I’m really bored with the unintelligent idea that Putin is crazy. It is shameful that our political leaders despise us so much that they think it’s OK to offer this ridiculous explanation to us.
Putin is not in the least crazy. He is expressing the interests of an overwhelming majority of people in his enormous country. And they love him for that.
Many – or probably even most – people in the FSU countries have not accepted the fall of the Soviet Union. They don’t like the capitalist system, they can’t manage to learn to live in this new reality, they perceive the values and lifestyles that go with it as deeply alien. They didn’t have a chance to learn capitalism and civil rights gradually and slowly. Instead, they were thrust into a way of being that they will never master as well as everybody else does. And this makes them feel constantly and painfully inferior.
This is a shared experience in the FSU countries but the non-Russian republics have received something in return for relinquishing the USSR that compensates them for this suffering. Their humiliation at the hands of the much closer Russians rankled more than the feelings of inadequacy when comparing themselves with faraway Americans. Nationalism is a potent force, and people will choose it over pretty much anything.
With the fall of the USSR, Russians saw their opportunities to feel good by humiliating Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Latvians, Georgians, etc severely curtailed. Instead, they found themselves constantly humiliated and made to feel painfully and constantly lacking. This does seem like a really lousy trade off: give up the pleasing feelings of total superiority and in return get to feel inferior and receive a system that you have no use for.
What we are seeing now in Russia is an intense acting out against this trade off and an effort to return to the status quo. And the only people who are crazy are those who are dismissing these efforts as nothing but an act of insanity.
Clarissa's Blog 
You said it “so true” Clarissa….
As it’s super-power staus declines, America finds it necessary to diminish the likes of the sly and strongman, Putin.
It may get worse if we are foolish enough to elect a “cowboy type” president next time…..
sadly, the world might then be confronted with two “crazies”.
…observer Jules…
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Interestingly the Bulgarian place I was just in was Nessebar.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nessebar
It wasn’t the first time I’ve been there but I’ve never seen nearly as many Russians as this year. Russian speakers were easily over half of all tourists (judging by the language overheard on the street with almost as many tourist signs in Russian as in English). Almost no Germans which was weird.
I didn’t go to the nearby Slanchev Brjag (the hardcore party capital of the area) and things might be different there but where I was it was wall to wall Russian speakers, mostly families though there were seemed to be some same sex peer groups as well.
A shop owner I spoke with thought they were more Belarussians and Ukrainians (because they weren’t buying as much expensive stuff as Russians in previous years) but the airport timetable was mostly to Russian cities (including three different Moscow airports and even Irkutsk(!) via Krasnojarsk(!) which seem like insanely long distances for a vacation.
I’m assuming these are nascient middle class people of the kind sanctions will hurt (to the joy of the regressive lumpen masses whose hearts are still rooted in the USSR handout state).
I’ll say this. In the way they dressed and behaved overall I prefer them to British (easily my least favorite tourists in Europe). This also might partly be due to not being able to understand what they’re saying to each other…..
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I’m looking forward to the backlash to Russia’s closing free transit of their airspace. I expect it’ll come in the form of Russian airlines losing slots at every European and British airport, which I heartily look forward to — I’d rather those slots be freed up for use by airlines I’d actually want to fly. 🙂
Vlad one day wants access to Heathrow again? He can wait until they’re done building Heathrow T7 …
Maybe the Gernams can reopen Tempelhof so Aeroflot can land there. 🙂
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My keyboard is highly dyslexic when I’m ripping MP3s …
Still, I like “Gernams”, it’s hilarious — I’ll allow it. 🙂
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I’ve heard that Aeroflot is the best European airline, though, in terms of customer service. Which isn’t that hard when the competition is the horrible Air France and the likes.
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Air France, where they charge you for your baggage per leg if you’re unlucky enough to fly from certain countries.
I’d be happy with getting rid of those Air France slots at Heathrow too. 🙂
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My experience is Lufthansa and SAS. The latter’s service wasn’t as good as Lufthansa standard but it was easily the most comfortable plane I’d ever been in. Massive amounts of room in an insanely comfortable seat.
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What you make of this? Seems to be the anti-Russian side of the conflict doing the nut-covering routine (based on studied emphasis on the T-word), but I’ve largely lost track of who’s who’s ally and the like, as I always do when it comes to international news.
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You make good points, but one thing that you are missing when you talk about how Russians feel – that the current sentiment has been cultivated for the past 15 years.
There is no free press in Russia today. Everything – tv, radio, internet – broadcast only what Putin wants them to. Incidentally, don’t believe “Russia Today” either, it’s a Russian propaganda site even if it’s in English. Recently, a couple of journalists quit from RT because they were forced to print lies. If in the past there were a few internet websites, recently some of them switched to only broadcasting the government line while those who failed to do so (grani, Kasparov, ej) were blocked to Russian readers under a flimsy pretext of “inciting unrest” – and on appeal the government couldn’t show any unrest-inciting articles, but the judge took government word anyway. So whatever people feel has been cultivated by Putin government. During the past 15 years, the government also cultivated anti-West feelings while promoted views that idealized the Soviet Union. if you’ve only ever heard one point of view, you’d believe it too. At the moment it’s 100% anti-Ukranian propaganda. So no, Putin isn’t expressing interests of Russian people, he is cultivating and using feelings that may help him stay in power. He is using the emotions he himself created. But what he is doing is not helping Russians.
Is Putin crazy? Who knows? I am not a psychiatrist. Sure his popularity increased with his grabbing Crimea, but he also backed himself into a corner and started processes that may be the end of him. Now, it’s difficult for him to leave Ukraine alone – he woke up nationalistic feeling and fear of “Ukranian junta” and “right wing”, so if he stops now, a large segment of the population will not be happy. But if he continues, the results are unpredictable. Unless he mounts a full scale invasion, the Ukranians will soon throw him and his soldiers out of the Ukraine. These people who are going to return aren’t going to be happy. Also, the Russian economy is 100% based on exports of natural resources. If Europe starts to buying less gas and oil, Russia’s economy will plummet. China isn’t going to pay the same price, and the deal with China is actually far more advantageous for China than Russia. In 15 years in power Putin has done nothing to develop Russian industries. All he did was enriched himself. He got lucky that oil prices went up so he took credit for it. But as sanctions start hurting Russians (including Putin’s own sanctions – brilliant idea, starving his own people to punish West), they may well turn against him. His own friends, oligarchs, may turn against him if the sanctions hurt them.
He is simply trying to hold on to power and also leave a legacy, after all he can’t retire. If he retires, he’ll be put on trial for corruption or killed. But at the same time he has a dream of re-creating the Soviet Union in some form, and while trying to reach it he isn’t thinking of consequences which isn’t very sane.
This is by the way from someone who grew up in Russia and visited Russia several times in the past. I mostly get my information from few remaining independent websites in Russia (currently blocked in Russia to Russian readers – this should tell you something). So I think I am not exactly ignorant when it comes to Russia.
If you can read Russian and are in the West, I recommend reading grani.ru, Kasparov,ru, ej.ru and a couple of blogs e.g. that of Navalny. If you are in Russia, you may have to go through mirrors to get to these websites as they are currently blocked to Russian readers. Incidentally, many of these websites – and these are Russian websites, not immigrant websites and not Western websites, so I suspect people there know no less about Russia then you do, and many of them do question Putin’s sanity. Incidentally, they often call him Putler.
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Thank you for this brilliant and well-informed comment!! You totally rock. You didn’t have to tell me you knew what you were talking about because it’s obvious from the comment.
Navalny is doing some really good work but the problem is that he is banned from TV and most people in Russia get all their information from the TV. He has great trouble making even just his name known nationally, which is a sign that the Kremlin sees him as a real threat.
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This is a good post from the other side of my viewpoint. Even though to me it seems you clearly accept all western writing as being above or more correct than Russian “propaganda” (Much propaganda in both I’d say – I’ve taught myself by reading both sides of the story and not accepting 100 percent of either side). I appreciate the take. I will say ending the post with “Putler” is really counter productive. Let’s be honest, Putin isn’t Hitler – It’s nice to make a point, but you did fine before that swipe.
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It’s important that people know how Russian dissidents refer to Putin. And I said time and again that pretty much nobody in the West has anything even remotely useful or intelligent to say about Russia. Except me. I’ve done a brilliant job reporting on Eastern Europe.
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