More recent times have also been rewritten. The 1990s experiment with market democracy is portrayed by Putin’s textbooks as a modern ‘Time of Troubles’, in which chaos, poverty and violence outweighed any benefits; while the era of communist rule is remembered for its subsidised prices, free housing and education, rather than the political repression, shortages of consumer goods and persecution of free speech. Deploring the ‘wild’ liberalism of the Yeltsin years allows Putin to make the leap to a blanket condemnation of democracy and pluralism, while the mirage of a glorious autocratic past helps him silence dissent, political opponents and critics.
When, in 2019, the European Parliament issued a resolution condemning the Kremlin for ‘whitewashing’ the facts of Soviet collaboration with the Nazis, Putin responded angrily. In a lengthy essay published on the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, he defended the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact of 1939, in which Moscow and Berlin agreed they would invade and divide up Eastern Europe between them. The real guilt, Putin wrote, belongs to the Western powers who acquiesced to Hitler’s demands to annex the Czech Sudetenland. ‘Britain, as well as France … sought to direct the attention of the Nazis eastward so that Germany and the Soviet Union would inevitably clash and bleed each other white.’ As for Poland, the country that would suffer more than most from the secret protocol of the Nazi–Soviet pact, Putin argued that Warsaw was to blame for its own misfortune. ‘It is clear from examining the archive documents,’ he claimed, ‘that the Polish leadership of the time was colluding with Hitler … Maybe there were also some secret protocols in there, too.’
Most alarmingly, Putin rewrites the brutal Soviet invasion of the Baltic states, describing it as a peaceful unification of nations. ‘In autumn 1939, the Soviet Union, pursuing its strategic military and defensive goals, started the process of the incorporation of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. Their accession to the USSR was implemented on a contractual basis, with the consent of the elected authorities.’ Such an explanation is completely false. Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia were subjected to a violent occupation that involved repression and mass murder. His contention that they joined the USSR ‘voluntarily’ and ‘with the consent of the elected authorities’ is a fiction that has alarmed other former Soviet states that the Kremlin might once again seek to annex.
For his domestic Russian audience, Putin’s manipulation of history has had the desired effect. In a 2012 poll asking Russians to nominate ‘the greatest ever Russian’, Stalin came top and he has retained his title ever since. In that initial poll, Vladimir Putin finished in fifth place, behind Peter the Great, Yuri Gagarin and Alexander Pushkin; but by 2017, he had risen to second, only a few percentage points behind the man he has striven so hard to rehabilitate and, perhaps, imitate.
CHAPTER 17
STOP THINKING YOU CAN BE SAFE WITH THE BEAR
While in power, Donald Trump used the language of populism to pledge to ‘make America great again’. Vladimir Putin continues to use the same rhetoric today. Both of them have stirred up resentment among their own population, insisting that their nation has somehow been demeaned and diminished, while promising a return to what they see as its rightful national glory.
The world would benefit if ideas of ‘greatness’ were consigned to the past. Russia in particular would gain from an acceptance that the Soviet superpower is no more and that Russia needs to find a new place in the world, a role that corresponds to the real interests of her citizens who, like citizens across the globe, yearn for freedom, security and economic prosperity. Britain in the 1950s and 1960s went through the painful process of relinquishing its great power status and its old imperial dreams, finding itself a new role in global politics. If the Kremlin were to make the same leap, it would strengthen global peace and stability and would permit a new focus on the civilian economy to the immense benefit of the Russian people. Sadly, such a transformation is unlikely to happen under the current Kremlin administration.
Putin’s imperial thinking is in part explained by Russia’s history. For the last five centuries, Russia has been an empire, an agglomeration of territory invaded and swallowed up by successive tsars, then by the Bolsheviks. Empire has become Russia’s default mode; Russian people have grown used to it and come to regard it as a safeguard for national security. In the twentieth century, it encompassed the satellite states in Eastern Europe, which were seen as protection against invasion from the West.
But the world has moved on; empires are a thing of the past. Russia finds herself in thrall to an outdated system and now she must choose between the discredited past and the way of the future. To me, it seems evident that Russia must plump for the latter, for a unified nation of people of different ethnic origins, whose commonalities are more important than their differences. Such a state can exist only as a result of freedom, self-determination and the rule of law, not through compulsion and the force of arms.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a lot of ill-considered enthusiasm in the West about the rapid and trouble- free transformation of Russia into a ‘junior partner’. The West gave Russia lots of advice, but much less in terms of investment or technology. After the crisis of 1998 and the progressive disintegration of the Yeltsin regime, Western enthusiasm for helping Russia move into the twenty-first century quickly faded and was largely replaced by scepticism. Russia was seen as the new ‘sick man of Europe’, no longer worthy of interest or attention. It was an attitude that bore real-world consequences. In the early 2000s, Western governmental and quasi-governmental programmes such as the UK’s Know How Fund were shut down or refocused on Africa and the Far East. Some Western academics who had previously studied the USSR retrained as sinologists. Only those who really understood Russian history warned against writing Russia off: the Russian bear may spend long periods asleep in its den, but the longer it sleeps, the more serious the consequences.
Even those who recognised that Russia was not about to fall apart lost interest in the idea of Russian democracy. There were two streams of Western rhetoric about Russia: the ritualised speeches about the importance of Russia’s transition from authoritarianism and totalitarianism to democracy; and the informal consensus that formed at the end of the 1990s that however much you feed the Russian bear, it will always scurry back to the authoritarian forest. Even worse, there was a growing feeling behind the scenes that, actually, a bit of ‘moderate’ authoritarianism in Russia is both good for the Russian people and for the West; that a ‘moderately’ evil ruler is the best way – perhaps the only way – to keep a very evil and unruly nation under some sort of control. Such a ruler, the reasoning went, would keep Russia from rivalling the West in the struggle for the economic future; and since Russians are not suited to living in a democracy anyway, it would be useful for them to have a moderately authoritarian regime that would not frighten the West with Russia’s social abominations or provoke mass waves of emigration. Such thoughts, together with simple self-interest, played a part in the rise of Trumpism in America and Schröderism in Europe over the past two decades. If Russia isn’t going to fall apart, they suggest, then such an outcome – a sort of enlightened monarchical repression – is not a bad outcome.
Such attitudes are a mistake. Russia can be one of two things: despotic, aggressive and dangerous; or a democratic, strategic ally. The West can never be safe with an authoritarian Russian bear. Such a bear will forever be in search of prey, inventing external enemies on whom to blame internal failures and to rally the Russian people around its leadership. Russian authoritarianism will always be belligerent and aggressive. Its modus operandi will always be messianism, militarism and adventurism. It has no possibility of internal stability; it can be stable only when it is thrusting aggressively outwards. Such is the fate of all empires that refuse to transform themselves into a nation-state.