A Century of Russian Disinformation: Part Three
What Does Russia Want?
It’s been a busy time for those of us tracking Russian active measures. In the last few months, Putin has (as long expected) murdered his opponent, Alexei Navalny. Latvia’s representative to the European Union’s legislature, Tatjana Ždanoka, has been revealed to be a Russian asset for the past twenty years. The source for the Republican Party’s case against Hunter Biden turns out to have been a Russian spy. Our House of Representatives is still holding up a vote to arm Russia’s enemy, Ukraine. A growing consensus now agrees that Russia has infiltrated the GOP, which Rep. James Clyburn has charmingly renamed the “Groupies of Putin.”
All of this activity has prompted commentators like Tom Nichols to wonder, what does Russia want? Rather than looking to Putin for answers to that question, I would suggest a more reliable guide. The past can give us a much better sense of how Russia operates, and why it is unlikely to change course any time soon, with or without Putin in charge.
The inaugural stack in this series established that Russian active measures in America are over a century old. In May 1921, the American Communist Party was founded when a number of smaller parties flying under the banner of communism unified at a secret convention at the Overlook Hotel in Woodstock, New York. This unification was a shotgun wedding directly ordered by Moscow. Lenin wanted a fifth column in the United States. And he got one.
From 1921 on, the Kremlin chose the leadership of the American Communist Party, dictated its policy positions, and funded its propaganda outlets. One member of the party was always stationed in Moscow to forward directives through coded cables (or letters written in invisible ink) to America. The Kremlin tasked high-ranking members of the party with shady missions—like slandering the leaders of America’s Socialist Party—to accomplish its objectives. Think of Roger Stone but working only for Russia. Oh wait…
But why did Russia do this? What were its objectives? Why invest so heavily in disinformation and intelligence operations in the United States at the very moment millions of Russians were starving?
The stated reason, of course, was ideological: Russia was attempting to instigate the overthrow of the capitalist ruling class in every country through the international unification of the laboring class. But America’s greatest foreign policy mistake has always been to assume that Russia operates out of ideological purity.
The real goal of all Russia’s active measures in other countries was to consolidate the Bolsheviks’ shaky hold on power. The Bolsheviks could not survive without foreign investment—and a lot of it—from the capitalist West. Lenin tried to deny that his centralized economy was a failure, but the famine had created so much desperation throughout the nation that he was forced to make concessions. Communists in the United States were therefore pressuring the government to recognize the new Bolshevik regime in Russia (which it did not do until 1933) and to normalize trade relations between the two countries. Lenin even approved the creation of the Russian-American Industrial Corporation—a very capitalist instrument for raising funds by offering dividends (profit!) to bond holders. This initiative essentially turned communists into bond traders. Even Lenin, in a public relations op, bought two shares for a twenty dollar bill.
Yes, even as the Bolshevik government was decrying Western capitalist expansion, it was trying to get in on it because it couldn’t survive without it.
In Moscow, the tradition of wanting its cake and eating it, too, continues to this day. This is why you will hear Putin decrying Western imperialism while calling for Russia to regain its “sphere of influence” in former Soviet satellites like Ukraine. And he will do this all while complaining about sanctions which constrain Russia from exporting its gas to the countries that it is working hard to undermine.
So, what does Russia “want”? It wants nothing less than the restoration of its empire and on its own terms. It wants the world to believe that it is capable of surviving on its own when it cannot. And it wants you to think that it has operated under a consistent and successful ideology when it never has.
The sooner we face the absurdity of what Russia wants, the faster we can protect ourselves from further efforts to undermine our democracy. These efforts started long before Putin. Given Russia’s structural weaknesses, they will unfortunately continue long after he is gone.