Unrest around Russian borders shows when empires crumble, they become murderous

Nothing like a good and clever book. I suddenly remembered just such a book, when watching ongoing happenings around Russia’s borders. At least two former Soviet republics were in turmoil, this week. In Georgia the pro-Western capitol dwellers staged demonstrations, protesting against the Parliament’s intention to pass a law on foreign agents. The idea was to copy an American law about organizations or private persons having to declare their foreign funding, so as to let the public know if any of them may represent foreign interests. The anti-Russian Georgian opposition has declared that bill “Russia-inspired” and tried to oust the whole government. In Moldavia, the reverse happened. The pro-Russian opposition tried to oust the government, accusing it of aiding Ukraine and the West against the people’s will. In both cases, we see violent clashes on the streets. There were earlier similar events in Belorussia and Kazakhstan. The new eruptions of the old conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan add to the general picture, namely, instability all around the Russian borders. You add to it the murderous war in Ukraine, and that picture is getting even more convincing. While the book – it has been published a year ago in the US, and the subject was the crash of the British Empire, with all kinds of wars and atrocities committed by the Raj even in the 1950s. That’s Legacy of Violence - A History of the British Empire by Caroline Elkins. What really struck me in her work, were the dates. You normally are mentally prepared for mass murders at the start of the colonial conquest of foreign lands. I won’t be lecturing you on Indian history, but I’ve just finished a short story about the crown rubies of the kings of Burma, that disappeared when the British stormed the palace in 1885. That’s what they do when they grab lands, they do not stop at anything, do they? But Elkins’ book was mostly about the retreating, not about an attacking empire. So why they could not retreat without war and mayhem? After all, they’ve had enough. Look at these attempts to estimate the riches, plundered from India in 200 years, amounting to today’s $45 trillion, with about 165 million premature deaths between 1880-1920. Not to mention the hunger of 1943 or the victims of Amritsar in 1919. But why should the outgoing empire start an operation in Palestine after the Second World War? Why build concentration camps for 230,000 people in Kenya in 1953? The American lady gives a lot of good answers for that. And most of these answers are about the mentality of the masters of the world when they see that something wrong happens with their power. The reviews are quoting her lines about the sadistic methods that marked the last acts of empire, being not an anomalous aberration but learned behaviours of imperial power. We are talking about what she calls “liberal imperialism”, with its belief in the benevolent power of empire to improve subject peoples. The big idea was (and is) that “backward” societies would be transformed by the violent application of free trade and proper education. The British Empire may be gone, but we have been witnessing the same liberal imperialism in creating a new empire, ruled by the US or the “collective West”. The new empire learned some lessons from the predecessors’ failure, by not establishing direct rule over these or those territories. But that soft or violent application of free trade and proper education was what we saw almost everywhere, especially in the former parts of the USSR. Elkins’ description of “self-delusion, seductive mythology and doublespeak” were also very much around for all these three decades after the USSR. There was an American review of Caroline Elkins’ book and naturally, it tried to say that by starting the war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin was presenting the war as an act of imperial policing, not military aggression. Oh, no, you won’t, my friends. The story of Ukraine and other former pieces of the Soviet Empire is about three decades of powerful attempts of the US and Europeans to colonize these territories, dragging them into a liberal empire, spanning – preferably – all of the globe. The methods were British, though without direct rule. Education, political brainwashing through hundreds of NGOs financed from abroad – these things were everywhere. They still are, though there were several setbacks for the new Raj in many cases, like in Belorussia. Most amazing was the lethargic Moscow reaction to these activities, notably in the 1990s, with little change in the 2000s. There were a lot of alarmist voices in the media noting that somehow the “spread of democracy” around Russia, spearheaded by all these NGOs as in “foreign agents”, invariably promoted hatred towards Moscow and to ethnic Russians living in these new nations. But Russian diplomacy preferred to stay diplomatic, relying on a soft approach or no approach at all. Ukraine, of course, was the extreme case. It all began there with ridiculous attempts by nationalist historians to claim that Ukrainians have always been fighting the encroaching Russian aggressor. And it ended with building up a huge army, openly getting ready for a war with Russia. Finally, since Russia regularly showed reluctance to show up for the war, Ukraine started a war with its own Russian-speaking territories. All that had been gladly supported by the liberal imperialism of the collective West. Most people in Russia tend to view the mentioned wave of violence and unrest around our country as a sign of the new Raj grabbing new lands, and being on the offensive. But what if it is rather something that Elkins is describing, namely a typical case of a retreating empire getting murderous? After all, we all can see that the global world and the end of history, predicted in the late 1990s, went astray. But the masters of the world have no habit of retreating softly, their natural reaction is to double down on fomenting havoc and bloodshed everywhere. The author is a columnist for the Russian State agency website ria.ru, as well as for other publications. Views expressed are personal. Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.