Putin’s insecurity might start with anxiety about his personal future, but he has extended this into a vision for Russia that involves a permanent struggle with the West and its liberalism. There is little NATO can do about this vision except to ensure Russia’s defeat in Ukraine. Trenin’s bleak logic works both ways. There is no turning back for either side. Putin’s future and that of his inner circle is a matter for the Russian elite. The fragmentation of the Russian Federation is not, despite allegations, desired by Western governments in that this would be a source of yet more upset and instability. By and large they would prefer that Russia held together – but again this is not up to them. Moscow’s decision to use outlying regions as a source of military recruits to pursue a catastrophic war means that it will have to cope with the consequences. Whether or not an alternative liberal and democratic vision for Russia can develop in the future, upon which any more stable European security order depends, will also be up to Russians. The West can help if there is something to work with for the consequences of continued chaos and anger will be dire, but the first requirement will be a different sort of leader in the Kremlin, with a strong enough political base to confront the harsh reality of Russia’s situation. In the end the biggest threats to Russian security do not lie outside its borders but inside its capital.
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Samizdata quote of the day – Росію необхідно перемогти editionPerry de Havilland (Wiltshire) · International affairs · Military affairs · Russia · Slogans & Quotations · Ukraine December 17th, 2022 |
 28 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – Росію необхідно перемогти edition |
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The “liberalism” of the West is not liberalism at all – this is perfect for Mr Putin as he, and his supporters, can point to the evils in the West (such as the sexual mutilation of children and the general Diversity, Equity and Inclusion agenda) and pretend that these evils, the collapsing societies of the United States and other lands, are what “liberalism” means.
And Mr Putin is perfect for the Western “liberals” (who are not liberals) as they can say “if you do not support what we are doing you must be a supporter of the vicious dictator Putin!”
Thus both the Dictator Putin and the Western “liberals” (who are not liberals) feed off each other – Mr Putin can point at the madness and evil that is engulfing the West, and the Western leaders can point that the brutal dictatorship of Mr Putin and his war of aggression in the Ukraine.
If these two things, the brutal dictatorship of Mr Putin or the madness and evil of Western “liberalism” (which is not liberalism), were the only two alternatives – then suicide would indeed be the correct course of action, but they are NOT the only alternatives – indeed they are not really “alternatives” at all.
I would ask people the following question – if Mr Putin and Western “liberalism” are alternatives then which of them takes the following position.
Support for Freedom of Speech.
Support for Freedom of Religion.
Support for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
Opposition to abortion.
Support for private property in land against the edicts of the government.
Real (commodity) money against the fiat money of governments and bankers.
Honest finance from Real Savings – not Credit Bubbles.
Voluntary, not state, provision for some of the basic things of human life – childhood, illness, old age.
The correct answer is NETHER.
Western “liberalism” is a lie – it has nothing (nothing) in common with the Classical Liberalism of Gladstone or Senator Conklin or President Cleveland (for both Republicans and Democrats could be Classical Liberals).
And the “alternative” of Mr Putin is no real alternative at all – for on so many basic things he agrees (yes agrees) with the false “liberalism” if the West.
The man of the right, in the true sense of the righteous man (or someone seeking to be righteous – for we all fail, and have to pick ourselves up again) will reject the “alternative” of Mr Putin as the false (fake) thing that it is.
I repeat – think about the Bill of Rights and the other things that truly mattered to Classical Liberals and real Conservatives (such as the Old Whig Edmund Burke – who spends far more pages attacking fiat money and Credit Bubble finance in “Reflections on the Revolution in France” than he does in talking about the threat to the Queen, although it is the latter that always gets quoted).
It is true that modern “liberalism” (which is not liberalism) has betrayed everything – every part of the Bill of Rights and every other basic principle (Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Religion, the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, the right to be secure in one’s person and possessions, the right to a fair and speedy trial, and so on) and has made a total mockery of honest money and sound finance – which is the bed rock of a just economy with real security of property.
But so has Mr Putin – he is no alternative, he is the same thing, tyranny, wearing a different coloured mask.
Much like in “1984” Oceania, Eurasia and East Asia are presented as alternatives (often fighting savage wars against each other) – when, in reality, they are not alternatives.
All the things one hears from deceived Conservatives on the internet “there was no Covid lockdown in Russia”, “there is no abortion in Russia”, “there is freedom of religion in Russia” are all false – every single claim is wrong.
To our brothers and sisters in liberty – especially in the United States, but elsewhere to.
If you are looking for liberty and for traditional principles – do not look to Mr Putin, look much closer to home.
Not to the Credit Bubble cities (yes they are doomed) and not to the Woke Corporations (also supported by the Credit Bubble) or to the institutions of government – such as the corrupt thugs of the FBI.
Go out into a rural area and follow the sound of a hammer working metal and the smell of a forge – there you will find what you are looking for.
“Putin needs to die.”
Can’t argue with it. Harsh, but his fault. I just hope those waiting in the wings are better.
Indeed, but that’s a big if. As Freedman put it…
Whoever comes after Putin might well not do so by promising to end the war against Ukraine but rather promising to win it.
This is listed as having five comments.
I don’t see any of them.
Does the site need looking at?
[They just showed up.]
Fan of Slackwire Clowns
Same here. I couldn’t see any comments, but once I’d posted one (which I then deleted) all the others appeared? Bizarre.
We’ll see if we can sort this issue out
Comments are working fine for me on my laptop even when I’m not logged in, but don’t appear on my Android phone in either Firefox or Chrome. Maybe it’s a rendering issue with the Cyrillic.
I removed the cyrillic from the permalink address. This seems to have fixed it for me (or it has just randomly fixed itself). I have no idea why that would cause the problem we were seeing.
Excellent points by Freedman.
I think the departure of Putin, however it happens, will be taken as a signal by many ordinary Russian conscripts as time to get out of this dismal war. Whatever promises are made by leaders in the battle to succeed him, whoever takes over will have a hard time restoring obedience and eagerness in the ranks even to the level of today, let alone to what Russia would need to start taking territory, or even keeping it.
The “bottom line” is “how does this war benefit Russia?”
And the war in no way benefits Russia – it is Mr Putin trying to recapture his youth, for when he was born, indeed right up to when he was 30, the Ukraine was under Moscow.
Mr Putin can not adjust to the fact, and it is a fact, that the Ukrainians do not wish to be under Moscow – for in his youth (again right to when he was 30) the Ukraine and Russia were one country, the Soviet Union. It was the Soviet Union that Mr Putin served – in the KGB.
Mr Putin is sometimes attacked as a Russian nationalist – but that is exactly what he is NOT. A Russian patriot should look to Russia, the interests of the Russian people, NOT try and rebuild the Soviet Union.
Hopefully, people will come into power in Moscow who do not dream of rebuilding the Soviet Union – but look inward, inward to Russia.
By the way, Lawrence Freedman is, in a way, just as delusional as Mr Putin.
Lawrence Freedman talks of something called “Western liberalism” as if Ronald Reagan was still President of the United States and Margaret Thatcher was still Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
This Frankfurt School “Woke” mess is not “Western liberalism” – Western liberalism, in the sense of supporting Freedom of Speech and a, at least partly, free economy, has utterly collapsed.
Russia must reject both Mr Putin and his dream of recreating the Soviet Union – AND reject the “Woke” West, which is in no way Western liberalism (which, contrary to Lawrence Freedman, has collapsed).
As for Americans – there is respect for basic liberties and for (to some extent) limited government in some States – Texas and Florida are the largest example (tens of million of people in both – so not small examples), but NOT at the Federal level.
The Federal Government of the United States and the Corporations (the Corporations propped up by the Credit Money of the banking system) are now an abomination – and this basic fact must be grasped.
In the 1980s the United States government was vastly bigger than it was supposed to be – but it was still, to some extent, “our side”. Only someone totally out of touch could think of the American government of today as in any way “our side” – it is, today, an abomination.
“Paul you have not really discussed the United Kingdom”.
I have not, and it is not an oversight – given the current position of the United Kingdom, there is no point in discussing United Kingdom.
As for technical issues with Samizdata.
Perry does a better job unpaid – than the large, and paid, staff of Facebook do.
Facebook has been driving me to distraction for a week now.
Other people on Facebook, including certain elderly people in poor health, will think I have let them down – that I have abandoned them.
There seems to be nothing I can do.
Silly me – of course Mr Putin was 39 (not 30) when the Ukraine voted for independence on December 1st 1991.
Still this strengthens my point – 39 is a bit old to adjust to a different world. Although his grandfather managed it – he went from being a chef at a hotel in St Petersburg, to cooking for both “Lenin” and “Stalin” before dying in 1965 in Moscow.
If someone had told a young Vladimir Putin “you know that, centuries ago, Ukraine was independent of Moscow” he would have said something like “how interesting” and then gone to lunch. It would not have occurred to him that such times could come again.
Things in history are not “settled” – just because something has been around a long time, does not mean it can not be reversed, and that is a good thing to keep in mind.
Curious: To whom in Russia do these promises need to be made to affect who takes power? Is there truly a meaningful democratic situation, or will contestants need to impress some shadowy power structure? Where does national power reside in a Putin-less Russia?
The people most likely to replace Putin circa 2022 are the nationalists (I nearly wrote “extreme” nationalists, but in a Russian context, the term “extreme” is redundant as there really isn’t a non-extreme alternative, it would be akin to saying a “moderate Nazi”). They run the range from true believers like the Himmler-esque Timofey Sergeitsev & his Rashist ilk, to cynical opportunists like Yevgeny Prigozhin, a non-figurative gangster.
This is the problem – Russian culture, the Russian soul, is wounded.
Take the Orthodox Church – the true priests and laity were mostly destroyed by the Marxists, often murdered. So what was left? Mostly clerics willing to go along with what they were told to do by the Marxist security organs (such as the KGB that Mr Putin was a member of) – it is true that actual belief in Marxism declined over time, but it was replaced by gangsterism. And nor is it just the church that was corrupted.
As various Russians have told me – “remember we are not the descendants of the people who risked their lives standing up for the truth – we are the descendants of those who murdered them”. The best Russians know how wounded the Russian soul is. Mr Putin is not the descendant of someone who denounced the lies and murders of “Lenin” and “Stalin” – he is the descendant of someone who made lunch and dinner for “Lenin” and “Stalin”.
But, make no mistake, there were plenty of Ukrainian Marxist murderers as well – they were not just victims for 70 years, their were plenty of “Activists” in the Ukraine.
Nor is the West free of moral decay – as Lawrence Freedman should know.
Every institution in the West is corrupted – state institutions and private ones to.
For example, Father Frank Pavone, the head of Priests for Life, has just been kicked out of priesthood – supposedly for vile language, he said “God damn” in a social media argument, but everyone knows this is NOT the real reason he has been kicked out. No doubt they will next throw financial allegations at the man – but that will also be nothing (nothing whatever) to do with the real reason they have got rid of him.
Modern Rome hates real priests – priests who actually do their job of standing up against abortion and other things. This is because modern Rome, like every other institution in the West, religious or secular, wants to get on with the establishment – and people who point out that what the establishment does (not “just” on abortion – on just about everything) is against the principles of Christianity (and against traditional secular moral philosophy as well – the traditional understanding of natural law, natural justice) are a terrible problem for Rome – and a terrible problem for any corrupted institution, religious or secular.
Bishop Strickland (Tyler Texas – of course it would be Texas) called what Rome did “evil” (his word not mine) – and questioned whether the earthly Church is controlled by people who believe in God at all (to which the answer is, perhaps, that they believe in a sort of Hegelian “God of surprises”, God as “History” – not the God of traditional Christianity).
Again it is not just religious institutions. The proud secular universities were set up to defend free enquiry and the search for truth, and now they are “Woke” – hating everything they were created to love, and seeking to destroy what they were created to protect.
The vast corporations are no longer really business organisations seeking to provide customers with what they want to pay for – the corporations now have a very different agenda (a political and cultural agenda), and are financed (more and more) by the flow of Credit Money created from nothing, and allocated (by BlackRock and so on) on the basis of the SEG and DEI agendas.
Every institution, public and private, is corrupted.
It is not just the Russian soul that is wounded – it is the Western soul as well.
And that holds true even if one has a non Christian (Aristotelian) view of what the soul is – what a person is.
We are all in deep trouble – and not just economic trouble.
China is preparing for war. We best do that ourselves if we know what’s good for us.
https://brownstone.org/articles/is-china-preparing-for-war/
The real question, Paul?
Who did all this damage to the “Russian Soul” you allude to?
Go back and take a look at what the “Russian Soul” consisted of, back before Lenin and the Communists. Was it ever anything worth holding up as exemplary?
So far as my reading of history goes, the Russians have always been a bunch of authority-loving ass-kissers, ideal slaves for whoever turned up. Whether it was the Scandinavians or the Tatars, the average Russian was always, always willing to serve themselves and their neighbors up as slaves. To the degree that the very word “slave” is derived from “Slav”, or vice-versa. Rather hard to tell, really.
The Russian “soul” is all about subservience or dominance; there’s no room there, for a free man to live. What few they throw up, they either kill or force into emigration.
Couple that with a deeply-rooted feckless fatalism, and the near-certainty that they’re doomed, and you’ve got Russia. The whole thing is sad, but just like dealing with your relative who’s a habitual alky, there’s no helping them. I’ve often wondered if it wouldn’t be kinder to just put them down like a diseased animal, before they foul the rest of the nest that is our world. Sea of Azov, anyone? The great whale slaughter of the post-WWII era, executed merely so some Soviet bureaucrat could tick off a box on the latest 5-year plan…? Never mind, of course, that much of the resultant product got wasted.
Whatever the “Russian Soul” consists of, the world would be a better place if it spent some time fixing itself, or just went quietly into that good night…
I still can’t wrap my head around whatever it is they think they’re accomplishing in Ukraine, aside from destroying themselves and confirming every sad stereotype the rest of the world has about Russians.
I hope no one here is offended by my irreverence and talking off OP but I just finished watching His Dark Materials
The series begins and ends in Oxford.
Philip Pullman is an Exeter College man, Oxford.
Considering the Eternal War between Oxford and Cambridge (let’s leave the London School of Economics to the Jim Hacker Fans, shall we), would an Oxford graduate and a Cambridge graduate setting out to collaborate on a similar series of books be ble to agree on where to set it …
Or would one of them write the series from prison for killing the other in a fight over where to start?
Happy Holidays all!
Too much essoterics for my taste. All the babble about Russian-Ukrainian history is “theater” for the media.
I think it is clear that Putin went into the Ukraine to secure the gas, oil, cosl reserves so as to secure his virtual monopoly on European fueal supplies. BessArabia/Romania were next on the menu. The “glorious” Russian history was just a convenient cover. This is an old fashioned “resource war”.
Most of Eastern Europe and the Balkins got all excited since they have played host to the Russian/soviet/tsarist hoards before. Their countrymen are buried in places like the Katyn Forest. Romania is a rather “stand offish” country. They didn’t accept US troops and French contractors because of the Holiday spirit.
If Russia isn’t stopped and bled white in the fields of the Ukraine, all of Eastern Europe up to the Vistula and the foot of the Carpathians is gone, along with the population. Note that the Luhansk and Donetz opted for an existence until they were occupied by Russia.
The gas and oil reserves along the Black Sea coast are the focus of this operation. All the blather about Russia and its destiny are for the hamburger in the trenches and the hamburger sedated by the media. The 101 Division isn’t there for a vacation. Someone sees the stakes on the table.
Russia seems to have some severe internal problems. Ex-Major (KGB) Putin apparently blocked the international financiers from taking over Russia, but he didn’t take the next step of verifying that his Russian financiers took care of business. Those in power in Russia stole the resources meant for training, maintenance, and up grades and, just like ours in Washington, pocketed the cash. When Putin sent the Russian army into the Ukraine, he was probably shocked at how badly things went. Now he is struggling to get some of his goals while NATO abd the US struggle to destroy that Russian invasion. Both Russia and the West have to keep their eye on China. Russian history and society are minor components in the mix.
It is a complex game in which Russian history is a fig leaf to keep the Russian population docile and the Wester population distracted.
The Kremlin in 2023:
‘Mr President, the Prime Minister has been killed in a car crash‘
‘Goodness me, is it 11.30 already?‘.
—
Borrowed and adapted.
Kirk – I have heard this one sided view of Russian history before.
It is like saying that American history is all about slavery and lynching black people – it is a Fun House mirror view of history, not real history. Like a history of the British Empire that consisted entirely of the slave trade and famines in various places – and nothing else.
There is a lot of bad in Russian history and culture, but also a lot of good.
Essentially what is being done is a leftist trick – “it is not Marxism, or leftism generally, that is at fault for what happened – it is nasty Russian culture….” the not so subtle subtext being “so we can try leftism here – it will work here, because we have a nice culture”. As Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, citing an old saying, “first they smash your face in, then they say you were always ugly”
The sort of fake “liberal” rubbish one sees in the Atlantic magazine.
Even that old liar Mr Putin tells part of the truth – when he says that what is being done in America today, mass abortion, attacks on the family, the celebration of sexual perversion, and-so-on, was all done in the Soviet Union long ago – he is correct. The lie is that it has stopped in Russia – in reality, underneath the rhetoric, it has continued.
The mass abortion, the sexual abuse of young conscripts, all the filth of Soviet times – under the surface it carries on in the Russia of Mr Putin. There has been no true spiritual rebirth, no Great Awakening – and there can not be, not with “ex” KGB types still in charge.
As for the West – pro abortion atheists who serve the World Economic Forum (with its agenda of world “governance”) are even appointed to the Pontifical Academy of Life.
The corruption of the West proceeds.
The corrupted West, Mr Putin’s Russia, and the People’s Republic of China.
We are not there yet – but we are approaching the “Oceania, Eurasia, and East Asia” of Mr Orwell’s “1984”. And it is the ideas that Mr Orwell himself, partly, had that are to blame.
Contrary to the Atlantic magazine, and all of the FAKE liberals, it is not the culture of Russia that led to these ideas failing there – they did not even “fail” they achieved the evil they naturally (yes naturally) lead to.
It will be the same, or worse, in the West.
Let us pretend that Ivan the Terrible, the worst ruler in Russian history before Soviet times, exterminated the Tartar Muslims (as many Western rulers would have – after all the Tartar Muslims had raided and murdered Russians for centuries) rather than accepting their surrender – even allowing them to keep their religion. Let us pretend that all the Cossacks were Ukrainian, that there were no Russian Cossacks. Let us pretend that the Free Peasants for the North did not exist (let us pretend that all Russian peasant farmers were serfs – as they were, say, in Prussia). Let us pretend that the Empress Elizbeth did not abolish the death penalty (during her time on the throne) – at a time when one could be executed for theft in many Western lands (including England). Let us pretend that the Russians are genetically evil. Yes indeed – this “history” is good fun.
In a way Moscow loves this “history” – because it divides Russians from other people (it turns them into Millwall Association Football fans “everyone hates us – and we do not care”). And it takes the achievements of ordinary Russians and hands them to the rulers.
It was NOT the various rulers in Moscow and Saint Petersburg who took back the lands of the east (which the ancestors of the Indo-Europeans had once inhabited) – indeed all the way to the Pacific and beyond (almost to where San Francisco now stands).
It was ordinary people – but they were not really “ordinary”, they were astonishing. What was done in the “Wild East” was at least as remarkable as what was done in the “Wild West”, indeed more so – as the technological gap was much smaller, and the numbers far more even (indeed Russians were often outnumbered).
And in spite of two World Wars, and the tens of millions of murders of Soviet Marxist times, much of this land is Russian to this day – cities such as Vladivostok (on the Pacific) are Russian today, just as they were in 1914.
Can the British and Americans say as much? About American cities or British ones?
But Putin must go – he has failed Russia. Both in his military incompetence and in his insane dream of rebuilding the Soviet Union.
It was not just that he failed – his objective (his aim) was wrong.
Mr Putin is not even a good Chekist – some of the people he has had poisoned have survived (it is known that poison is the weapon of a clown – one shoots one’s enemies).
President Z. goes about at will – all over the Ukraine and outside. And Mr Putin utterly fails to kill him. President Z. will be speaking to the American Congress soon.
Enemies of Mr Putin even leave Russia (mocking him in Youtube films) because his organs of state security are too incompetent to intercept them.
This clown regime in the Kremlin must end – it is an insult to Russia.
Even the Dictator of Belarus mocks his “friend” Mr Putin – pointing how Mr Putin believed all the Western (and Chinese) lies, hid from Covid like a little girl, imposed a Covid Lockdown on Russia (a mad decision), and even had himself injected (that did not work out very well, did it Mr Putin) and, of course, allowed the West to manipulate him over the Ukraine (playing on his paranoia) – so that he launched a war that has brought great harm onto Russia.
This war has allowed the Americans to blow up two Baltic pipelines (and they are justified to do so – after all Mr Putin is the aggressor, he launched the war) launch a whole series of sabotage attacks inside Russia (for example on an important gas field only a couple of days ago – many Russians have died in a whole series of attacks, and the organs of state security have utterly failed, if they have not been bribed to look the other way), and allowed the Western leaders to blame all the economic and social consequences of their policies – on the bogey man “Russia” (and thus escape blame for the consequences of their policies).
They played Mr Putin like a fiddle, in attacking the Ukraine Mr Putin did exactly what they wanted him to do – he is a fool.
The Agency and so on wanted a bogey man who would launch a war of aggression and murder lots of innocent people.
And Mr Putin lunched a war of aggression and murdered a lot of innocent Ukrainians – he did exactly what various international interests wanted him to do, he provided them with the Bogey Man they needed. Now they can blame everything on “Russia”, just as they used to blame it on “Covid”.
He might as well grow a mustache of the sort that can be twirled – and get himself a black cape and top hat, as he ties damsels in distress to railway tracks.
Why not Mr Putin? You behave like this (exactly as the international interests want you to – to be their bogey man) so you might as well dress the part.
And how’s that working out for Russia?
No, it’s a simplistic terrible explanation of Russian actions. The invasion has destroyed Russia’s dominant energy market share in Europe as a whole (but it was never a monopoly) & massively disrupted Russian supply chains.
Putin’s actions are utterly irrational from an economic point of view, which is a dead giveaway the primary motivations driving them were not economic. It doesn’t matter if you don’t buy the bonkers Russkiy Mir narrative, only that Putin actually does.
Not really. Putin isn’t an insult to Russia, Putin’s a reflection of Russia, Russia squared, distilled essence of Russia, the shit that floats to the top. A big mass of population thinks Putin is great, or at least ok & blame everyone except Putin for every fuck up. You think a sane alternative to Putin is waiting in the wings? Dream on. Unless you’ve lived there & tried to get stuff done in Russia, you’ve no idea how dysfunctional the place is all the way down to street level. Even at its worst, the dumbest neurotic woke inept bureaucratic institutional shit in the west doesn’t even come close. Putin is what Putin is because of Russia, not the other way round.
Paul Marks (December 20, 2022 at 11:48 pm), you attribute too much intelligence and foresight to the western ‘elite’. Generally, I’m +1 with Perry’s critique. Specifically, although Biden’s Afghan debacle and “only invade a bit of it, please” idiocy played its part in encouraging Putin’s invasion, the western elite did not foresee or want this invasion. “Rising energy costs are all Putin’s fault” is a lesser substitute for their expected alternative of having the costs of net zero phase-in over a longer timescale in less gross increments. The green narrative is determined to survive this little hiccough, but that does not mean they wanted it.