Paul
Goble
NB: As longtime readers of Windows on Eurasia
know, there is no commentator on Russian politics for which I have greater
respect than historian Irina Pavlova. Her 70 essays written between 2006 and
2014 and which appeared on Grani.ru and Rufabula.com are among the most
insightful commentaries we have on the nature of Putin’s regime that we have
have. Many of us regretted when she took a break over the last 18 months and
thus are delighted that she has decided to resume with her own blog at http://ivpavlova.blogspot.com. The
summary below is of her first article in this new series. She can be reached at
ivpavlova2015@gmail.com. Paul Goble
Staunton, July 6 – Russia is now
experiencing its own “end of history,” Irina Pavlova says, but it has turned
out to be “not liberal democracy but a new turn back to the enslavement of
Russian society, the consequences of which will be its further degradation with
prospects that are dangerous both for the country itself and for the entire
world.”
Unfortunately, she continues in an
essay posted online today, “the West is only beginning to recognize the
seriousness of the problems which the present-day Russian regime presents for
the world.” And besides some rhetorical flourishes, the West has not taken any
steps which really hurt Putin: indeed, those it has taken “only strengthen
[him] in the eyes of his population.
The West generally and the US in
particular need to display both wisdom and political will to effectively oppose
the political challenge the Kremlin now presents, the historian says. Its response must deprive the Russian
authorities of their ability to use “ignorance, lies and disinformation” to
promote its goals.
For this, Pavlova says, “it is
vitally important to find ‘the key’ to changing the policy of the current Russian
powers that be,” to undermine “the pro-Stalinist identity within the country,
and to destroy that image of the global world which the Kremlin is tring to
construct by using the values and methods of Stalinist great power ideas.”
Unfortunately, she continues, Western
analysts have not yet been up to this task because they are wedded to the idea
that Russia was on the right path after 1991 until relatively recently, with
some seeing the problem beginning with the war in Ukraine and others with Putin’s
coming to power and the war in Chechnya.
In fact, the Russian problem now has much
deeper roots. “Few Western specialists on Russia are prepared to acknowledge
that perestroika was a KGB planned operation directed at seizing power with the
goal of privatizing state property” or that “in August 1991 there was no
liberal let alone a democratic revolution” but rather a carefully planned
operation to make “channel” mass enthusiasm in the direction the organs needed.
“Today, all real policies of the Kremlin
are a collection of cover special operations,” she writes. In order to understand
this,” one must do what Western specialists do not want to do: recognize the
way in which what the Kremlin is doing is reproducing “the Stalinist mechanism
of power.”
“It has been an
unwelcome surprise for Western publics how well the Kremlin and its ‘information
forces’ have studied the weakness of Western leaders ad how capably they are
using this in their propaganda.” Moscow’s
propagandists “not doing do not fear the West; they have contempt for it.” The
West thought it was “’civilizing’ Russia” after 1991; Russia viewed this period
as a time for “recruiting its own anti-Western supporters."
These people “not only studied the
activity of Western international institutions and successfully integrated in
them, but they adopted the arsenal of the rhetoric of international law and the
methods of contemporary information wars.” Among the leaders of this, Pavlova
says, are Vladimir Solovyev, Vladimir Kulistikov, Natalya Narochnitskaya,
Adnrannik Migranyan, Yegeny Popov, Sergey Markov and many, many others.
They are united by their common goal
of “fundamentally weakening the West and in the first instance the US, to
extend the borders of their influence in the world, and to make Russia an
assembly point for all the anti-Western forces of the world,” Pavlova
continues.
“The most important part of the
great power strategy of the Kremlin is the special operation of the Kremlin
concerning ‘the struggle with the threat of Nazism.’ The Russian powers that be
have successfully privatized the role of the main world fighter with this
invented threat” in order to block any from seeing the similarities of
Stalinism and Nazism.
This particular special operation
was prompted by the growth of national self-consciousness in the former Soviet
republics, she suggests; and Moscow created “a new generation of Russian
historians organized by the FSB” to promote national discord among these
countries.
In doing so, the Moscow
propagandists are not reviving the post-1956 Soviet view but rather that of
high Stalinism, denying the
existence of the secret protocols of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the cooperation
of Hitler and Stalin, and their joint responsibility for the beginning of World
War II in Europe.
“Today,”
Pavlova says, “it is obvious how successfully the Kremlin and its ‘information
warriors’ have been able to impose on international society its discourse on ‘the
struggle with the threat of Nazism.’”
Many pick up Moscow’s line on “’the fascist junta’” in Ukraine and the
need to struggle with fascism everywhere.
Even
some opponents of the Russian regime pick up on this by talking frequently
about comparisons of Putin and Hitler, Pavlova says. But that sometimes works
to Moscow’s benefit: it treats things too superficially for the West to
recognize what it has to do. And it leads some to think that the Putin regime
will pass from the scene as quickly and permanently as Hitler’s did.
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