The other Russia

Despite war, murder and Putin's current popularity, 'Nemtsov's Bridge' points the way forwards for a post-imperial nation and its neighbours

The other Russia

Despite war, murder and Putin's current popularity, 'Nemtsov's Bridge' points the way forwards for a post-imperial nation and its neighbours

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Russia has lost an empire and not yet found a role. Only the Russians themselves can decide what that should be, and it will take some time. The new Russia will certainly not arrive this May 9, when Vladimir Putin's Kremlin celebrates the 70th anniversary of the end of the Great Patriotic War. It may not emerge till May 9, 2025, or even 2045, but we should never abandon hope for that other Russia, and we must keep faith with those Russians who are working for it.

The phrase 'lost an empire and not yet found a role' was first applied to Britain, by a former US Secretary of State. The British know as well as anyone how initially uncomfortable it is to lose an empire, and how difficult to find a new role. Some would say Britain has still not got there. And, by the way, the fate of the original, heartland empire, the one that forged the four nations of these islands – England, Wales, Scotland and (now only a small part of) Ireland – into a supposedly United Kingdom, is still unresolved. That is a major theme in Britain's general election.

Yet at least these internally complicated islands were surrounded by water, so that most of the British empire was 'overseas'. Russia's, by contrast, has been a land empire, growing patch by patch over centuries. As the historian Geoffrey Hosking argues in his book Russia: People and Empire, Russia's historical problem is that it has never been able to distinguish clearly enough between the nation and the empire. In fact, 'the building of an empire impeded the formation of a nation'.

Moreover, while the British empire was slowly dissolved across more than 20 years, the Russian-Soviet empire was dismantled in little more than two years, between 1989 and 1991 – one of history's most spectacular vanishing acts. It would be extraordinary if there had not been a confused and angry response from many in Russia after such an event. Under the current leadership, that reaction has taken a dangerous form.

We have to confront that danger firmly right now, but beyond that, there is the question of how we think and talk about Russia. One wrong way is exemplified by those who have come to be known throughout Europe as the Putinversteher (literally, Putin-understanders). Confusing Putin with Russia, they make the classic mistake of 'to understand all is to excuse all'.

German business people seem particularly prone to this confusion. The Russian writer Vladimir Voinovich, author of two of the finest satirical novels in 20th century European literature, once told me an amusing story about being invited to dinner by a German banker, sometime in the 1980s. Chauffeured out to the villa in a Mercedes the size of a tank, Voinovich was treated to a lavish dinner, through all the many courses of which the German banker explained to the then exiled Russian writer how one should properly appreciate the Russian trauma. Throughout its history, poor Russia had been constantly invaded, by the Mongols, by the Poles, by the French, and then, worst of all, by the Germans. One must verstehen. Finally, Voinovich could stand it no longer, 'so I say to him: "then why it is so big?"'

Today, Voinovich is a still satirical but also bravely outspoken representative of the other Russia. He has criticised the annexation of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. In a recent interview on a Russian website, he said that Russia needs a revolution – not a violent one, nor a Ukrainian-style orange one, but 'I think that the revolution should take place in people's minds… Not only Putin is to blame, the society is also, because it allows him to do whatever he wants'.

Characteristically, Voinovich articulates a complicated truth. There is another Russia. It is represented by the murdered Boris Nemtsov, and the people who come to lay flowers on the bridge where he was assassinated, which they already call Nemtsov Bridge. While some must obviously have been frightened by that murder, and the whole atmosphere of violent intimidation, a brave few have redoubled their defiance. The blogger-oppositionist Alexei Navalny directly accused the Putin regime of responsibility for Nemtsov's death. The murder has galvanised attempts to unite a fragmented opposition, including a new electoral alliance between the parties founded by Nemtsov and Navalny.

But the other Russia is also represented by activists who planned a 'march for peace and freedom' last Sunday; by the theatre group Teatr Doc; by Lena Nemirovskaya, the inspirational head of the long embattled Moscow School of Political Studies; by the founder of the leading Russian social network Vkontakte, Pavel Durov, now living abroad; by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch turned political prisoner turned exile campaigner for a better Russia; and many more, all in their different ways. When Thomas Mann arrived in American exile from Nazi Germany he said 'where I am, there is Germany'. All these Russians have the right to say 'where I am, there is Russia'.

But when Khodorkovsky tells an audience in London that 'Putin is not Russia; we are', he is making a rhetorical statement of principle, not an accurate description of reality. For the truth is that Putin does, so far as we can judge, currently enjoy great popular support, and in that sense Putin is also Russia. Germans know better than anyone that this is what sometimes happens to nations, and then one day they wake up with the mother of all hangovers.

Working out what Russia should be, drawing a novel line between nation and empire, involves developing a new kind of relationship with neighbours who speak your tongue and share much of your culture and history. In recent years, Putin has misappropriated the term 'Russian world' (russkiy mir) and made it a political slogan which almost implies 'if you speak Russian you belong in Russia'. But it doesn't have to be like that, and most of the neighbours don't want it to be. I was in Minsk three weeks ago, and the Belarusian foreign minister told our visiting study group that his long-term vision is for Belarus to become something like Switzerland. Well, still a little way to go perhaps… but the point is clear. Switzerland may have a lot of German-speakers, but it doesn't need to be part of Germany.

The same is self-evidently true across today's Spanish-speaking, French-speaking, Portuguese-speaking and English-speaking worlds. There are very close cultural, economic and political ties, but we don't want to be in the same state or empire. I have more Canadian cousins than I do British ones. The relationship between Britain and Canada is at least as special as that between Russia and Ukraine. In my case, as in that of many Russians and Ukrainians, it is literally in the family. But (my Canadian cousins may be relieved to hear) the annexation of Toronto and the restoration of British North America are not currently being proposed in London. Our countries get on much better being together apart. The same will be true for Russia and its cousins. If the Spanish-, French-, Portuguese- and English-speaking worlds could manage the transition from complex imperial past to today's elective affinities, so can the Russian-speaking world. And one day it will.

Timothy Garton Ash is Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, where he currently leads the freespeechdebate.com project, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His latest book is Facts are Subversive: Political Writing from a Decade Without a Name