Ukraine: “There is a connection between the nihilistic ideology that marked Russia in the 19th century and this way of waging war”

What is most striking in the Ukrainian conflict is the strategy adopted by the Russians. It is characterized by a deliberate intention of annihilation, of systematic and radical destruction. Surely all wars involve damage to the enemy; but they are most often linked to military objectives, even if they lead to blunders.

In the case of the Russian aggression, on the other hand, one has the impression of an enterprise of total annihilation of the territory to be conquered, civilians and soldiers, men, buildings and things. Mariupol, Boutcha and many other martyred cities tragically illustrate this desire. As has often been pointed out, this is a strategy already adopted in Chechnya and Syria.

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Usually, the conqueror aims to appropriate the resources of the attacked country, which leads him to preserve them as much as possible, in his own interest. Here, on the other hand, one has the feeling that the expected gain does not matter at all. Destruction is not a means but an end in itself; and moreover it applies to the aggressor as much as to the attacked.

Nihilistic thinking as a principle of war

The damage caused to Russia by the war (effects of sanctions, withdrawal of foreign investors, accession to NATO of hitherto neutral countries, strengthening of European unity and defense, etc.) is far greater than the potential benefit of conquering the Donbass. But that damage, great as it is, doesn’t seem to matter.

How to explain such an attitude? One word imposes itself on the spectacle of this militarily irrational, economically aberrant, politically catastrophic war: nihilism. We know that this concept was born in Russia in the 1860s; and it is often associated with a marginal movement of opposition to the Tsarist regime, which quickly disappeared in favor of the Marxist-Leninist protest that would lead to the October 1917 revolution.

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But this representation is erroneous. The writer Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883), in Fathers and Sons, defines the nihilist as someone “who does not want to recognize anything”, “who does not respect anything” and “does not bow before any authority”. The writer-philosopher Alexandre Herzen (1812-1870), in an article from 1869, sees in it “a spirit of critical purification”; he associates the phenomenon of nihilism with the Russian mentality as such: “Nihilism is the natural, legitimate, historical fruit of this negative attitude towards life which Russian thought and Russian art had adopted from its first steps after Peter the Great. He adds: “This negation must finally lead to the negation of oneself. »

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