The man who made Russia perpetually paranoid
- By Sumantra Maitra
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E-mail China.org.cn, July 1, 2015
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Former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev (L front) attends the funeral ceremony of Russia's former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov in Moscow, Russia, June 29, 2015. [Xinhua/Pavel Bednyakov] |
Primakov was appointed head of Russian intelligence services after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the first civilian to ever hold that post. He was a member of the Yeltsin council of advisors, but was often overlooked at the height of the Russian Atlanticist honeymoon. When Russian Atlanticism died after the first five years of the post-Soviet era, Yeltsin replaced Andrei Kozyrev and Yegor Gaidar with Primakov. Primakov laid the foundation for Russia's retreat from its pro-market and pro-Western foreign policy by identifying three ways to achieve this task. He wanted to diversify the oil and gas export-dependent Russian economy, oppose American hegemony at any cost regardless of context, and look East to find and forge new alliances and renew old ties.
Under Primakov, Russia started to act as and identify itself as a Eurasian power rather than as a primarily European one. Primakov was also hard on domestic opposition, and even though he identified the primary problem of the Russian economy as dependence on oil and gas exports, he did nothing to change it. In fact, his opponents accused him of stalling economic reforms that were initiated in the early nineties.
Primakov's second idea was comparatively more successful. It was under his leadership that Russia started cultivating renewed interest in the Middle East, where its influence had waned since the Camp David Accords. He was close with the Assad family in Syria, Saddam Hussein's family in Iraq and the anti-American regime in Iran. It was under Primakov that the idea of an informal alliance among Russia, China and India was first theorized, although he essentially distrusted both a confident and rising China as a peer rival and India as a country that was easily swayed. He was a vocal supporter of multipolarity and, as a true Soviet, was extremely opposed to the United States throwing its weight around. Primakov was known to have mentioned to his closest advisors how he despised U.S. advice on and meddling in the management of the Russian economy. The loss of the prestige of a dying superpower hit him hard.
His record of opposition to U.S. hegemony was also mixed. He couldn't stop the run up to the bombing of Kosovo, famously turning his flight to the U.S. around halfway across the Atlantic and returning to Moscow in a show of impotent rage. However, both Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam learned the hard way that they should have listened to the suggestions of this old scholar. During his later years, Primakov was sidelined by Yeltsin in favor of the younger, more charismatic Vladimir Putin. Putin, however, kept Primakov in his advisory council as Primakov returned to academia and business circles, lecturing on the Middle East, his old area of expertise.
There is a lot of speculation as to how the history of Russia would have turned out if Primakov had been in power instead of Putin. I think it would not have made much difference. Primakov – though much more worldly, wise, restrained and scholarly than Putin – was equally paranoid about the West and equally skeptical of market forces in economics. Much like Putin, Primakov's formative years in politics trained him to reflexively oppose the West, especially America, because of a deep-seated sense of victimhood, revanchism and a desire to bring back the glorious, prestigious days of Soviet yore. Primakov essentially created the modern paranoid Russia, for better or for worse. Putin is just continuing the tradition.
The writer is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit: http://china.org.cn/opinion/SumantraMaitra.htm
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