The Kremlin's suicidal imperialism

[Celerity]

The more apparent it is that Russia is losing, the more forcefully Vladimir Putin declares that it is not.

https://socialeurope.eu/the-kremlins-suicidal-imperialism



Not since the Soviet Union collapsed have I listened to a speech as Orwellian as the one the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, delivered to declare that four Ukrainian regions were now part of Russia. Just as Communism was once supposed to save humanity from imperialist exploitation, Russia is now apparently responsible for defending countries’ right not to be subjected to a ‘new colonialism’ which would turn them into Western vassals. In Putin’s Russia, war is peace, slavery is freedom, ignorance is strength and illegally annexing a sovereign country’s territory is fighting colonialism.

In Putin’s mind, he is righting a historic injustice, as the annexed regions—Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia—were once part of Novorossiya (new Russia), brought into the Russian empire by Catherine the Great. He is also standing up to the west—especially the United States, which has bled it of resources and dictated its actions since the cold war—on behalf of the rest of the world.

I love a good propaganda speech—I’ve taught the subject for years. But, coming from the leader of a country which has established itself at the centre of two empires, with other states as its satellites, Putin’s rhetoric is too rich to be satisfying. Just like Soviet leaders’ cold-war speeches, Putin’s address did not contain a single whiff of compromise. But Putin’s assertiveness in some ways surpasses that of his Soviet predecessors. It is instead inspired by his intellectual hero, the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin.

To be sure, Ilyin hated Communism. In fact, he praised Adolf Hitler for saving Europe from the Red Menace and when he emigrated to Switzerland before World War II he was thought to be an agent of the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. But it is pointless to seek logic in the dystopian kasha (porridge) of Russian heroes and symbols Putin serves up. So, while he echoes Ilyin’s belief in Russia’s superiority, he compares western leaders who ‘lie’ about Russia to Goebbels and justifies his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine as necessary to ‘denazify’ the country (with its part-Jewish president).

String of defeats.....

snip

[paleotn]

1. Baghdad Bob in Russian.