From: "Robert Bruce Ware" <... at brick.net> Subject: The Sovietology Syndrome (McFaul JRL 7044) Date: Sun, 2 Feb 2003
Michael McFaul gets three or four things right in his essay titled "U.S. Ignores Putin's Assault on Rights" (JRL 7044). First, and by far of greatest importance, is his observation that a balanced approach has been the key to preceding successes of American diplomacy in Moscow. Secondly, Professor McFaul underscores the importance of symbolism. Thirdly, he notices a series of recent incidents that do indeed suggest a worrisome contraction of Russian society. And finally, there is perhaps little harm in once again rehearsing the standards about America's responsibility for, and Russia's recalcitrance in, the promotion of rights and democratic values.
Yet while such platitudes do little harm, they also provide little help. The problems that plague democracy in Russia go deeply and distinctively within the culture of each region, and deep within the psyches of many of their inhabitants. These problems, in fact, go so deep that they are far more difficult than Professor McFaul allows, either in their specification or their resolution . The only thing that's clear is that Russia's path toward democracy will be long and winding and will differ substantially from ours. We will do more harm than good (as, in some ways, we already have) if we insist that they should do precisely as we have done. Of course, American officials should continue to advocate the freedom of the Russian press, but that is not a problem that has been ignored. And while continued funding for democratic programs may be worthwhile, we will spend our money most effectively when we distinguish more carefully between self-serving sanctimony and carefully targeted assistance.
Professor McFaul's least fortunate passages involve his boiler plate about human rights abuses in Chechnya, though the error is not of his commission.
The abuses that he outlines are real, and truly horrifying, and he is right to demand greater attention to them than they recently have received.
The error is rather of his omission, and the omission is so common that it would probably not bear notice, were it not for Professor McFaul's genuinely helpful attention to the merits of balanced diplomacy at the opening of his piece. Professor McFaul is absolutely correct when he reminds us that we will accomplish nothing in Russia without a balanced approach. Yet a balanced presentation of the situation in Chechnya would have condemned Russia's human rights abuses and then gone on to address a few of the following points:
The world faces a dangerous, difficult, and complicated problem in Chechnya. Law and order must be enforced, and that means that human rights abuses must stop immediately, but it also means that disorderly elements must be controlled, and that goes to the heart of the situation's complexity. Some of the disorderly elements are international, and some are of a local criminal nature, but many derive from the endemic and chronic failure of the people of Chechnya to take responsibility for maintenance of order within their own society. The latter problem is anchored deep within local social structure and culture in ways that intersect ironically with issues of democratic psychology. These problems are so complex, that today, as in 1999, there is no government on the planet that could succeed in effectively enforcing order and protecting rights in Chechnya. Russia has done a terrible job, but everyone else would have failed at least as spectacularly. We must balance our criticism of Russia's failures with credit for the resumption of its responsibilities to protect its citizens (including its Muslim Kavkasian citizens) in the region. If Russia had not returned to Chechnya in 1999 the scale of violence and human rights abuses in the region would not be less than it is today, it would be much greater. And if the Russian military pulled out of Chechnya tomorrow the scale of violence and abuse would also be much greater than it is today. Up to this point, the choice in Chechnya has not been between massive human rights abuses, on the one hand, and an absence of human rights abuses, on the other. Rather the choice has been between two sets of massive human rights abuses, those, on the one hand, committed by Russian troops against people in Chechnya, and on the other hand, those committed by people in Chechnya against their neighbors. Now the situation in Chechnya has reached a critical juncture from which it is possible to slowly improve, but that improvement will not occur without the sort of balanced approach that Professor McFaul recommends only to immediately ignore.
Does Professor McFaul believe that a balanced approach is an issue for American officials, but not for American scholars? More significantly, why would a scholar of Professor McFaul's caliber set such a trap for himself. Here I must admit that I don't know how much time Professor McFaul has spent in the North Caucasus. If he has done significant fieldwork there then I wish he would write more about it. If he has not done any fieldwork there, then I wish that he would do some before he writes much more about the region.
But, of course, even if Professor McFaul were making pronouncements about the region without ever having set foot there, he would certainly not be alone. The astonishing fact is that most American scholars who pronounce authoritatively about the North Caucasus have never, or rarely, set foot there. Matthew Evangelista, for example, has recently published a monograph about the security situation in Chechnya without ever having visited the region, and having, in fact, declined an invitation to visit from a regional official whom he interviewed in ... Moscow. Nor is Evangelista's book on Chechnya the first on that topic by an American scholar who has never set foot in the region. In fact, it is nothing more than the latest installment of a sad and dishonorable sub-tradition in American scholarship.
Coming from outside the discipline, it is absolutely astonishing that so many scholars would feign authority in a region where they have conducted little or no fieldwork. It is difficult to think of any other discipline, apart from cosmology, where such a glaring lack of field experience would be tolerated. But the North Caucasus is on our planet, and one can get there simply by stepping aboard any of the regularly scheduled flights. Remarkably, when it comes to the North Caucasus, the methodology of most scholars seems closer to that of philosophy than to anything recognized in any of the other branches of political science, sociology, anthropology, conflict, ethnic or area studies. Indeed, there are passages when Evangelista's book reads more like the medieval Inquisition, attacking empirical research from the standpoint of the received view, not the received view of cosmology in this case, but of Russian policy in the Caucasus.
Why has this been tolerated? One reason is that people are afraid to visit the region because of the disorder that has reigned there. That's the reason why few Western journalists visited the region between 1996, when the Russian military got out, and 1999, when the Russian military returned.
And that's the reason why their editors, the American public, and most American scholars know so little about what happened in those years. That's the reason why all major human rights and international relief organizations abandoned the people of the region to horrendous suffering and human rights abuses during the same period. Most journalists, and all major NGOs found the courage to return to the region only in the wake of the Russian military, making it safe for them to bash the Russians without admitting that were afraid to go there before the Russians returned, and without admitting that they care nothing about what happened to the people of the region during the intervening years.
Of course, fear is not a crime. The crime is in the masquerade that presents fear and ignorance in the guise of authoritative scholarship and righteous indignation. It is both facile and fraudulent to write authoritatively about the security situation in the North Caucasus if one has never set foot there. If one is afraid to visit the region, or even if one has simply been too busy to do so, then one should write about the security situation in London, or in Paris, or even in Moscow, but not in the North Caucasus. Clearly, if one has been afraid to conduct field investigations in the region because of the disorder there then one is in poor position to criticize Russian efforts to overcome the disorder, however much they may deserve criticism. This is important because the region is full of families who had nowhere else to go from 1996 to 1999 when the journalists and NGOs retreated to the safety of Moscow and so many American scholars had more important things to do. My field work indicates that most of those families are glad the Russian troops came back. A scholar who has been unwilling to expose himself to the region is in no position to overlook those families, or to try to speak for them now.
So why is it that the discipline tolerates this charade, a farce that certainly would embarrass any other empirical endeavor? I can only think that it is the syndrome of Sovietology, the last gasp of those generations of American scholars who could do little more than interview officials in Moscow and Leningrad and scrutinize the faces on top of Lenin's corpse. It is a misfortune that this discipline is full of doctoral candidates with more field experience than some of its leading lights, but it is misleading that some of those luminaries write as if this were not the case, and it is mystifying that they are allowed to get away with it.
Here is what our scholars, journalists, editorialists, and rights advocates have accomplished by bashing Russia with their Chechnya boiler plate throughout the last three and a half years: They have undercut Russian moderates and strengthened the hand of Russian hard-liners. They have condoned terrorism, encouraged militancy, and excused the people of Chechnya from taking responsibility for themselves and for the order of their society, which is the only way that they and their neighbors will ever have any peace. Russia bashing in the West has never done anything except encourage Russians and Chechens to continue bashing each other. It has prolonged the suffering of people in Chechnya, and prolonged instability in the region. It has rendered AI, HRW, PACE, OSCE and a long list of other Western organizations absolutely powerless and irrelevant in the region. But then, of course, it has served as a vehicle for the advancement of numerous Western careers.
Contrary to Professor McFaul's conclusion, American officials deserve credit for increasingly adopting the sort of balanced approach that Professor McFaul momentarily recommends. As a result, American officials increasingly will find themselves in a position constructively to influence events in Chechnya. If American scholars wish to write about Russian regions then they should visit those regions and conduct field studies. If they don't wish to conduct fieldwork in a region then they should find the integrity to avoid the pretense of authoritative publication on the topic. Alternatively, if they wish to conduct their fieldwork from the hotels that surround Red Square then they will be well-prepared to write about Lenin's corpse.