Letter From the Editors

Those who seek a Chinese perspective on geopolitics often turn to the classic political epic “Romance of the Three Kingdoms,” which begins with the statement: “The empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide.” But as timescales telescope in the modern era, it is hard to tell: Is the world divided and seeking unity, or united (unipolar?) and succumbing to entropy?

Within Russia, unity seems to have carried the day (which would naturally be the aim of a ruling party called “United Russia”). Grigory Leiba writes that “all current regional governors, including acting governors, will win convincing victories in the elections” this fall due to the fact that “voter behavior remains conservative and loyalist.” The biggest threat to this monopoly comes from Irkutsk Province, where former governor Sergei Levchenko of the RFCP stands a chance.

However, as Novaya’s Alyona Itskova writes, Levchenko may be under intense pressure to take a dive: His son Andrei is currently serving a nine-year sentence among a slew of RFCP members recently prosecuted on politicized charges. Itskova traces the whole history of the RFCP as the primary challenger to the post-Soviet Kremlin, from Duma victories in the 1990s to “increasingly becoming an integral part of the system” under Putin. Does this persecution of up-and-coming Communist officeholders, let alone the nationwide network of street activists, indicate fear of a latent insurgency?

While top RFCP leadership has been largely cowed, one issue now seems to be galvanizing them, as Yevgeny Mezdrikov explains in the article, “Zyuganov Urges Fellow Party Members to ‘Escalate’ Topic of ‘The Mummy’ Movie About Lenin,” a title that serves well as a summary. Party organ Sovetskaya Rossia echoes the leader: “The murky slurry of anticommunist propaganda will not be able to obscure the bright past that Soviet power gave the country.” “Bright past” is a peculiar play on Lenin’s verbiage, suggesting a cyclical view of history rather than Marxist progressivism.

With the past safely in the Mausoleum, Putin went seeking his multipolar future in Tianjin, where China was hosting the SCO summit. Let’s allow correspondent Andrei Kolesnikov to paint the scene: “Everyone noticed that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi took Vladimir Putin, who entered the convention center, not even by the arm, but by the hand, and never let go . . . and led [him] in this fashion through assistants and translators to some bright future, toward which it is always worth striving – that is, toward Chinese Chairman Xi Jinping. . . . The three of them were delighted with each other and stood half-embracing.”

The context is Trump’s 50% tariffs on India, which have pushed Modi – traditionally cool on China and benevolently neutral toward Russia – very literally into the arms of his SCO partners. Into their cars, as well, apparently. Kolesnikov describes Modi and Putin “sitting in the car without interpreters for 40 minutes” while their staffs waited inside the Ritz-Carlton for talks to begin: “Apparently, they needed to discuss a treasured secret – that is, the supply of Russian oil to India” in defiance of US sanctions.

Returning to the Three Kingdoms, the whole gathering resembled the conspiracy against Dong Zhou that set in motion the collapse of the Han Empire. As host and clear leader among the 26 SCO+ countries, Xi Jinping was free to put forward his own magnanimous-sounding vision of a world based on “sovereign equality” and international law. Putin responded: “We have certainly listened attentively to everything that Mr. Xi Jinping has proposed, to create a new, more effective and functional system of global governance. This is relevant in a situation where some countries are still not abandoning their desire to issue diktats in international affairs.”

Apparently, Putin’s recent trip to Alaska did not sell him on Trump’s reforms to US leadership. He has now brought India into his multilateralist coalition and raised a Chinese banner over it. “The empire . . . long divided, must unite.”