The original absurd Time magazine headline, “How Ukraine’s [Kakhovka] dam collapse could become the country’s ‘Chernobyl,’” while quickly mocked with responses such as “When will America face its own Pearl Harbor,” or “Will Napoleon ever meet his Waterloo?,” reinforces a serious issue in discussing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine: 16 months after Russia’s full-scale war, 9 years after Russia’s seizing of Crimea, and centuries after an imperial expansion that first brought Ukraine under its thrall – there is still a lack of knowing and understanding basic facts when it comes to Russia, Ukraine, and their histories, separate and intertwined, and there is a continued failure to understand the current situation in the full context of Russian imperial history. Likewise, there is a continued failure in certain circles to explain Russian President Vladimir Putin beyond the Soviet system in which he was raised or his actions beyond IR realist theory.
Amongst a certain ilk of political scientists in particular, Putin’s actions in Ukraine are not only explained but, it seems, justified by NATO expansion into Eastern Europe, in contradiction to an alleged promise that it would not happen. Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s final General Secretary, confirming on Russian TV that there was no such promise ever made should put this argument to rest forever, but, alas, it has not. In similar fashion, their realist IR theory justifies Russia keeping the lands they have illegally seized, for they are – in their words – “traditional Russian lands,” while trying to compel Ukraine to negotiate these lands away in the name of a “peace” that Russia cannot be trusted to keep. Equally absurd is their notion that Russia should have received any type of “security guarantees” from the defensive NATO alliance, when it is Russia – and Russia alone – that has been the belligerent in the region, attacking only nations that have not been admitted into NATO.
Likewise, Putin’s psychology is explained away by, well, take your choice: he is a former KGB official; he was serving in East Germany when the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, and no one in Moscow would answer the phone and tell him what to do; something about once cornering a rat; the disintegration of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century,” any or all of which have led him to want to create a strong state at home, impervious to collapse. Those who can work a little further back link him to the Stalinist state, while a few more manage to tie him to Lenin’s Red Terror and other brutalities. While the tacit acknowledgement that Stalin – the only Soviet-era leader Putin praises – was a continuation of Lenin, rather than an aberration from him, as some in the West sympathetic to the Soviet Union long argued, is welcome, they fail to understand one important fact: Lenin himself was a continuation of Tsarist terrors that preceded him. However, this type of analysis requires a more in-depth knowledge of Russian history (as well as of broader Russian culture) than is held by a typical political pundit, academics who work on Russia within a larger field, rather than actual Russianists/Slavists who work in any given field, or the average writer of a Time magazine headline.
The Russian security state, from which Putin descends, is far more than a century old. It extends from at least 1565, when Ivan the Terrible – one of two Russian imperial leaders whom Putin praises – created the oprichniki, a secret police force established to oppress Ivan’s opponents through various forms of torment and torture, while also more generally terrorizing the entire Russian population. Boris Godunov, himself an oprichnik, later became tsar and is thus the first serving member of the security state, and one of only three in history, to lead Russia – the other two being Yuri Andropov and Putin himself. The security apparatus evolved to become the Okhrana under the later tsars and then morphed through a number of incarnations to become the KGB, in which Putin served, and then the FSB, which Putin briefly headed.
Putin’s actions against intellectuals who have stood up against his rule long precedes the oppression of writers in Soviet times, including those in the 1970s who revealed Soviet atrocities. Under Nicholas I, writers were censored and exiled, and it is here when began the long cycle of talented artists dying young, dying violently, and dying at the hands of the Russian state, whether directly or indirectly. The Golden Age of Russian Literature and Culture, which many cite as a reason not to blame all of Russia and Russian history for Russia’s full-scale war on Ukraine, was not a Golden Age of Russian governance. Indeed, it set a precedent for how the Russian state – including its Soviet incarnation – would treat intellectuals through to and including during Putin’s reign.
While Putin’s shuttering of Memorial does not have such a precedent, this is because the existence of Memorial itself does not have a historical precedent. It is the result of a unique period of Russian history, when such an organization was allowed to exist. What Putin did, once its existence became inconvenient for him, was in line with what would have happened had it existed earlier in history. If Putin’s abuses seem more or crueler than in Russia’s past, it’s because social media has made it much easier to track and follow and for those who are being oppressed – or their representatives – to speak out. In reality, though, there is nothing new in how Putin has acted, and, it goes without saying that if there is another period of liberalization in which an organization such as Memorial can exist, it will almost certainly face a similar end under a new Putin. Even the liberalization period of Alexander II, who followed the oppressive Nicholas I, was not long-lived, while his son, Alexander III – the second Russian imperial leader Putin lauds – proved to be even more oppressive.
The simple fact is that Putin is not an aberration in Russian political history nor is he simply a product of his Soviet past. He is a continuation of centuries of Russian imperial history, complete with a brutal security apparatus likewise supported and lauded. Just as Putin is a product of historical Russia, his actions in Ukraine are a continuation of Russia’s historical actions in Ukraine, extending from Russian imperial times, through the Soviet Union, up until the present day. A thorough grounding in Russian and Ukrainian history makes both of these facts clear.
Add to those who misunderstand the situation US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, himself holding degrees in Social Studies and Law, but having no known Russian area studies knowledge, who recently stated: “We have no quarrel with the Russian people, who had no say in starting this tragic war. … The United States is not your enemy… For more than 30 years, we worked to pursue stable and cooperative relations with Moscow, because we believed that a peaceful, secure, and prosperous Russia is in America’s interests … We still believe that today.” This, of course, is standard milquetoast boilerplate when trying to separate a leader the US wishes gone from his people. The problem here, though, is that Blinken misunderstands the support that Putin has from Russian people and the support that the full-scale war on Ukraine has amongst the Russian populace. Thus, our quarrel is, indeed, with the Russian people, particularly those who continue to express racist attitudes toward the Ukrainian people and who do not consider Ukraine to be a legitimate nation and, amongst Russians, there is a substantial number of such people.
Thus, it’s not that it’s become “Russia’s war,” as recently argued by Eugene Rumer and as accurately termed by Jade McGlynn in her eponymously titled book; it’s always been Russia’s war, from the first time they invaded Ukrainian lands centuries ago.
For those who argue that the domestic situation is too fraught for ordinary Russians to take to the streets in protest of Putin, tell that to young people in Hong Kong who still today, in the face of Xi Jinping’s continuing brutality that includes genocide against the Uyghur population of East Turkestan, stand up for basic human rights and democracy despite threats of long jail terms – or worse. What this means is that those optimistic about the next generation of Russian leadership, coming from today’s Russian youth, should have little reason to be so, for, even if this next generation were to consider a more liberal path, in order to do so, they would first have to successfully overcome the obstacle of being descendants of Russian imperial history and all that entails, and no one has yet been able to do so, especially with any permanence.
Views from the Heartland 