From Ivan The Terrible To Vlad The Mad: Putting Up With Putin

A Continuity In Horror, Terror and Infamy:

Russia is by far the largest state on Earth in the expanse of land it owns… And it is weird, and why it is weird is directly related to how it became so big. This colossus spread across eleven time zones, until Putin a few years ago reduced it to nine, by putting more zones under Moscow time.

Russia is 70% larger than the other very large countries: Canada, China, and the USA. With a bit more than twice the French population, Russia controls more than 30 times the land area, with a total wealth that is not even half that of France.

Russia, as a state, is superior mostly in weapons and military power. Aside from its supergiant empire, and its oil and gas, sheer physical force, threatened or applied, is what makes Russia powerful. That, and the conquests of imperial Russia.

Saint Michael Cathedral, Kiev. It Survived the Mongols, Not Putin’s Soviet Teachers

[The cathedral was destroyed by Stalin in 1935, and rebuilt identically in the 1990s. Although against religious fanaticism, or precisely because of that, I am for the safeguard of beautiful religious buildings, and that includes a lot of magnificent mosques.]

On the face of it, one should say that Russia is a classical example of military imperial overstretch: bloated land control, vast military, little else.

On April 17, 2015, Putin just gave a public conference that lasted 4 hours. Then he talked some more informally with the press outside. He denied the obvious, that his aim was to reconstitute the Russian empire. The lying bear with his beady, untrustful eyes, denied he would ever eat again.

Old nations such as Russia have long traditions. Ukraine is more than a millennium old, and was launched as a Christian state in Crimea, by Vladimir of Kiev around 990 CE.

Ivan III, predecessor of Ivan The Terrible, the latter much admired by Putin, beat the Mongols, a bit more than 5 centuries ago, and united three states. Moscow subjugated Novgorod and Tver. This makes the Muscovite state half the age of Ukraine (although it is possible to argue Russian history descended from Alexander Nevsky, and the republic of Novgorod; Nevsky’s son founded Moscow).

Ivan III’s grandson, Ivan The Terrible, launched many of the Russian state’s worst traditions. The growth of the Muscovite state was spectacular. Many who were in the way died horribly at the hand of special secret services. Unsavory ways got enshrined as normal, or destiny (in particular torturing to death and otherwise killing individuals next of kin to the ruler). That was all more terrible, because Ivan was successful, making sure that those ways would become forever the ways of the Moscovite state. Horror, terror and autocratic madness had triumphed, creating an enormous empire, and ensuring itself as a superior moral system.

Ever since then, Russian rulers come to rule, persuaded that Ivan’s terrible ways are intrinsically Russian, intrinsically good, and on objective grounds, how to have a successful nation. Indeed, which nation is bigger? Ivan is now being rehabilitated under Putin.

Russian propagandists now say that official history about Ivan the Terrible, was only terrible “Western” propaganda against Russia.

Why such bad faith? Another Russian tradition is the West’s bad faith. The fall of Ukraine and elements of Russia, to the Mongols, in the Thirteenth Century, without any West European attempt to save it, is still resented.

According to the Mongol generals themselves, they could not beat the Franks in Western Europe, in part because of the unfavorable ecology, which did not allow the Mongols to use their bows to their best, or to maneuver around the heavily armored knights. (The Franks were on top of all things military. Once the Franks/French got their hands on gunpowder, they quickly evolved field guns… That is how the “English” were thrown back to the sea… All the more as the knights had previously surprised and annihilated the Welsh archers.)

The fact remains that the Franks were (mostly) allied to the Mongols (!) and an expedition to free Ukraine from the Mongols was not suggested.

Moreover, the conquest of Constantinople by the Franks in 1204 weakened Kievan Rus. The Mongols attacked in 1236.)

In some ways, Putin is more xenophobic than the worst leaders of the USSR.

Stalin treated Crimea very badly: he threw out most of its Natives, the Tartars, and exiled them far away. Yet, Putin dared do what even Stalin had not dared to do: invade and annex Crimea.

Putin has created trouble in many zones peripheral to his supergiant empire. Not just south of the Caucasus (where he occupies parts of Georgia, a nation much older than Russia), but all the way to the Carpathians (West of Ukraine).

The obvious reason is that Putin’s regime is unstable if not united by the fascist instinct of rising against a common enemy. So Putin’s regime is stable, if, and only if, it has enemies.

Thus, the more one tries to accommodate Putin, the more one reduces the enmity he faces, and thus the more anti-Putin one is. That therefore requires Putin to attack, threaten, and invade more, to re-establish the enmity he needs to reign.

So it has been with many tyrannical regimes in the past. However, Russia has profited from this, so far. This is why it is Earth largest empire, by far.

Just like Hitler was the more popular, the more Nazism he engaged in, because the Germans thought they did not have a choice, but to abandon themselves to hatred, expect the same with the nationalist regime in the Kremlin.

Putin said in his call-in that the USA “doesn’t need allies, they only need vassals” and that Russia would never accept that role. Too often those who mention a notion embrace it.

Well, the Republican Congress just gave full powers to is president Obama full powers to negotiate fast (“fast track”) the TPP, the Trans-Pacific-Partnership. From what I hear, that treaty, which excludes China, in its present version, would allow corporations to sue the government of the USA (something corporations cannot do now).

So who is the boss, Putin? The “USA”, or the plutocrats and their corporations? And tell me how your crony plutocracy differ from that?

Some would argue that Russia became Russia, that giant empire, well, precisely because it had all the traditions of an empire, and that means the ability to get down to the hard and dirty. American traditions say the same. This is why both Russia and the USA ended with forts in California. Since then the American power has grown, propelled by the will to empire, and helped by more democracy than in Russia.

Democracy is not a luxury. It’s a weapon. Just go ask the Spartans (the Lacedaemonians and their civilization mostly disappeared… from too much discriminating against others). Or just ask the giant, multi-ethnic plutocracy of plutocracies, Persia. At Marathon, the giant Persian army was charged by the Athenian phalanx. Athens was a direct democracy, with around a tenth of one percent of the Persian empire directly charging, the elite units of the undefeated, largest empire in the world. And Athens won. Not just that day, but that way. The way of democracy, that became the way of the world.

It would be smarter for Russia to get over its Mongol complex, and join the way that wins, instead of embracing the desperate way of losers.

Patrice Ayme’

Russian Soul Weak From Weak Literature

What makes Russia led by the Kremlin, strong, makes Russian culture weak. And reciprocally.

Boris Nemtsov, main opponent to dictator Putin, was assassinated next to the splendid Saint Basil Cathedral. He was going to lead on Sunday a march against Putin’s war in Ukraine. Nemtsov, an ex-Vice PM, and ex-Vice Speaker of the Duma, Parliament, was killed below the Kremlin’s windows, a place full of police, and state security. As if to show that the killers had nothing to fear… from the Kremlin.

Four shots in the back, each lethal. Nemtsov’mother had told her son that “if he kept cursing Putin, Putin would kill him.”  Putin promised her justice would be served. However an underling on the investigative committee immediately suggested that the assassination may be related to the Charlie Hebdo massacre (!). I have a more prosaic approach.

Pretty Catherine, Soon To Make A Lethal Coup Against Her Spouse, The Czar. For Starters. Putin Wants To Recover What She Invaded.

Russia is a place where opponents and critics keep getting killed, for purely political reasons. The tradition is not new. Ivan the Terrible had some differences with his son. He killed him. Peter the Great had the same problem. He had his son torn with red hot pincers. That son also died.

How are those unable to communicate, led alone love, their children, these terrible Czars, some of the great heroes of the eternal Russian soul?

Russian leaders keep on reminding us that they have nuclear weapons. Putin keeps on reminding us he mourns the “Big Country” (Imperial Russia… not the USSR, which had devolved some power to its constituent republics…). Now the ex-head of Mi6 in Britain is admitting that:

“Russia has become a danger to Britain and the country must be prepared to take steps to defend itself and its allies”, the former head of MI6 says.

Sir John Sawers, who recently retired after five years as chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, told BBC Radio 4’s Today program that Russia poses a “state to state threat“.

Sir John said such threats would require more defense spending. But called on “increased dialogue”.

Body of Nemtsov, St Basil. Kremlin Behind. So Far, Only Bullets Talk

Here I am, dialoguing. The Russian intellectual class has failed, all too smothered by its own nationalism, not say laziness, to erect a robust critique against its masters.

And this mood of intellectual pusillanimity has been long in power (I am thinking not just of the irritatingly conservative Alexander Solzhenitsyn, or Gorbachev, here). True, as Peter The Great confronted the “Old Believers” with a maximal ferocity I approve of, he was no doubt confronted to the fiercest critique. However, in Russia the dialogue tends to be between ultra-conservatives, and those conservatives who are for some progress.

All the fiercest criticism is always coming from the savages (notice that this covers not just the “Old Believers’, but also Lenin, Stalin and their ilk).

Sir John said he was disappointed how, after the end of the Cold War, Russia’s and Europe’s paths had failed to converge. “[Russia] keep on reminding us that they have nuclear weapons,” he said.

How come Russia did not join the West readily?

Atavism.

Look at the immensely wealthy Count Tolstoy and other famous Russian authors. They are all about a subtle propaganda: Russia is a traditional place. Count Tolstoy, in Anna Karenina and other books, is all about the Russian soul being conservative. And the triumph of conservatism. Dostoevsky satirized revolutionaries and endorsed the Tsarist autocracy (one absolute ruler) and faith in Christ and the Orthodox Church.

The truth about the greatness of Russia is more geographical than moral. Russia was successfully led, for centuries, by a cruel, determined and highly imperially efficient plutocracy. It’s too effective to be all that conservative. Or then one should call the Dark Side “conservative”. This is (partly) why Russia ended as the largest empire on Earth. Europe was unable to reconquer North Africa, but Russia was able to set up forts all the way down to the California coast. (And conquer half of Eurasia.)

That different truth is what constructed the empire, and thus what has to be hidden. At this point, Russia is proceeding on mental inertia, doing what it knows best: do whatever it takes to cruelly grab more territory. Even if it means killing dozens of critiques inside, and risk total war.

But why no books on historical Russian figures? Where are the Alexandre Dumas of Russia?

Dumas did not hesitate in depicting some of France’s figures in pretty drastic, not necessarily flatering, situations. Think about what he wrote (all true) about Marguerite de Navarre.

De Sade directed his worst critiques to the Great Leaders. He presented the great leaders anointed by the Lord, as monsters who needed to kill… sadistically all and any, especially the innocent, just to relax during their vacations (incensed, the Ancient Regime and Napoleon put De Sade in prison. Still, in between De Sade launched the Revolution of 1789… from the Bastille! Don’t expect conventional history books to relate this).

The tradition of fierce critique among literary figures is obvious in France by the time of Rabelais. Rabelais made an entire parody of the Bible, complete with grotesque names and the most disgusting habits. Thanks to the disgusting Francois I, three philosophers were burned alive. Rabelais, the son of a lawyer, who endowed himself with an overall education second to none, not just as a philosopher, philologist, translator, lawyer, but also as a Medical Doctor.

Very similarly to Abelard, Rabelais fought the church tooth and nail, in a constant, unending war. His collaborator Étienne Dolet was burned alive, for atheism (and being relapse, the technical charge against Johanne of Arc). Obviously the sort of mentality obvious in Abelard, and the early Franks, travelled across the ages.

In the Thirteenth Century Dante had put a contemporaneous Pope in hell. No less. (No wonder, shortly thereafter Buridan publicized his heliocentric theory, which he deduced from new mathematics and new physics. The Church had Buridan work destroyed 130 years later: another proof that the intellectuals were at war, in Western Europe, with the powers that be.)

Even earlier, Abelard wrote the book “Sic and Non” (“Yes And No” ) about the main theses of the Church. That was in the early Twelfth Century, and the war between the philosopher and the fanatical Saint Bernard became absolute.

It is not a question of winning. It is a question of having a tradition of daring to engage into war against religious and political authority.

Where are the terrible, pitiless Russian literary descriptions of Russian autocrats?

Russia, since Ivan the Terrible, has had the bloodiest, most cruel leaders ever known. They killed, their children, spouses, and other close relatives. They should have allowed to write juicy books, the sort Roman authors have accustomed us to.

And what do Russian writers write about?

Anything but.

So now enjoy Putin.

A nation with a non-examined soul is not worth admiring. To say the least.

Patrice Ayme’

Note: Meanwhile the Western powers ought to give the Ukrainians counter-strike radar (the Ukrainians were only given radar warning of incoming shells, but not the software to direct counter-strikes; in the 1990s the French broke the siege of Sarajevo, by striking rogue “Serbian” artillery with radar directed counter-strikes)