Putin Must Go - Russia's surprise war in Ukraine and the West's response to it have shown Vladimir Putin that the state of democracy in Europe, and largely in the world, is stronger than he believed. I have never shared the pessimistic view of Western democracies born of the failure of democracy to take root in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the recent resurgence of some democracies within democracies. However, there are important lessons to be learned from the recent past and from the present to preserve future prospects for democracy everywhere.
Russia's barbaric aggression in Ukraine poses a real and present threat to world peace and the rules-based order in Europe. But even worse than Russian war crimes are the neo-Stalinist ideas the Kremlin uses to justify them. Putin's regime is proposing to implement these projects in Russia and export them to the outside world in hopes of leading a new global Comintern. That new international that broke away from Soviet Communism—the Anti-Democratic International—still pursues the same goals, uses the same means to seize power, and incites the same anti-Western rage.
Putin Must Go
According to a recent Wall Street Journal report, German Chancellor Angela Merkel (2005-21) admitted at the November 2014 G-20 summit in Brisbane, Australia that Russian President Vladimir Putin would not be open to dealing with the West. While Ukraine was under discussion - Russia annexed Crimea earlier that year - Putin cited the "spread of gay culture" as evidence and condemned the collapse of democracy. This statement should be familiar to people in Russia and Germany, where it was used to justify the installation of bloody dictatorships in the 1930s. Surprisingly, rather than anyone who lived under Stalinism or Fascism being disturbed by such ideas, some right-wing media commentators defended Putin and repeated the lie to their audience.
The World Cannot Ignore Putin's Ukraine Obsession
Even more alarming was Putin's statement in an interview with Merkel that "Russia has high values and opposes the decline of the West." Nazi Germany's claim to racial superiority and Stalin's Soviet Union's claim to ideological superiority fueled their attacks on other nations. Considered inferior by both, Poland was occupied by the two powers during World War II and placed under the names of the foreign ministers of Russia and Germany under the infamous Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939. The insistence on the superiority of values and national legacies (the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union) is the key to understanding the war crimes and genocidal nature of Russia's war in Ukraine today. For Putin, all methods of dealing with inferiors are justified, they have to be forced or removed. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Serbian President Aleksandar Vukic say Europe's appeasers should take into account Russia's history and Putin's view that Russia is superior not just to Ukraine, but to the West as a whole.
At the same meeting in 2014, after Stalin, Putin also said that his hatred of the West was political, not cultural. According to Putin, leaders in a democracy are always weak because they need to get votes. Sergei Karaganov, Putin's former top adviser and now honorary chairman of Moscow's Foreign and Defense Policy Council, has been more vocal about Putin's democratic views, as have many Kremlin journalists. In an interview in April 2022, Karaganov said that Russia should win the war against Ukraine, while explaining that the real opponent of this war is the West, whose "moral basis" is questionable. Explaining the Kremlin's strategic report, Karaganov said that "democracy cannot survive in its current form in most European countries, because in situations of great stress [such as the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine], democracies always wither or turn into autocracies." These changes are inevitable."
Although the Kremlin's policies are no longer aimed at defeating communist capitalism, they still aim to destroy Western democracy. An overview of the history of Russian-Western tensions shows how they escalated into a political, cultural and economic conflict in early 2022, and why democracy has emerged as a central issue in this conflict.
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 raised hopes for democracy in Russia and Ukraine, along with other countries that gained independence. The West declared the end of the Cold War and welcomed these developments, but provided little practical, especially financial, support to Russian reformers. (This should not happen again with Ukraine today.) Finally, the old guard in Moscow allowed democratic and rebellious nationalist forces to easily overthrow ascetic communism, but feared democracy. To maintain their hegemony, the corrupt and military-security bureaucracies led by the KGB overthrew the reformers. Above all, the old guard worked to maintain control over key natural resource-based industries, particularly oil. These possessions were and are after power and money. They spent their spoils on luxuries in the democratic West and on propaganda machines and police to keep the people under control at home. This form of Russian state capitalism developed its hypocritical cult as a cover-up for corruption and looting and an appeal to the masses not to protest.
Stop Imagining Putin's Overthrow. Fantasies Won't Help Ukraine.
I remember having debates with the old guard when I was in government. Their arguments seemed to be a mixture of primitive nationalism and religious and cultural clichés. According to them, the Bolsheviks first created the Soviet Union, a superpower, and then the Cheka (predecessor of the KGB) to protect the USSR from internal and external threats. But the communists failed to recognize the flaw in their ideology: if you force people to sacrifice an unattainable paradise, sooner or later they will become disillusioned and revolt. The same thing happened in the Soviet Union. After the fall of Communism, my opponents argued, the Kremlin had to carry out propaganda
(Orthodoxy), who promised a heavenly paradise but demanded sacrifices on behalf of the Russian state – a fortress guarded by the Federal Security Bureau (successor to the KGB) and led an army against the infidels of the declining West. by United States of America. Now comes their ace card: whatever one thinks of their friendship, Russia cannot lose the US as a clear enemy in the eyes of the public, the military and the government. They need a common enemy to unite them.
This eclectic and false mixture of religion and patriotism became a post-communist surrogate for state ideology. This is called "Orthodox Czechism", which may sound strange, because the Cheka first suppressed the church and religion. Orthodox Czechism and its adherents gradually ascended to President Boris Yeltsin (1991–99), who was instrumental in the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise of the new Russian state in the early 1990s. A former provincial Communist Party operative, he denounced Communism and raised the banner of democracy in the struggle for power. However, he was not really committed to its implementation and, despite opposition, began to revert to traditional methods of governance. It was no accident that Yeltsin chose Vladimir Putin, a St. Petersburg politician and former KGB officer, as his successor in 1999.
At that time, the reform process was slow, and the emerging free market system left the Russian people with huge bills and means of payment. The promised benefits of capitalism and democracy were nowhere to be seen. At the same time, bureaucrats and crooked businessmen turned into millionaire oligarchs overnight. By continuing to support Yeltsin unconditionally and failing to act as an independent counterweight, democratic forces have lost credibility. As a result, the Democrats lost two free and fair parliamentary elections (in 1994 and 1995) to extremists and neo-communists who took advantage of the difficulties caused by partial reforms. None of the parties in parliament could offer an attractive alternative to the political and economic course set by Yeltsin and his bureaucracy - glorified Czechism and crony capitalism.
Russia Erupts In Fury Over Biden's Calling Putin A Killer
After coming to power, Putin and his team of ex-KGB soldiers doubled down on that focus, tightening control over key industries and the media. Parliament has finally become a stage show and a rubber stamp for Putin's policies, a sign that democracy is under threat. For Putin's circle, the Cold War never ended. The collapse of the Soviet Union was one defeat in the ongoing war with the West, which was responsible for Russia's domestic failures before and after its collapse. As the democratic press weakened under Yeltsin, and especially under Putin, ex-Soviet journalists were receiving KGB-led sponsorship from crony capitalists at home and abroad, and were soon turning to their traditional West-denouncing, NATO-fearing themes. .
After Putin consolidated his power in Russia, the Kremlin followed the Soviet model and moved forward.
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