Live Encounters Magazine February 2023
Reflections on Vladimir Putin’s Valdai speech and the return of the sacred
by Dr Greta Sykes.
Reflections on Vladimir Putin’s Valdai speech and the return of the sacred
Dr Greta Sykes, Honorary Research Fellow, UCL, examines the recent speech by the Russian president to the Valdai Discussion Club within the context of a modern understanding of what is sacred.
The study of almost any ancient civilisation leads the researcher inevitably to the concept of the sacred, which is an elementary belief in something existing beyond human understanding, scientific analysis or outside our control that is both terrifying and consoling in equal degrees.
‘’…We cannot grasp anything human, unless we start from the feeling of the sacred…’said Carlo Levi. Maxim Gorky speaks in a similar vein when he says,
‘…the fact that man created Gods in his own image goes to show that religious thinking did not spring from contemplation of the phenomena of nature, but sprang from social struggle.’
It is no exaggeration to say that we are now in what might be called the ultimate social, political and economic struggle for the very survival of our species and life on earth as we know it. It is now approaching a year of NATO organised warfare began using Ukraine as a battering ram against Russia. The aim is nothing less than the destruction of Russia as a state, the dislodgement of Putin from power and an attempt to rob the country of its wealth and splinter the Russian Federation up into pieces. For the Russian people it is a devastating but familiar experience.
They have been here before. They are inclined to call the current attack on their land and their defence of it the “Third Patriotic War”, after Napoleon tried his luck in the 19th century and Hitler attempted to conquer its land and wealth in the 20th century. One could add the Crimean War to this list. Then the Ottoman Empire began an attack on Russia which was defeated quickly. The Russian forces withdrew, seeing this as the end of the enmities, when France and Britain decided to deal Russia a blow. It was the commencement of the tragic Crimean war which led to massive bloodshed on all sides with no gains made by anyone. That was the Crimea of 1853.
Historical background
Starting as a limited military engagement to demilitarise and “denazify” the areas of Eastern Ukraine that had been fighting already for eight years, Russia is by now defending their own nation state and their very culture against the entire NATO alliance. West Europeans around me are taken aback. A war in Europe? That should not happen in the 21st century! They forget that the US has been engaged in wars almost continuously since its beginning about two hundred and fifty years ago.
It was only in 2021 that the US lost a war in Afghanistan. Currently wars in Yemen and Syria are supported by weapons produced by the West. There is continuous murder happening against Palestinians with the quiet acquiescence of the West. The imperialist and colonial exploitation of countries around the earth, Africa, India, China, Korea, Vietnam to name but a few have all been left with deep scars due to murder, destruction and cultural rape.
The current war in the Ukraine has been years in preparation. The Euro Maidan events in 2014 marked the beginning of preparing to attack Russia. However, one can find evidence in many US publications that an attack on Russia was the ultimate aim of the US for a long time, possibly even since 1917 when the Russian Revolution took place. WW2 offers illustrates the correctness of this assertion. Why otherwise would the US and the UK have hesitated to enter the war with their D Day landing in 1944 when Russia was about to win the war after the Battle of Stalingrad in 1943?
The context of the current war in Ukraine is pertinent. The West’s economies are failing. The gap between rich and poor due to rentier economics has widened catastrophically. Money can be made by the elite with poorly paid workers increasingly replaced by technology. Consequently, our social services, education and welfare systems are deteriorating. The push for the so called ‘Great Reset’ and big tech is failing to fulfil expectations. This scenario is made more worrying by concerted limitations of freedom of expression, the rise of so-called cancel culture, a mass media which speaks in one voice and the silencing of any critic who contradicts the West’s shared perspective.
The Covid lockdown has highlighted how easy it is to instil obedience among the general public, especially as the West has worked hard to infantilise its citizens and make them a prey to delusions and exploitation. Capitalism as a system is based on the exploitation of people and nature. Lifestyle choices and consumer products are made using advertising that promotes instant gratification, short-term thinking and forgetfulness, thus ultimately destroying the individual’s personal independence and autonomy. People become victims of seductive language and euphemisms persuading them to buy products that they don’t need and cannot afford. That is how people learn to conform in a society that is bereft of meaning and forgetful of its history.
Russophobia
The malleability of the European population through the mass media has been extraordinary and to no small measure due to the pounds and dollars invested in the process by billionaires. The whipped-up fears around Covid, lockdowns and exaggerated reports of deaths have led to a frightened population that is easily manipulated. In February 2022, almost immediately after Covid stopped being a problem the next wave of mass fear was unleashed, that of making an enemy of Russians. Headlines spun fabrications that in normal times would have just made people laugh, such as that Russia was ready to invade the rest of Europe, Putin was sick, mad, or a monster, they are killing babies and bombing hospitals etc.
Every aspect of Russian culture was cancelled, composers, literary figures such as Pushkin, Dostoyevsky, ice skaters, footballers, athletes in general, Russians had their property confiscated, they were denounced and humiliated. Russophobia had become the only acceptable, and by now even fashionable, racism in our so-called free and democratic West.
No Peace
Meanwhile, military units from Ukraine openly espousing Nazi views are trained and equipped by the likes of the US and the UK. Other countries are cajoled into delivering more weapons. Billions of dollars have been transferred to Ukraine. Where this money is going or into whose hands these weapons are going it is impossible to tell. The continuous flow of weapons from the Western countries has depleted their own arsenals, but raised the profits of arms manufacturers, who are the only ones really benefitting from this war. People who demand that peace negotiations should be held are silenced immediately.
Western countries led by the US and NATO do not want peace negotiations. Russia’s proposals for peace are ignored. Reports of near fantastic military achievements on the battlefield by Ukraine and the weakness of Russia or Putin (we are repeated told that he is seriously ill or dying) remind us of WW2 when Hitler portrayed Russia as failing and proclaimed his own imminent victory, when in actual fact, he was about to be defeated.
In a previous essay ‘Time for a new humanism’ I outlined the joint Russia China statement which speaks of an indivisible security, in other words a security that is shared by all, not one that is safe for one country and unsafe for many others. The statement also speaks of multipolarity as an objective to be achieved, meaning that no one country (the US) will continue to dictate to others and impose its ‘so called rule-based order; instead, the whole world and each country can decide how they want to pursue their own national identity, culture and path of development.
US hegemony demands that Russia must be defeated. An obedient Europe, still the US’s most powerful economic competitor, is beginning to realise that their suffering is part of the plot. Hostilities towards China regarding Taiwan are brewing in the background. At the recent Madrid NATO summit the US had the temerity to announce that NATO was not just a defence organisation but was now engaged to fight for the ‘indivisibility’ of the Atlantic and the Pacific region. They stole this term from Putin’s Joint Charter with China. One cannot have indivisible security for all, when one country usurps the sole right to be in charge of it.
While they may use the same terms, they have removed its meaning. Their language constantly portrays one thing but in essence means something else. NATO is a defensive alliance, but it starts wars. Moralising language about a ‘rule-based order’ is in reality ‘we rob you any time we like and you have got to tolerate it’.
The weapons for Ukraine are not a defence of Ukraine but are leading to that country’s total destruction, as it becomes a battlefield. Their interest in the Chinese ‘Belt and Road initiative’ is merely a robber’s view of how to destroy it or use bits of it for their purpose. As in imperial and colonial times their efforts abroad are solely designed for monetary gain and exploitation, rather than for mutual benefit. Until COP27 the West refused to send money to developing countries who are already suffering from climate change, although promises had been made for years.
By contrast, examples from the Russian side illustrate genuine care and mutual assistance. Russia stopped the grain ships because rather than the grain going to poor African countries, it all ended up in rich European countries. China supports African nations by allowing interest free money. There is real generosity taking place and cooperative work. More and more countries are starting to see this for themselves and are queueing up to join BRICS and all the various other global or Asian collective communities. The trade between Russia and China alone is about to reach 180 billion dollars.
Trade with India and Iran is increasing manifold. Attempts to develop exchange using currencies other than the dollar are growing, leaving the dollar behind. There exists a growing awareness throughout the world outside the Western orbit of wishing to leave behind the deceitful and exploitative US/UK hegemony. Nations can feel intuitively that their dependent relationship contradicts human nature with its longing for truth, freedom and justice, wherein resides true meaning. Loss of meaning is in essence also a loss of spirituality. The condition can make people feel lost, confused and sick.
The Decline of the West
In ‘The Decline of the West’, published in 1922, the German philosopher, Oswald Spengler described how the West European-American civilisation had entered into a permanent and irretrievable decline in all its manifestations, including its religion, art, politics, social life, economy and science.
‘The failings of the Western political class on both sides of the Atlantic ‘consumed by ideology and contempt for silent majorities, breeds a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, a parasitical city dweller, tradition-less, utterly matter of fact, religion-less, clever, unfruitful and deeply contemptuous. The political doctrinaire always knows what should be done, and yet this activity, once it ceases to be limited to paper, is the least successful and therefore the least valuable in history’.
Such sentiments could not more succinctly describe our current situation, although his words were written a hundred years ago. In many respects, we are now in a more dangerous situation than in Spengler’s times which were leading inexorably to WW2, the war that was supposed to wreck Socialism in the USSR. The socialist state was not wrecked. Instead, the people of the USSR won the war to the disappointment of the West. They are now trying to rewrite the history of WW2. That is why everywhere in Eastern Europe – due to obedience to the West – monuments to Lenin, Stalin or victory of the USSR are smeared or even demolished. In Ukraine, these are replaced with Stepan Bandera statues who is celebrated on Ukrainian soldiers’ uniforms which are often adorned with Nazi insignia.
But this time around we are not standing helpless before the powerful hegemonic US/UK who are orchestrating the current war. Unlike Spengler’s time other nations and continents have arisen as emerging world powers with their own strength and perspectives. Russia and China are closely linked with a large number of countries throughout the globe in such organisations as BRICS, ASEAN, The Belt and Road Initiative and many others. Discussion for a such as the Valdai Discussion Club, founded in 2004, are now widely respected and taken note of. The forging of this new solidarity, based on the notions of indivisible security and multipolarity, is founded on ancient principles and can be understood as what is meant by ‘The Sacred’.
Spengler emphasises the short history of the West which he places as running from the 15th century to the present day and compares it unfavourably with China’s 4,000 year history, a duration which has given it a deeper, longer sense of awareness of itself as a nation and its place in history and its status at the present time. Every country possesses its own culture and religion and also has its own value system, in fact there are as many value systems as there are cultures.
These ideas directly inform the Joint Statement that Russia and China issued last year. In this statement, the two countries expressed the need for multipolarity and the respect for individual cultural and religious developments of each nation state. These aspirations are also at the heart of every person’s cultural experience beginning with their childhood sense of belonging and growing self-awareness. Each person grows up within a specific tradition, acquiring a language, literature and a sense of self.
In the West, as Spengler observed, all this has been given up. Individuals are expected to be nomads, following any job anywhere in the world, in the process we lose our sense of belonging, and are left without a spiritual experience that we can call our own. Karl Marx predicted that the capitalist will in the end destroy the meaning of everything in the pursuit of profit. ‘Sacredness is the fundamental mark of antiquity and tradition, while secularity, the banning of sacredness, or the ‘disenchanted world’ represents the essence of modernity, according to Max Weber.
Key points made by Putin in his Valdai Speech of October 2022
In this speech, Putin’s central thesis is that “the United States and its allies no longer enjoy the status of the dominant superpower, yet the global infrastructure that serves it is still in place. All major interconnected issues at the current crossroads were precipitated because Russia became the first major power which, guided by its own ideas of security and fairness, took action to throw off the yoke of the NATO stranglehold. The West has become incapable of single-handedly ruling the world. This means that we stand at a historical turning point, making it the most dangerous and important decade since World War II.
“Humanity has two options – either we continue accumulating the burden of problems that is certain to crush all of us, or we can work together to find solutions. The “global peace” the US/UK installed is more like a Mafia-enforced ethos of “our way or the highway”, he said. The freezing of Russia’s gold and foreign currency reserves and the “mop up” of Russia’s property abroad are guided by political expediency rather than the law. It is in fact outright theft, under the cover of the “rules-based international order”. Furthermore, while the Nazis burned books, the Western fathers of ‘liberalism’ are banning Dostoevsky.
Putin’s Valdai speech acknowledges the role of the Global South and how it exemplifies the democratization of international politics. Meanwhile world politics are rapidly descending into a state of anarchy built on force, threats and a severe disruption of world trade. The US works by divide and rule, which is leading the world to anarchy. It has completely run out of geopolitical and geo-economic tools to control rebel nations, apart from a sanctions tsunami.
The “end of history” doctrine has been proven wrong, as we are thrown back to the pattern of large-scale conflicts between centres of power. Simply changing the ‘operator’ as it happened in earlier centuries (with the U.S. taking over as world leader from Britain) just won’t work, because this unipolar world is in essence anti-democratic and unfree. It is thoroughly false and hypocritical. The necessary way forward is a multipolarity with a system of self-regulation based on indivisible security which can allow nations to develop and cherish their culture, tradition, language and spirituality. That in summary is what Putin has argued.
The potential shape of the sacred for our current world situation
Turning to the concept of the sacred in the modern world; to reiterate, the sacred is not the same as a church or any organised religion. Rather, it refers to the essence of the natural being, one who is part of nature and experiencing a deep sense of coherence with nature. As expressed earlier most ancient cultures and civilisations display a vigorous imagination that seeks to visualise their place in nature. In this quest they created a multitude of Gods, Goddesses, angels, devils and animals that personified different abilities, habits and who imposed customs or punishments to regulate their lives.
Such creations led to rituals and celebrations of fertility and sexuality and brought people together in appreciation of their beliefs. The Egyptian God Thoth, for example, would accompany a person at the moment of judgement before death. Shiva the supreme Lord can protect and transform the universe. Confucius’s teachings underpin Chinese thinking to this very day.
An ancient philosophical tract called Hermetica attributed to Hermes Trismegistus refers to a spirituality based on an all-pervading divine Mind or Nous. This work reflects an intellectual tradition and science that reaches far back in time to Egyptian and Greek philosophy. Hermetica focuses on the close relationship between human beings, the cosmos, and the divine. Many English thinkers, such as John Dee, John Donne, Christopher Marlowe, William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon, engaged with these ideas in various degrees. The notion of ‘imaginative inhabiting’ or mimesis which had produced the splendour of the Renaissance and imagined the sacred and transcendence was silenced by the voices of people like Isaac Casaubon who, during the rise of Protestantism, favoured a mechanical cause and effect mode of thinking.
How this all connects with what Putin said in his Valdai speech becomes apparent: The speech is centred around a vision of ‘a concert of polyvalent civilisational visions or facets of civilisation’. Western commentators insist we should simply ignore Putin’s arguments. They also portray the Chinese economy as a poor imitation of the Western neo-liberal model that ‘plays’ with a Confucian and Taoist legacy. Likewise, the Russian Orthodox revival is no more than a power-play, concocted by an Orthodox Patriarch in alliance with President Putin. Western writers insist that everything that China and Russia attempt to do is but a poor imitation of the Anglo-American liberal market model. Ultimately, this position reflects a disenchanted worldview. They are ignorant of what the sacred really means.
In contrast, the Valdai speech with its emphasis on growing solidarity of friendly nations basing their development on multipolarity and indivisible security is an outline of the sacred concept for today. It marks the return of humans as the measure of all things, the return of a non-mechanistic vision that embraces spirituality, true meaning and a cherishing of traditions and culture, enabling us to appreciate what is divine about life on earth. The Valdai schema offers us the potential to reconnect with the ancient sources of our various civilisations with their shared appreciation of imagination, fantasy and dreams of a better life while remaining in close contact with nature. As such, I would argue, Putin’s Valdai speech offers a promise of a return of the sacred.
© Greta Sykes
Poet, writer and artist Greta Sykes has published her work in many anthologies. She is a member of London Voices Poetry Group and also produces art work for them. Her new volume of poetry called ‘The Shipping News and Other Poems’ came out in August 2016. The German translation of her book ‘Under charred skies’ has now been published in Germany under the title ‘Unter verbranntem Himmel’ by Eulenspiegel Verlag. She is the chair of the Socialist History Society and has organised joint poetry events for them at the Poetry Café. She is a trained child psychologist and has taught at the Institute of Education, London University, where she is now an associate researcher. Her particular focus is now on women’s emancipation and antiquity. https://www.gretasykes.com/