Crisis 22

Pushkin’s Brethren

Writers in an Authoritarian State - The ____ Hate Us - The Global South - Colonialism & Genocide

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April 3, 2025

Writers in an Authoritarian State

The Kremlin sees itself as a champion of Russian tradition, identity, and morality. And in the worst of senses this is true: ❧ it’s created a new version of the czarist state we saw hounding the great 19th century writers — with the same old nationalistic imperialism and the same old secretive and elite control over the masses; ❧ it’s created a new version of the Soviet regime we saw harassing Bulgakov — with its elitism, secrecy, and lack of personal freedom; ❧ it’s also recreated what both the czarist and the Soviet regimes had in spades: control over peoples and cultures from Eastern Europe to the Caucasus and the Pacific. This control is more colonial than neocolonial, since it involves direct control over land, not just overwhelming economic influence. The Kremlin’s imperialism also comes with a bizarre claim to be liberating the world from Western imperialism.

The Kremlin displays an authoritarianism that’s similar to the czarist one that forbade Pushkin from travelling abroad and that sent Dostoyevsky to a prison camp for a mock execution. It’s also similar to the illiberal Soviet repression that censored Bulgakov at every turn, forbidding him to leave Russia and write freely in the West. This lack of freedom forced Bulgakov to keep secret his novel The Master & Margarita. While it was completed by the time of his death in 1940, it wasn’t published until 1967. A completely uncensored version didn’t appear till 1969. Edythe Haber says this about it:

It’s a very complicated novel, and people get what they want out of it. […] One thing that Putin and the people of present-day Russia support is the Christianity that was attacked during the communist period. Those people who are very pro-church pick that out, whereas most readers look at the anti-authoritarianism of it." Haber says that after all the years of repression, Bulgakov's work is now out in the world, and no amount of censorship can ever put it back. (From NPR, January 21, 2015)

In using the great Russian writers, I don’t mean to imply that they would necessarily oppose the Kremlin’s use of massive violence to enlarge the boundaries of Russia — although I imagine that Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Bulgakov would oppose this. The quote I used on the previous page may still be generaly true: “Many Russian writers and historians are complicit in facilitating this war. It is their words and thoughts over the past 350 years that sowed the seeds of Russian fascism and allowed it to flourish, although many would be horrified today to see the fruits of their labor.”

Yet Putin’s thinking isn’t necessarily quintessentially Russian — if, that is, we concede that the reason great Russian writers are great can’t be separated from the fact that they’re Russian. Despite intense censorship, many oppose authoritarianism and imperialism. Many get at undercurrents of freedom that the government tries to stem. Here, for instance, is an excerpt from Richard Pevear’s introduction to Tolstoy’s final novel, Hadji Murad, which ❧ is based on his experiences in Chechnya in 1851, ❧ was written from 1896 to 1904, and ❧ was published posthumously in its complete form in 1917:

In 1852, Tolstoy published his first short story, "The Raid," about a Russian attack on a Chechen village. In chapter XVII of Hadji Murat, he returned to that same event. Few things written about the two centuries of struggle in Chechnya are as telling as the six paragraphs of this chapter, the briefest in the novella. It gives a terse, unrhetorical inventory of the results of a Russian raid on a mountain village — the same raid we have just seen in the previous chapter from Butler's jaunty point of view, the same raid Tolstoy himself took part in back in 1851. Nowhere in Tolstoy's polemical writings is there a more powerful condemnation of the senseless violence of war. 

On one hand we might say that Russian literature doesn’t have the same type of anti-colonial current we find in England — with writers like Swift, Blake, Byron, Conrad, Forster, Orwell, and Rushdie. On the other hand, it’s hard to say what Russian writers would have written about their government if they weren’t constantly being censored by it. In his autobiography of Tolstoy, Andrei Zorin writes,

The early 1850s was both a difficult and exciting time to start a literary career. Emperor Nicholas I, eager to suppress any hint of dissent after the European revolutions of 1848, had begun a new round of political repression. Among many others, the young Fedor Dostoevsky was arrested, sentenced to death, pardoned on the brink of execution and sent to Siberia. Censorship became exceptionally severe. ‘Why bother’, said one censor surprised at the temerity of authors who persisted in writing, ‘when we have already decided not to allow anything?’

It’s hard to imagine what type of anti-censorship arguments Russians might have made — if only they had been able to express themselves freely! Still, it may be helpful to note that Russia doesn’t have a deep liberal tradition (unlike England with its John Locke and John Stuart Mill), nor does it have the time-honoured arguments against censorship that we find in Chaucer’s 14th century Prologue to the Miller’s Tale, Milton’s 17th century Areopagitica, and John Stuart Mill’s 19th century On Liberty. Chaucer argues that if you don’t like what you’re reading, turn the page — don’t burn it. Milton argues that true Christians should read all manner of writing, good and bad, if they are to freely choose the good. Mill argues that even subtle censorship and coercion have no place in a free society. These arguments are deeply rooted in English trends of evolving liberalism and democracy, trends which find few successful parallels in Russia. While Russia finally abolished serfdom in 1861, England had already abolished slavery and was working on its second reform bill, which in 1867 would give the vote to more of the working class.

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Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov help us see some of the problems in both czarist and Soviet Russia: the acceptance of authoritarian government, the lack of individual freedom, and the slippery nature of social morality. From this angle, the Kremlin and its Ukraine War exacerbate the deep-rooted political and ethical problems that have plagued Russia for the last 200 years.

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The _____ Hate Us

In cases where we imagine that great Russian writers might agree with the present thinking of the Kremlin, referring to them helps us get at certain ways of thinking, and at certain cultural and historical patterns. For instance, in his 1836 “Journey to Arzrum,” the father of Russian literature, Alexander Pushkin, makes extremely negative remarks about Circassians, who are an ancient people who were largely decimated by Russia (see the Circassian Genocide). Their descendants now live mostly in the hills of North Caucasus, north and east of Abkhazia (which Russia recently wrested from Georgia):

Pushkin’s patronizing, colonial remarks about the Circassians are reminiscent of the accounts many European colonizers made about foreign peoples. And the result is the same: the local population ends up hating Europeans:

The Circassians hate us. We have forced them out of their open grazing lands; their auls have been devastated, whole tribes have been wiped out. They withdraw further and further into the mountains and from there carry out their raids. The friendship of the peaceful Circassians is unreliable; they are always ready to help their violent fellow tribesmen. The spirit of their wild chivalry has noticeably declined. They rarely attack an equal number of Cossacks, never the foot soldiers, and they run away at the sight of a cannon. But they never miss a chance to attack a weaker troop or a defenseless man. The country roundabout is full of rumors of their villainies. There is almost no way to subdue them, so long as they are not disarmed, as the Crimean Tatars were, which is very hard to accomplish on account of the hereditary feuds and blood vengeance that reign among them. Dagger and saber are parts of their body, and a baby begins to wield them sooner than he can prattle. Among them killing is a simple body movement. They keep prisoners in hope of ransom, but they treat them with terrible inhumanity, force them to work beyond their strength, feed them raw dough, beat them whenever they like, and have them guarded by their young boys, who at one word have the right to cut them up with their children's sabers. A peaceful Circassian who had shot at a soldier was recently captured. He justified it by the fact that his rifle had stayed loaded for too long. What to do with such people? It is to be hoped, however, that if we acquire the region east of the Black Sea, cutting the Circassians off from their trade with Turkey, that will force them to become friendlier to us. The influence of luxury could contribute to their taming: the samovar would be an important innovation. There is a means that is stronger, more moral, more consistent with the enlightenment of our age: the preaching of the Gospel.

In general, since World War II the West has distanced itself from such attitudes. Russia calls the West colonialist, yet it continues to do in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine what the West once did in places like Mexico, Congo, and Burma.

Seeing how a colonial mentality lingers today in the minds of the Kremlin leaders, we might substitute Ukrainians for Circassians, and put Pushkin’s words into the mouths of a Kremlin spokesperson:

The Ukrainians hate us. We have forced them out of their open grazing lands; their auls have been devastated, whole tribes have been wiped out. […] There is almost no way to subdue them, so long as they are not disarmed [. …] It is to be hoped, however, that if we acquire the region east of the Black Sea, cutting the Ukrainians off from their trade with Turkey, that will force them to become friendlier to us.

The realism at the beginning of the paragraph — The Ukrainians hate us — predicts the failure of the idealism at the end: [our actions] will force them to become friendlier to us. How can Russians bomb infrastructure and hospitals, and then expect Ukrainians to be friendly to them? Russian leaders may have their reasons for doing what they’re doing — solidarity with Russian-leaning people in the Donbas, fear of NATO, the example of Kosovo, etc. — yet none of these justify the use of extreme and prolonged violence. And none of this violence will make Ukrainians feel friendly toward them.

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The Global South

While the Russian novels of Gogol, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Bulgakov help us see into illiberal Russian systems and colonial mentalities, the postcolonial novels I look at help us see through Russia’s claim to be a champion of the Global South. I should note that by postcolonial I mean after the colonial period or critiquing a colonial power, system, or mentality. For instance, I consider Graham Greene’s The Quiet American to be a postcolonial novel. While it was written at the time the French were leaving Vietnam, it critiques both the French and the American violation of Vietnamese sovereignty.

Postcolonial novels can be used to understand the Global South and to see why the Kremlin’s rhetoric isn’t one iota as glorious as it pretends to be. While these novels may seem like deviations in time and space from the Ukraine War, they give new context to the bizarre spectacle in which the Kremlin presents itself as a champion of the Global South against the evil West.

I should note here that Global South is an odd yet helpful term. As the blue line on the following map shows, much of the Global South lies north of the equator, and some of the Global North (Australia and New Zealand) lies south of it.

Yet the term Global South does get at the basic idea of a swath of countries that are generally ❧ to the south, ❧ less wealthy, and ❧ resist falling into the orbit of very powerful countries or regions to the north — principally the U.S, Europe, Russia, and China. For this reason I suggest not including China as a Global South nation. The use of Global South also avoids the potentially negative terms Third World and developing.

An alternative name for this group of countries is non-aligned. Like Cold War, this term invites immediate comparison with the post-WW II period. This may be helpful, especially if one sees China as a Global North country. Yet it may also create some confusion: just as there are key differences between Cold War I and today’s Cold War II, so there are key differences in degrees of state-to-state alignment, especially for Vietnam, Eastern Europe, India, Brazil, South Africa, and Indonesia.

If one wants a more geographical and poetic name — as suggested by my light blue line on the map above — the Central Wave or the Middle Fin might work.

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Colonialism & Genocide

The Kremlin argues that it’s liberating Ukraine and fighting for the Global South, yet it’s easy to see through this rhetoric. Like General Westmoreland and George W. Bush, who ripped apart Vietnam and Iraq, the Kremlin is ripping apart Ukraine. It’s obvious that the Kremlin’s violence is similar to the Western colonialism that was aimed at the Global South in the past.

Throughout the colonial and Cold War periods, both the U.S. and Russia told everyone that they’re liberating the world. In saying this, I don’t mean to equate what the Americans did in Vietnam and Iraq with what the Russians are doing in Ukraine. What the Americans did was extreme and in my opinion unjustified, yet it wasn’t colonial in the sense that we use that term historically. By this I mean that the Americans didn’t try to take over the two countries and run them like their colonial possessions. Only in a vague sense, and in a way that ignores American isolationism, can we say that the US wanted Vietnam or Iraq to be an integrated part of their Empire. Russia on the other hand wants to completely digest Ukraine, and in the process erase its identity. The bombing of Vietnam was unconscionable, yet it never reached the level of genocide against an entire people.

It’s hard to get at an equivalent situation, but as a Canadian I see what Russia is doing to Ukraine as a colonial, genocidal, and fratricidal betrayal. It’s like if the US decided to invade Canada — its closest neighbour, a country which shares a great deal in terms of history, economy, language, and culture — with the intention of erasing it’s identity completely and making its citizens conform to American practices and beliefs. As the old story of Cain and Abel attests, killing a brother is a horrible, primal sin. Killing a brother nation is the same sin writ large.

I believe that the US has no intention of invading Canada, although Trump repeatedly said it would make a nice 51st state. He also said Canada doesn’t work as an independent nation, the creation of the border was arbitrary, and the border ought to be erased. Yet so far the US hasn’t invaded Canada. If it did, an overwhelming majority of Americans would mostly likely oppose their own government. Not so in Vietnam and Iraq, two nations the Kremlin is quick to mention in its diatribes against the West and the US. In these diatribes the Kremlin portrays the US as the puppet-master behind the actions of Western nations. It’s therefore important not to play into the Kremlin’s game by downplaying, by being defensive about what went on in Vietnam and Iraq. Far better to contextualize it, and to distinguish it from what’s going on in Ukraine.

Above all, it’s crucial to stop the Kremlin from using the grim facts of Vietnam and Iraq to justify their unjustifiable war against Ukraine today. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Being against the US in Vietnam and Iraq doesn’t mean you can’t be against Russia in Chechnya and Ukraine. In fact, this pro-sovereignty position is completely consistent.

It’s true that American violence in Vietnam was more lethal than Russian violence in Ukraine: the Vietnamese contend that three million Vietnamese died over the course of the war. Also, the American invasion of Iraq led to a comparable amount of internal division: it unleashed the Sunni/Shia tensions and it allowed for the rise of ISIS, much as the earlier bombings of Indochina unleashed the chaos in which the Khmer Rouge rose to power. Yet the U.S. didn’t aim to erase Vietnamese or Iraqi identity. Nor did they aim to take over the Vietnamese and Iraqi lands and run them, not in the same colonial way that the Spanish did in Mexico starting in the early 16th century, or the British did in the Indian subcontinent from 1600 to 1947. Or — and this is my point — like the Russians have done all the way from Ukraine to Kamchatka, and all the way from the 16th century to 2025.

The Russians may have allowed the Soviet Union to split up in the 1990s, yet the Kremlin soon reverted to their old colonial aims and strong-arm tactics, first in Chechnya, then in Georgia and Ukraine.

Because of their colonial expansionism, combined with the fact that they’re expanding into Ukraine, a country that ❧ borders Europe and ❧ wants to be a part of Europe, what the Russians are doing is far more dangerous to global security than what the Americans did in either Vietnam or Iraq. The Russian invasion directly infringes on the international, United Nations value of self-determination, although according to the Russian leaders it’s the West who have infringed on their inherent right to control Ukraine. Seen in the light of colonial history, this supposed right is a misguided colonial privilege and abuse.

I spell this out because I want to clarify my political position from the start: I’m deeply critical of any imperial or colonial stance. I also want to distinguish my political view above from my overall aim in the majority of the pages I write. My aim in Crisis 22 isn’t to apportion blame — it’s obvious that Russia is to blame — but rather to use literature as a lens to see into the geopolitical, personal, and cultural aspects of the present crisis.

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