From Russia with love

Russia should be too big and too diverse to exist as a single country. But its post-Soviet saga contains lessons for any nation in search of cohesion.

Sometime not too long ago, I embarked on a mission to find the most diverse country on earth. Unfortunately, the question is sufficiently complicated that Google offered no definitive answer, so that meant research. Eventually, that brought me to Russia. Let’s just say, I was dumbstruck.

Surely, had I interviewed our Fred Weir, author of this week’s cover story, he would have patted me on the head and said in a very patient voice, “Yes, Mark, Russia is very diverse.” But I don’t think I would have understood the full scope. Russia is not even a country, really. It’s a Swiss cheese federation of so many cultural and linguistic groups – spread so widely over such an unfathomable expanse – that it’s something of a miracle the thing exists and functions at all.

And that is the point of this week’s cover story. It’s also a lesson for the world – the United States included.  

In one sense, the Russia of today really shouldn’t be a single country. It’s too big, too diverse, too difficult to govern. The centrifugal forces within it are always threatening dissolution. Things were even worse in the Soviet Union – so much so, that those forces eventually prevailed. Today, they still stalk Russia as existential doubts. 

So what do you do? Dissolve again? Not only might that once more unleash the rampant geopolitical uncertainty that destroyed the Russian economy in the 1990s, but it would also mortally wound a proud nation that built a centuries-old inland empire of historic extent. Not likely. 

So what has Russia done? That is what Fred explores. It has muddled through, seeking to avoid further collapse through economic growth and stern (and often anti-democratic) resolve. Former Soviet countries that have sought to leave its orbit have been systematically undermined.

Yet the challenge Russia faces is the same challenge facing every diverse nation on earth. Two years ago, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to unite his diverse, fractious nation. Now, he has launched a brutal war against a separatist region. As Russia will tell you, this is not easy.

In many ways, America’s diversity is different. The vast majority of Americans are transplanted from elsewhere, by choice or force. In Russia and Ethiopia, diversity involves cultural and tribal identities centuries if not millennia old. Yet the underlying point is the same – diversity is hard, and the easiest political solution is often violence and anti-democratic rule.

Russia, Fred suggests, might finally be learning some lessons, if slowly. Perhaps it doesn’t need to rule the region with an iron fist. Its actions during a recent war between neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan hint that ideals of respect, forbearance, and rule of law are at least percolating. Could Russia survive if it relied only on the common purpose of those higher ideals? We aren’t likely to get an answer anytime soon. Yet in struggling mightily with that question every day, America’s greatest gift to the world is the hope that the answer could someday be yes.