2022 is starting to look, sound, and feel an awful lot like 1962. If one wonders how 60 years could go by with so much historical change and global shifting and yet still end up basically back at something reminiscent of the peak crisis point of the Cold War (the Cuban Missile Crisis), then it is necessary to go on a recent historical journey to offer an uncomfortable explanation as to how this has all come to pass: it is the fault of America’s Generation X.
It’s not exactly Generation X’s fault alone. But due to an unanticipated conflagration of unique historical and academic circumstances, the American scholarly landscape today when it comes to Russian analysis is surprisingly thin. The specific reasons for this might be somewhat surprising and are most certainly not openly discussed in various academic, professional, and diplomatic conferences. In fact, it is actively and even aggressively avoided. The dearth of American Generation X Russian experts is not because everyone just somehow forgot Russia still existed after the end of the Cold War. Rather, it seems what was forgotten was the undeniable uniqueness of Russian history: namely, that despite over 1000 years of political and historical evidence, American graduate schools in the 1990s forgot that Russia would NEVER allow itself to be politically irrelevant for long.
The West’s celebration of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the so-called ‘end of history,’ the unequivocal victory of democracy over its main political system-rival, was accompanied by an almost unconscious Russian deemphasis in prestigious American graduate schools. Yeltsin’s Russia was intellectually pushed aside by young aspiring scholars because, after all, it had not only lost the Cold War: it also now seemed to be an inefficient kleptocracy, a political also-ran, and a corrupt economic swamp, destined to remain unimportant on the coming 21st century’s global stage. The fact that this impression in America was aligned with a Russian demographic crisis in the 1990s – with its overall population shrinking as opposed to growing – and the American academic/political communities dismissively shook their heads and felt like the end of the Cold War quite possibly might just be the literal end of Russia. And so, by 1997, when many Gen Xers would naturally be advancing through their PhD programs, selecting dissertation committees, and deciding on complex theses, they were subtly but decisively given an adamant piece of advice: abandon Russia.
Keep in mind: this was not petty advice. It was meant to be well-intentioned. By 1997-1998, Russia seemed to most in the West as, at best, a place to study the problems of crime and corruption or flawed democratic transition. This was all political Russia could be good for from the level of elite American graduate schools. The mentoring of the next generation of experts, the one that was meant to take the leadership mantle from the Baby Boomers and lead American-Russian relations into the 21st century, stagnated and was stopped cold. The not-so-subtle hint given to doctoral students was simple but powerful: if you truly want a job in academia and want to do ‘important’ work, Russia is yesterday’s news. If you want to be on the cutting edge, look to the Middle East and jump on the Islamist bandwagon. That is where the real scholarly action (and future job demand) was going to be. Of course, the seismic event of September 11, 2001, just a short three years later, stamped out whatever doubt remained amongst these now advanced American Generation X PhD students. It was as if their mentors were prophets and had to be obeyed. And thus, the ultimate consequence that still limits the solving of Russian-American political problems today: the Lost Generation.
There are too few new thinkers or innovative minds that have emerged from Generation X when it comes to studying and understanding the Russian Federation politically and strategically. When examining and coding media sources and academic work, when viewing who mainstream media reaches out to for quotes and expert opinion, one is hard-pressed to find a quote from anyone under 50 who is not massively dependent on the ‘Soviet presumption’ for explaining behaviour. And this is not an ‘ageist’ argument. The problem is not how old a person is but rather under what style of educational mentorship would they have been trained. It is not coincidence that almost every single Russian foreign policy initiative today is characterized as some sort of revanchist attempt to resurrect (symbolically or literally) the power and glory of the Soviet Union. It is not odd happenstance that Putin is evaluated only in terms of thirsty Soviet dictatorship exclusively. Examine political reality today. Read as many sources of information possible. Whether it was the missile defense ‘shield’ in Poland and the Czech Republic, or Iran, or Syria, or the Sochi Olympic bombings, or Maidan, or Crimea, or the present special military operation around Kiev, what one sees are analyses that could have been cut from the New York Times in 1962 and just had the geographic key words altered. There is no imagination, no innovation, nothing evolutionary whatsoever. There has been no contrarian intellectual power transfer in America at all when it comes to understanding Russia. It is frozen in amber. Not surprisingly, the possibility for connection, collaboration, and dynamic negotiation is equally frozen.
Perhaps worse than this diplomatic reality, the situation within think tanks, academic associations, and institutes in the United States – all priding themselves on Russian expertise – is just as dire: put bluntly, there are negative career consequences for anyone interested in considering alternative ideas to the academic orthodoxy. Within Russian Studies, academic freedom is arguably under intense pressure so that there is only one acceptable kind of freedom. And that freedom is decidedly anti-Russian and deterministic. Complicating this, of course, was Russia’s stubborn unwillingness to remain irrelevant. The little black box of Russian abandonment or anti-Russian indifference created by American academia the past 25 years, now obliterated, means there is a new generation of PhD students emerging, once again intrigued, concerned, and fascinated by Russia. This new generation – a combination of Millennials, Y, and Z depending on how you define it, is in or entering PhD programs now. The concern, however, is that many of these programs are incredibly still run by either Baby Boomers on their last legs with an intense desire to see the old principles of the Cold War once again dominant or by a smattering of Generation X scholars who have spent their entire careers under a domineering orthodoxy that has not evolved beyond said Cold War. This leadership demands that the Cold War is the only political destiny allowed Russia. Given the influence this community has on American policymakers, why is anyone surprised at the lack of evolution in the Russian-American relationship?
In sum, there are very few Generation X thinkers directing programs today that are determined to open up new political and diplomatic possibilities, to encourage new thinking about Russia in a 21st multipolar global century not shackled to the mid-20th bipolar Cold War century. This does not bode well for the future of American-Russian relations or the future of Russian Studies in America. It certainly doesn’t bode well for diplomacy between the two countries, which is no small loss as everyone watches the events transpiring in Ukraine. Truly, this is about how the future gets defined. Right now, it is a future that looks depressingly familiar within a tightly framed intellectual past. It is a future shaped by a Lost Generation that allowed itself to be swayed by immediate trends and pressures of job placement. Instead of focusing on who to blame or where to place shame, it is now critical to see institutions be the intellectual change the world needs more than ever. There can be no diplomatic revolution without it.
*This is an updated version of an article I previously wrote back in 2015. At the time, I thought it was crucially needed because of how poor the state of Russian-American relations were. I am sadly disappointed that seven years later it seems necessary for such an update, given those same relations are arguably in an even worse condition.