KavkazCenter - Russia: The Fiction And Fact Of Empire

Russia: The Fiction And Fact Of Empire

In the new book by nationalist writer Aleksandr Prokhanov, a dynamic Russian leader known as the "Emperor of the Polar Star" comes to power after ‘'winning'' a war against proud mountain-dwellers in the Caucasus.

The book, "Symphony Of The Fifth Empire," is a collection of essays calling on Russia's elite, liberals, and patriots alike to unite to construct a new Eurasian empire -- a successor to the Soviet Union and Tsarist Russia. Prokhanov's book, which he says is the most important in his life, has reportedly been translated into English, Chinese, Hebrew, Ukrainian, and Latvian.

"One can see signs of emerging empire almost everywhere," Prokhanov writes. "In events such as the building of new types of ships and submarines...launching the new 'Bulova' missile...or the construction of the North European Gas Pipeline."

The author is ebullient about Russia's state-controlled gas monopoly, Gazprom: "It gathers together Russia, by merging companies, connecting pipelines, extending its steel tentacles to the terminals of St. Petersburg and Nakhodka, laying [new pipeline] tracks at the bottom of the Baltic Sea and to China and stitching together the tissue of the former Soviet republics."

Bestseller

The book is likely to sell well. Prokhanov's previous best-selling novel, "Mr. Gexogen" (2002), was a thinly fictionalized account that maintains that the 1999 apartment-block explosions in Moscow and other cities, the renewal of fighting in Chechnya, and the election of Vladimir Putin as president were all the result of a conspiracy led by veterans of the KGB.

"Mr. Gexogen" won the prestigious National Bestseller Prize and Prokhanov, who had previously been a fringe nationalist figure largely ignored by the mainstream media, became a pundit on a number of national television channels and the Ekho Moskvy radio station.

Nikita Mikhalkov, an Oscar-winning filmmaker known for his pro-imperial and monarchist views, presided over the launch of Prokhanov's new book on October 24.

While the event was largely unreported by the mainstream media, it received prime-time coverage on the state-controlled Channel One and RTR television networks and in the semi-official "Rossiskaya gazeta."

Politicians from across the political spectrum attended the bash, including Leonid Gozman and Boris Nadezhdin from the liberal Union of Rightist Forces, former Deputy Prosecutor-General Aleksandr Kolesnikov from the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party, Vladimir Zhirnovsky, a co-leader of the national-patriotic Liberal Democratic Party of Russia and Sergei Glaziyev from the nationalist Motherland.

Speaking at the event, Prokhanov, who also publishes the savage anti-Western weekly "Zavtra," said that he sees Russia's future as a new superstate, which he refers to as the "fifth empire." Russia's revival has already begun, he says, under Putin. "The first Russian empire was Kyivan Rus, the second was the Moscow Kingdom, the third was the St. Petersburg Empire of Romanovs, and now we are witnessing the emergence of the 'fifth empire.' It is still invisible but its inauguration has taken place," he said.

Russian Pride

Prokhanov's ideas -- a combination of nostalgia, nationalism, and revanchism -- are nothing particularly new.

Anatoly Chubais, then the leader of the Union of Rightist Forces, spoke in 2004 of a "liberal empire" based on energy resources.

In 2005, leftist writer Maxim Kalashnikov published his book "Forward To The USSR-2," in which he popularized an unrealized scenario for the reform of the Soviet Union that dates back to the early 1980s and which was attributed to then KGB Chairman Yury Andropov. According to this scenario, the Soviet Union should be transformed from a country with a clumsy socialist economy into a smart, aggressive, and strong-willed imperial state -- a kind of Red Star Inc.

And in 2006, a group of Russian monarchists linked to the state-security community anonymously published a widely circulated book, "Russian Project," in which they called for the restoration of the monarchy and the Russian imperial order.

Growing Acceptance

But such ideas, which years ago might have seemed outlandish, are now gaining more currency among Russian elites.

Russia has accumulated a number of black marks in recent years for its dubious democratic credentials -- dubbed "sovereign democracy" by Kremlin ideologists. The suppression of mass media, restriction of NGO activities, and the abolition of gubernatorial elections have all alarmed critics in Russia and abroad.

But, of late, "sovereign democracy" has acquired more chauvinist overtones

Victor Yasamann

Source: Rferl