While several leaders in the West and elsewhere, whatever their age, are intent on remaining current with awareness both of their own place in history and the aspirations of their respective nations, an aging Vladimir Putin seems never to have left his past behind nor even those of his predecessors. He is a resurrection from another era, intent on regaining a past glory of Russia which he believes once existed. The once KGB officer-turned-politician continues to parade himself in the classic, demonstrative style of his security-focused upbringing, right arm held still by his side while the left noticeably engaged in high-amplitude front-and-back motion. He lamented the 1991 demise of a moribund Soviet Union as “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” in his 2005 state of the union address. He obsessed over Russia’s fragmentation by subsequent separatist movements that threatened its legacy as a formidable and fearsome entity on the world stage. The notable example here had been the recent revolt in Chechnya (1999-2000) which he brutally suppressed in unmistakable Soviet military fashion with its attendant atrocities.
Much has been made of Putin’s imperialist designs, disguised within his flawed view of history. He revels in Russia’s particularly expansionist ambitions of the 16th through the 18th centuries when its tsars from Ivan IV (“the Terrible,” r1547-1584) to Empress Catherine II (“the Great,” r1762-1796) extended the country’s territorial reach progressively to the Pacific Ocean. Emulating tsarist historians who attempted to enhance their monarchs’ prestige by weirdly conflating Ukrainian and Russian histories to reflect a common and therefore older heritage, Putin went on to do the same in his 2021 historical fantasy. Using this platform, he justified his right to invade Ukraine in order to reclaim it as his land and not one belonging to the West let alone a declared sovereign nation itself.
Putin became invested in the notion of a greater Russia from his youth and sought to become engaged in its security through recruitment within its main enforcement agency, known at the time as the KGB or the State Security Committee. A strong security-minded apparatus had long become imbedded within Russia’s elite society from the time of the tsars, particularly promoted by the highly influential adviser to Tsar Alexander III, and later, Tsar Nicholas II, Konstantin Pobedonostsev (1827-1907). Vladimir Lenin (1870-1924) and his Bolsheviks not only adopted the notion of a pervasive security machinery, now named the “Cheka,” but notably heightened its brutal tactics upon civilians to those of criminal status with the implementation of physical torture and extrajudicial killing as accepted means of conduct.
The history of Russian cruelty has not only been institutional in its manifestations, it appeared to have emerged and been shaped intrinsically within Russian society, particularly among the peasantry of tsarist Russia. Life during this time had been subject to considerable harshness and deprivation without respite. Famed Russian writer, Maxim Gorky (1868-1936) took note of this in his pronouncement that, “Cruelty is the Russians’ principal trait.” This feature of the Russian character could only have been further promoted by the later violent overthrow of the tsarist regime, the brutal Russian civil war that followed, only to encounter the ultimate cruelty of Stalinism and the deprivations of World War II. It is perhaps what underlies the inherent and historic cruelty that is so abhorrent of Russia’s military and yet condoned by its leadership.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that Russia would witness the sort of ruthlessness on an unimagined scale during Stalinist rule after just emerging from Lenin’s revolution that itself had claimed upwards of nine million lives. Josef Stalin (1878-1953) assumed leadership of the Soviet Union as General Secretary of the Communist Party in 1922, consolidating his hold over the regime in the 1930s when he assumed dictatorial power until his death. His gulags, euphemistically addressed as “labor camps,” at the time of his death housed 2.5 million prisoners, the majority prosecuted for dissent. Some 14 million had already passed through their gates during his lengthy tenure with more than one million having perished behind them.
Stalin’s system of agricultural collectivization had caused widespread starvation that peaked with the Great Famine or “Holodomor” of 1932-1933 during which conservative estimates accounted for 14.5 million deaths within the Soviet Union. Among them, were seven million Ukrainians, including three million children, according to Robert Conquest in his book, “The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror Famine” (Oxford University Press, 1986). Ukraine, in particular, had been strategically targeted for its dissent and its fate was acknowledged by the European Parliament as a genocide. Then came “The Great Purge” (1936-1938) when a paranoid Stalin terrorized the general population and his own communist elites, including academics and the military leadership, with accusations of undermining the state but, more accurately, his authority. Hundreds of thousands were arrested by his secret police including 103 of the highest-ranking Communist Party members, 81 of whom were executed with the rest distributed and lost throughout his gulags.
As if to highlight Russian ambivalence toward authoritarianism and cruelty, a 2019 public survey by the Levada Center in Russia identified 51% of respondents who regarded Stalin with “admiration,” “respect” or “sympathy.” The study was notable also for a 12% increase over the previous year in the “respect” category. The public was now of the opinion that the human losses of the Stalinist period were somehow justifiable. The trend toward a positive view of Stalin, even among youth, had evolved within Russia, in particular, since 2015, after Putin’s invasion and annexation of Crimea. The latter action paralleled Stalin’s postwar claim upon several nations of Eastern Europe which had been overtaken by his military, including the territory of Königsberg, now Kaliningrad. Soon after, Russian communist influence was exerted throughout and puppet regimes established, much as in the case of Crimea in 2014. It was then a straightforward matter for the Warsaw Pact to come into existence in 1955, much to the chagrin of those Eastern European nations, as a means of challenging the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which had formed in 1949.
There are troubling similarities between Stalin and Putin, as if the latter was a student of the other. Perhaps it is not surprising that Putin resurrected the Stalinist-inspired national anthem, written for Russia in 1943, and revived the tsarist iconography of the two-headed eagle as the state coat-of-arms. Their behaviors speak to a penchant for absolute control of their immediate environment, perhaps rendering them vulnerable to paranoid beliefs, and excessive means of maintaining absolute security. Mental illness underlying Stalin’s paranoia has, in fact, been suggested to explain the excesses of his Great Purge. Likewise, there was a notable lack of humanity in how both domestic and foreign affairs were undertaken by the two leaders, a disregard for the welfare of the people over whom they had domain as well as the ruthlessness with which they conducted matters of war.
Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine turned out to have an inauspicious beginning, a profound strategic misstep in the scheme of things and a terribly shameful experience for the would-be emperor. The characteristic hallmarks of Russian military strategy with its inherent cruelty were all in evidence – civilian atrocities, criminal enterprise, and disregard for the rules of conduct. None of it helped to overcome its inept prosecution that had the expectation of quick victory and celebration in the streets. But it’s not an unfamiliar set of circumstances as much of the same had been witnessed at the start of the First and Second World Wars, the same expenditure of military personnel, loss of armament on a massive scale, and embarrassment that came with it.
Elements of the same barbarism so evident during Stalin’s reign in the 20th century have manifested under Putin in the 21st. Relief from the bonds of Soviet Russia’s oppression in Eastern Europe so readily felt by all in 1989-1990 was replaced by a fear of that same threat by the recognizable evil that is Putin. Remarkable as it may be within such a short time frame of little more than two decades, despite serious past grievances, the Eastern European nations of Hungary and Slovakia, have drifted toward alignment with an emboldened Russia and another Russian dictator. A fear of provoking Stalinist-style Russian vengeance perhaps runs deep when both nations not only directly border Ukraine but remain dependent upon Putin’s energy export. Both Viktor Orbán of Hungary and Robert Fico of Slovakia also have their own personal liabilities or dependencies regarding relations with Russia that may be of concern to each leader or that they may not wish to compromise.
Putin’s beliefs regarding Russia’s destiny were given affirmation by certain Russian ultranationalist writers and philosophers. Ivan Ilyan (1883-1954) espoused autocratic beliefs and the idea of a solitary idealistic hero, a force of nature, capable of taking command of his situation to bring new revival or to enhance his nation’s status. This nationalist rhetoric was carried forward at great length by another influencer with imperialist designs, Alexander Dugin, who fueled a sentiment of expansionism as Russia’s destiny, one that remarkably encompassed much of Eurasia. To some measure, it appears likely that Putin inherently harbored these beliefs from his youth so that it would have seemed natural for him to conflate them with his own, enough to reset history to his own irredentist design and proceed with retaking what he felt to be his.
The historically minded Putin takes into account the once expansive and tightly controlled tsarist Russia and its successor, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and sees the current state-of-affairs of a Russian Federation (RF) under threat of collapse. Since its inception in the latter part of the 13th century, the principality of Muscovy, centered upon Moscow, was established and gradually added to its domain the independent city-states of Novgorod, Pskov, Smolensk and Tver to become the territory that would become Russia. It gained recognition as a powerful city-state under Ivan III (1440-1505), followed shortly after by an unceasing expansionism eventually beginning to overtake the territory of present-day Ukraine to a large measure 200 years later. Imperial intentions became a necessary element justifying tsarist autocratic rule as a means of protection against imagined enemies. As Geoffrey Hosking’s book, “Russia: People and Empire, 1552-1917” (Harvard University Press, 1997) has put forward, a repetitive cycle of expansion, subjugation with repression and Russification, followed by further expansion had been set in motion, leading Catherine II to utter, “I have no way to defend my borders but to extend them.”
Putin’s own imagined external threat, of course, has been NATO which he accused of encroaching upon Russia’s own border, claiming territory over which Stalin’s Russia once had domain. The problem with Putin’s logic here, other than that NATO remains a defensive organization, points to the fact that nations sought security against the threat of another repressive Russian hegemony ruled by a self-serving and centralized authoritarian regime in Moscow. Much like Empress Catherine’s justification for Russia’s expansion, Putin would claim in 2016 that Russia’s border “doesn’t end anywhere.” This was taken to mean, in its modern sense, that he would defend the rights of ethnic Russians wherever they lived. The claim was no different in its intent than what Adolf Hitler had stated before invading Czechoslovakia where a German plurality had occupied its Sudetenland region. By his own words, Putin came to justify his interference in eastern Ukraine at the time, following it up with his full-scale invasion of the territory in 2022.
Although, surprising as it may seem, the current regime in Russia has not risen to the scale of depravity witnessed during Stalinist times, there is certainly a level of ruthlessness and immoral behavior in Putin that emulates the previous dictator. The real matter concerns what this will mean for Russia and the war that Putin must lay claim to. The cost of the war has continued to escalate. Targeting of Russia’s export economy with destruction of its oil refineries and depots has furthered the impact of global sanctions. The very real threat of seizure of its foreign assets for Ukraine’s benefit may further strain Russia’s ability to fund the entire military enterprise. Likewise, the considerable loss of military personnel has led to rather desperate methods to replace them through recruitment of criminals, ethnic minorities within the RF, and foreign fighters, many of whom have deserted, simply refused to fight or, more likely, have been killed. Russia has long been known for its ability to recruit great numbers of military personnel but its ability to do so now and to retain them has become increasingly difficult. It is now compelled to provide incentives of increased salaries and family death benefits and to find ways to overcome the plague of bad news that has streamed back from the front itself. It is unlikely that such a calamity, as acute as it became, was anticipated.
There is, however, more involved in sustaining the war effort that should be mentioned. Well before the invasion, Putin’s efforts were focused upon securing his dictatorship for the long term. This could not only happen by staging a Soviet-era election sham with its “ritualized, performative affirmation of the regime,” as it was referred to by Jerome Gilison in a 1968 American Political Science Review paper. Rather, it is more the case that a long-term effort has been underway to bring about the militarization of Russian society to ensure a state of protracted war for the purpose of regaining Putin’s lost empire. To this end, the regime began a process of indoctrinating its youth with nationalist ideals, promoting the notion of patriotism, righteousness and heroism in defending mother Russia much as it once did during the Great Patriotic War of 80 years ago. A Stalinist imprint is once more making its entry into the present day.
Political repression in Russia has escalated markedly since the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine with the imposition of laws that criminalize dissent resulting in a substantial increase in the number of political prisoners reminiscent of Stalinist oppression. Independent media has been eliminated leaving state-sponsored news sources to highlight Russia’s military propaganda, remind the public of its past imperial prowess, stir patriotic sentiment and promote the infallibility of Vladimir Putin. In the same fashion, it has raised the stature of a previously condemned Stalin to one of heroic proportion, one who saved the motherland from the Nazi invader and, in doing so, reminding Russians of Putin’s great struggle against Nazism in Ukraine, as ridiculous as that may sound.
The cult of Putin has become imbedded in contemporary Russian society with an emphasis upon a heavily biased perspective of Russian exceptionalism placed within its educational system. The latter is manufactured from an historical sentiment toward its imperialist past, its imagined inherent mystical spiritualism and commitment to its future. A crusader-like mentality is becoming instilled in the Kremlin-sponsored Movement of the First, a youth organization founded in 2022 on the 100th anniversary of the creation of its predecessor, the Komsomol (“Young Pioneers”) which was prominent in Soviet Russia. The new organization brought into its fold previously established entities, Yunarmia (“Young Army”) and the Russian Union of School Children among them, although they have remained somewhat compartmentalized. The enterprise has a membership approaching 5 million and is organized throughout the RF.
The stated agenda provides several educational avenues for development – international relations, science and technology, culture and history, ecology, military “volunteerism.” Sports competitions, war memorial restoration, first aid skills training add to the wholesome nature of the enterprise. However, the manner of delivery is meant to distinguish it from an implied comparatively degenerate upbringing of youth in the West. Propagandist elements appear in videos promoted by the movement emphasizing Russia’s altruism and denying such wartime atrocities as the bombing of residential buildings and destruction of schools and energy infrastructure in Ukraine. The movement by its appearance, otherwise, is not unlike other youth organizations save perhaps for its rhetoric which appears to promote the notion that the sanctity and the welfare of Russia must be preserved against external malevolent forces. This is not dissimilar to the anti-foreign sentiment characteristic of the Komsomol movement in Stalin’s time. The concern therefore regards whether we are witnessing the evolution of a new generation of Russian youth geared toward a more uniformly militant attitude toward the West. Such indoctrination is not unlike that seen in paramilitary movements of past fascist systems, notably, the Hitler Youth. In effect, is Putin weaponizing a youth movement for his future use on the battlefield?
Putin exists very much in a past that has consumed him with a hatred for the present. Ironically, his favorite Beatles melodies are, “Yesterday” and “Let it Be.” Putin’s future depends upon a perpetual conflict that he envisions will provide him the security he requires within Russian society. Russia’s future, on the other hand, rests with its people to judge whether a perpetual state-of-war over imagined grievances appears a worthwhile prospect for the coming generations. Will ignorance of the past perpetuated by a pervasive state propaganda prevail among a majority in Russia to guide its destiny or will the nation break from a self-serving authoritarian rule to find itself in an entirely different light?
Copyright @Kost Elisevich, MD, PhD 2024. All rights reserved. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.
