Putin Thinks Only Spiritual Bonds Can Keep Russia from Falling Apart as the USSR Did, Gudkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 1 – Vladimir Putin’s almost obsessive focus on promoting the spiritual “bonds” that supposedly hold the Russian people together reflects his conviction that the weakening of those bonds by the West in the 1980s led to the demise of the USSR and that any weakening now could lead to the same end for the Russian Federation, Dmitry Gudkov says.

            In a brief comment to Rosbalt, the opposition figure says he personally is not surprised that the Kremlin leader is ready to violate the Russian Constitution and promote a new official ideology based on these “bonds” because of his analysis of 1991 and his fears about the future (rosbalt.ru/posts/2016/05/27/1518238.html).

            It is quite obvious, Gudkov continues, that Putin believes that the Soviet Union “fell apart not because of empty shelves and total lies but because the US undermined our spiritual bonds” and that the US is trying to do the same thing to the Russian Federation at the present time. That is the obvious meaning of what he and his entourage are proposing.

            For the Kremlin leader, he says, Russia’s overriding problem today “is not theft and suspicions of its own citizens but in the search for enemies, because only enemies can push the population not to love its own leaders.  Thus, the Duma deputy writes, for Putin, these “bonds” are “higher than [any] law.”