Why is Russia aggressive?

Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimea with a new force raised the question of the reasons for the extreme aggressiveness of Russia's foreign policy, which makes Russia itself a very dangerous phenomenon of world politics, threatening the entire civilized world.

The question about the reasons for Russia's aggressive behavior can be formulated as follows: is today's Russia aggressive because it was headed by a man like Vladimir Putin, who has some specific psychological characteristics, or Russia is aggressive because its history or nature itself contains something that objectively attracts this country to the path of foreign expansion?

In our opinion, the reason for Russia's aggressiveness lies in the combination of the three main factors that resonate among themselves, with the result that modern Russia is a significant threat to neighboring countries and the world security system as a whole.

Perhaps the first such factor can be considered the subjective, psychological factor associated with the psychology of President Putin, who is at the top of the authoritarian hierarchy of power, whose decisions determine the content and direction of the foreign policy of the Russian state. According to the psychological theory of the presidency of American scientist James David Barbra (James David Barber), outlined in his famous book “The Presidential Character”, all presidents can be classified into four types of character: 1) active-positive, i.e. the type whose traits include optimism, willingness to act and job satisfaction (this type of presidential character included such US presidents as: Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, John Kennedy); 2) passive-positive type, in which the rather low self-esteem of the president is compensated by excessive optimism and the desire to please everyone (examples: William Taft and Ronald Reagan); 3) is an active-negative type of president characterized by such features as aggressiveness, a high degree of rigidity of thinking, and attitude to power as a means of self-realization (examples: Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon); 4) is a passive-negative type, characterized by such features as a strong sense of duty, a desire to shy away from power, low self-esteem, compensated by serving others (examples: Calvin Coolidge and Dwight Eisenhower).

At the same time, Barber considered the most dangerous and conflicting type of president to be the actively negative type, to which President Putin belongs.

From the point of view of the psychological theory of Putin's psycho-types, it can be attributed to the paranoid psycho-type, which is characterized by the following character traits: insensitivity to other people's grief, vindictiveness, categorical, deceit, ability to manipulate people in their own interests. The paranoiac type often destroys the existing order and prefers that everyone play by its rules. Here is what is said about such a psychotype in psychological literature: “It is distinguished by perfidy. And he will find a lot of excuses for why he broke the contract. Conscience, disturbing people of other psycho-types, quickly calms down on the paranoid. He forgets good deeds, devalues ​​them in his own eyes and in the eyes of other people, easily manipulates facts-arguments in his psycho-protective benefit. Often blames other people for ingratitude, reproaches, counts their good deeds. In communication, there are constantly business-like requests, orders, orders, instructions. ”

This characteristic fully explains to us why Putin so easily went to the flagrant violations of international law against Ukraine.

The current Putin complexes are also associated with his childhood. So, Polish Newsweek quotes Putin's childhood friend: “Volodya fought wildly, he had to win, otherwise he fell into a rage. Soon everyone began to fear him. ” As we can see, Putin’s psychology has not changed significantly since his childhood: he still falls into a rage if he loses, and civilized countries are already beginning to fear him due to unpredictability and heightened aggressiveness.

All these negative features of the paranoid type were fully manifested by Putin during the Russian aggression against Georgia and Ukraine.

It is quite obvious that a president with such traits of character, especially if under the influence of unlimited power they turn into pathology, bears the gravest threat to both his country and the whole world. Especially if it is the president of a nuclear power.

Incidentally, for understanding Putin’s psychology, the book “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness” by Erich Fromm is of particular interest, since Putin’s behavior reveals obvious signs of aggressiveness of an aging male seeking to impress a young female.

Be that as it may, the psychological characteristics of a state leader have a serious influence on the foreign policy of his state if the authoritarian power structure of this state makes this leader the center for making major state decisions on which the fate of the country and the world can depend.

The second factor determining the aggressiveness of Russia can be called a socio-psychological factor, since here we are talking about the features of the mass psychology of the majority of the Russian population. The dominant type of the Russian population is an authoritarian personality. In the most general terms, an authoritarian type of person means the type of person that is characterized by an intolerant attitude toward uncertainty, excessive deference to authority and authority, as well as hostility to any group that potentially violates the existing order. As is known, the very concept of an authoritarian type of personality was formulated and developed by the Frankfurt School, in particular, by such thinkers as Theodore Adorno and Erich Fromm. Authoritarian personality traits include conformism, authoritarian ideas, authoritarian aggression, superstitions and stereotypes (including those of other nationalities), power and "hardness", destructiveness and cynicism, projection and exaggerated concerns about sex (sexual repression) . Essentially, this is a sadomasochistic character. Unfortunately, all these traits of an authoritarian personality on a massive scale are present in modern Russian society, 80 percent of which support Putin’s policies. These features are expressed both in hysterical Ukrainophobia, and in great-power chauvinism, and in those laws that are directed against sexual minorities in Russia.

In the pre-revolutionary science of law, the creator of the psychological school of law Lev Petrazhitsky called the socio-psychological state in which the majority of the population of Russia is “slave soul”, meaning by this the underdeveloped sense of justice, and the lack of self-esteem and respect for the dignity of another person. Here, involuntarily, the famous words of Gilyarovsky are remembered: “There are two misfortunes in Russia: the power of darkness is below, and the power of darkness is on top”. If Putin has concentrated in his hands the "darkness of power", then his very power rests on the "power of darkness", that is, on the type of authoritarian personality that dominates in Russian society. To this we can add only the fact that between the authoritarian government and the Black-Hundred masses there is a very thin layer of the Russian intelligentsia, whose position in modern Russia is truly dramatic; however, which, nevertheless, is precisely the most valuable in the history and modernity of Russian society. It is this subtle social stratum that is now trying heroically to resist Putin’s autocratic insanity, on the one hand, and the chauvinism of the masses Putin’s propaganda zombie, on the other.

And, finally, one can fully understand Russia's aggressiveness only by referring to such an objective factor as its geographical size. So, in the opinion of the American-English thinker Leopold Cora, expressed in his famous book “The Disintegration of the States”, the main reason for the aggressiveness of countries is their excessive size. Therefore, the pledge of peace and democracy in the world is the creation of small states or the proper federalization of large state entities. If Hitler, Kor believed, had come to power in a small state of Bavaria, and not in huge Germany, the consequences of his activities would not have been so devastating, and soon he could have been neutralized. According to Cora, a large state is like a cancer tumor, aggressively devouring everything around it and striving for unlimited expansion. Just such a cancer for the world today is Putin’s empire.

It is not by chance that some analysts predict the speedy collapse of Russia, as it happened in its time with the USSR. For example, Vladimir Bukovsky, regarding Putin's Russia, notes: “As soon as oil prices fall, this will inevitably weaken the political center and instantly lead to an increase in separatism on the periphery. And they, like drug addicts, constantly raise their dose. A country can break into several pieces. And not at all on ethnic boundaries. It will be an economic fragmentation. And these “pieces” will gradually build up their foundations, and in the future we can unite in the form of a confederation. ”

In a word, Russia is now repeating the history of the USSR, only on a reduced scale. If before the USSR showed aggression towards its neighboring states and sought to create satellite states around itself, then modern Russia does the same, only in relation to the former Soviet republics, called “close foreign countries”. Only now Russia has nothing to offer the former Soviet republics, since it cannot serve as an example of successful economic, political or cultural development for them; and Russia simply will not have enough resources to hold the power of neighboring countries. In this sense, Putin’s Crimean adventure was not the beginning of the re-establishment of the Russian empire, but its impotent and hysterical agony.

What could be the vector of development of Russia in the near historical perspective? Will she be able to overcome her aggressiveness and take the path of civilized development?

This question is difficult to answer. Nevertheless, one cannot but recall the words of the historian Nathan Eidelman that the whole history of Russia is a kind of recurring cycle consisting of 10 years of reforms and 20 years of counterreforms. If the years of perestroika and the beginning of the period of Yeltsin’s rule were just this ten-year period of reforms, then the period of Putin’s rule is a period of counter-reforms. For the period of reforms in Russia, modernization and westernization were always characteristic, through which Russia joined Western civilization, forming democratic institutions within, and pursuing a less constructive and peaceful foreign policy. The period of counter-reforms in Russia always meant slipping into barbarism and was characterized by a desire to enslave the neighboring nations.

Thus, simple calculations show that the Putin period of counterreforms remains in any case the strength of 5-6 years, after which Russia will inevitably face the task of westernizing society and the state and returning to the fold of Western civilization. At the international level, such a return will mean that Russia will be forced to get rid of foreign policy aggressiveness and become a normal civilized state, respecting not the right of the strong, but the force of law in international relations.

Author: Alexander Merezhko, Doctor of Law, Professor, Head of the Department of Law of the Kiev National Linguistic University, Professor of the Krakow Academy named after Andrzej Modzewski.