Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 11 – Vladimir
Putin is neither a conservative nor a nationalist despite what he often suggests
he is and what many have been led to believe, Vladimir Titov says. “By his
ideology and practice, [the Kremlin leader in fact] is a typical leftist,” and
his system is “left-wing authoritarianism seasoned with mysticism.”
And that points to serious problems
ahead, the Russian writer continues, because “history doesn’t know any examples
of successful left-wing dictatorships.” They may continue for a time on the
basis of misplaced enthusiasm, repression or aggression but sooner or later
they collapse (rufabula.com/articles/2017/02/09/right-wing-putin).
“One of the widely disseminated
myths of the present day is that Vladimir Putin is a “right of center”
politician, Titov says. In part this reflects the unwillingness of many to move
beyond the left-right spectrum in which politics have been discussed since the French
Revolution, however inadequate that one-dimensional approach is.
Both Putin supporters like Marine Le
Pen and his liberal opponents place him at the right end of the political
spectrum, he says. And the one and the other point to his expansionism, his
militarism, his opposition to immigration, his much-ballyhooed support for religion
and “conservative values,” and his stress on Russia’s unique national path.
Such measures, however, exaggerate
some parts of Putin’s agenda and more significantly ignore others which point
in a very different direction.
“It is no secret that ‘strengthening
the state’ in the Putin way takes the form of building a regime of personal
power, reducing civic freedoms, cutting back on the independence of regions …
and undermining democracy.” In normal language,
“that is called a dictatorship – but dictatorships can be either right or left
of center” depending on whom they are based.
The social basis of right-wing
authoritarian regimes, Titov says, are property holders from the smallest to
the largest and also “the conservative part of the intelligentsia, officer
corps and clergy … Leftist dictatorships find their support in the lumpenized
masses and ‘socialist’ bureaucracy.”
In
any case, just because a state isn’t democratic, that does not mean that it is
necessarily right of center. “More than
that,” the Russian writer points out, “the majority of authoritarian regimes
which have existed since World War II and which exist now are more ‘left-wing’
than ‘right-wing.’”
Putin’s social policies “do not give
a basis for considering him ‘right of center.’”
He has attacked small owners and the oligarchs are really in charge by
his permission of state corporations. He
has pursued militarism and an aggressive foreign policy, but left of center
regimes have been more inclined to do so that right-wing ones.
Hitler and Mussolini were
aggressors, but both of these oft-cited examples “had socialist roots: it is
sufficient to recall the full name of Hitler’s party,” something that is seldom
done. Moreover, “neither Francisco Franco nor Antonio Salazar nor Augusto
Pinochet not Jan Smits carried out an active expansionist policy.”
Instead, it has typically been
leftist regimes which have sought territorial expansion not only because their messianism
led them in this direction as was the case with the USSR and communist China
but also because their systems constantly need an infusion of resources given
that they seldom can produce a sufficient amount of them on their own.
Putin’s wars fall into the leftist
category rather than the right: His “’hybrid war’” in Ukraine “which is taking
place under the slogan of ‘the defense of the Russian world’ bears a suspicious
resemblance to the Polish campaign of Comrade Budyonny” and has nothing to do
with any Russian national interests.
That conclusion is also justified by
the way Putin treats Russian nationalists at home. There is no Russian
nationalist party although many would support one. And Russian nationalists
unless they closely hew the Kremlin line or do its “dirty work” against
liberals and migrants are often jailed.
And it is justified by how the
Kremlin leader deals with immigrants. While he “hypocritically” expresses his
sympathy with Europeans about immigration, he has shown no willingness to
introduce a visa regime for former Soviet republics, and he has backed a regime
in Chechnya which is openly hostile to Russian values and even the Russian
constitution.
Some who view Putin as a
conservative point to the flourishing of the Russian Orthodox Church and Putin’s
much-covered attendance of religious services, but neither the one nor the other
has anything in common with a genuine growth in religion. The ROC serves as the
ideological department of the Kremlin.
Moreover, the traditional values the
church and the Kremlin promote have done nothing to reduce “the frequency of
divorces and abortions” or “reduce the popularity of all possible kinds of
sexual deviation,” Titov says. Only about
three percent of the population are really Orthodox; the rest are only
nominally so.
If Putin were really a nationalist,
he would be attacking the revival of Sovietisms in Russian life rather than
promoting their ever more rapid restoration. And he would be defending
monuments to Gustav Mannerheim and Aleksandr Kolchak rather than allowing them
to be attacked.
Thus, “even a superficial analysis
show that Putin is not in any way ‘a right of center’ politician let alone a
nationalist.” But nonetheless, the myth that he is remains widely believed not
least of all because he and his regime promote it.
There are several reasons: Putin is
trying to win the support of mass publics who are angry at the power of liberal
elites and who feel that they have been passed by. Presenting himself as such a
leader has won him backing even though those who are most fervent in that would
be among the first to be confined in his jails if they were in Russia.
And in presenting himself to the
world as a conservative nationalist, Titov says, Putin is aided by the
declarations of Russian opposition liberals like Kasparov, Yashin, and Borovoy
who tell the West that the Putin regime is “nationalist” and “fascist.” That is
because mentally, “they remain Soviet people, and in the Soviet cosmogony, ‘nationalism=fascism=very
bad.’”
Not surprisingly, all too many in
the West who have looked into the matter closely simply go along and repeat
what Putin wants them to rather than what is in fact the case.
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