The Cooptation Tactic

However, the roots of this tactic are clearly visible in Tsarist society dating back to the conquest of Kazan in 1552 if not even earlier with the Kasymov Khanate under Ivan III.[i]  So while, “Before The nationalization of the Russian Empire in the second half of the nineteenth century to join the elite was often even easier for non-Russians.”[ii]  And in the second half of the nineteenth century when the regime felt that its past toleration of the Muslim establishment in Kazan was paving the way for Tatar and Islamic self-assertion that it regarded as threatening, the Ministry of Education and the religious educator Nikolai Il’minski devised a method for educating Tatar and other nationalities in the Volga that created separate national scripts and alphabets for each the minorities in the Volga-Ural basin to exploit minority nationalism in the region against the Volga Tatars, the leading  Muslim group there.[iii]  The purpose of such cooptation is obvious to distance elites over time from their roots in the community, deprive them of a mass base for resistance, deprive the masses of a leadership class and render them vulnerable to acculturation, assimilation, and most of all loyalty to the domestic status quo in Russia.[iv]     Abroad, however, the purpose is to break up or at least enfeeble other major powers either on Russia’s own periphery whose territory may be targeted by Russia or other major powers whose resistance obstructs the advancement of Russian interests.  In all cases in these foreign territories the objective is to create an enduring pro-Russian “bloc” that can reliably be called on to advance and defend Russian interests.[v]  This exploitation of class and ethno-religious fissures among minority peoples or foreign states remains to this day an enduring feature of Russian statecraft. 

In modern times this tactic’s use expanded to include ethno-religious or class-based groups globally as the experience of the Communist International suggests.  And in accordance with Leninist ideology during the Soviet period in Islamic countries like the Middle East, the regime, in its rhetoric or propaganda, sought to make use of “progressive” Muslim elements be they religious or secular.[vi]  As Alfred Rieber wrote, “For Russia there was no hard and fast distinction between colonial questions and the process of state building.  This was not true of any other European state.”[vii]  This was also the situation in Soviet times as well where the state structure, domestic and foreign policy all came together and remains the case today.[viii]  This point also suggests that given the permeable boundaries of Islamic and other societies in the contemporary world where movement across borders is easy, the tactic of finding and attracting tractable elites at home and abroad can be used abroad to resolve domestic issues or at home to resolve foreign issues.  Celeste Wallander call this process trans-imperialism although the label is less important than the imperialistic reality.

Trans-imperialism is the extension of Russian patrimonial authoritarianism into a globalized world.  Russia can trade and invest without being open and permeable by selectively integrating transnational elite networks in the globalized international economic system and replicating the patron-client relations of power, dependency, and rent seeking and distribution at the transnational level.  Russian foreign policy is increasingly founded on creating transnational elite networks for access to rent-creating opportunities in the globalized international economy.  Moscow functions as the arbiter and control point for Russia’s interaction with the outside economy to ensure that Russia is not exposed to the liberalizing effects of marketization, competition, and diversification of interests and local power.  If that were to happen, the political system that keeps the present leadership in power would be at risk of failing.  In this sense, globalization is a threat not to Russian national interests but to the interests of Russia’s political leadership.[ix]

And this phenomenon of seeking external elites support to quell domestic insurgency is also discernible in Russia’s ongoing efforts to obtain Middle Eastern support to quell Islamic uprisings at home in the North Caucasus –which was a major objective of Putin’s early diplomacy in the Middle East – and now to use Russia’s Muslims in Syria to legitimize Russia’s military intervention there.[x]  Indeed, Andrej Kreutz observed in this context that, for Putin,

The sheer size and ferocity of the Islamic challenge had an impact on the new Russian leader and persuaded him that a new political approach was necessary in order to solve the conflicts with the Muslim population of the country and have a closer link with the Islamic nations.[xi]

Similarly Maxim Suchkov more recently commented that,

As an external power, Russia needs regional partners to master its own Islamist challenges in the Caucasus, the Volga region, and the Urals, to name a few.  Thus Moscow is in constant pursuit of a balance between a pragmatic foreign policy in the Middle East and its own domestic problems in this regard.[xii]

But beyond the consolidation of the empire at home such tactics also were and remain instrumental in advancing Russian power into actually or potentially unstable areas on its borderlands since Russian leaders have believed with Catherine the Great that “I have no way to defend by borders other than to expand them.”  This expansive approach to foreign policy and national security strategy, as Alfred Rieber has observed, also epitomized Stalin’s approach at home in the initial Soviet period but also a generation later when he built his external empire in Eastern Europe.  Specifically he recurrently aimed to create a pro-Russian party in the Russian borderlands or outside them who could be reliably counted on to advance the regime’s aims and weaken the cohesion of opposing domestic and external forces.  And his foreign policies, as Rieber notes, grew directly out of his experiences in 1917-29 in dealing with the “national question.”[xiii]   In that context Stalin and his successors right down to Putin remain acutely sensitive, even hyper-sensitive to the prospect of foreign ethnic or ideological influence threatening the security of the regime given the shaky loyalties of ethno-religious minorities.  But at the same time they remain equally sensitized to the fact that ethnic fragmentation across the border provides numerous opportunities for expanding the empire or at least Russia’s global standing. 

Thus, as Kreutz wrote in 2009,

Iran abuts directly to the South Caucasus and Moscow has always considered this region a strategic interest priority zone.  Russian analysts perceive that, “whoever controls the Transcaucasus also controls the Caspian Sea and access to Central Asia and the Middle East.  In addition, ensuring influence and stability in the Transcaucasus countries is seen as a necessary precondition for Russia’s internal peace and for its territorial integrity.  Rusia itself is also a Caucasus state.  Seven regions of the Russian Federation (Adygea, Ingushetia, Dagestan, Kabardino-Balkaria, Karachaevo-Cherkessia, North Ossetia, Chechnya) are located in the North Caucasus and four more are on the steppes adjacent to the Caucasus (Krasnodar and Stavropol territories, the Rostov region, and Kalmykia) With Muslims constituting more than 15 percent of the Russian population any potential American and allied invasion of Iran and the ensuing clash of civilizations would put pressure on Russia’s domestic issues and might threaten its territorial integrity.[xiv]

These considerations are one reason for intervening in Syria as is what the Tsarist statesman, Count Petr Valuev called “the lure of something erotic (Nechto Erotichesikoe) in the borderlands.”