"I Was Wrong About Putin"

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/03/putin-russian-political-deterioration/626966/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/CjWgG

In February 2000, I met my friend and mentor, the anthropologist Vladimir Arsenyev, for a beer in a musty St. Petersburg University cafeteria. We were talking politics, and we fell into a conversation about the upcoming presidential election, which Vladimir Putin was obviously bound to win. Putin had succeeded Boris Yeltsin after the latter’s resignation and was seeking his first full term in power.

Arsenyev, then in his early 50s, was a fiery postcolonial leftist who hated the Soviet Union, but considered the emerging Russian mix of imperialism and capitalism to be even worse. He was not popular among his colleagues and was also disliked by some of his students who saw him as a kind of anti-corporate maverick.

My political orientation was rather different. I was decades younger than Arsenyev, and my whole childhood had been colored by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because I had experienced chaos, I believed in a strong hand. I regretted that Russia was no longer a superpower and thought that my country deserved a bigger role in world politics. I suppose you could say I wanted to make Russia great again.

Arsenyev put down his beer and said (in Russian, of course): “This man, Putin, will bring this country to hell. I know this for sure. It is the worst thing that could ever happen to us.”

*snip*

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

“Stability” (stabilnost) was, in fact, something of a slogan for Putin, one he adopted early in his presidency. He used the goal of stability to justify ruthless military operations in Chechnya. Another price of stability was having the same people in government from one election cycle to the next. In 2008, Putin’s ally Dmitry Medvedev took over the presidency, but everyone understood that Putin was still running the country as prime minister. I can’t say I cared much. Medvedev was promising to build a Russian Silicon Valley. People from all over the world wanted to move to Moscow. Life was good, and everything that wasn’t good I considered an anomaly, like the disgraceful war in Georgia. That was just a deviation from the norm, wasn’t it? Besides, our government insisted that it had to come to the assistance of the South Ossetians. I tried, moreover, to simply ignore politics. I became a journalist, but I focused on science and technology.

And so for many years I told myself that all was well. In 2011, Medvedev declared that he would not run for a second term and suggested that he would pass the presidency back to Putin, like a tennis ball. That was uncomfortable, but I tried to focus on the stability I still enjoyed. The parliamentary elections a few months later finally woke me up a bit: They were not just uncomfortable; they were a disaster. The results, which solidified Putin’s power, were obviously, shockingly, impudently fake. I took the metro to one of the first big protests of that winter with a friend. I asked him with sincere naivete, “Are the protests going to change anything?” My friend, who understood Putin much, much better than I, said, “Let’s just do what we can.”

Little by little, over a decade, I came to see that my country’s political deterioration was real and severe, and compromising everything else—very much including our scientific progress. I abandoned technology reporting for investigative journalism. I no longer strained to call frightening political developments, such as the ban on foreign adoption of Russian children, a mere deviation from the norm. I understood that these were signs of the new normal, and that the new normal was getting worse with every year.

As a journalist, I took part in investigating the infamous Unit 29155, tasked with destabilizing Europe; modern Russian Nazis; the production of Novichok, the nerve agent used to poison Sergei and Yulia Skripal and Alexei Navalny; corruption in the Federal Security Service; Russian hackers; the obnoxious wealth of Putin’s close circle of friends; paramilitary groups. I learned a lot about how Putin’s Russia works.

Most Russians, however, simply adapted. The degradation of our society was slow enough that many could choose not to notice it. This was Putin’s way: sticking the knife in gradually. Less drama, same result.

[smirkymonkey]

19. Isn't this the way it always happens?

"Most Russians, however, simply adapted. The degradation of our society was slow enough that many could choose not to notice it. This was Putin’s way: sticking the knife in gradually. Less drama, same result."

All modern Authoritarians use this method. They slowly acclimate you, little by little, to radical change and before you know it you are living in a hellish dystopia, because you were too comfortable to notice the tiny incremental losses of freedom and self-determination. One day you wake up and ask yourself how you got here. How did this happen? But the signs were there all along. It is death by a thousand cuts.

The same thing is happening here. Why aren't we doing more about it?

[lapfog_1]

2. Sorry Sergei Dobrynin, but some of us have understood

for a very long time that Putin was a cold evil POS.

And the crime is that your nation has let him become a dictator with aspirations of being the next Hitler or Stalin.

I hold all Russians who supported him or looked the other way (like you) accountable.

[Nevilledog]

3. Don't you see any parallel to the US and Republicans?

[lapfog_1]

4. of course...

Trump was a Putin wannabe and probably a Putin puppet.

And I hold the entire GOP accountable for him... that said, Trump strutted around like a tinpot dictator but he didn't invade Mexico (or Canada) with a mechanized army of 200,000. His big "accomplishment" was building part of a fence along our southern border. A fence that was never effective and is now falling down.

But we have flirted with the same sort of authoritarian politics here...

And I have never once thought that it was "ok" or "well he made the trains run on time" (where have we heard that before?)

[jaxexpat]

7. It's plain for any and all to see. It didn't start with Trump.

I think it bloomed with the post-Nixon era. From that time the GOP has made ever smaller efforts to provide a reasonable government alternative to the Democrats. With Nixon's departure, the GOP vision of their place in US politics was seen only through the rear-view mirror. They have not attempted to create real solutions for any of the very real problems that have reared up since 1975. In fact, they have created problems where none existed. That's because their only solution for every challenge is war. Tellingly, war and its profitability are their go-to certainties. The only nonmilitary approaches they understand are to pre-applaud criticism and encourage distain and despair for all things related to Democratic policies. They're now dependent on the lowest forms of propaganda for influence as well as justification.

Of course, they're ripe for collusion with our international competitors/opponents, as well.

[SheltieLover]

9. Absolutely!

[uponit7771]

11. +1,

[smirkymonkey]

22. Absolutely!

And the same thing will happen here if we don't stop Republicans from manipulating the voting process. They will definitely cheat and will most likely win unless we do more to stop them.

[Martin68]

5. It is interesting. A few intelligent and well-educated progressives I call friends told me Russia

had a right to annex Crimea - and they thought Putin was doing good things for the Russian nation. I was always suspicious of every aggressive move Putin made because I believed him when he said he wanted to restore Russia's "greatness." To me that meant he wanted to take back all the counties that finally regained independence when the USSR fell. So I don't get people who didn't believe Russia would invade Ukraine, in spite of every indiction that Russia was preparing for a massive multi-pronged invasion.

[SheltieLover]

6. Kicking for visibility

[KPN]

8. Well, if there's a silver lining, perhaps enough

Russians now recognize they were wrong and, together with those who never made that horrible misjudgement, can depose and rid their nation and the world of that evil prick.

Better yet, perhaps enough Americans will now understand the parallels between Putinism and the GQP’s Trumpism, so that as a nation we can nip it in the bud and destroy it.

[Solly Mack]

10. K&R

[XacerbatedDem]

12. Thanks Nevilledog

Excellent post. I never knew all that went on, it's like a history lesson, without the test at the end.

[scarytomcat]

13. Putin needs to be taken out.

Some how some way he needs to go down. I hate to bomb the Kremlin or anywhere else but this madness needs to stop.

[scarytomcat]

16. maybe we should put out a list of military and government targets in Russia

we could start bombing if putin doesn't back out of Ukraine start beefing up Nato and get ready to invade.

[panader0]

17. Have you heard of these things called nuclear bombs?

These bombings you want will cause worldwide destruction.

[scarytomcat]

21. do putin first

he is going to pull trigger anyway wait for it

[mountain grammy]

14. K & R

Excellent article.... thank you for posting it.

[2Gingersnaps]

15. Highly informative, very sad read.

Russia thought they were being "liberated" in 1917 when they overthrew an inept autocrat. All they have had since is some variation on inept, kleptocrat, autocrat. But his mentor was right, "once secret police, always secret police." Putin was and will always be in his core a peasant with delusions of grandeur.

[ruet]

18. Garbage!

1208 words in defense of himself and 44 more saying he was wrong.

[Hekate]

20. Article at link is very good. Thanks, Nevilledog.

[Nevilledog]

23. ...