M. Shishkin: Thanks to Putin, post-war Europe is now pre-war Europe

I can't think of anything to add this essay by famed Russian writer Mikhail Shishkin except my regret that, in addition to Russians in Russia being zombified and primed to revert amazingly fast to their self-deceiving Soviet ways, so too have many Russian-Americans, including U.S. academics in Russian and post-Soviet studies. 

Emotionally, not intellectually, they have felt the need to take sides, and sadly they have taken the side of the ex-KGB dictator because he's "theirs." 

Moreover, among Russian thinkers and elites there has always been a feeling of chauvinism and superiority vis-a-vis their "little Slav brothers" in Ukraine. I suspect but cannot prove that many Russian "liberals" are jealous of Ukraine's Orange Revolution and Maidan Revolution, and so they seek to discredit both, either as nefarious anti-Russian plots organized and funded by the U.S. (in both cases, they charge) or a neo-Fascist coup by an un-elected "junta," in the latter case.

Russia, Ukraine and Europe have been into Vladimir Putin's black hole of fear

By Mikhail Shishkin

September 18, 2014 | Guardian

I remember that as a child I read about black holes in a popular science magazine about space and it scared me. The idea of our world being sucked into these breaks in the universe kept bothering me until I realised that it all was so far away that it would not reach us. But then a black hole tore our world very close to us. It started sucking in houses, roads, cars, planes, people and whole countries. Russia and Ukraine have already fallen into this black hole. And it is now sucking in Europe in front of our eyes.

This hole in the universe is the soul of one very lonely ageing man. The black hole is his fear.

TV images of the demise of Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi were messages that fate sent him from exotic countries. Protest rallies that gathered hundreds of thousands of people in Moscow ruined his inauguration and signalled approaching danger. The disgraceful flight of Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych earlier this year set off alarm bells: if Ukrainians could oust their gang, it could serve as an example for the brotherly nation.

The instinct of self-preservation kicked in immediately. The formula for saving any dictatorship is universal: create an enemy, start a war. The state of war is the regime's elixir of life. A nation in patriotic ecstasy becomes one with its "national leader", while any dissenters can be declared "national traitors".

Before our eyes, Russian TV was turned from a tool of entertainment and misinformation into a weapon of mass destruction. Journalists became a special part of the arsenal, maybe the most important one, more important even than missiles. The desired world view formed in the infected minds of a zombified nation: Ukrainian fascists wage a war to annihilate the Russian world on orders from the west.

"There are no Russian soldiers in Crimea," Vladimir Putin claimed to the world with a wry grin in the spring. The west could not understand: how can he tell such blatant lies to his nation's face? But the nation did not take it as lies: we ourselves understand everything, but deceiving the enemy is not a sin, rather a virtue. The fact that "Russian soldiers were indeed in Crimea" was later admitted with such pride!

We are back to the Soviet times of total lies. The government renewed the social contract with the nation under which we had lived for decades: we know that we lie and you lie, and we continue to lie to survive. Generations have grown up under this social contract. These lies cannot even be called a sin: the power of vitality and survival is concentrated in them. The government was afraid of its nation, which is why it lied. The nation participated in the lies, because it was afraid of the government. The lies are a means of survival for a society built on violence and fear.

But just violence and fear cannot explain such an all-encompassing lie.

Why did the father of the Russian paratrooper who lost his legs in Ukraine write on Facebook, "My son is a soldier; he followed orders, which is why, whatever happened to him, he is right and I am proud of him"?

He keeps his mind off the idea that his son went to kill brotherly people and became disabled not defending his motherland from real enemies, but rather because of an insipid colonel's panic-stricken fear of losing his power, because of the ambitions of a clique of thieves swarming around the throne. How can he admit that his country, his motherland is the aggressor and that his son is the fascist? Motherland is always on the side of good. This is why when Putin lies in his nation's face, everyone knows that he is lying, and he knows that everyone knows, but the electorate agrees with his lies.

When Putin tells blatant lies in the face of western politicians, he then watches their reaction with vivid interest and not without pleasure, enjoying their confusion and helplessness. He wants Kiev to return on its knees, like a prodigal son, to the fatherly embrace of the empire. He is sure that Europe will boil with indignation, but eventually calm down, abandoning Ukraine to brotherly rape. He offers the west the chance to join the social contract of lies. All it has to do is say that Putin is a peacekeeper and agree to all the terms of his peacekeeping plan.

The sanctions imposed by western states against Russia represent a timid hope that economic hardship will make Russians resent the regime and nudge them towards active protests. Alas, it is an idle hope. Russians have a proverb: beat your own so the others fear you. It is hard to imagine officials in Berlin or Paris summarily banning food imports. The entire nations would burst in indignation that same day.

In contrast, in Russia such a move boosted the ruler's already sky-high rating. Putin knows the difference between the power he enjoys and the power of European democracies. Democratic governments are liable to their electorate for the people and their future, whereas under a dictatorship, one is only liable to follow orders. Every dictator hopes he is immortal, but since it is impossible, he is ready to drag everyone he despises into the black hole. And he despises everyone – both his own people and everybody else.

Putin knows that the west cannot cross the red line that he himself has long crossed and left behind. The red line is the willingness to go to war. It is hard for a human mind to switch from a postwar to a prewar time. The means of mass informational terror in Russia helped Russians to make the switch. Moreover, Russia is already in a state of war, an undeclared war against the west. Coffins with fallen Russian soldiers have started coming to Russian cities from Ukraine. Europe has fallen behind; it is still enjoying the relaxed prewar peace.

Europeans are not ready for the new reality that has set in. Leave us alone! Return everything to the way it was: jobs, gas, peace! No supplying weapons to Ukraine! One cannot start an armed conflict in the age of nuclear weapons because of some Mariupol! Should the world perish in a catastrophe because Ukraine was to be part of Europe? It is just because the Americans want to cause us to quarrel with Russians! It is all the fault of US imperialists and European bureaucrats! Why do we need sanctions that would hurt us too? The French are ready to take to the streets to protest at the American ruling that forces France to abandon the sale of Mistral warships to Russia. Moscow just protects its interest in Ukraine! And maybe fascists are indeed in power in Kiev? It may have started as a public uprising, but then a Nazi junta took over. Then why should we support them and fight with Russia? Putin offers peace! We want peace!

Putin's calculations are proving correct: it is more likely that citizens of western states, scared by economic woes and the possibility of war, would elect new governments, replacing Putin's enemies with more amenable politicians, than Russians would start to protest because of devastation and rising food prices.

Putin offered Europe his social contract. And with every new person willing to accept it, the black hole will grow and expand.

One needs to realise: postwar Europe is already prewar Europe.

Russian politics is about preserving Putin's power and life

I translated this op-ed (HT: AK) about Russian President Vladimir Putin because this Russian insight is not something my Western friends will often see in the media.  

Piontkovsky does not agree with some analysts that we are entering a second Cold War with Russia. In fact he believes we are entering a phase much more dangerous for Russia's near neighbors and global security.

Read on!

UPDATE (16.04.2014): For my Russian-speaking readers, here is a long conversation with Piontkovsky on Radio Liberty, where he repeats many of these themes and touches on other points. Bottom line: he doesn't believe Putin can stop with annexing Crimea; then Putin would be "caught in a mousetrap" of gaining Crimea only to lose Ukraine to the EU. Furthermore, he argues that Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov always out maneuvers SecState John Kerry, and the upcoming negotiations with the US, EU, Russia and Ukraine won't bring any results. Finally, Piontkovsky still believes the West is not willing to use force to stop Russia's interference in Ukraine, only economic sanctions.

Piontkovsky's last words: "In the case of very tough economic sanctions the only opportunity to stop this catastrophic development is the discontent of the upper layer [of Russia] and the establishment of the dictator's [Putin's] inner circle."

Must Putin re-unify the old Russian Empire to survive as the anointed Leader?

The Last Russian Myth

By Andrey Piontkovsky

April 15, 2014 | Echo Moskvy

"The mind cannot understand Russia; it cannot be measured by a common yardstick." -- has been the standard excuse of Russian and Western experts for a century and a half. But today it is not necessary to understand it. The problem is greatly simplified. For practical purposes in the medium term it is enough to understand the motives of one person. All citizens of Russia from the last bum to leaders of Forbes' global list with delight and awe gave him their fealty. And this man's actions are determined by only one criterion -- preserving his lifetime in power.

And it is not pathological lust for power, as it is sometimes criticized, but rather a quite natural concern for his personal security. He understands the laws how the system, built with his participation, function. At the end of this tunnel is the same place from which people with crowbars pulled the condemned Gaddafi.

Consider in this context Putin's policy towards Ukraine. It has been fairly consistent and logical at all its stages. Even the timid attempt of his fellow Ukrainian oligarchs to launder their criminal past, having turned into civilized European entrepreneurs, elicited his fierce rejection. In the Association Agreement with the EU, he rightly saw some chance for Ukraine to fall out of the chain of post-communist thieving regimes, and go to the European model of economic and political competition.

Such a development could in the future be contagious and an attractive example for his subjects and therefore must be nipped in the bud. Having by way of threats and bribery won Yanukovych's refusal to sign the Agreement with the EU, he found his tactical mission accomplished and did not think about Crimea . Why would he need Crimea when he controlled the whole Ukraine.

Maidan was a surprise to him as it was for so many. The victory of the February Ukrainian anti-criminal Revolution turned a theoretical threat to his lifelong rule into a real political problem today.

The top priority for Putin's judo-ism as a necessary condition for its survival became the defeat of the Ukrainian revolution, its maximum discrediting in the eyes of Russian public opinion and either the establishment in Kyiv of an obedient Kremlin power, or the dismemberment of the Ukrainian state while retaining control over most of it.

Here became useful plans that were already drawn up for the annexation of Crimea by the Special Security Forces. They were swiftly carried out as a natural first step in an ambitious, but quite ad hoc, and not long-term program of restraining Ukraine.

His Crimean speech on March 18th  was conceived as a propagandistic presentation  urbi et orbi of the annexation of Crimea in the most favorable light for the Kremlin. Unexpectedly, it seems to me, it became something much larger, even for the orator himself. The speech decided for him a personal problem that was much more important than even the strangulation of the Ukrainian revolution.

Let me remind you what I see as the nerve of the dictator's existential problem, which I have repeatedly said in recent years. Even the most brutal dictatorship cannot rely solely on violence. The genetic matrix of every authoritarian regime is a kind of systemic myth that deceives for a time a significant part of society.

The life cycle of the regime is the same as the life expectancy of this myth that takes shape in a period of storm and stress, reaches its acme, and finally fades away, taking with it the regime that it generated.

Similarly the Soviet communist system, generated by the myth of the Tsardom of justice and freedom, reached its tragic peak in the Soviet victory in World War II and died out in the late '80s , when not even members of the Politburo any longer believed the communist myth.

His little TV myth about a young vigorous intelligence officer sending Russian troops deep into the Caucasus, carrying terror and death blasting us in our own homes to terrorists and all enemies of Russia rising from their knees, created cynical Kremlin spin doctors in the bloody autumn of 1999. A key theme was the famous "toilet" phrase. [Putin famously declared that he would root out and destroy all Chechen-Islamist separatists, even in their toilets. -- J].   "He is ours," sighed contentedly Russia's feminine soul.

The entire political structure of the state has since then hung since then on a thin thread of the Putin myth. Consciously conceived as a simulacrum of a more ideological style, Putinism has, in its short biography, run through all the classic stages of Soviet history, becoming a vulgar parody of each of them. In 2008 it passed its pathetic acme (the victorious war with Georgia), and since then the growing nausea of the elite testifies to the death of the Putin myth.

He then moved to his zombie stage whose time has long exceeded the normal range. By all the laws of evolution of authoritarian regimes, Putin's judo-ism should have fallen already as a result of two interacting factors: mass protests by an active minority, and an elite schism.

This Russian anomaly -- the unusually long duration of the zombie stage -- is due to the unique nature of our elite/nouveau riche that rose up not by their creating something new, but by their banal digestion of the former superpower's remains.

Elites' aversion to the dictator, and their awareness of how disastrous for the country and for themselves the continuation of his reign must be, lives together with their fear of being left without him, left one on one with a sullen people who are infinitely alien and wild to them.

The flood of mass protests in 2011-12 that was not backed by the "elite" that proclaimed "we must influence the government, not blame it," convincingly demonstrated this.

However, to continue their zombie existence in the absence of a positive mobilizing myth, weakly defending in political discourse the meme, "Putin is a thief," is becoming increasingly uncomfortable and dangerous, especially given the irreversible collapse of the thieving economy.

And here became apparent the genius of Putin's speechwriter. He intuitively grasped that in the course of 15 years of TV's defilement, the people were ready for debauchery, and had become ripe, finally, for the idea of ​​reunification of the Russian World / The Fifth Empire.

The Leader's risky appeal to Germany's experience of a disunited people in his Crimea speech at the Federal Assembly was related on the surface to the early '90s, but more deeply, it was about creating myths related to the 1930s.  

Taking place before our eyes is the successful reloading of the rotten "toilet" myth of 1999. A new, radiant, uplifting myth is being born of Vladimir Tauride, Uniter of Russian Lands.  [Tavria is an older name for southern Ukrainian lands including Crimea - J.]  It is the last Russian myth, senseless and merciless.

Until March 18, Kyiv was the goal; the annexation of Crimea was a means to get it.

After March 18, the unification of Russian lands and the criminalization of the entire post-Soviet space or even the Russian Empire has become the plan of Kremlin myth-makers and bandits; it has become their mystical super-goal and higher meaning of existence, having finally risen from their knees and gained a worthy ethnic Russian national idea.

And at the same time it has given legitimacy to the lifelong rule of the anointed one.

And Kyiv? It is a milestone, one of the necessary stages of a long journey. Seventy-five percent of those surveyed in the Russian Federation support a military solution to the Ukrainian question. This is the final diagnosis of a society subjected to the most brutal radiation by television porn-propaganda.

The reloading of a system-creating myth, and the anointing of Putin's rule for life in the robes of Russia's Messiah, will lead to fundamental changes in domestic policy and relations with the outside world, especially regarding the Russian Federation's military and nuclear strategy. Each of these areas deserves more consideration that I will give in the near future. In the meantime, I'll stick to general comments.

Some experts have expressed fears that this will lead to the start of a new Cold War. I strongly disagree.  It will lead to a state of Russia's relations with the West that is much worse and more dangerous than the Cold War.  During the Cold War, U.S. presidents and general secretaries of the Central Committee of the Communist Party after the dramatic experience of the Cuban missile crisis considered nuclear weapons only as way to prevent military conflict between them, as a tool to maintain strategic stability. They did not wave the nuclear club in front of each other.

The politician who has taken it upon himself to recreate the Russian World by redrawing state borders, who has a huge nuclear arsenal and relatively weak regular army is bound to proclaim (which was formally done ​​in 2008 ) a free hand in the former Soviet space, blackmailing his ​​"partners" in the erstwhile G-8 who disagree with this idea with the threat of nuclear weapons, i.e. the threat of mutual suicide.

Actually the nuclear bluff works today in the war with Ukraine. The famous remark about "radioactive ash" [recently by the Russian TV newscaster Dmitry Kiselyov, aimed at the USA --J] was undoubtedly approved at the highest level.

Characteristically, the first words of Obama and Rasmussen over Ukraine were assurances that U.S.-NATO military intervention was out of the question because Ukraine was not a member of NATO.

Well, what if the inhabitants of Narva [a city in Estonia, bordering Russia, with a large ethnic Russian population - J] tomorrow hold a referendum on accession to Russia? Will tens of millions of people in the U.S. and Europe be willing to risk war with a super-nuclear power and die for Narva?  Putin is convinced that they will not be ready. And I agree with him.

Kim Jong-un with just one bucket of nuclear slop as blackmail makes the whole world dance around him and equip the army with food. And by the way the Kim family safely ruled for 70 years and the youngest is also planning to die in his bed in his old age .

Imagine what opportunities await Putin if he finally breaks his bonds, overturns the chessboard and also plays "against the rules." That's why he was kept so long in the G-8, even when he started to frankly ***** in their eyes.

And his behavior is not madness. It really is another reality beyond the comprehension of respectable Frau Merkel and Chicago's union rouser Obama.

International relations are entering the most unstable and volatile place they have been in the past 60 years.

If we seek an analogy in Soviet-Russian history, I would compare the current Putin reboot to the last months of Stalin's life (October 1952 - March 1953). That leader, like all in his rare profession, was also concerned, and not without reason, with the problem of preserving his own power and life. And so he thought up a three-pronged reboot: the forced preparation for a Third World War, the elimination of the party leadership, and the radical solution to the Jewish question.

At that time, the Russian God intervened at the last moment in a fatal course of events for Russia...

Sachs: N. Korea not so crazy, given U.S. past

Usually Jeffrey Sachs writes about global economics and poverty, but for some reason he was moved to write about N. Korea and how there is quite a lot of reason as opposed to madness in its actions, considering how the U.S. is not a very loyal friend to dictatorial regimes.

Iraq, Libya and Panama are all countries whose dictators "found a common language" with the U.S., only to be killed or arrested a few years later with America's support.

Sachs is also correct to point out the United States' rank hypocrisy when it comes to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: "That the US demands that this or that state must denuclearize while others [Israel, India and Pakistan] flout the treaty is an assertion of [U.S.] power, not principle."

We say we are a nation founded on ideals. When we cease to draw strength from our ideals, but instead only our military and (declining) economic might, then we must resign ourselves to the inevitable decline and fall that all empires suffer.

A Better Approach Towards North Korea

By Jeffrey Sachs

April 15, 2013 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/17cQWZi

Nokia Siemens helps Arab regimes catch dissidents

As one expert remarked, "There's very little chance a government is smart enough [to identify dissidents] without this [interception] technology."

That means firms like Nokia Siemens, which has actively sold mobile and Internet spying technology to despotic Arab regimes, are ethically complicit in their arrest and torture of peaceful dissidents.

Think about that the next time you're looking to buy one of their products!

Nokia: Connecting dictators and their victims

Torture in Bahrain Becomes Routine With Help From Nokia Siemens

By Vernon Silver and Ben Elgin

August 22, 2011 | Bloomberg

URL: http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-08-22/torture-in-bahrain-becomes-routine-with-help-from-nokia-siemens-networking.html

King Abdullah to Obama: Don't humiliate my fellow dictator pal!

"Meanwhile, the Egyptian military has been accused of being involved in both the disappearance and torture of Egyptian citizens, including the use of electric shocks.

"Hossam Bahgat, director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights in Cairo, said hundreds, and possibly thousands, of ordinary people had 'disappeared' into military custody across the country. Many were still missing.

"'Their range is very wide, from people who were at the protests or detained for breaking curfew to those who talked back at an army officer or were handed over to the army for looking suspicious or for looking like foreigners even if they were not.'"

But oh no, the last thing we want to do is offend the precious feelings the oppressor, autocrat, and torturer Mubarak. Gimme a break.


Report: Saudis Warned Obama Not to 'Humiliate' Mubarak
February 10, 2011 FOXNews

URL: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/02/09/source-saudis-tell-obama-humiliate-mubarak/

Get to know our pocket dictators

Get to know 7 more dictators with whom the U.S. "maintains strong relations."

Be the first to clue in your clueless friends and co-workers when the next national liberation protest movement starts, and explain to them in an informed and serious way why other nations' liberty is not always such a good idea.


It Ain't Just Mubarak -- 7 of the Worst Dictators the U.S. Is Backing to the Hilt
From Saudi Arabia to Uzbekistan to Chad, the U.S. keeps some very bad autocrats in power.
By Joshua Holland
February 5, 2011 | Alternet

URL: http://www.alternet.org/world/149805/it_ain