In Putinism, Hurting the
United States Is All About Payback
Russia still hasn’t recovered from its own trauma.
| APRIL 1, 2021, 1:25 PM
President Vladimir Putin addresses the crowd during a rally and concert
celebrating the fourth anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea at
Manezhnaya Square in Moscow on March 18, 2018. KIRILL KUDRYATSEV/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
“You’re just
projecting.” That’s a familiar phrase in domestic quarrels. Yet in their
relationships with one another, governments can also do a fair bit of
projecting. And in today’s foreign-policy climate, characterized by trolling as
much as it is also defined by past grudges, Russian President Vladimir Putin
stands out as a true king of projection.
As the U.S.
intelligence community recently reported, Russia attempted to
“denigrate” Joe Biden during last year’s election and undermine confidence in
the United States’ democratic institutions. To be sure, there’s a geopolitical
element to all this. But there’s also a psychological one in a country that underwent
one of the greatest national humiliations of the 20th century.
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Most Americans see Putin in cartoonish terms, usually
as some kind of mysterious “KGB spymaster.” Putin’s career in the KGB was
neither glamorous nor remarkable. Today, he’s just an older man carrying the
weight of bitterness and imperial nostalgia—a burden also carried by many of
his compatriots.
Putin is
often criticized for famously stating that the collapse of the
Soviet Union was a “genuine tragedy.” Yet even if you don’t romanticize the
Soviet Union, you can understand the place this sentiment comes from. The
social dislocation, widespread poverty, and loss of ideals that followed after the
Soviet collapse had tragic results for tens of millions of people in Russia and
beyond. Death rates soared, especially for older men, while GDP halved.
As the
journalist Arkady Ostrovsky has argued, the U.S. triumphalism that also
characterized that era not only added to the tragedy but bolstered a sense of
resentment that coalesced into revanchism—the perfect breeding ground for the
rise of Putinism. To blame the United States for Russia’s ills is to deny
Russians their agency, but serious mistakes were made early on, and the
consequences were predictable.
These
consequences don’t just come down to one person and his style of leadership.
Putin is not the only one who suffers from Putinism.
Putinism,
instead, is an entire way of thinking, a political ideology that, for Russian
elites, is based on the monetary rewards of staying loyal to the Kremlin. For
ordinary Russians, Putinism equals payback, a chance to be proud of their
country once more. Soaring oil prices have contributed to the sense of a
historic wrong being righted, simply because a portion of the profits went to
ailing Russian infrastructure and the like.
While this
may be hard for some people to remember, the Soviet Union had a grand vision
and purpose. This was the country that put the first man in space. This was the
country with the first woman in space—all the way back in 1963. (Sally Ride,
the first American woman in space, got there in 1983, by comparison.) This was
the country that, at least on paper, tried to make you feel as though you
belonged to something greater than yourself. Why wouldn’t Russians want that
same feeling back, in one way or another?
Consider the
events of 1991. An unsuccessful but frightening coup against President Mikhail
Gorbachev paved the way for the fall of the Soviet Union. What seemed solid
turned to dust. The Soviet Union had been fragile for a while, but it’s one
thing to contemplate fragility and another thing to have an entire country
collapse around your ears.
Viewing the
United States through the prism of this experience, Putin clearly considers it
fragile, too. Recall, for example, that the Russian president considers Netflix’s House of
Cards a credible portrayal of U.S. politics. Not only does it confirm
Putin’s worst beliefs about the U.S. political system, but it also shows how
easily the United States can be subverted.
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If U.S.
institutions are as hollow as popular television shows suggest, then it is
logical to believe that the United States will have its own 1991 soon. All it
needs, perhaps, is a gentle push, and Putin is certainly not above providing
it.
These
projections of Putin’s would be laughable if they weren’t worryingly close to
the truth.
These
projections of Putin’s would be laughable if they weren’t worryingly close to
the truth. The rot that had quietly spread through U.S. politics, in part
because the United States was so eager to distinguish itself from the Soviet
Union by further empowering the excesses of the rich and believing in the
ludicrous idea of trickle-down economics, culminated in the election of Donald
Trump as president. And though he was defeated both in the 2020 election and
the failed Jan. 6 insurrection attempt, Trump’s lurid disdain for the
democratic process is as contagious as any plague. Millions of Americans are
sick with it.
On the other
end of the spectrum, some popular, wealthy leftists are engaging in similar,
albeit less noticeable forms of sabotage—whether in the form of subverting social justice or chipping
away at the United States’ moral authority on such issues as
genocide, including what is now happening to the Uighurs in China. (Though let’s be clear:
The far-left hasn’t taken over an entire political party.)
The fact
that Putin plays both sides of the left vs. right argument
in the United States is a big clue as to the hollowness of the political system
he built. Ideology is a useful tool for Putin, but it doesn’t represent a goal.
The Russian
state may have adopted reactionary conservatism in order to create an
alternative to the “decadent West” with its pride parades, decriminalized
marijuana, and other things that Russian babushkas rail about, but that
conservatism is just another mask the government wears. The real purpose of
Putinism is money and power for a very small and entitled group of Kremlin
insiders. It’s a thoroughly corrupt system and therein lies its weakness.
And while we
can’t ignore Putin’s hostility, we need to address it in a realistic way. This
means being aware both of the Russian government’s limitations and that Russia
is always going to be a more interesting country than the sum of stereotypes
about it. It also means that we should stop playing into Putin’s fantasies. The
Russian state can’t denigrate us without our permission. Enough is enough.
Natalia Antonova is a writer, journalist, and
online safety expert based in Washington D.C.
TAGS: GEOPOLITICS, RUSSIA
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