A country for old men: The pitfalls of conservative political analysis during crises

Abstract

I would like to start this reply to the latest forecast by the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) with a small literary digression. Besides its poetic beauty, Y. B. Yeats’ ‘Sailing to Byzantium’ became one of the poet’s most lauded works for managing to express his acute reflexivity about the problem of aging. Observing the world around him, Yeats’ character understood with astounding clarity that it no longer belonged to him. Moved by this realization, he decided to set off to a different realm, a metaphysical world of immortal culture and spirituality, poetically represented as Byzantium. This critical reflexivity about the fragility and finitude of one’s earthly life indeed secured Yeats a place among his fellow literary classics in ‘the artifice of eternity’ (Yeats, 2004 [1928]: 2). In the IMEMO forecast, Dynkin et al., unlike Yeats, but like many pro-Kremlin spokespeople, tend to reproduce a somewhat fossilized and unreflective paradigm of political prognosis that hampers critical perception. Arguably, this analytical stance is a poor fit for the contemporary world, a reality that the authors dub ‘negative certainty’. The main reason for this misfit is that IMEMO adopts a discursive position of a ‘stereotypical old-timer’ who is attempting to talk to and educate a ‘stereotypical youth’. While trying to do so, however, the old-timer steps into territory