While tensions between Russia and Ukraine heightened with President Vladimir Putin’s hint of nuclear warfare, Hillsdale College hosted its first Center for Constructive Alternatives from Oct 2-5 to discuss Russian history, culture, and modern politics.
“The theater we are entering has been, in the last century and a half, the single most violent military theater on the entire planet,” said Christopher Caldwell of the Claremont Institute, who spoke at the CCA on Tuesday night.
Professor of European History and Culture at Bard College Sean McMeekin began the series with “Russia from 1696-1917: An Overview,” examining Russian history and the changes it experienced under rulers such as Alexis I, Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great.
McMeekin used these historical figures to draw parallels to modern Russia.
Stephen Kotkin, author of “Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941,” spoke Sunday night on “Russia from 1917-1991: An Overview.” After a childhood of poverty, Stalin committed himself to social justice, according to Kotkin.
Motivated by his past, Stalin’s leadership in the Soviet Union was a story of unintended and horrifying consequences, Kotkin said.
On Monday, Professor at Northwestern University Gary Saul Morson lectured on “Tolstoy and Dostoevsky: Lessons from the Russian Classics.”
Morson offered Tolstoy’s assertion that true life is determined by small changes.
“True life is not lived when great external changes take place,” Morson said. “When people move about, clash, fight, and slay one another. It is lived only where these tiny, tiny, infinitesimally small alterations take place.”
Morson presented Tolstoy’s example of Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” Raskolnikov was living his true life when “only his consciousness was active,” Morson said.
Morson addressed Tolstoy’s ability to portray his characters.
“Tolstoy understood the human mind better than any professional psychologist or social scientist who ever lived,” Morson said. “If they understood the mind as well as Tolstoy, they could create a portrait of a person as believable as Anna Karenina, but none has come close.”
Monday night, concert pianist Hyperion Knight presented “Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff: Creating a Russian Identity in Music,” weaving the history of Russian classical music with live piano performances. He presented the paradox of Russian music with the American disposition toward the Soviet Union.
“For a century, the Russian Soviets were the enemies of everything we hold dear,” Knight said. “And yet, the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky and Sergei Rachmaninoff feels as warm and welcoming to us as mother’s milk and apple pie.”
Due to travel restrictions, Michael Millerman of the Millerman School appeared in a virtual presentation entitled “Russia Under Putin” on Tuesday afternoon. The lecture focused on the Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin’s ideological role in Russia’s war on Ukraine,” Millerman said.
Dugin’s theories, frequently echoed by Putin, explore an alternative to Western liberalism found in a multipolar world. Dugin’s philosophies hinge upon the disintegration of nations, focusing instead on dynamic Russian borders, according to Millerman.
“The ideological dimensions of Russian foreign policy today is an expression of Dugin,” Millerman said. “The question for the future is whether it will continue to move in that direction or whether political and military events, as well as acts of God, will turn out in favor of unipolarity after all.”
Caldwell concluded the lectures with “Russia and American Foreign Policy Today.” Caldwell said the Ukrainian conflict is far more complex than most Americans seem to think.
“Should the United States pursue the war to ultimate victory, taking Crimea and admitting an ambivalent Ukraine to NATO, it will require a Korean style military buildup to hold the ground that we have taken but it will also change the West,” Caldwell said.
The CCA closed with a faculty roundtable on Wednesday. Associate Professor of Politics Kevin Slack posed a question about the American people’s say in the decision to become involved with Russia.
“How many of us voted on a war in Ukraine? We’re talking about possible nuclear holocaust,” Slack said. “If there’s one decision, if you had a democracy or some kind of representative government that was rooted in the people, people would make a decision as to whether or not we should go to war with Russia. And we are at war with Russia, and we’re possibly facing nuclear annihilation.”
Sophomore Clare Wildern said the CCA helped her to understand modern conflicts with Russia better.
“I signed up mainly because of the war between Russia and Ukraine,” sophomore Clare Wildern said. “I wanted to learn more about the war and the overall history of Russia. The CCA has been super informative and I’ve learned a ton.”