OPINION GUEST ESSAY The Grand Theory Driving Putin to War

[Uncle Joe]

By Jane Burbank

Dr. Burbank is a professor of Russian history, recently retired from New York University.

(snip)

As Communism lost its élan, intellectuals searched for a different principle on which the Russian state could be organized. Their explorations took shape briefly in the formation of political parties, including rabidly nationalist, antisemitic movements, and with more lasting effect in the revival of religion as a foundation for collective life. But as the state ran roughshod over democratic politics in the 1990s, new interpretations of Russia’s essence took hold, offering solace and hope to people who strove to recover their country’s prestige in the world.

One of the most alluring concepts was Eurasianism. Emerging from the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917, this idea posited Russia as a Eurasian polity formed by a deep history of cultural exchanges among people of Turkic, Slavic, Mongol and other Asian origins. In 1920, the linguist Nikolai Trubetzkoy — one of several Russian émigré intellectuals who developed the concept — published “Europe and Humanity,” a trenchant critique of Western colonialism and Eurocentrism. He called on Russian intellectuals to free themselves from their fixation on Europe and to build on the “legacy of Chinggis Khan” to create a great continent-spanning Russian-Eurasian state.

Trubetzkoy’s Eurasianism was a recipe for imperial recovery, without Communism — a harmful Western import, in his view. Instead, Trubetzkoy emphasized the ability of a reinvigorated Russian Orthodoxy to provide cohesion across Eurasia, with solicitous care for believers in the many other faiths practiced in this enormous region.

(snip)

The goal, plainly, is empire. And the line will not be drawn at Ukraine.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/22/opinion/russia-ukraine-putin-eurasianism.html

[regnaD kciN]

1. Does she mention Alexander Dugin as well...?

Because he appears to be Putin's favorite ideologue, as well as required reading in Russian military academies, and is a prime exponent of a "Eurasia" stretching "from Lisbon to Vladivostok."

[orwell]

2. Yes...

...Dugin is mentioned as one of the philosophical architects of Eurasianism.

The joke about all of this is the fact that the underlying cause of this mindset is ego, pure and simple. I saw an interview with Dugin where he was obsessed with who was "the boss." Men and their toxic masculinity worldview...

"The West," always presented as the "evil bogeyman", was triumphant over the failed communist experiments in Russia and China for the fundamental reason that capitalism, with all its weakness and inequality, was a superior organizational method for delivering goods and services to people.

The communist economies financially collapsed, forcing them to reorganize with capitalist principles, avoiding deprivation for their people. Instead of just admitting that they were fundamentally wrong, they built up their economic and military power, and are now turning it on "the West."

But the basic authoritarian nature of communism still remains. They still dream of empire. They are still fighting the last World Wars. If they have a better organizational structure, then compete economically. Bring other nations into your sphere of influence by providing solutions to climate change, income inequality, human rights, and collective and individual problem solving.

But they can not do that! At the core their authoritarian male dominated philosophy is a vile corruption of human values and aspirations.

Liberalism is not a disease, it is the cure...
Feminism is not a disease, it is the cure...
Environmentalism is not a disease, it is the cure...

And right now, this planet is sick.