We Need to Talk About Putin: Why the West Gets Him Wrong полностью

Finally, Ivan Ilyin was a White, or anti-Bolshevik, émigré who died in 1954. In The Road to Unfreedom, the historian Timothy Snyder paints him as a man who ‘ignored or despised: individualism, succession, integration, novelty, truth and equality’ and at the same time as an intellectual inspiration for Putin. This characterisation of Ilyin as a ‘fascist’ is pretty questionable – after all, this is a man who believed passionately in the rule of law and wrote that ‘freedom of the will is essential’ and that ‘self-determination in spirit is the deepest law of this life’. But regardless of such philosophical debates, the real issue is whether there is any evidence that Putin reads, let alone follows, Ilyin – or any of his other supposed inspirations. It is true that Ilyin’s writings were among a batch he suggested that regional governors read, back in 2014, and they certainly usefully justify his belief in Russia’s unique place in history, the importance of a strong ruler and the role of the Orthodox Church in defending Russia’s soul and ideals.

However, does occasionally quoting from the writing of Ilyin and others truly mean that Putin considers them his lodestars? Moreover, it is impossible to know if these are his or his speechwriters’ words. Instead of shaping policy, this is all about managing the public narrative; when some figures’ ideas are politically convenient they are hyped, and when they become liabilities they fade from view. Even when the ideas seem to chime with Putin’s own instincts, he is enough of a politician to put pragmatism first. Dugin, for example, has called for the Internet to be banned, and given that Putin has in the past described it as a CIA plot, one might think that this at least would get a positive hearing. However, with more than three-quarters of all Russians now using the Internet it is clearly a non-starter, and when the idea has been raised, Putin has shot it back down.

There is, after all, always another grand thesis or eccentric philosophy on which to draw, and a whole gallery of pundits, scholars, authors and know-it-alls are trying to influence Putin – or at least to give the impression that they do. In many ways, we can consider them as philosophical entrepreneurs akin to the political and economic varieties – they pitch their ideas to the Kremlin, locked in a rhetorical arms race with each other for attention and relevance, often by being more strident and striking than the last. But just as there is no one figure who is the power behind Putin’s throne, nor is there any one philosophy or philosopher that shapes his thinking. So, I had to disappoint that eager analyst and tell him that there was no key to this particular lock – or rather, that the answer was at once simpler and more complex.

In the same way as there is no single detailed strategy behind his attempts to elevate Russia internationally, nor is there is an explicit, coherent ideology in his domestic policy. Instead, within his unemotional exterior there bubbles a mix of very human motivations that generate his policies and responses. In what does Putin believe? As explored in previous chapters, he is a gut-level patriot who believes that Russia should be considered a great power not because of its military strength, its economy or for any other specific index, but because it’s Russia. This kind of primordial nationalism is hardly unique to him, or to Russia, but it bites especially sharply given that he and his generation still remember being a superpower. To an extent, this is about security – the idea that Russia must protect itself in a scary and unpredictable world – but it is also about respect and honour. Outsiders ought to treat Russia right, treat it better than they have previously.

To Putin, security and respect are based on strength, and a strong country needs strong state power. Like his fears about Russia being weak and his resentment at it being disrespected, this feeling is to a large degree rooted in the formative post-Soviet chaos of the 1990s. One of his first priorities on assuming power – and, to be honest, one of his real achievements – was to stop Russia sliding further into near collapse and assert the ‘power vertical’, a system of top-down personal control. However, the details seem to matter less to him. He grew up and lived in a state socialist economy, and though he had practical complaints about day-to-day inefficiencies and shortages, as far as we know he didn’t object to it philosophically. Now he runs a capitalist state, albeit one warped out of shape by corruption and oligarchic monopolies, and again, while he may sometimes be unhappy about some of the details, he shows no signs of wanting fundamental systemic reform.