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

And the boyars aren’t happy. On the one hand, those closest to him – which also means those who are benefiting most greatly from his rule – are unlikely to want to see him go, because he is their krysha, their protection. One of the reasons why poor old Leonid Brezhnev lasted so long as Soviet leader, even staying in office after several heart attacks and strokes, was because he had people around him who feared the rise of the dangerous and puritanical Yuri Andropov. When Brezhnev finally succumbed to a heart attack in 1982, it was probably a release for him but a terror for them. Obviously one can only draw so many parallels between the sad, senile Brezhnev and the still-vigorous Putin, but it is likely that there are many who will do their utmost to stave off a succession, which would likely sooner or later mean the new president’s favourites would take their places.

Most within the Russian elite, however, are not in this charmed circle. As Putin increasingly focuses on building his historical legacy and his own geopolitical agenda, he seems to be getting out of step with many of them. The majority, after all, are pragmatic kleptocrats; they are happy to proclaim their devoted commitment to Mother Russia, but they want to be able to keep robbing her blind at the same time, and sending their money, and their families, and their mistresses to safety and comfort in the West. The more sanctions bite, as Russian money becomes toxic and visas become harder to get, the less they can truly enjoy the fruits of their embezzlement. They are happy to see Crimea back in the fold, but they would prefer to holiday in the Cap d’Antibes. Times are getting harder, and so long as Putin continues to make sure his closest friends do well, that inevitably comes at the expense of everyone else. That said, they cannot risk challenging him, because one thing he does understand – and will undoubtedly be ruthlessly willing to keep in his grip – is power. His true loyalists control the security forces, which means they can punish whoever steps out of line. So instead the boyars are waiting. They know the tsar can’t, or won’t, be there for ever, and then they will have a chance to salvage something from the situation.

What do we in the West want out of this situation? It is hard to see any substantive improvement in relations with Russia, so long as Putin is in the Kremlin. Any attempt actively to topple him would be tremendously dangerous – we risk appearing to vindicate his claims about Western aggression and, if past experience is anything to go by, regime change never seems to work well for us. The apparent American enthusiasm for President Medvedev, and their willingness to treat him as if he were the real ruler and not a proxy, was meant to encourage a shift to a slightly more liberal politics, but actually contributed to Putin’s decision that he needed to return to the presidency. Any more active and aggressive meddling would likely trigger an active and aggressive backlash and empower the ultranationalists whom Putin has actually contained. He is neither a fanatic nor a lunatic, and a stable Russia is less dangerous than one in chaos. Containing the harm Russia can do to us and minimising his opportunities for mischief is probably the best we can hope for, however depressing and unambitious that may sound.

But what we can do, to restate an earlier point, is remember that ordinary Russians should not all be considered Putin’s ardent followers, but rather his victims, even if they may not think of themselves as such. We need to make sure they realise that we are not their enemy, and not least for the post-Putin future. We need to appreciate the extent to which Russia is driven by emotions, by a sense of threat and abandonment and disrespect that might be hard fully to justify in objective terms, but felt no less strongly for that. Personally, I am still an optimist and believe that Russia is slowly moving towards Europe and European values, as it works its way through the traumas resulting from the end of empire. But this is likely to happen over a matter of generations rather than years.

So we need to talk about Putin also because much of this will still hold true, even when he’s gone. We may face a Putinist Russia even without the man himself. It is not just that he has nurtured a political generation of mini-Putins, but also that one of the fundamental reasons for his continued standing is that he embodies and channels feelings shared by a majority of Russians. It is worth mentioning that even critics such as Alexei Navalny support the annexation of Crimea, and the newly active Communists who stage anti-government marches do so not because they think he is too anti-Western, but because they think his confrontational geopolitics mask a supine acceptance of exploitative neo-liberal market economics. Just as not everyone who supports Putin is our enemy, not everyone who opposes him is necessarily our friend.