A Modern Russian, but Nostalgic for Lost Prestige
William Pfaff International Herald Tribune
Thursday, November 15, 2001
PARIS Who really is this Russian leader from nowhere, Vladimir Putin, in the United States this week?
Until Sept. 11, officials of the Bush administration had largely written Russia off. Its main geopolitical asset, its nuclear weapons force, was unusable. Its energy resources would be delivered to users by the market. In any case, the United States was rapidly developing its own bilateral relations with the ex-Soviet Central Asian states, undercutting Russia. All that abruptly changed when the United States was attacked. Washington suddenly saw a need for Russian intelligence cooperation, access to bases and resources in the former Soviet states of Central Asia and endorsement by Russia of its new war against terrorism. The Crawford ranch meeting assumed new importance.
Yet apart from whatever Mr. Bush, at their first meeting, saw in the eyes of Mr. Putin, the Russian remains a stranger.
I have a friend with interesting ideas about Vladimir Putin. The friend is a Russian, now in the United States but in touch with Moscow intellectual circles and the Russian political scene, possessing the unusual perspective of having been the child of a high Soviet official, educated amid privilege as well as the intrusive terrors of the secret police.
My friend calls the latter, collectively, "the beast," but nonetheless says:
"I know what they are as human beings. The new leader - God help me and help them all! - is a former spy, a young, disciplined, non-drinking man, reared in the milieu of the KGB, born at roughly the same time as the wealthy Texan he is going to meet but born in Russian poverty.
"Born in the ugly poverty of Leningrad's communal apartments, shared by several families, a poverty the boy from Texas and his parents could never have imagined, a hell of common life (I used to see it when I visited
classmates), in which creatures fought for space in a small kitchen, a tiny
bathroom and for such hot water as existed.
"Wishing to succeed, the young man volunteers for the KGB very early,
undoubtedly expecting a romantic life of adventure. He soon learns to develop a
professional second self, to live a double life, and he is a success, is noted and
is awarded by assignment with the Communist secret police, the Stasi, in East
Germany.
"Going abroad in those days, when even East Germany was 'abroad' and
Russia was all but completely shut off from the rest of the world, was a
revelation for the young man. He learned German very well. That was another
revelation, opening another civilization and world to him. He may have gone on
missions to rich West Germany. Whatever he learned, he kept in his heart.
"In those days we were taught that the U.S.S.R. was the center of the world,
center of a Ptolemaic system. 'Abroad' in my youth meant a different galaxy.
We were not meant to live there.
"My old nanny, who was completely apolitical, had an adult son who was a
specialist in milk production and was sent on an official mission to Denmark in
the 1950s. He returned deeply depressed. He told his mother: 'That was my
first and last trip abroad. Their animals live better than people do in our villages
here.'
"These experiences are vital. Once you have seen such things they remain
deep in your subconscious. They remain with Putin now as he travels all over
the world. He understands poverty, as the boy from Texas could never
understand.
"The naïveté of the rich boy blinds him. Only someone totally innocent of
poverty could drop food parcels on the Afghans at the same time as bombing
them. "Putin clearly wants to make Russia a great power again, but this is a
goal he can't speak about. He needs the United States and has quickly gone
aboard the anti-terrorism bandwagon. The world will forget Chechnya. He can
become bolder with the leaders of the ex-Soviet Islamic nations - whose
independence will be short-lived. They, too, will eventually be proclaimed
'terrorists.'
"Putin has big ambitions. They may also prove unrealizable. He knows that,
too. He might be satisfied if he could give his people lives in decency and
comfort. Today the president of Russia wants his country to be able to live in
that other, once forbidden galaxy. "But even to think this way makes him
trouble in Russia. He is caught between his two aspects. He is loyal to the old
superpower and to the idea of Russia as world power. On the other hand he is a
modern man. That makes him distrusted in his own country and the ally of the
West against his own country's past.
"He has his dream of restoring Russia's lost status. That could turn the United
States against him. His formation has prepared him to live with these dualities,
this ambiguity. But they are dangerous and make enemies."
Los Angeles Times Syndicate.
iht.com
Russia Repents?
Vladimir Osherov
Copyright (c) 1997 First Things 78 (December 1997): 43-47.
firstthings.com
Excerpt:
Consequently, Western support for Yeltsin on the grounds that he is promoting democracy looks more and more dubious. NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe seems to indicate that, despite protestations to the contrary, Russia is still deemed a potential threat and, as recent spying scandals in the U.S. confirm, Russia will hardly ever be a true ally. So why the support? Is Yeltsin seen as a guarantor of Russia's weakness? Whatever the reasons, the costs of supporting Yeltsin are being paid primarily by the Russian people, and the rise of popular anti-Americanism is far more ominous than any spying conducted by government agencies. Assisting in the destruction of Russia may prove not only morally questionable, it could also be short-sighted. Isn't this the way Germany was treated after her defeat in World War I?
Russia, or Moscow at least, bears more and more resemblance to the popular image of the pre-Hitler Weimar Republic's panoply of social decay: hoodlums, prostitutes, pimps, beggars, drunks, criminals, feverish excitement, and looming violence. There are other, more significant similarities: economic chaos, unemployment, the rise of political extremism. But there is also a moral analogy. It was, to a large extent, the de-moralization of Germany that brought Hitler to power. When Germans were asked to choose between Communists and Nazis, they chose the latter. Nazis, at least, were patriots, not Comintern agents. But the very fact that Hitler's racist, extremist agenda won so many votes clearly points to a moral blindness. The rot began not with Hitler. It started much earlier, with the advent of a liberal --and quite decadent-- democracy, prematurely adopted after the Kaiser's abdication.
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