Venezuela Shows Russia Now Leader of ‘a Shameful Union of Despotisms,’ Zubov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 26 – Andrey Zubov, a Russian historian who teaches in Georgia and is a longstanding critic of Putin, says that the course of events in Venezuela shows that Putin’s Russia now stands “at the head of a shameful union of depotisms” whose rulers can not a wit about the well-being of their peoples but only about their own wealth and power.

            “The Putin regime is simply a despotism devoid of ideas, the chief value of which is power in and of itself and the money to which this power gives access,” Zubov says. “Patriotism, nationalism, socialism and clericalism – all the fig leaves have been thrown away” given that the Maduro regime was “anti-religious and socialist” (glavred.info/opinions/10044527-revolyuciya-v-venesuele-okonchatelno-proyavila-cherty-putinskogo-rezhima.html).

            There, the people rose up against the dictator who had falsified the results of elections so as to keep power. Russia, China, Turkey and Iran all stood with the dictator. “Who stood for the people who wanted to restore their power to run their own country? Of course, the democratic countries – the US, Canada, the EU, and the majority of countries of Latin America.”

            The governments of the countries in short who have the freedoms and well-being that the people of Venezuela want, Zubov says.

            What this means is this, he continues. The world is divided not as in the past between left and right, Christian and Muslim, or West and East “but by the most simple and banal line, between a tyrant and his subjects who steal the rights and wealth of the people and the people who know and recognize their right to run their own country.”

            All countries have to choose which side of that line they are one. Russia, unfortunately, stands at the head of this sad “union of depots.” As such, Zubov continues, this is “the end of the New Russia which threw off communist tyranny 30 years ago” only to fall under a new one. But “in this sad end, there is the basis for a new beginning.” 

            “’The ruler’ everywhere, be he in Beijing, Moscow, Ankara, Teheran, Caracas or Zimbabwe lives for himself. The citizens of his country are for him only a means or a danger but not the highest goal of is activities.”

            Russians, Zubov says, please note that “the Armenians have been able to overthrow their tyrants and escape from this shameful union of despotisms, the Georgians have been able, and the Ukrainians have been able although at a great price. Now, the citizens of Venezuela are trying to gain their right to freedom as well.”

            Do Russians want to allow themselves to be used “as a means for the enrichment of tyrants and as a weapon for the suppression of freedom in the entire world from Syria and Sudan to Venezuela?” Or do they again want “to become a free people running their own affairs, a people with a sense of own and dignity?”

            Zubov argues that that is the choice Russians now face, a choice that Putin by his actions has made both inevitable and immediate.