Reactionary Rus

Russia seems either both European and Asian or neither European nor Asian.  Is it Marxist or conservative?  Atheist or Orthodox?  Democratic or despotic?  The West is never really clear about Russia, as Winston Churchill once succinctly put into a pithy comment.

Today the liberal Western media is wringing its hands about a further step towards despotism, voted for by the Russian public.  What makes the media more upset is that the new constitution voted upon by the Russian people not only in effect seems to give Putin power for life, but has been sold to the people as a restoration of traditional values, particularly in terms of protecting marriage as between man and woman and including God in the constitution.

Traditional values are thus seen as the clever ploy and part of a despotic manoeuvre to seize power.  Worse is that the Western media regards this as an appeal to prejudice as though Putin has manipulated base instincts to rally support for his prolonged presidency.

The constitution itself does place a strict limit upon the presidency of two terms of six years.  It nonetheless resets the clock allowing Putin to begin his terms all over again.  Hence the accusation of an attempt to fix up a lifelong presidency. 

The role of a little-known body called the State Council is also raised in importance and power.  Again Putin’s critics have accused him of using this body to ensure he retains power as a member.

Whatever the politics, and this article is not meant to defend Putin, the interesting question is how Putin has relied upon social conservatism as an integral part of these constitutional changes.  By contrast, in the West, with its representative democracy, widely-held socially-conservative views remain excluded from political debate.  It is as though socially-conservative views cannot break through the dominance of liberalism in the Western party system, while Putin’s ever increasing power has meant the focus of accountability is directly upon him.  If Russia were to introduce same-sex marriage only one man could be held responsible for that.  Meanwhile in the United Kingdom a Conservative Government could introduce same-sex marriage with very little consequence in terms of electoral losses amongst small-c conservative voters. 

It would be a mistake to see social conservatism in Russia as somehow imposed as false consciousness from above.  Anyone who has encountered the revival of Christianity in Russia or discussed traditional values with Russians will have found that socially-conservative views remain mainstream for many.  It is far more likely that Putin is following the instincts of grass-roots attitudes that survived seventy years of atheistic Marxism to win his referendum.

What the overwhelming vote for Putin’s constitutional changes therefore demands from Western social conservatives is that they ask themselves why they are losing so badly compared to the victory in the cultural war in Russia.  And it is not just in Russia,  indeed many of the former Warsaw Pact nations are seeing a revival in both conservative Christianity and social conservatism, from Hungary to Poland.  Meanwhile, without any violent revolution in the West, values have been stripped away leaving a meaningless liberal anomie somehow fraudulently compensated for by Left-wing identity politics.  Most social conservatives will appreciate which of the cultural options will lead to greater human flourishing.  The disconcerting thing is that in Russia it appears to come at the cost of stable rule of law and democratic politics.

But is the political contrast so black and white?  While there is clearly a healthy bedrock and foundation of rule of law in the West, it is undeniable that as the cultural Marxist and postmodern outlooks have rapidly spread from the Academy into politics, law enforcement and the legal system, those fundamentals cannot be taken for granted.

 

There is a sort of totalitarianism-lite in the West.  In a free market economy it is vital to be able to survive in the world of employment.  With legislation on hate speech and equality goals any challenge to the cultural Marxist agenda can result in loss of employment - permanently.  There is no need for the Gulag or brutal oppression when people are scared about not being able to pay their mortgage or feed their families.  Meanwhile elections might change the finer details of economic policy, but whatever the voters want, the agenda of attacking traditional values continues under whichever party is in power.  There is a sort of liberal oligarchy installed in the West, with much more in common across borders than with the people within politicians' own nations.  In the UK the Brexit vote was a sign of this disparity and the same was true of Donald Trump’s election victory.  

Nonetheless, even without the heavy-handed legislation and the confident arrogance of the liberal oligarchy, the public in the West are very unsure about their conservative instincts.  While Russian babushka grandmothers ensured values survived Soviet oppression during the years of the Godless regime and the various nationalistic movements in Catholic Europe looked to Pope John Paul II, in the West the tide of consumerism and popular culture has almost drowned any residue of conservatism.  It is not just a detached oligarchy, but a confused public that ensures the onward and unimpeded march towards Sodom and Gomorrah.   

The Academy, the political world and the media reinforce the enthusiasm and commitment of each other for pursuing an agenda of radical liberalism that can only end in anomie.  Those institutions (such as the Church and the Tory Party) that should give leadership in this cultural battle are dominated by the same group of people – liberal, privileged and tending towards a relativism learnt at university.  The non-values dressed up as worthy tolerance and open-mindedness that these powerful people share give them some sense of purpose while allowing moral decadence in their own lives and in society at large.  While ideas inherited from the Protestant roots of much of the West in terms of probity in public office and the rule of law persist at least for now, there is a programme of undermining the standards and meaning bequeathed to us by Christian civilization.  The corruption is benign and amoral at the moment, not violent and criminal.  In a sense that makes it all the more corrosive to the soul of Europe.  It is spiritually and morally bankrupt, but sees itself as righteous and worthy.  This is a very dangerous situation.

 

It is dangerous not because of the risk of some extremist movement from beyond the Overton Window (although such a risk should not be breezily dismissed, as we saw from the rise of Black Lives Matter with its Marxist agenda of erasing history and silencing opposition over the summer).  Even in the straitened times of Covid 19 and in the post- Credit crunch world, material life will not turn into unbearable suffering for most.  Instead there is a risk of falling into a state of anomie in part because of all our wants being met in a consumerist society and all our freedoms to follow our passions respected as long as we “respect” the driving passions of everyone else.  Fundamentally important to this nadir of Western civilization is the disappearance of Christianity.  What remains of the Church as an institution in most Western countries is run and led by that same anti-traditional section of society, thereby ensuring no genuine revival is possible.  Combine that with the continual pushing at lowering of moral standards and promotion of immorality in drama and in all aspects of the media and the trajectory of the West looks to be pretty vertiginous.

 

To look specifically at the UK, where social conservatism is almost silenced, there is no mechanism such as the primary system that the United States has, to give direct democratic input into the selection of the prime minister.  True we are a  monarchy, not a pure republican democracy.  A primary system for the potential Prime Minister does not necessarily mean that the Queen would not still have the formal role of appointing her first minister, only that the party would select him differently and then recommend him to the Queen.  That primary system would be a safety valve to overcome the control the party has over selection of candidates.  It would be a means to start dismantling the liberal oligarchy.

What the Left dismisses sniffily as “populism” must have democratic avenues to be expressed, because it reflects the attitudes and prejudices of a nation.  Despotism from the Right remains a very remote risk in the West of course.  The real danger is the growing power of cultural Marxism to which dominant liberalism has been unable to present any serious ideological resistance.  Freedom of speech, political diversity and honesty are all under threat from the cancel culture of the Left.  Electing a Conservative Government in the UK has done very little to slow down the increasing power of the Marxists, as has been seen by the ease with which they seized control of the streets and attacked precious monuments with seeming impunity. 

Thus there are a number of reasons why traditional perspectives are locked out of the public square – the lack of Church leadership, the cultural changes forced by the media, the infiltration of the Conservative Party by hard-line social liberals, the politically-correct restrictions enforced through intimidation and by means of new laws.  Meanwhile the Academy continues its programme of brainwashing our young people with Marxist indoctrination. 

Nonetheless, Russia faced all this too and yet retained its belief in traditional values.  Perhaps the iron fist causes a reaction of resistance; but more likely, despite Sergeism, the values were more deeply instilled in the Russian people and could not be erased.

In the West since before the Enlightenment, all the way back to William of Ockham and the Nominalists, truth and values have been attacked.  This has disorientated ordinary people, meaning they are not sure how to justify what they feel in their spirit to be true.    The real problem therefore lies in centuries of dismantling our Christian values.  It lies in the very liberal paradigm that tried to accommodate the fracturing of Protestantism into different sects and the loss of a coherent and sustaining tradition.  It lies in the European narrative from a Humanist perspective of an oppressive Church that played the role of Caesar.  It lies in the doctrine of Papal Supremacy that broke the West from the East and eventually led not to a rebuilding of cohesion, but everyone becoming their own Pope through Protestantism.

Therefore even with avenues for populist expression, whereby the residue of traditional values amongst ordinary people that have not yet been erased might find expression, that incoherence of tradition will not be overcome.  Instead only a spiritual renewal will achieve anything in secular society.  Only a rediscovery of Tradition in the sense of a uniting, objectively true and subjectively encountered reality can heal the West.  Its very dynamic scientific and material successes are in part both due to and a cause of the break down of that cohesive Tradition.  The worldly comforts and riches achieved were pursued after the loss of Tradition and distract from the need for a return to Tradition.  The West has gained the whole world, but lost its soul.

Russia undoubtedly has its problems, as indicated by high levels of both single parenthood and abortions.  There is financial and criminal corruption in high places.  It was badly damaged by the Revolution and prior to that there were Oriental forms of oppression by the Tsarist state despite its Christian ethos that was so deeply rooted.

Nonetheless what survived in Russia and what often seems alien to those of us unable to see the world from outside the liberal paradigm, is the tradition of faith that is life sustaining in an eternal sense.  Of course, even the Church was heavily compromised by the Soviet regime, but the Tradition through the Holy Spirit exists within each member of that Church, as Lossky explained.  It is far more possible to remain unperturbed in one’s faith in the Orthodox Church when there are profound sacerdotal failings than under the sacerdotal hierarchy of all forms of Western Christianity.  Priesthood and laity are understood differently.

What we see in Russia is a suffering nation and through suffering Christianity flourishes.  Western material success combined with a reductive strand of theology has led to a hollowing out of the Tradition. Only from the small seeds of faith and re-connection with the Holy Tradition will the West be rescued in a sense far more important than maintenance of the rule of law and democratic rights.  Perhaps a time will come when those fundamentals of law and freedom are lost so that providentially we might rediscover what is important.  In the West we have lost the sense of what is most important and that is why we have become obsessed in a maniacal way with cultural Marxist causes.  The rise of Left wing extremism is indicative of the craving for meaning, but it will not be found there.  It will only be found in a return to Traditional Faith and the Church.  Russia has already learnt that lesson the hard way and furthermore at a grassroots level it never fully lost touch with Tradition.   We need to be able to understand what is happening in Russia and we can only do that by stepping outside of our liberal secularist paradigm.