J.K.Rowling’s Harry Potter series revolves around the standoff between good and evil, represented, respectively, by Harry and Lord Voldemort. But the two protagonists share a mysterious bond, as stated in the prophecy: “and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.”
Russia and the United States seem to share a similar link which predates their rise to global dominance after World War II. What about the freeing of serfs and the emancipation of slaves, two pivotal events for the two countries’ respective history that occurred within a few years of each other? Both left the newly freed multitudes of mainly rural poor folks with no land and still dependent on their former masters. Both countries even now, a century and a half later, are living with the consequences of serfdom and slavery and the way they were ended: in Russia a new class of klepto-aristocrats has formed over the last two decades, to lord over the docile masses, whereas in the United States white supremacy has re-emerged at the highest level of federal government.
For some 45 years after they jointly defeated Germany and its allies, the two new superpowers were locked in what seemed like a mortal confrontation. It was ideological and cultural as well as military and economic, and the assumption was that its outcome would determine the future of mankind.
In 1989-91, the Soviet Empire crumbled, communism was discredited and George Bush, Sr. declared the New World Order, based on the principles of Western liberal democracy. Russia too toyed with the idea of joining the West but promptly regressed to its more familiar aggressive autocracy.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks claimed that by building communism in their country they were showing the way for the rest of the world. Dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn declared that Russia’s suffering under communism positioned it to lead the West in religious and moral rebirth. Both those notions are ridiculous in retrospect, but by embracing the misrule of Putin and his clique Russia led the emergence of right-wing populism, which is gaining strength in the West and to which even the two founding nations of liberal democracy, Britain and the United States, have now succumbed.
About a decade before coming to power, Lenin published an article “Leo Tolstoy as a Mirror of the Russian Revolution.” Lenin had his own ax to grind, but his title was accurate: without trying to do so, Tolstoy accurately portrayed attitudes which played a crucial role in the revolution that followed.
In Anna Karenina, written back in the mid-1870s, when Lenin was still in short trousers, Tolstoy developed a cohesive theory of optimal relationship between landowners and peasants. It is the secondary story line in the novel, centered on the character of Konstantin Levin, a thinly disguised self-portrait. Given Tolstoy’s immense popularity, this model and his way of looking at the peasantry were adopted by a majority of “progressive” opposition of the early 20th century, in the years leading to WWI and the revolution.
What Tolstoy refused to see, and what Chekhov, for example, noted in numerous short stories, is the deep resentment against the emerging new Russia that was brewing in the Russian peasantry. The well-meaning Russian intelligentsia proposed to alleviate the dire poverty in which most peasants still lived—but it was not what the peasants wanted. They chose to follow Lenin—a strange foreign guy with wacky ideas who also bitterly resented the nascent capitalist, modernizing Russia and encouraged them to torch manor houses and murder land-owners.
We’re now facing a similar reality in the United States. Trump supporters tout his fantastic economic achievements, but a closer look shows that to be total sham. First and foremost, economic and employment growth as well as the stock market rally predate the 2016 election by seven years, but Trump supporters disparage Obama’s economic management. They refuse to give Obama any credit for saving the country from an economic collapse.
Moreover, aside from his budget-busting tax cut and jawboning the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, Trump’s contribution to making America great again has been marginal. Trump and trumpists are very much like the Soviet propaganda of old: bragging of spectacular economic successes where in reality there have been none.
On the contrary, Trump has recklessly put the economy on a dangerous course by exacerbating existing financial bubbles.
Thus, Trump supporters are driven not by economic considerations—or by patriotism, as they seem to appreciate Trump’s sidling up to traditional enemies of the United States—but by resentment, very much like Russian peasants a century ago.
And, very much like the Russian reformers of the time, the Democratic Party in the United States is making the mistake of trying to beat Trump by emphasizing their economic programs and by pointing out that Trump’s policies are damaging the economy, destroying American institutions and undermining America’s standing in the world. What they don’t understand is that Trump’s anti-Americanism and promise to dismantle the existing American system constitute the core of his appeal to his supporters.
Trump may yet emerge as an American dictator. But even if he goes down in flames, the resentment he has been mining to achieve political success is not going anywhere. Resentment on the right, expressed by the uneducated whites, is complemented by resentment building up among minorities, too. The real mess will be if Trump is replaced by a populist who could unite the divergent strains of resentment in the way Lenin was able to do in Russia by channeling the hatred and anger of the peasants, the urban poor, the soldiers and the colonies of the Russian Empire.
Also looking at the Russian experience, news footage from Moscow shows what Americans will eventually need to do to restore their democracy. Even now, holding well-meaning televised debates is probably not enough. Just as some brave Russians are doing now—and Ukrainians did five years ago on Maidan—they’ll have to put their freedom and even lives on the line.
