Official Kremlin Int’l News Broadcast
June 10, 2005 Friday
RADIO INTERVIEW ON RUSSIA’S INDEPENDENCE DAY WITH IGOR CHUBAIS,
DIRECTOR OF THE RUSSIA STUDIES CENTER OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FRIENDSHIP
OF PEOPLES RADIO OF RUSSIA, 10:30, JUNE 10, 2005
Anchor: Dear friends, I welcome everybody who is listening Radio
Russia. I am Vitaly Ushkanov, and this is persona grata. Perhaps,
some of you do not know that the Sunday is a holiday, Day of Russia.
Please, don’t feel hurt by what I say, but I am not at all sure that
everybody has heard about this day. And I am absolutely sure that
many of my fellow citizens will not be able to give the correct name
of the holiday: either it is Independence Day or Day of Russia.
Doctor of Philosophy Igor Chubais, who is the Director of the Russia
Studies Center at the Russian University of the Friendship of
Peoples, is persona grata on Radio Russia. Welcome to our studio,
Igor Borisovich.
Chubais: Thank you and good day.
Anchor: Good day. Is June 12 a real holiday for you?
Chubais: I think it’s largely artificial, even though if we recall
our past and the year when this holiday was proclaimed, the
sentiments were quite different. So, it was all clear and reasonable.
But we tend to forget our history very quickly, especially our recent
history. This is why there is so much artificial about it. But I do
not think that the holiday must be scrapped. I would say it must be
filled with meaning; it must be a day when we should think about our
country, its problems and difficulties, about how to solve these
problems. If I could, even though many people will not agree with me,
I would leave only one of 10 entertainment television shows and make
the nine of them intellectual shows, I would also proclaim June 12 a
Day of Intellectual Quest, a Day of Dialogue Between Authorities and
People, a Day of Meditation, a Day of Search for Solutions.
There are so many problems, there is so much tension, and there is
such a big potential for discontent in the country and outside it.
Sometimes I look at forecasts made by Western analysts, and I see
that they are very negative, even I don’t believe them. But they are
very negative. So, we must think about it, and concentrate on solving
our problems.
Anchor: But one day will not be enough for that.
Chubais: You are right, problems cannot be solved in one day, but at
least it will be a day when we can speak about it in full voice and
discuss our problems. I repeat, a dialogue between authorities and
society — we have seen dialogues between the president and people in
the streets, which the press said were well rehearsed, but we need a
genuine dialogue with real questions and real answers on this day. I
think that would be very appropriate.
Anchor: Actually the press didn’t say it was also rehearsed. I
personally participated in the preparation of these live broadcasts
with the president, and you can trust me.
Chubais: I do, but I also trust what I read. By the way, I have
recently spoken on Voice of Russia, and the topic was Russians
outside Russia and hoe to help them. I said that Russia’s position,
authority, strength and might were the main factor of our help to
these people outside Russia. We should come up with claims not
against Latvia — I mean probably we should, but it’s not a top
priority at the moment. Our priority is the revival of the country.
Perhaps, we need an international conference, a world congress of
Russian thinkers and intellectuals. WE must understand what is
happening because this crisis has been around for 90 years, and the
time has come to put an end to it.
Anchor: How many years?
Chubais: Ninety years.
Anchor: In other words, it didn’t begin with Gorbachev’s perestroika.
Chubais: Of course not. I can explain.
Anchor: But why ninety?
Chubais: It’s a well known figure even though it was dug up from
archival documents not so long ago. At the beginning of the century,
from 1900 to 1916, and to be more precise from 1890 to 1916, Russia
showed the highest economic growth rates. But Russia was shot in
midair, while it was on the rise. That’s when the ill- known events
happened.
It was the year 1917. It was the first disintegration of our state.
Communists say that they created the biggest state in the world. But
in the year 1917 Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania
separated. Lenin gave away part of Armenia, and part of Georgia to
Turkey, and so on. We can often hear that China has its Taiwan.
Russia doesn’t have Taiwan. In his well-known essay “The Island of
Crimea” Vasily Aksyonov showed what would have happened if Wrangel
had stayed in the Crimea.
But we do have our own Taiwan, or sort of. I mean Finland, because
Finland was called Chukhnya in 1917, and life in Finland at that time
differed little from life in the rest of Russia. Many Finns still
know Russian. So, what I want to say is that by the time of the
Soviet Union’s disintegration in 1991, the Soviet-Finnish border had
become the most contrast border in Europe. There are no other two
countries that are located next to each other, and at the same time
live in two different worlds, economic, cultural, financial and so
on.
I personally have no complaints against our people, our fellow
citizens who have gone through hard trials, repressions, hunger, wars
and deficiencies, trying to rebuild the country. But if they failed,
if no communism was built, it was not built not because the people
were bad but because authorities were incapable and because they made
a lot of mistakes.
So, the year 1991. We can go into long discussions about communism
and the Soviet Union, but simply go to Helsinki and then come back.
And that will be an answer to communists. But the problem is even
worse and bigger. The Soviet Union broke up in 1991, losing Estonia,
Latvia, Lithuania and others. Today, 15 years on, the
Russian-Estonian border, the Russian-Lithuania border are becoming
contrast borders. These countries do not have oil, gas, forests or
natural resources. And yet they are ahead, the average salary in
Lithuania is $300.
Anchor: But maybe they are ahead because they have no oil.
Chubais: I don’t think so. I think it depends on how well a country
is run. Because if a person has huge resources, but he doesn’t use
them, then it is this person, not the resources, who takes the blame.
Fact sheet: Igor Borisovich Chubais is the Director of the Russia
Studies Center at the Russian University of the Friendship of
Peoples. He was born in Berlin on April 26, 1947, graduated from the
Department of Philosophy at Leningrad University and completed a
course of post-graduate studies at the Academic Institute of
Sociology. He taught at the Mukhina Art School and Institute of
Theater Art.
At the beginning of the 1990s, he was an active participant in the
democratic movement and one of the leaders of Moscow’s Perestroika
and Perestroika-88 clubs. He was a member of the Coordination Council
of Democratic Platform in the CPSU, he published the Novye Vekhi
almanac. He has been analyzing the philosophical aspects of social
and historical processes in our country since 1992. He introduced the
term “philosophy of Russia”. In 1996 he published his first monograph
on this issue titled “From the Russian Idea to the Idea of a New
Russia”.
The monograph won a contest at Harvard University, it was then
translated and published in the US. He is the author of the “Course
of Lectures on Dialectics”. He is currently working on a new
monograph called “Fathomed Russia”. In the year 2000 he proposed to
begin a search for a modern Russian idea. He initiated the
introduction of a new subject, Russian Studies, in the national
system of education, and he was one of its authors.
Chubais is a core author and executive editor of the textbook on
Russian studies for senior grades in secondary school. He has a
doctorate degree in philosophy. Chubais is a Professor at the
Department of Social Philosophy at the Russian University of the
Friendship of Peoples and a member of the Board of the Union of
Literary Workers of Russia.
He is married, his daughter has graduated from the Law Department of
the Institute of Economics and Law. Igor Chubais says his biggest
hobby is his work.
Anchor: Twenty years ago, in April 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev came to
power. So, it’s a jubilee, even though it passed calmly and
unnoticeably. Gorbachev touched the Russian landscape, and this
triggered titanic geopolitical changes. Now we are living in a
different country. Has there been anything during these 20 years that
was positive?
Chubais: There have been many positive details and things, and some
of them we don’t even see. The first thing that comes to mind is
this. We always complain about people from the Caucasus. I have a
very clear memory of how we lived before 1991, and I remember that
one couldn’t buy fruits in Moscow even in summer. And if barges of
watermelons arrived, all of the fruits were cracked because they were
no one’s, no one was making money on that, and they were shipped just
for the sake of some plan.
Now beautiful fruits are available in Moscow all the year around. And
we owe this to our Azerbaijani brothers who supply them here. There
are problems, of course, and there are excesses. I know that they buy
cucumbers in large amounts from the Moskovsky state- owned farm. Why
aren’t our own people, Muscovites, doing it? Well, that’s another
question. Bu supplies have improved. Retailing has reached the world
level, the Western level. Although the West may not be the ideal
model, but our retailing has become wonderful. You come to a store,
and you get served, you do not beg the sales attendant who shows you
one and the same pair of shoes and says: You may choose. Just like
you had only one party, the CPSU, to choose from, so you had one pair
of shoes to choose from.
All this is now available, and of course, there are arguments about
democracy. Surely we don’t have a true democracy. I agree with
Alexander Isayevich there. But it is also true that we do not live in
a totalitarian state. And what I tell my students in my lectures —
they can’t even imagine that if they had asked the kinds of questions
they are asking me now 25 years ago the professor was obliged to
report on such students, and both the professor and the students
would have been sent to jail. So, we do not live in a totalitarian
country, but the new opportunities that have arisen have not been
taken advantage of, they just remained opportunities, and what is
more, they are gradually going. The authorities failed to do a proper
job and society proved too weak to put things in order and to bring
about a radical change.
So, I wouldn’t say that 20 years have been wasted, but many
opportunities have been missed and a lot of what could have been done
has not been done. By the way, when they say that 15-20 years is
nothing, that it is too short a time, some serious politicians with
whom I talk from time to time, say that we have to wait 200 years.
But I have already said that early in the 20th century Russia made a
big economic leap with 16 years. And in an earlier era, in the first
seven centuries in Russian history, from the 8th to the 14th
centuries, in fact, Russia was looking for a center around which the
country could be built. They tried Staraya Ladoga, they tried
Novgorod the Great, the tried Kiev, they tried Suzdal and Vladimir
until Ivan Kalita in 1325 — and he ruled Moscow for just 15 years —
he said: This will be the place from where we shall start — Moscow.
And it worked, and he gave a colossal impetus to Russian history
which lasted 500 years. He started adding to our territory 500 years
ago and in 500 years we reached from the Kremlin walls to Alaska, to
Finland and to Central Asia.
This is to say that a lot can be done in 15 years if you only put you
mind to it.
Anchor: For some reason people tend to remember not Kalita, but Moses
who was leading his tribe in the desert for 40 years.
Chubais: One might as well recall Moses. Well, Moses was leading his
tribe in one and the same place. By the way, this is just a myth, it
has been proven to be a myth, while Kalita is true history.
Anchor: Our politicians were fond of remembering it because 15 years
is a foreseeable time span whereas in 40 years these politicians will
be gone.
Chubais: Yes, in that case you absolve yourself of responsibility. By
the way, one of the favorite theses trotted out by Mikhail
Sergeyevich (Gorbachev) when asked about responsibility, he says: “I
talked with Deng Xiaoping some time ago and he said that we could
form a final judgment in about a thousand years. No, assessments must
be made now and we understand what mark should be put to all that has
been done.
Anchor: But you have mentioned that Gorbachev’s assessment in popular
consciousness has changed, it has been much more positive over time.
Is it just because some things tend to be forgotten, or is it because
that from a distance you can see now that Mikhail Sergeyevich had
really accomplished something?
Chubais: I think there are many reasons. To be quite frank, I can
give you an example. For seven years I was very active in civil life
and in politics, I did it daily from the beginning of perestroika and
until 1992. And it was only in 1992, in 1993 that I realized that the
main thing is not who you are fighting against, but who will come to
replace the present leaders because the next man may be worse than
the man you are striving to remove.
Therefore, against the background of what is taking place, Gorbachev
doesn’t look all that bad or feeble as he appeared to be when he was
in power. I think there were some fundamental mistakes and
irreconcilable contradictions in the Gorbachev’s policy. He didn’t
really know the country in which he lived because, to quote Andropov
— one of the few quotable things that Andropov ever said – – the
situation of ideology and censorship dupes not only society but it
dupes the dupers themselves. They are out of touch with what is
happening. He could not take the right decisions. He did not see
where he was. Just like it is known from physics that an invisible
man should be unable to see anything himself. These are just the laws
of physics.
A state based on ideology, that is, on lies and on censorship, cannot
truly understand what is happening. This is the affliction of all the
leaders who are divorced from the people, divorced from society.
Anchor: Okay, in 1991 we were at a crossroads. We faced the question,
which way to go. The question that was hotly debated at the time was,
which road leads to the temple? Do you think that the elite and
society had taken the wrong turn at the time?
Chubais: Yes, I think so. Society is society. There was no unity
between society and the elite, that’s one thing. And secondly, I
don’t think that in 1991 everybody understood the situation and make
a clear forecast and predict what would happen. It was very difficult
at the time.
After 70 years of depressing unity it is hard to understand
everything over night. It was a tall order. So, it’s easy for me to
speak today, but it was not so easy at the time. At the time, many
things were not understood. What we did not understand at the time
could form a separate subject. The democrats were sincerely deluded,
because I was one of them, a participant and a leader of that
process. I organized the first rallies in Moscow and so on.
I would say that the past years were wasted. To me an example is what
has been accomplished in the countries of Central Europe, the former
Eastern bloc countries.
The first step after they freed themselves from tyranny, from the
communist dictatorship, was to restore the constitutions of those
countries that they before the communist takeover. Secondly, having
restored the constitution, the immediately suspended that
constitution and started reworking it to fit into it the situation in
which they were at the time.
Drawing on their own historical experience, not somebody else’s, not
the Western or the Eastern experience, but their very own experience
of history, they modernized their constitutions, reformed them and
adjusted them to accommodate what happened in those countries during
40 years.
I think that — indeed I am convinced though not everyone would agree
with me, but I have published some papers and books and started and
school of thought called “Continuity,” and there are dozens of
scholars who come to the same conclusions, namely, that the way out
of our crisis — although our crisis is deeper and more complicated
than the crisis in Central Europe — is continuity with the 1000 year
history of Russia. We should take the ideas and values of the
1000-year-old Russia and adapt and reform them so that they fit the
present day, bearing in mind what happened in the Soviet Union and
outside the Soviet Union.
But the key problem is to restore our identity. We simply don’t
understand who we are when we argue whether our true holiday is
November 4 or November 7. It is not about November, it is all about
us. It is an argument about whether we trace our lineage to the
1,000-year-old Russia or to the Soviet Union. You cannot move forward
without realize who you are. This is a fundamental problem. Our
crisis is not primarily economic or military or educational — ours
is a crisis of identify. This is the main problem.
Anchor: But every individual problem has a name, a social status, a
place of residence, he remembers his parents, he has children and he
plans his life. Perhaps, that is enough?
Chubais: Well, first of all, different people take a different view
of their history and their past. Some write to Radio Russia: “Our
Motherland is the USSR.” For me the Motherland is the 1,000- year-old
Russia and not the Soviet Union.
Some say that the break of the Soviet Union was the greatest
catastrophe of the 20th century, but I think that the greatest
catastrophe was 1917 that brought to power the regime and the
ideology which was doomed to experience 1991. The catastrophe of 1991
had its origins in 1917, it was guaranteed. So, we should sort all
these things out. Confusion in people’s heads, dislocation in
people’s heads, but also a kind of renaissance in people’s heads. So,
we should restart intellectual debate first.
Anchor: I see that you have the book on the desk in front of you
entitled “Russian Riddle Solved.”
Chubais: Yes, exactly.
Anchor: Can you claim that you have managed to solve the Russian
mystery?
Chubais: It’s a tricky question because — yes, I have. At the same
time, of course, I haven’t. At least I have started untangling the
mystery. And I think I have offered solutions to some philosophical
things — philosophical problems.
By the way, when Alexander Isayevich Solzhenitsyn recently gave his
interesting interview which everybody watched and he said that the
national idea is still a problem, I happened to drop in on some of
his friends and I asked them to pass on this book to Alexander
Isayevich and I wrote in the dedication: “And still, the problem of
the national idea has been solved, Alexander Isayevich,”
Anchor: And you think you have solved this problem?
Chubais: Yes, of course.
Anchor: And his suggestion that preservation of the people can
provide such a national idea — doesn’t it suit you?
Chubais: It suits me down to the ground. I absolutely agree with
this, but the roots go much deeper. First, the national idea is not
something that has to be invented. To put it in a nutshell, as I
said, Kalita began putting the country together, and Russia existed
for 500 years like an empire that constantly expanded and grew in
size. Even during the troubled times new land acquisitions continued
not because someone in Moscow issued such an order but because it
that’s how people felt about it, they felt the need to acquire new
land. By the way, these new territories never became colonies. And
this is what differs the Russian empire from others. It is absolutely
wrong when people say that Russia should disintegrate because all
empires have disintegrated.
When Novgorod was acquiring new territories, it turned them into
colonies and robbed them. But Moscow didn’t do that, and their
economic position never worsened and even improved. So, this
expansion continued for 500 years, till the second third of the 19th
century. But 100 years ago the time came when it was necessary to
stop the quantitative growth because it led nowhere. The Soviet Union
was an attempt to continue the strategy of growth at the time when it
was no longer feasible. “We will stir a global fire, we will raze
churches and prisons to the ground,” Red Army soldiers sang but never
succeeded. The world communist movement broke apart, just as the
world socialist camp and the Soviet Union did.
So, one of the fundamental values of the revived Russian idea is a
transition from expansion to development, to qualitative growth,
which means taking care of people, directing most of the budget funds
to education, new technologies, culture, science, and communications.
The Academy of Sciences must not be closed. At first they drive
scientists into poverty and then complain that they don’t have new
ideas. But how can they if all of them have gone to the West? Bring
the money back to science because it is our pride, history,
intellect, identity, distinction and intellectual potential. It is
necessary to increase the financing of education and science and to
make the Academy of Sciences an ideal of society. We must advertise
not beautiful legs, which we can see everywhere nowadays, but
scientists. Newspapers should publish photographs of outstanding
scientists who make great discoveries for the country on their front
pages.
Anchor: Let there be both legs and scientists.
Chubais: Let there be legs, too. As I said, there is no need to close
all entertainment shows, but one of ten will be enough.
Anchor: There is a belief that our citizens shun away from such words
as democracy and reform, that they are not pleased with their life.
However, the latest studies done by the Institute of Public
Projecting show that it’s not quite so, that Russians adapt to a new
environment much better than the press says and than we think. What
do you think about these results?
Chubais: You know, words like democracy or socialism are very vague.
I can tell you, for example, that the word ‘socialism’ makes my blood
boil and fills me with hatred, or I can say that the word ‘socialism’
fills me with delight and a desire to go along this road. Because a
different meaning is put into this word. Socialism in the West, in
Western Europe is something different. Socialist International rules
there. The Federal Chancellor in Germany is a socialist, the leaders
of France, Spain, Portugal and Sweden have traditionally been
socialists. But at the same time, Stalin was also a socialist. So, it
is necessary to differentiate between the two.
And when I hear the word democracy, I always wonder what exactly is
meant. And that people adapt to a new life, that’s a very vivid word.
There is no need to adapt in democracy because one has to realize his
potential in democracy. And when I hear or read that the sultan of
Brunei wants to invest in Siberian projects, I want to say: we lose
$20 billion due to capital flight. Maybe we should bring this money
back first. Why do we need Brunei’s money that we will have to
return? Let us first create conditions that will not make our own
money flee the country. Business does not mean madmen or bastards.
That’s not the way to put things. These are sober and
commercially-minded people. If they can’t get dividends from their
profits in this country, they will take it to other places. So, let
us create normal conditions and then we can live without Brunei. And
we may even invest our own money in Brunei. Not me, of course.
Because I have none.
Anchor: Sociologists say that the attitude of Russian citizens toward
private ownership has changed during these past decades and they
respect private property, even though not other peoples but their
own.
Chubais: I think it is so. It is totally wrong to say that people in
Russia hate the rich. It is obvious that Alexander Solzhenitsyn is
not at all poor, but he has so much respect that probably no one else
has because he went through a lot of suffering and hardships to earn
it, he didn’t steal it. However, a noveau riche, who made a fortune
by sucking the money out of the state budget, he certainly evokes
feelings of protest and discontent. So, the wealth itself doesn’t
matter. What matters is where it came from. If a person is rich and
of high social standing but he has built his wealth honestly, we
applaud him. We should study his experience in order to know how he
did it. The only problem is that it’s very hard to do here.
Anchor: In other words, Russian people want to get at the core of the
problems.
Chubais: I think so.
Anchor: I have three short questions. What is your favorite type of
recreation?
Chubais: Actually I like to work. I haven’t had a vacation for three
years. I went away to Turkey for just one week this past May.
Anchor: Who would be your best opponent in a scientific discussion?
Chubais: I like discussions and I like an opponent if his reasoning
is correct, if he does not try to go personal, if he thinks
logically.
Anchor: And the last question. What would you wish to Radio Russia
listeners on the eve of Day of Russia?
Chubais: I will wish them health and good luck, I would wish them to
remember and love their country, and loving means feeling glad for it
and worrying for it when it has problems.
Anchor: We were talking with Igor Chubais, a doctor of philosophy and
the Director of the Russia Studies Center at the Russian University
of the Friendship of Peoples. He was our persona grata today. Thank
you for coming.
Chubais: Thank you.