Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 23 – That Vladimir
Putin represents a threat to the countries around Russia’s periphery and to the
principles on which the international order has been based no one disputes, but
some both in Russia and the West are beginning to recognize that Putinism as a
manner of rule is an even greater threat than the man himself.
Like Soviet communism, Putinism
includes both what the leader wants for himself and his country and seeks in
various ways covert and otherwise to promote and what may emerge in other countries because
of problems there and the wish of some to emulate the Kremlin leader’s approach
even if he is not directly behind what they do.
On the Odnako portal, Viktor Marakhovsky says
that most analysts who dismiss the notion that Russia under Putin has a very
specific set of ideas are wrong and that Putinism consists of a remarkably
elaborated ideology that is enormously attractive to others (odnako.org/blogs/o-perspektivah-mirovogo-putinizma/).
In an essay
entitled “On the Prospects of Worldwide Putinism,” he picks up on ideas offered
by Jennifer Walsh, a professor at the European University Institute in
Florence, in a new book entitled “The Return of History” (ISBN: 9781487001308)
that was released a week ago and which directly addresses the existence of “Putinism.”
Putinism, the Canadian scholar on international
relations writs, “hardly offers a competitive system of thought or economic
principles.” But that is not the source of its power. Rather that is to be
found both in itself and in its “analogues” in other countries with their “decisive
rejection of the liberal-democratic international order.”
“The Putin-style rejection of
pluralism and democratic openness now as never before is in demand by the
political leaders of Western countries,” she writes; and consequently, they are
picking up on Putinism whatever they may say about Putin himself – in much the
same way many in the Third World took up communism a half century ago.
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