Running the World: The Kremlin’s Cold War Bid for World Power
Written by Sergey Radchenko
Cambridge University Press, 2024
It just so happens that Sergey Radchenko’s book, a campaign that took years to write, reached the reader in the third year of the war between Russia and Ukraine. To summarize the idea of the book in just a few words, it is about the defining role of the struggle for recognition in world affairs, and this is very applicable to the 2022 violence directed by Vladimir Putin, supported by the majority of citizens. of the Russian Federation. I would go so far as to say that this is the only reasonable explanation. There were no economic benefits to be expected from seizing the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson, and no strategic benefits – and had Russia won, the domestic effects of the “mini-victory war” would have been very short-lived. to justify the cost of victory.
In the final section of the book, Radchenko suggests that an appropriate metaphor for Putin’s war would be the crimes of Rodion Raskolnikov, who committed murder to assert his “right” to do as he pleased (p.602). I wouldn’t be surprised if a Dostoyevsky scholar finds this speech unconvincing, because in the book, Raskolnikov’s bad deeds eventually lead to redemption, but as many people watch. Crime and Punishment since it’s about a man who kills old women just because he can, I’d argue that Radchenko’s metaphor holds up.
Of course, one cannot write about the struggle for recognition without referring to the Hegelian school, and Radchenko mentions Francis Fukuyama immediately – however, the reader would have benefited from examining, in depth the tradition of Hegel / Kojeve, which , in the words of Fukuyama (2006, p.144 ), “an immaterial language of history.” Its basis is that man is “an animal directed in a different way and he socializes with other people, but his socialization does not lead him to a peaceful society, but to a violent struggle to the death for the sake of pure honor,” (Fukuyama, 2006, p. 147) and Radchenko’s book is based on this assumption. However, Hegel’s “man” is not static, and the “first man” will change (which is why Fukuyama uses “the last man” in the title of his seminal book). I think it’s fair to argue that this time around, we’re seeing a remarkable rigidity in the Kremlin, and it would be interesting to read Radchenko’s thoughts on that.
In general, I am left with the opinion that it is Running the WorldI saw two different book ideas vying for space and attention. One is an interpretive history (ambition and destructive pride as the driving force behind the Kremlin’s policies), and the other is a narrative history of the Cold War: comprehensive, well-documented, and presenting the Cold War as a global system with several battlefields. . The author calls it “a very long book” that covers some of the “well-known places” (p.11). It is, and it happens, and I’m not sure if it was necessary.
I think I will not be mistaken that the translation section (from Dostoyevsky to Fukuyama) is the most interesting thread in the author’s book. That’s how it seems to me as a student. But the translation is inevitably diluted along the way, and this is not surprising, given the large proportions of the volume. Choosing just a few events to support the author’s point of view (for example, the Yalta Conference for Stalin, the Cuban missile crisis for Khrushchev, détente for Brezhnev) would have worked very well, keeping the book objective and relevant.
That said, I still think this would be a good book to use in a Cold War course: I have already said that, unlike many of us, Radchenko is not Eurocentric and treats the battlefields outside the North Atlantic with all due diligence. Another good thing about this book is its tone: it is an intelligent, easy-to-read text.
We as readers are very fortunate that Sergey Radchenko has written a book that reintroduces the struggle for recognition, or the fight for pure honor, as well as “pride” and “ambition” in the discussion about conflict and war. In my opinion, it would be interesting to read Radchenko’s book-length interpretation of Russian foreign policy since 1991. Take NATO’s eastward expansion, for example. If we use the struggle for recognition (and I think it should), Russia reacted to the expansion with anger, not because there was a real security concern (it was absurd to suggest that NATO would attack Russia from the territory of Poland or Estonia) , but because Moscow felt left out – everyone of Eastern Europe (with the notable exception of Russia’s partner Belarus) was invited to join the main center of the West, while Russia was not.
The last paragraph of Radchenko’s book reads: “A more diverse world -“multipolar” -, with many more actors, was more attractive to Putin than the world from Washington. This can lead to a chaotic situation, indeed. But chaos creates opportunities for the brave. Perhaps, with the right combination of chutzpah and luck, Russia can one day reclaim its delusional greatness and its insatiable, self-destructive desire to run the world” (p.603). I wouldn’t agree to use the word “chaos” to describe the uncertainty of a mixed world (“chaos” would be a better word), but the question Radchenko asks is a good one, and since the war in Ukraine has really created diversity. stronger, now more likely to be brave.
References
Fukuyama, Francis. The End of History and the Last Man. The Free Press, 2006.
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