Is it worthwhile for a Ukrainian newspaper to mark Vladimir Putin’s birthday in a special publication? In any case, this is an occasion to draw public attention to this person, which makes sense. All the more so that reputable and high-profile political scientists, analysts, and experts publish bulky texts with deliberations on Putin’s machismo and complexes, on how he has led himself into a deadlock without solving his psychological problems which are admittedly the root cause of the current troubles.
These people had been taught something and, whatever the case, they know what they are doing. Texts of this kind are a marketable commodity. And it is mindless to remind them that Russia’s entire society and political system are now aimed at war and seizures, that millions of people and, what is more, a narrow circle of decision-makers are personally interested in a continued expansion and pursuit of a policy that leads to degradation of the Russians and Russia.
“Let war be accursed! It has robbed us of our strength.” This is a line from a version of lyrics to the waltz On the Hills of Manchuria. Whoever sings the latter today, they use the words “we shall celebrate a bloody wake.” Meanwhile, it is just the right time to remember the robbed strength because this is what is now going on in Russia – enormous forces, means, and energy have been thrown for a war effort along the borders. This is the way Russia’s potential for peaceful development in the spirit of good-neighborliness and cooperation is being destroyed.
Putin is not so much the initiator and creator as the personifier of historic changes. The radical change is that the Russians have totally dropped the erstwhile peaceful rhetoric which was not just empty words for the previous generations of rulers who had seen a big war and were trying to ward off a new one even when they waged small-scale wars. Putin’s year of birth is quite a serious detail – not only for him, naturally. There are no more people in the ruling elite, who have the existential experience of a large-scale war.
Nor are there such people in the West and, as a matter of fact, anywhere else. But they do have an institutionalized national memory – a proper name for the attitude to the postwar system of international balance in a civilized world. But the Russians do not have one. The Soviet incantation “if only there were no war” has become an anachronism before our very eyes. Besides, the image of war has changed radically. Let us put aside all that has something to do with art and the humanitarian tradition, noting that war has been interpreted very simply since the times of the film The Fall of Berlin: leader – generals – masses. That great war has now been reduced in serials, pulp fiction, and the gutter press to one big-time special operation by NKVD men helped a little by military intelligence officers and hindered by battlefield soldiers and hinterland workers.
Putin is staging a show for the people. At first, informational broadcasting merged with serialized thrillers, and then the actors who had created the hackneyed images of glamorous NKVD men went to fight in the Donbas – after the ceasefire, to tell the truth. The President of Russia emerged as producer and director of a multi-genre political show. This is the nature of his power now.
Other voices can also be heard here. This is all madness! This is mindless! This is a road to the past!
No, gentlemen, it is sort of a road to a worldwide future. There is some similarity with the past, but there are more differences, and their number is bound to rise. Who could have imagined just a few years ago that it is so easy and simple to tear away a part of a neighboring state’s territory, invade it, in defiance of NATO, the EU, and the UN?
And it is only the beginning. Saying that all empires eventually collapse, for it is “the law of civilization” is an effective instrument against nuclear blackmail. Also quite effective is the exclamation “Shame on you!”
The producer managed to stun the world with novelty, and he will hold a monopoly on the political show market in the near future. Putin turned 62 last Tuesday – as many as Stalin did in December 1941. The latter was still to have such things under his belt as victory in the war, deportation of peoples, the great construction sites of communism, the repartition of Europe, wars in Iran, China, and Korea, the nuclear bomb, and new repressions.
And now – given up-to-date medicine, worthless Western leaders, a cohesive population, the cutting-edge technologies which the authorities can apply better than their critics, Europe’s dependence on gas, the most battleworthy army in Europe if not in the world, the nuclear weapons and readiness to use them, and, what is more, a political will that no other Western politician has – Putin will move mountains! And even if he is replaced by somebody else, no alternative to the current policy is in sight so far.
I can hear Ukrainians say, absolutely Russian-style: wars are won by intellect and soul, not by arms. I will agree to that. But let us not forget that Ukraine used the same weapons in the lost war as the aggressor did. Does this mean that he won by intellect and soul? Yes, by intellect and soul, as he had defeated democracy in Russia because he turned out to be smarter and more inspired than his opponents. And he managed to provide totalitarian inspiration to the populace, while neither the previous authorities in Russia nor the current opposition have even tried to provide the inspiration of freedom. On the contrary, they considered it undesirable and were trying to quell it as much as they could.
I will not be surprised if Time again proclaims Putin as man of the year. He is now the only one in international politics who fits the definition “actor.” He is also the author of many new and exclusive things. All the rest – both allies and adversaries – are backup singers and dancers.
And why not? Here is the Time magazine of January 2, 1939.
“Fuehrer of the German people, Commander-in-Chief of the German Army, Navy & Air Force, Chancellor of the Third Reich, Herr Hitler reaped… the harvest of an audacious, defiant, ruthless foreign policy he had pursued for five and a half years. He had torn the Treaty of Versailles to shreds. He had rearmed Germany to the teeth – or as close to the teeth as he was able. He had stolen Austria before the eyes of a horrified and apparently impotent world.
“All these events were shocking to nations which had defeated Germany on the battlefield only 20 years before, but nothing so terrified the world as the ruthless, methodical, Nazi-directed events which during late summer and early autumn threatened a world war over Czechoslovakia. When without loss of blood he reduced Czechoslovakia to a German puppet state, forced a drastic revision of Europe’s defensive alliances, and won a free hand for himself in Eastern Europe by getting a ‘hands-off’ promise from powerful Britain (and later France), Adolf Hitler without doubt became 1938’s Man of the Year.”
Unlike Stalin and Hitler, Putin resorted to almost no violence inside the country. Several generations had lived for decades in a fictional world with a fictional history. Then it became possible to live in world that contains several pictures of the world. And society itself preferred new inventions and fantasy. Even now, nothing in particular has been banned or closed down. There is no alternative on television, but it exists on social websites. People can read and learn everything. They can travel to Ukraine and see what is going on there. Therefore, crucified boys and corpses raped by the Kyiv junta is a free choice of free people.
It is for this reason that Putin is not Russia and Russia is not Putin. The name of Putin may be changing, but this will not change the heart of the matter. The show will go on – as long as it is a show.
The Russians have supported the aggression against Ukraine and a confrontation with the entire world. They are proud of the death of their relatives at war. They were not indignant that their pensions went to support Crimea and the “right” corporations. They left unattended budgetary compensation for the property Putin’s friends had lost abroad. So, “the people and the Party” are united in the current ordeal. There has never been such a consolidation of the elites and the populace, such cohesion of society, in Russian history – without repressions, intimidations, or buy-up, but sincerely and with dedication. It is like a pop star’s concert, the tickets to which are so expensive that you’ve gone into debt – it will be long and hard to go back home in the crowd, you’ll have to go to work in the morning, but the audience remains turned on so far.
The conclusion for the future is simple: in the case of a major war, there will be no civilians or civil targets in Russia.
But there is no major war in sight. There will be a different thing – politicians and peoples will be seeking their own place in Putin’s show, for it will be totally impossible to refuse this. Impossible if politicians and people remain within the framework they have outlined themselves. For the Putin show does not reject the old truth: you can treat politicians, nations, and people the way they allow you to. This also applies to the Russians.
Yet, not to allow often means to die. It is only the ability to die that can stop this show provided this is displayed not by a few heroes, as was often the case formerly, but by well-knit and cohered nations, which has also been the case before.
Dmitry Shusharin is a Moscow-based historian and political journalist
