSR well into the 1970s. But what idea does Russia have today? None. What can the regime offer now? Just a model of a wartime empire like Genghis Khan’s.
What geopolitical consequences do you now expect?
We all know what a “small successful war” with Japan in 1905 led to and what happened to the tsarist regime twelve years later. I believe that today we are witnessing the final paroxysm [des letzten Krampfes, des letzten Zuckens] of Russian imperialism. I am also thinking of the disintegration of territorial integrity. And I think that this process will probably start in Russia’s Far East, because its infrastructural links with the European part of the country are very weak.
Russian intellectuals are now accused of having increasingly distanced themselves from politics since the 1990s. This paved the way for the catastrophe of civilization that Russia is experiencing today.
The problem with Russian liberals is that they lack technocratic skills. They don’t like to rule. They prefer to be conceptualists [soll heißen, sie analysieren lieber, statt selbst einzugreifen]. Therefore, power was taken over by people who were already part of the system in Soviet times. They are the defenders of the archaic and have the backing of the population.
How do you explain the reasons for this support?
State propaganda has been very successful in Russia over the past decade. She had a strong influence on the population. The regime has evoked feelings of past imperial greatness and turned them into a simulacrum relevant to the present [also nicht in ein Imperium, sondern in ein Gebilde, das einem Imperium ähnelt].
What role did relations with the West play in this process?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the West had a choice. He could not have treated Russia as the successor to the country that lost the Cold War. The USA is also to blame for this, which in the 1990s did not take the opportunity to admit Russia into the Brotherhood of Nations. On the contrary, they pushed Moscow away.
Today we see, among other things, how the cultural bridges to Russia are being broken. Is this a logical complement to Western sanctions?
I think it is absolutely wrong to impose collective responsibility on representatives of culture and sport. Also, the idea that the Russian oligarchs need to put pressure on Putin to end the war is simply a misunderstanding of how this regime works. Many of them haven’t been able to influence it for a long time. The West is only pushing them back into Putin’s embrace. Nobody wants to repeat the fate of Yukos.
Is there a chance for Russia to come to terms with and moral conversion, which would be a possible way out of this historical impasse?
I don’t want to sound blasphemous – I’m not sure this would be a necessary process. I would hope for people’s practical education rather than repentance. How can we build democratic institutions, effective control mechanisms and independent branches of government? How do we train technocrats who can enforce liberal values? That’s what we’re going to work on at True Russia.
Ekaterina Venkina spoke to Oleg Radzinsky