Putin's Wars полностью

[T]his is the feeling of pride in one’s Fatherland, its history and great events. It is the endeavour to make one’s country more beautiful, richer, more powerful, happier. If these feelings are free from national megalomania and imperial ambitions, there is nothing blameworthy, conservative, in them. It is the basis of the courage, the perseverance, the power of the people. If we have lost patriotism, and the national pride and dignity that go with it, we lose ourselves as a people capable of great events.^[26]

Although Putin paid lip service to democratic freedoms, he stated that the “universal principles of the market economy and democracy” should be “organically integrated with the realities of Russia,” because “every country, Russia included, is obliged to seek its own way of modernization.” To adapt the universal principles of democracy to “the realities of Russia” meant that Putin advocated a Russian Sonderweg, a “special course,” implying that these universal principles are in fact not universal, but in need to be adapted to the Russian situation. This, in essence, introduces the theory of “sovereign democracy” that some years later would be developed by Putin’s spin doctor Vladislav Surkov. This theory, therefore, was, perhaps, not so original: Surkov was only acting as his master’s voice.

Putin’s “Russian Idea” can be summarized as follows: state power, the aggrandizement of state power, and pride of the citizens in this accumulating state power. The three pillars are: great power status for the state externally (derzhavnost), a strong state internally (gosudarstvennichestvo), and patriotism: the pride of the citizen in this external and internal state power. On the first element, Russia’s great power status, a commentator wrote: “The undemocratic and even authoritarian nature of derzhavnost is self-evident. Foreign and security policy implication of this ideology has been so far the assertion of Russia’s national interests which in many fields are considered to be conflicting with those of the West.”^[27] On the necessity of a strong state internally, Putin wrote:

Russia will not soon, if ever, become a second edition of, let us say, the U.S.A. or England, where liberal values have a long historical tradition. In our country the government, its institutions and structures, have always played an exclusively important role in the life of the country, the people. A strong government is for the Russian citizens not an anomaly, but, on the contrary, the source and the guarantee of order, the initiator and main force of any change.^[28]

Putin’s ideology, therefore, begins with the state and ends with the state. The ultimate goal of every Russian citizen should be the aggrandizement of state power and not the aggrandizement of his or her personal freedom and well-being. Putin’s words remind us of the words of Nobel Prize Laureate for Literature John Steinbeck, who, after a visit to the Soviet Union, wrote:

It seems to us that one of the deepest divisions between the Russians and the Americans or British, is in their feeling toward their governments. The Russians are taught, and trained, and encouraged to believe that their government is good, that every part of it is good, and that their job is to carry it forward, to back it up in all ways. On the other hand, the deep emotional feeling among Americans and British is that all government is somehow dangerous, that there should be as little government as possible, that any increase in the power of government is bad, and that existing government must be watched constantly, watched and criticized to keep it sharp and on its toes.^[29]

National Rebirth and Consensus Building