I Was Wrong About Putin

[Uncle Joe]

When U.S. intelligence started saying that Russia would invade Ukraine, I didn’t believe it.

By Sergei Dobrynin

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)

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

[Wicked Blue]

1. Author? nt

[Uncle Joe]

2. Got it, thanks.

[Kittycatkat]

3. Great article

[whopis01]

4. I had a friend of mine say something very similar about Putin in 2000.

I thought he was overreacting back then as well. He clearly was not.