The point is that, like it or not, one has to write about Vladimir Putin’s message to the Federal Assembly of Russia. But this is a strange job. Even the pro-presidential online publications have been clowning around at full blast, as if it were for the last time.
But, who knows, this may be for the last time indeed.
I have already been saying that the new Russian totalitarianism has overcome in its development the logo-centrism of its predecessors. Actually, never and nowhere has the sense of a statement boiled down to the meaning of the words used in it, but it is impossible to properly interpret the leader’s speech in the great Putinist epoch unless you understand the context and many other circumstances.
Naturally, the Ukrainian reader will show interest in what concerns Ukraine. Judging by the text and the context, nothing good is in sight. The message repeated what Secretary of the Security Council of Russia Nikolai Patrushev had said on October 15 in an interview with Rossiyskaya gazeta. On the eve of the message announcement, the most visited websites showed links to this publication – perhaps to remind the reader of it. All is very simple: the former USSR’s territory is Russia’s sphere of influence. The West is trying to stage sort of a “Yugoslav scenario” here. Even if Russia had not seized Crimea, sanctions would still have been imposed on her.
After Putin had read out this part of his speech, the ruble, which had somewhat risen before, fell and never rose again. But Putin does not care a fig about this.
The essence of what he said is simple: for the Kremlin, there was not, is not, and will not be Ukraine as an independent state. For the Kremlin, there were not, are not, and will not be any nations as self-sufficient subjects. They are all just the objects of US manipulations. The US is thus being demonized to such a degree that it is in fact not demonization but demiurgization, almost deification.
It follows from this that Ukraine will continue to be in the process of a preplanned and streamlined destruction as a state and a nation. For the Kremlin, she is only a territory that hosts a battle between Russia and America, a new Armageddon, a battlefield on which nobody lives. And those who may still be living are not humans.
The old legend that the Kremlin’s top bosses have all their interests in the West, that the CIA controls their bank accounts, and, hence, they are manageable, seems to have been invented by the Kremlin itself, and some are spreading it by force of their stupidity and others by force of their official duty. Russian leaders regard the elimination of Ukrainian independence as a way of self-assertion in the face-off with the US. Beyond the shadow of a doubt, they are snuffing their cocaine and live in a world pictured by their own propaganda, which is natural for their rotten KGB brains.
But this is half the trouble, which would not provide grounds to forecast their success. Things are much worse.
Chekism was just a concentrated expression of the Soviet way of life which is in turn just one of the historical and transient forms of Russian identity. Now this rottenness of brain is Russian identity per se. The authorities need no ideological intermediaries, for they have merged with the people. It is not even people’s power. The authorities are the people and the people are the authorities.
It is totally mindless to seek any social support for the current regime. The Russian and any other totalitarian authorities do not need any deliberate support. It is just impossible to side with them because this will presume subjectivity of the supporter.
And this is sedition and sabotage.
For this reason, it is impossible to be on Russia’s side in the Kremlin-led wars and other enterprises. This side does not exist.
But the other one does exist.
And this applies not only to wars, but also to the abovementioned social support for the authorities.
Their social support means absence of any force to rely on. Therefore, their aim is to maintain constant mutual enmity inside and outside the country. Whoever does not understand this can still feel it. For this reason, nobody took a serious view of the message’s economic part, including legalization of the repatriated capitals. After World War II, emigrants were also invited back to the USSR – a repatriation of sorts on the crest of the victory’s wave. Prison-type research institutions received valuable specialists and the great construction projects of communism were furnished with additional workforce.
After Patrushev’s not so fresh interview was recovered, Komsomolskaya Pravda published an article signed by Ulyana Skoybeda a day before the message was delivered. This is usually the way to spread materials that are supposed to outline political trends in a crude and challenging manner. This time the source glorified sanctions and drew the conclusion: “the market has very little justified itself.”
The test is useful to all those who believe that the crisis in Russia can shake the regime, forgetting that the regime itself has organized, to a large extent, the crisis. The whole life of the country is being restructured, which is comparable to the “great turning point” in 1929. Some social strata, a free labor market, and all kinds of people’s mobility will be eliminated. All this is being done step by step, cautiously. This is also openly admitted – not in the president’s message but in the comments of MPs, journalists, and other official and unofficial mouthpieces of the government.
Moreover, the progressive public challenges the poll results which bring Putin’s trust rating to 88 percent. The arguments are typical – I recently chatted to a gypsy cabbie who said: just a little more time, and we’ll take pitchforks and go crushing all it over, if not today then tomorrow…
This attitude to sociology is, of course, a grudge against the thermometer. But this does not matter. It makes no difference whether or not it is 88 percent, for this cannot have any effect. In no way. OK, they will take pitchforks and do the crushing. So what? They will crush here and crush there. What’s next? Ah, they will crush the Kremlin! All the more so, what’s next? This is a usual Russian story. This will bring about not 88 but 196 percent because those who crush are in fact rabid supporters of the current order. The latter includes this kind of excesses as well as terrorism which has always played into its hands.
I mean that the events in Grozny on the eve of the message might have been anything – as were demolitions of buildings in 1999 and the act of terror in Beslan.
And the last point. I don’t know whether this has anything to do with the message, but on the eve of its announcement the Web was again full of claims that it is totally impossible to return Crimea to Ukraine without colossal problems and difficulties. So, I would like to lay down my position once and for all.
This is an absolutely empty chat organized and encouraged by the agitprop. To have this chat means to help the Kremlin. Russia must leave Crimea. The rest is the problem and headache of Ukraine. The principle is simple: the criminal must not avail himself of the fruits of crime. It is not his concern how the owner will make use of the regained property. Dear Russians must shut up once and for all, for they have no right to discuss this topic.
Dmitry Shusharin is a Moscow-based historian and political journalist
COMMENTARIES
“BATTEN DOWN THE HATCHES!”
Lilia SHEVTSOVA, non-resident senior fellow, Brookings Institution, Washington:
“It is the first impression of President Vladimir Putin’s message to the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. This kind of verbal exercises, borrowed from the US practice, has never meant in modern Russian history either the leader’s identification of the country’s strategic vector or at least his outlining of the agenda. They have always been part of a ritual that shows the Autocrat’s appearance and the support that he draws from the political court which sits in the Kremlin’s hall and usually begins to fall asleep in the middle (and sometimes earlier) of the presidential speech. But this time the ritual attracted the increased attention of even the court which began to close their eyes and stifle the yawning only in the 20th minute of Putin’s speech, i.e., after the president had formulated the subject of his minuet. And the subject was clear and unambiguous: the president determined the format of Russia’s existence during his presidency. This is the format of wartime and societal consolidation on the basis of military-patriotic mobilization. The Kremlin is going to mobilize the Russians through the idea of the reunification of Crimea with Russia, victorious rhetoric, the slogan of a ‘pan-Slavic world,’ a rebuff to Western aggressiveness, and defense of Russia’s sovereignty (as if somebody is trying to restrict it!). The president proclaimed ‘defending our freedom’ as the main goal for the government and society. Yet his speech revealed rather an original perception of this freedom – the freedom to interpret the principles and rules of the game and fill them with any content.
“If someone tries to see in the message a hint about the Kremlin’s readiness to have a dialog with the outside world, including Ukraine and the West as a whole, I must upset him or her. Yes, the speech had the hurriedly pronounced phrase ‘we will not follow the road of isolation’ and will be looking for ‘partners.’ But this hurried utterance does not change the essence of the main format.
“Vladimir Putin could not possibly say anything else: he can only move in one, already marked, corridor in spite of the growing economic problems. He is sure of his victory at any cost. But can there be any victory for those in a sinking boat? In plain words, Russia is no longer drifting, for she has reached the end of a historical blind alley. And what is next? We will see it, as the events are gathering momentum.”
“HE IS TRYING TO SHIFT THE BLAME FOR HIS CRIMES TO THE INTERNATIONAL SITUATION”
Volodymyr HORBACH, analyst, Institute of Euro-Atlantic Cooperation:
“Putin is showing the old Russian view of the world, in which the country is surrounded by America, he has no neighbors, and there is nobody to speak with. Nobody understands Putin, for he does not understand what he is saying, either. The Russian president is trying to shift the blame for his strategic errors and crimes to the international situation, the United States, and Russia’s neighbors, i.e., the forces hostile to her. We have been in a state of undeclared war with Russia for almost a year. We must be prepared to go on offering resistance.
“As for Gleb Pavlovsky’s claim that ‘the central slogan in Putin’s speech may be a return from the world of fantasies to the real world,’ I must say that the political scientist, who was once ‘excommunicated’ from the presidential court, may have expected Russia’s president to show more sober and realistic attitudes. But, judging by what he said, Putin continues to make Russian society have a special idea of the surrounding world. It is isolation of the Russian Federation and attempts to find a way to live on in this situation. He failed to disclose any realistic plans for Russia to survive in the conditions of sanctions and international isolation.
“The fact that Putin did not mention ‘Novorossia,’ a term he coined in April, means that he has nothing to boast about. If he had had something to boast about, he would have surely adorned his speech with this. Putin is aware of his failure in the Donbas risky venture and of his responsibility for the crimes being committed there. Of course, he did not want to popularize this theme in Russian society. This would also be a sore point for many Russians whose relatives and neighbors did or will die in the Donbas.”
Interviewed by Ihor SAMOKYSH, The Day
