The colonel who got the century wrong

VLADIMIR JUSHKIN, Baltic Center for Russian Studies

The man who settled in the Kremlin in 2000 hung a portrait of Russian Emperor Peter the Great in his office. However, it was Yuri Andropov, a head of the Soviet KGB, who was his idol when he was young, and who remains his idol today.

The key to a psychological portrait of Putin is to be found in the film “20 Questions to Vladimir Putin” by Andrei Vandenko. In response to Vandenko’s question “Have you changed during your life?” Putin crosses himself (something he very rarely does in public, except at ritual events in church) and says: “My friends from my childhood and youth say that I do not appear to have changed.”

In this response, Putin reveals his basic way of thinking. He is an out-and-out conservative. For him, it is important to not change. It is well known that conservatives subconsciously fear the future and do not want it to come, while seeing ideals and role models in the past. A reformer, on the other hand, fears the past and sees ideals and role models in a future that has yet to be created.

It is important to understand that Putin’s conservatism is stored in his subconscious, in the foundations that will hold a person in place throughout his life, no matter how he changes or how he moves up or down the social ladder.

To an outside observer of life in the Kremlin, Putin’s rise to power appears to have been accidental, the result of a conspiracy of ‘oligarchs’ orchestrated by those close to Yeltsin (Abramovich, Berezovsky, Yumashev, and others). However, there is also another conspiracy theory about Putin’s arrival in the Kremlin. In the USSR and afterwards in the Russian Federation, the Cheka/NKVD/KGB/MB and finally the FSB made several attempts to seize power and rid itself of any political control from above.

In the recent history of the USSR/ Russia, the first clear-cut and indeed successful attempt of this nature was the appointment of KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov as the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in November 1982 following the death of Leonid Brezhnev. This was the moment the KGB as an institution finally came to power. However, Andropov died unexpectedly in February 1984, when power was again seized by ‘partyists’, the last of whom was Gorbachev.

On December 20, 1999, Putin reopened Andropov’s memorial plaque on the KGB building. The plaque was reinstated the day after Putin, at a meeting to mark the anniversary of the Russian security services, had said: “The group of FSB employees that we headed up while operating in the government was able to complete its tasks in the very first stage.” Russia is now run by the institution of special services. Mr. Putin is merely the administrator of the will of the institution in whose name he rules.

PUTIN’S AXIOMS OF STABILITY

The main objective of Putin’s nonEuclidean system is the self-perpetuation, for as long as possible, of the ruling class, i.e., the people acting under the ‘Putin’ brand, by keeping them in power. The Russian autocrat does not want isolation for himself or his entourage, does not want their children and grandchildren to sit in a gilded cage, does not want to and cannot spend more than at present on the arms race, as was the case in the Soviet Union.

The billionaires of the Kremlin and Lubyanka need a guardian who will not only give them the opportunity to spend the money they have accumulated for themselves, their children and their grandchildren anywhere in the world, but will also secure conditions that allow them to inherit assets anywhere, but above all in Europe and America.

Over the past century, the Russian rulers’ perceptions of the world and their place in it have not changed in the slightest. No matter what Russia’s supreme leader is called ‒ emperor, secretary-general or president ‒ the ruler will always be convinced that the population under his control lives better than all the other peoples on the planet, and that those who claim otherwise are madmen (like Chadayev), rebels (like Radishchev) or ‘foreign agents’ (Navalny and others).

THE AXIOM OF IDENTITY

Throughout the 21st century, Russians have been indoctrinated to believe that they have suffered because Russia lost its empire. Russians feel hurt because everyone – Europe, America, Asia, the whole world – owes them something. People took this hurt seriously, seeking some big idea, some sense of belonging.

The political regime found its own identity: conservative values, imperial self-consciousness, militarization, anti-Westernism, a particular path based on mythologized representations of history, the commemoration of the Great Patriotic War as the main glue that binds the nation together and the main method of legitimizing power. A consensus has developed around this, among both the elites and the masses.

THE AXIOM OF CORRECTED ERRORS

Putin and those close to him were mainly born in the early fifties. They chose their professions and began their careers under Brezhnev and Andropov. Having witnessed the collapse of the Soviet Union, they drew some conclusions.

Firstly, the shop shelves must be full so that no one goes hungry and there are no shortages.

Secondly, there is no need to shut all mouths. The valves that regulate the steam outlet must be maintained so that the pressure cooker does not explode.

Thirdly, check-in desks must be open at all airports. If you don’t like Putin, you can go anywhere you like and write “Putin is a dictator” in your blog.

The regime is not exposed to any internal threats at present. In this form, relying on repression, it will be able to exist for decades, even if the economy continues to decline.

THE AXIOM OF AUTOCRACY

This axiom is a cruel one: sooner or later, the possessor of an autocratic resource will become a hostage of his own “vertical”. He will become a hostage of those who defend and inform him. Of those who prepare his decisions and communicate his ideas. Finally, of those who feed him.

This has happened to all holders of absolute rule. In the end, each one of them ended up a hostage and also a victim of the reality they themselves created. It is not clear at this stage to what extent Putin is aware of this logic.

Edgar Savisaar (L), Estonian Prime Minister, and Anatoly Sobchak (R), Mayor of St. Petersburg, during the Estonian negotiations with Soviet Union republics in Narva, Estonia, Dec. 11, 1991. In the background is Vladimir Putin, Chairman of the St. Petersburg City Council’s International Relations Committee.

Scanpix photo

PUTIN’S SPACE-TIME

In September 2015, Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama held a full-scale bilateral meeting on the margins of the 70th UN General Assembly in New York. The conversation took place entirely behind closed doors. Instead of the scheduled fifty-five minutes, they spoke for around an hour and a half.

It was then that Mr. Putin presented his vision of international problems. According to Alexei Venediktov, editor-in-chief of Ekho Moskvy, he explained the instability of the modern world by the fact that the great powers had abandoned the Yalta-Potsdam system, within which each of them had its own zone of responsibility.

The Soviet Union had a certain zone of responsibility in which law and order had to be ensured. Let us now divide the world again into zones of responsibility. The Baltic States no longer bother us, the NATO countries no longer bother us. But the former Soviet republics (except the Baltic States), roughly speaking, should be placed in our zone of responsibility and I guarantee you that there will be no drugs, no Islamists, no terrorists. I will be responsible for law and order. Do you remember the Soviet Union? Was Poland in the Soviet Union? No, it was not. But it was like a satellite state within the Warsaw Pact. You take responsibility there: let the EU take responsibility for order in its zone, America in its zone, and China in its zone.

Russian President Boris Yeltsin (R) shakes hands with the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (L) during farewell ceremony in Kremlin, as members of the Presidential administration and the government look on and applaud in Moscow, Dec. 31, 1999. This is the moment the KGB took over Russia.

Scanpix photo by EPA

RUSSIA AS ANOTHER EUROPE

Russia is undoubtedly a European country, but it is a completely different Europe, with a different cultural code that requires translation from one language to another when it comes to European values. This is why the attitude of the Russian people ‒ including the pro-Kremlin elites ‒ towards Europe is so complex. This means that they would like to live there and enjoy all the benefits of European civilization, while discarding its underlying principles.

In addition, the Kremlin needs a presence in Europe in order to play its favorite game: divide and rule, deconstruct, incite, and seek allies. In other words, this is a normal part of undercover actions. If the Kremlin leaves Europe, it will miss out on many of the bonuses.

THE KREMLIN’S “LIST OF DREAMS”

Russia is governed by people who are convinced that the world is ruled by power and money, and that morality and justice were invented to deceive the foolish. Putin’s mission is to secure Russia’s readmission to the club of great powers. He wants to return his country to the position it held before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He believes that the strength of a country lies in its control over certain territories.

Not long ago, it would have been a victory for Putin if he were to obtain from the West, in any acceptable diplomatic form, a twofold guarantee: that the West would not interfere in what goes on in Russia and, at the same time, that it would allow Putin to intervene wherever he deems it necessary (within the former Soviet sphere of influence).

In return, Putin would give up trolling Western democracies, withdraw from some (but not all) of the regions which are sensitive in terms of the West’s interests and which he entered for the sole purpose of making the West acknowledge his importance, agree to more constructive dialogue on arms control, and develop trade and cultural relations in which he has an interest.

Ideally, this should have been a return to something similar to the brief period of détente in Soviet-American relations that lasted from around 1972 (Brezhnev’s first meeting with Nixon) until 1979 (the entry into Afghanistan of Soviet troops).

Biden reportedly gave Putin at Villa La Grange in Geneva in June 2021 around six months to prepare for constructive dialogue and to improve his foreign policy behavior.

A woman attends to a child as Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin takes questions during a nationally televised town-hall style session in Moscow, Dec. 4, 2008. A new generation has grown up in Russia knowing only one leader their whole life.

Scanpix photo by Alexander Nemenov

KREMLIN BOSS WITH A TROUBLED CHILDHOOD

Russian intellectuals know only too well that Putin is a worthless person, incompetent at almost everything, not well educated, with no understanding of international policy, history, or the ideological debates in which he tries to participate.

Biden, meanwhile, giving Putin a chance to sit down with people of a totally different level of intelligence, education, and political experience, was certainly aware of Putin's preparations for political suicide. In retrospect, we should have recognized his readiness for a military scenario in late December 2021 when Moscow’s ultimatum was presented to the West (the draft agreements with the United States and NATO countries to ensure the security of Russia and member countries of the Alliance).

It is now clear that the West’s written response (in which the US and NATO ignored key Russian demands) was the “trigger” for what Putin called “military and military technical measures”. But Putin is no military strategist. There were no objective prerequisites for waging this suicidal war.

Most military analysts wrote before the start of the campaign that a ground operation made no sense and therefore would not happen. The only exceptions were those who knew that, for the first time in history, the US intelligence community had taken a different approach: a significant amount of intelligence data were promptly unclassified and, in one way or another, made public.

“The purpose of this war is war,” explains Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian political scientist, publicist, and lawyer, and a senior fellow at University College London. “Those in Russia’s leadership who are quite rational and who are known as technocrats, who were once methodologists, who are trying to rationalize a long-term survival strategy for Russia, have developed the concept that war is a normal, healthy, and beneficial state for Russia. This war must be kept alive, constantly, like a slow fire on a burner. Now that they see the war as a slow fire, they want to put Russia on it, to boil it and produce a totally different cultural broth within the next 25 years. They expect that while they are burning on this slow fire, Europe will burn up completely and go to the dogs.”