요 며칠 방문자수가 '이상하게' 뜬다. 일시적으로 그러는 경우는 있었지만 이번처럼 '지속적'인 경우는 없었던 듯하다. 알라딘의 카운트를 신뢰할 수 없는 이유이다(이 밤중에 무슨 일로 몇 백 명이나 이 서재를 찾겠는가?). 그러나저러나 나는 나대로의 일을 할 뿐이다. 지난주에 스크랩해 두려던 기사를 이제야 시간을 내서 정리해둔다. <강대국의 흥망>의 저자인 폴 케네디 예일대 교수가 쓴 러시아 관련칼럼이다. 원문도 같이 붙여놓았다(왼쪽 정렬을 해놓아도 화면상으로는 양쪽맞춤으로 뜨는 탓에 유감스럽게도 단어들이 깨져서 보인다).
경향신문(07. 08. 18) 러시아, 강대국으로 복귀하다
지난 몇 년간 블라디미르 푸틴 대통령이 이끄는 러시아는 다시금 자신감 넘치고 매우 공세적인 나라가 됐다. 필자는 20년전 저서 ‘강대국의 흥망’에서 이 거대한 나라가 많은 외압과 내홍에도 쉽게 망하지는 않을 것이라고 예측했다. 그러나 러시아가 세계 무대 중심에 이렇게 빨리 복귀할 것이라고는 생각하지 못했다.
많은 이들은 석유와 가스의 값이 급등했고 러시아가 운좋게도 방대한 양의 에너지를 보유하고 있다는 점을 들어 러시아의 회복 배경이 취약하다고 볼 지도 모른다. 그러나 노르웨이나 두바이처럼 석유 수입이 지혜롭게 투자될 경우 국가 발전을 가져올 수 있다. 분명한 것은 늘어난 부가 크렘린에 공세적인 외교정책을 펴도록 자신감을 불어넣었다는 점이다.
현재 러시아 일방주의적 행동을 능가하는 이는 지난 6년간 백악관이 유일할 것이다. 미국이 국제기구에서 특수한 지위를 이용해 이스라엘을 보호해 온 것처럼 러시아는 유엔 안보리에서 거부권 행사로 코소보의 독립 희망을 짓밟았다. 푸틴 정부 관리들은 이웃 국가들에 러시아 에너지 공급에 대한 의존도를 인식시켜 압박하는 이른바 ‘송유관 외교’를 구사하는 데 능숙하다. 서구 석유 회사들도 러시아 정부가 에너지 사용계약을 법적 의무사항으로 간주하지 않는다는 것을 깨닫고 있다. 러시아는 군축 협정을 폐기하는 속도로 국제 사회에서 영향력을 확대해가고 있는 것으로 보인다.
사실 이는 새삼스러운 일이 아니다. 패배와 치욕을 경험했던 전통적인 파워엘리트가 자산과 권위, 위협력을 회복하는 시점에서 보이는 단계적 행동 패턴이다. 만약 이같은 현상이 지금 더 눈에 띈다면 세계의 맹목적인 석유 의존도와 부시 미국 행정부의 이라크와 테러리즘에 대한 강박 때문일 것이다.
오히려 필자의 호기심을 자극하는 것은 국가주의 나아가 민족주의적 기운을 강화하기 위해 푸틴 행정부가 실행하는 광범위하고도 미묘한 조치들이다. 애국주의적인 청년단체 조직과 러시아 역사교과서 수정작업이 여기에 해당된다.
‘나시(‘우리들’이라는 뜻)’라는 이름의 청년단체는 불과 2년 남짓 됐지만, 민주진영의 푸틴 정권 비판에 맞서 극우주의자 친위대로 삼으려는 정부의 의도에 힘입어 빠르게 성장하고 있다. 나시가 옹호하는 주요 정책들은 모국에 대한 경외, 가족과 러시아 전통, 결혼에 대한 존경, 외국인에 대한 혐오 등이다(나치 히틀러의 구호와의 유사성을 외면하기 힘들다).
푸틴이 고등학교 역사교범 집필자들을 불러 칭찬했다는 것도 그렇다. 역사학자로서 필자는 교육부가 국가의 과거에 대한 어떤 형태의 공식적인 의견을 채택해야 한다는 것에 망설이는 입장이지만, 러시아의 역사 교범이 민주국가 연합에 참여하는 것이 미국에 주권의 일부분을 내주는 것으로 기술한 것은 충격적이다.
장기적으로 볼때 나시 극단주의자들의 돌출 행동은 역사에 모호한 자취로 남을 수 있다. 반면에 젊은이들에게 의도적으로 사상을 주입하고 그들이 물려받을 위대하지만 극심한 혼란을 겪은 국가의 역사를 수정하는 것은 우리의 21세기에 중대한 의미를 지닐 것이다.(정리|김유진기자)
WORRIED ABOUT PUTIN’S RUSSIA?: READ ON
By Paul Kennedy
For the past several years, the Russia of Vladimir Putin has been sending very clear signals that it is no longer the weakened, troubled and Western-dependent state that it was compelled to be following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Russia is now once again a proud and very assertive nation, increasingly recognizable by its actions to historians of its Czarist and Communist predecessors. Twenty years ago (in my book “The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers”), I predicted that this enormous country, though deeply troubled by internal fractures and external exhaustion, would not go down without a fight; but I did not think Moscow’s return to the center of the world stage would occur so fast.
Now, many will say that this recovery is based on shallow foundations, in fact that it rests almost totally upon the high price of oil and gas — and Russia’s fortunate possession of vast supplies of those vital commodities. That is true. But oil revenues, if invested wisely (as has been done by two countries as different as Norway and Dubai during the past decade), can enhance national infrastructure, industrial and technological developments, and military security. The Dutch Republic was built upon the herring fisheries of the North Sea; the good burghers of Amsterdam knew how to reinvest their profits in other directions.
In any case, it is perfectly clear that not only is Putin’s regime making smart strategic investments — in infrastructure, laboratories, a revived and modernized military — but also that its flow of wealth is giving the Kremlin the confidence to pursue assertive foreign policies, secure for the moment in a set of global circumstances that has hobbled the United States, turned the attention of China and India elsewhere (toward growth and internal modernization), and given all the world’s oil-producing states immense leverage. Even the incompetent administrations of the late Messrs. Chernenko and Breznhev could not have frittered away such strong cards. And Putin seems, by all measures, a truly formidable poker player.
Right now, the list of Moscow’s unilateralist actions is probably only exceeded by those of the White House over the past six years. Take an obvious example: Russia uses its veto power on the U.N. Security Council to support Serbia and crush Kosovo’s hopes of independence, just as the U.S. uses its privilege to protect Israel and block pro-Palestinian resolutions in the world organization. In a similar negative way, Russia controls what the Security Council may, or may not, do regarding actions against Iran and North Korea.
The list goes on. Putin’s ministers are adept at using what has come to be called “pipeline diplomacy” to force neighbors like Belarus and Ukraine to bend to Moscow’s will and recognize their dependence upon Russian energy supplies, and it is clear that this is intended to have a secondary intimidation effect upon the states of Western Europe as well. Estonia and Latvia are browbeaten over what are regarded as anti-Russian acts, such as the removal of Soviet war memorials or treatment of Russian-speaking citizens.
Western oil companies are discovering that a contract for control of energy resources is not necessarily viewed by the Moscow government as a sacred legal obligation; as the Russian state returns to power, it is insisting upon altered conditions, all of which ensure that the Kremlin and its agencies have the majority share. Thus, massive international corporations such as BP, Exxon and ConocoPhillips, long regarded as powerful independent actors, are now, literally, being put over the barrel, forced to recognize their weaker bargaining position.
Many of their CEOs must have rubbed their eyes at the reports that Russia has just claimed extensive rights at the North Pole, with implications for rights to the exploitation of seabed energy resources. Moscow seems to be advancing its international claims with about the same speed that it denounces arms-control accords. Really, it is hard to keep up.
If all of this is unsettling, especially to Western business interests and to left-wing theorists of global capitalist conspiracies, it is by no means unusual. Actually, compared with extravagant policies and proclamations of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Russia’s actions are rather predictable. They are the steps taken by a traditional power elite that, having suffered defeat and humiliation, is now bent upon the recovery of its assets, its authority and its capacity to intimidate.
There is nothing in the history of Russia since Ivan the Terrible to suggest that Putin is doing anything new. “Top-down” policies from the Kremlin have a thousand-year provenance. If they seem more noticeable at this moment in time, it may simply be because of two (possibly temporary) factors: the modern world’s blind dependence upon petroleum, and the Bush administration’s obsession with Iraq and terrorism. All Putin is doing is walking through an open gate — opened, by and large, by the West.
So the reports from Russia that interest me most are not those concerning drone submarines under the Arctic icecap, or putting the screws upon Belarus to pay backdated oil charges. What intrigues me are the broader and more subtle measures being instituted by the Putin regime to enhance national — and, even more, nationalist — pride. Unless I am mistaken, they point to something much more purposeful, and potentially quite sinister.
Two examples will have to suffice here: the creation of a patriotic youth movement, and the not-too-subtle rewriting of Russia’s school history books. The youth movement called “Nashi” (it translates as “ours” or “our own”) is only a couple of years old, but it is growing fast, encouraged by government agencies determined to instill the right virtues
into the next generation and to use this cadre of ultra-Russianists to buttress Putin’s regime against domestic (read: liberal) critics.
The policies that Nashi advocates are eclectic, although probably the same could have been said about the Hitler Jugend 70 years ago. Among the main features are reverence for the Fatherland, respect for the family, Russian traditions, and marriage (the phrase “Kinder, Kueche, Kirche” is hard for this historian to resist), and a pretty complete detestation of foreigners; it is hard to tell whether American imperialists, Chechnyan terrorists, or Estonian ingrates are at the bottom of their list of those who threaten the Russian way of life.
Right now, Nashi is training tens of thousands of young diligents; right now, they are in summer camps where they do mass aerobics, discuss “proper” and “corrupt” politics, and receive the necessary education for the struggles to come. Vast numbers have recently been mobilized to harass the British and Estonian ambassadors in Moscow (don’t say the Foreign Ministry was unaware of such stuff), following Moscow’s disputes with those two countries. According to The Financial Times, Nashi is training 60,000 “leaders” to monitor voting and conduct exit polls in elections this coming December and March. One doubts if their impartiality will reach that of, say, an international U.N. electoral observer unit. I find this all pretty creepy.
So, too, are the reports that Putin has personally complimented the authors of a new manual for high school history teachers that seeks to instill a renewed pride in teenagers of their country’s past and encourage national solidarity. As a professional historian, I always shrink from the idea that education ministries should approve some sort of official view of the national past, although I know that bureaucrats from Japan to France do precisely that, that the PRC leadership would get highly upset if it learned that schools in China could choose their own textbooks, and that American fundamentalists try to put their own clumsy footprint on what children in the land of the free should actually be exposed to.
But it is one thing for French kids to be told about Joan of Arc’s heroism or American kids about Paul Revere’s midnight ride; everyone is entitled to a Robin Hood or William Tell or two. It’s a bit more disturbing to learn that the new Russian history manual teaches that “entry into the club of democratic nations involves surrendering part of your national sovereignty to the U.S.” and other such choice contemporary lessons that suggest to Russian teenagers that they face dark forces abroad.
What does this all mean? Should oil prices collapse — should pigs fly — then Mr. Putin’s efforts at a Russian nationalistic renaissance might also tumble. But there is no doubt about the coherence of this plan to rebuild Russian pride and strength from the top down (BEGIN ITALICS) and (END ITALICS) the bottom up.
Over the longer run, the current street agitations against Britain’s ambassador and the tearing down of the Estonian flag by Nashi extremists may be obscure footnotes to history. By contrast, the deliberate campaigns to indoctrinate Russian youth and to
rewrite the history of the great though terribly disturbed nation that they are inheriting might be much more significant for the unfolding of our 21st century.
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Paul Kennedy is the J. Richardson Professor of History and the director of International Security Studies at Yale University. His most recent book is “The Parliament of Man,” about the United Nations.
COPYRIGHT 2007, TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC. (8/10/2007)
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