Here's the question: Where does Putin's power come from? He is not an inherently charismatic man. He had to ask his wife to marry him twice because his proposal was so anticlimactic she missed it the first time. He was turned down for the KGB the first time and when he did make it in, he was exiled to a minor post in boring, no-path-to-advancement East Germany. He is not a leader who has risen to his position through cult of personality and force of will. Others have benefitted all along from Putin's rise to power, and others currently benefit from the way the country is run. The KGB failed to depose Gorbachev in the August Coup, yet the levers of power in Russia are currently controlled by former KGB and current FSB apparatchiks. If you were nomenklatura under the Soviets, you are with the Oligarchs under Putin... unless you oppose Putin. Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev, Yeltsin... these were flamboyant men whose cults of personality was internal, leaders who swayed and inspired friends and colleagues all their lives. Andropov, Chernenko, Putin - these are gray men whose role within government has been to shore up the power of the structures that raised them. The cult of personality built around Putin is formidable indeed... but it's external. He's not the kind of guy who will slam his shoe on the table at the UN. He's the guy that will have his enemies poisoned a thousand miles away and then say I didn't do it... but he deserved it. The opposition is removed. The voices of protest are silenced. The money is kept under the mattress. And the image is crafted. But all of these things are done for him as much as by him and in the power structure of autocratic Russia, if you aren't seeing a demagogue you're seeing a puppet. Putin would be nothing without the infrastructure that put him where he is and keeps him there for their own benefit. I grew up at a nuclear weapons lab. We saw far more Soviets than the average American encountered outside of TV and movies for the simple reason that we had exchange programs. We were also far more finely attuned to the comings and goings of Soviet politics; Sakharov was a town hero not just because of what he did and what he stood for, but because he was a personal friend of many of the scientists where I grew up. You've never been a monolithic "other" for me; Russians have always been good people under a bad system. If anything, my study of geopolitics has left me questioning the fundamental American maxim that all peoples everywhere want democracy above all else. The stable point of greater Asia does not seem to support this notion.This got me curious: what do you see Russia and its people as? How is this image different from the one you were growing up with?
Interesting observations. So, you think if Putin stopped making those around him more rich and powerful, he'd be deposed? This infrastructure... Are we talking solely about the people who built it, or about the culture that allowed for it, as well? This is mind-blowing. Your intimate connection to the nuclear program makes for quite a few amazing stories to geeks like myself, I Imagine. I remember you talking about Feynman, among others. Just being able to drop such names makes me moist. If you were God, what would you change about the current Russian system to make it better?Putin would be nothing without the infrastructure that put him where he is and keeps him there for their own benefit.
Sakharov was a town hero not just because of what he did and what he stood for, but because he was a personal friend of many of the scientists where I grew up.
Russians have always been good people under a bad system.
They're not my observations. Politkovskaya suggested it. It's pretty much the thesis of Gessen's book. Their argument - which I find compelling - is that Putin is the tip of a KGB/FSB shaped iceberg that enriches the elite and connected. This system existed under the Tsars, it existed under the Soviets, and it exists now. Russia is hardly unique in that regard; elitists do as elitists do. The overthrow of the Romanovs allowed for a change-up of the "monarchy" but that's hardly unique, either. It is my measured opinion that it's hard to be Russian, that it has always been hard to be Russian, and that barring a string of miracles, it will continue to be hard to be Russian. Autocracies thrive where life is hard because the likelier change is to be harmful or fatal, the less a populace will entertain it. A point the Durants make in every book is that history, as we study it, is only the high and low points. The overwhelming majority of people in any era are just trying to get by, live their lives and not make any waves. They go as far as to say that most of the time, people are happy. I've never been to Russia. The Russians I know, I admire. It would be the height of arrogance to suggest that I have solutions to problems undiscovered or unconsidered by millions of clever people across generations. It would be almost as arrogant to suggest that change is needed. But if I were God, and I could wave my magic wand, I'd make Russia a more bountiful, more easily protected place.If you were God, what would you change about the current Russian system to make it better?
Mongols, for one. Rationalism argues that the primary component of international relations is geography, not people, and that culture is shaped by maps, not the other way around. I'd start with Kaplan's Revenge of Geography.