five minutes with sergei medvedev

Interview for Pushkin House by Andrew Jack (@AJack)

How did this book come about?
My academic work concerns the triangle between history, politics and sociology. I write on Russian political history, theories of modernity, biopolitics, and environmental studies. But I also have a popular daily blog on Facebook. Those sometimes inspire my weekly columns in various Russian periodicals linked to current affairs, including in Russian Forbes, Slon (now called Republic) and Vedomosti. I rearranged those into a collection, re-wrote quite a few, and added some new texts. When put together, these texts turned out to have a much stronger critical appeal, as a systemic deconstruction of the current political regime in Russia. Therefore, it  was quite difficult to produce the book. Two different major publishers were going to produce it and then stopped printing on the order of the owners. They simply didn’t want to take the political risk. But then, a small independent publisher appeared, called Individuum, and produced the book quickly, to some success – the book had five prints in Russia and was translated into eight languages. 

What was the reaction in Russia?
Those who were expected to be unhappy were unhappy, since I have quite a reputation for critical thinking. There were positive reviews in the liberal media, and I also had a book tour across Russia and the neighboring countries, from Irkutsk and Novosibirsk to Vilnius and Tbilisi, receiving much interest and support from the readers. 

What about the government’s reaction?
The authorities are sensitive to what I write, which is quite surprising. I don’t think my weekly columns or Facebook posts can seriously challenge power because it is quite consolidated. This is rather an old Russian tradition of sensitivity of the authorities to texts– the power in Russia is literature-centric. And then, there are new laws almost every month to criminalise words and thoughts, which can lead to a sizeable fine, or even imprisonment. There is a permanent danger looming.  

Are you more cautious in your writing as a result?
I try to be as outspoken as I can but I have to weigh every word for the risk of criminal prosecution. That’s a very interesting stylistic task. I still say what I think and what I want. But I am more analytical than emotional in my choice of words which in the end only reinforces my message. Living under censorship is a venerable Russian tradition from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century. Public speech is like a conflict zone, a high tension area. There is lots of animosity, agitation and hate speech across the entire public discourse. But you get used to it.

Do you have any desire to emigrate?
That’s always an option, but there has to be a clear and present danger to my safety and freedom which I haven’t yet detected. For me, it’s a personal choice to stay in Russia and to observe, to comment and to try and change minds around me. Emigration has always been a part of the Russian story. Many fellow journalists and intellectuals have moved to Riga, Vilnius, Prague, Kiev, Berlin. I lived in the west for fifteen years, but in 2003 I made a conscious decision to relocate back and to make a new life in Russia, to build my small universe of various jobs,  human connections, and, most of all, words. This is what I cherish and I won’t give it up so easily.

Do your students share your views?
At the Higher School of Economics, we have a very select audience. Ninety per cent are like-minded people. They may think the same but most of them don’t want to stage any political protest. Maybe 10 per cent sign on-line petitions and go on opposition rallies. The others understand but they have lives, careers, their future to think about. Very few of my students will go on a demonstration, but people of my age, in their 40s and 50s, will. We had this period of openness and freedom, the idea that people can change things. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, my generation was demonstrating against the Communist rule, and then on the barricades around the White House in 1991. But we were the Last of the Mohicans, we were quite idealistic and believed  that the world can be a better place. And these  young people were born under Putin. They don’t even understand that there can be free presidential elections, an alternative to Putin. There is a mental shift, and the arrival of a new, pragmatic, generation. 

What is your view on Russia today?
Russia cannot come to terms with its own past. That is a symptom of a profoundly disoriented society with no idea of the future, no link to the present day, and only the delusion of past greatness. It’s a very infantalistic society stuck in the past. Yeltsin did not break the perennial structures of the Russian empire of the last 500 years. The state made by Ivan the Terrible in the sixteenth century is still there. These are very old structures of the authoritarian state which Putin has inherited and reinforced, supported by oil revenues. In a secular perspective, it is doomed. Russia is an empire in an age when empires have gone. This can’t continue forever. Russian Empire had major breakdowns, in 1917 and 1991. The third one is to come, and Russia has yet to convert from an Empire to a normal nation-state. 

Was it inevitable that Putin would end up taking the direction he did?
I don’t have a ready answer. I saw the change inside the man. I have to confess that at the time I made my decision to relocate back to Russia in 2003, I was quite optimistic about Russia. It seemed the country was on an irreversible course to normalcy, with modernised institutions, a web of economic dependency with the West, a globalised elite, an open society and a relatively free press. Then I saw this death by a million cuts. It started with Yukos affair in 2003, the reaction to terrorist act in Beslan in 2004, and the first Maidan in Ukraine later the same year, Putin’s Munich speech in 2007, and the invasion of Georgia in 2008... Probably these were the inevitable last acts of the ailing Russian Empire before it had totally outlived itself. 

Are you optimistic about the future?
I hope in my lifetime that I will see the demise of this regime. I don’t know how long it will take, especially since the rules of the game are permanently changing. Most likely, change will not come from within the country, from the social pressure or political turmoil. In Russian history, it always came from outside. I don’t see political activity breaking the regime, but it’s important that it continues so there are figures to take over if and when the system weakens. Six months ago, I thought the whole story was sealed for the next decade, with no change likely till the early 2030s. Suddenly the game is wide open, with the virus and the global lockdown, especially with low oil prices, with dwindling financial reserves, collapsing businesses, hesitant elites and Putin in hiding. I cannot say that change will occur in the near future but the range of scenarios is now much broader, and the future is wide open. 

Sergei Medvedev is Professor in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Previously, he worked at the Marshall Center for Security Studies in Germany, the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (Helsinki), the Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik (Ebenhausen), the Istituto Affari Internazionali (Rome) and the Institute of Europe (Moscow).