By David K. Shipler
Russia’s
war in Ukraine might be one of the strangest in history. Even while his army is
being pummeled into retreat, President Vladimir Putin expands the goals of the
conflict into a messianic campaign against the entire West. As his military holdings
shrink on the ground, his strategic ambitions spread into a miasma of
self-delusion. It is a dark comedy with monstrous effect.
Not
only does Russia aim to retake the Ukrainian part of the lost Soviet empire, according
to Putin. Not only must Russia parry American military threats to preserve its very
existence, he claims. But also, more deeply, Russia must fulfill its mission, borne of its
thousand-year history, to lead toward a multipolar world: to defeat the arrogant
West’s “faltering hegemony”; its “neo-colonial system”; its “enslavement” of the
less wealthy; its “pure Satanism,” its “radical denial of moral, religious, and
family values.”
That is
a tall order for a country with a limping economy, few international friends,
and an army that looked formidable until the first shot was fired. It also
suggests a war in search of an ideology—or at least a rationale trying for resonance
in both Russia and developing countries that feel exploited.
In a way, it seems a lame throwback
to the communist era of Russian evangelism for worldwide social justice. But it
also reveals something more significant.
Putin seems to fancy himself a
brilliant global analyst. He has been holding forth in various writings and several
long speeches, most notably on September 30
in annexing Ukrainian territory that his troops didn’t entirely hold, and then
on October 27
in a three-hour session at the Valdai International Discussion Club—an annual
gathering of fawning Russian and foreign guests who lob softball questions
after he pontificates at length.
Several conclusions can be drawn
from this disconnect between solid ground and atmospherics. First, Putin is not
stupid and he is not unaware. He is Donald Trump with a sheen of
sophistication. He is a cunning wordsmith who weaves lies and truths together into
webs of alternative reality.
Second, he is a chess player with
the long view, cognizant of historical trends and able to think several moves
ahead. But he does not play well when he is emotional; emotion is not helpful in
the logic of chess. And despite his steely pose, Putin reveals his emotions with
a mystical reverence for Russian destiny. It has thrown him off his game.
And that leads to the third
conclusion, perhaps the most important. Whether in sincerity or opportunism,
Putin is tapping into a strain of ethno-nationalism that has endured through upheavals
of state rule from czarist monarchy to Soviet communism to transitory pluralism
to post-communist autocracy.
Call it Russianism, the label I settled on when I first encountered the phenomenon under Soviet rule in the late 1970s. A liberal writer saw it as the country’s only mass movement, and the most dangerous.
