For John, BLUF: Russia can go "Western" or return to its "Eastern" roots. Nothing to see here; just move along.
Someone I know put this comparison together, as a way of looking at Russia's possible futures:
Russians have long debated what they want to be—a European society, heir to the Enlightenment, with Western-style religious pluralism, laws, and social organization, or a more paternalistic, authoritarian regime, rooted in Slavic nationalism and Orthodoxy.These are real differences. Russia is not France or Germany. Russia had Serfs right up to 1861. There was no religious reformation in Russia. The Enlightenment was not part of Russian political life.
President Vladimir Putin could drag Russia back to its less European outlook. And there will be those who believe he is providing a more correct approach to morality. Not everyone thinks "Pussy Riot" is a proper name for a band, nor approves of their actions. Moscow is not San Francisco.
To that discussion we can add an Opinion Piece by our former Ambassador to Russia, the Honorable Michael McFaul, "Putin the (Not So) Great". The sub-headline is "Laughing in the face of the rest of the world's rules can only last so long." The venue is Politico.
Vladimir Putin is everywhere in the Western media these days – glaring at us from the cover of magazines, psychoanalyzed daily on television, lampooned as a bullying tyrant in cartoons. Most portrayals assign sinister intentions to the Russian ruler. Yet, a subtext in many accounts is that Putin is also succeeding. As Time magazine put it, “each new crisis makes him stronger.” Putin may be a bad guy, so this story goes, but he is also shrewd, tough, strategic and smart, outmaneuvering the hapless Western alliance seeking to counter this judo master in the Kremlin.Regards — CliffI disagree. Putin dreams of comparisons with Peter the Great or the Catherine the Great. But if we judge him by his ability to achieve even his own stated goals, his record is not so great. He has achieved some objectives aimed at restoring Russia to the position of global greatness he believes it deserves, but failed at achieving those most important to him. And the future looks even darker.
While Putin is Russian, he is NOT Russian. The economic history of Russia over centuries as a result of its location on the earth's surface more or less "sets up" the Russian populace for a socialist life. Long repressed and suppressed while being dominated almost entirely by dictators/royalty, each passing and overthrown regime is not a leap toward freedom but rather a discouraging exchange of one despot for another. Putin is just the latest in a long line of dictatorial rulers and his KGB background ensures that his removal is highly unlikely as he has no doubt identified and terminated any potential opposition to his future.
ReplyDeleteCouple this with an "inherent" paranoia over invasion that has characterized Russia for centuries, and you have a populace who, even if outsiders want to play nice, are distrustful to the extent that they literally self defeat the very opportunities for freedom.
I don't think that the dreamers and academics in the free world can readily appreciate the foregoing. This particularly prevalent in the US as we have no historical experience with living under despotism...although...arguably...we've been sliding toward that state for the past 50 or so years.