Reflecting Others Back at Them One of Putin’s Special Skills, Khots Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 10 – “Only the lazy” haven’t pointed out that the new Russian-made Aurus car for Vladimir Putin is a copy of Britain’s Rolls Royce, Aleksandr Khots says. But the Russian commentator says that, in both small ways and large, this reflects the fact that copying, even mirror-imaging, others is at the core of the Kremlin leader’s personality. 

            “The virtuoso system of imitations which has become our national idea (from democracy, parliament and elections to automobile design, hasn’t been news for a long time,” the Russian commentator says. “Much more interesting is ‘why was the Rolls Royce chosen” in this case (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5CD43C32B66F6).

            Obviously, the makers of the car were pursuing British respectability, suggesting by copying the Rolls that “we also are respectable and solid, that we are part of Europe, and that our Russian ‘monarchism’ is worthy of the same honors as yours.”  After all, this project was begun well before the Crimean Anschluss.

            “But,” Khots continues, “there is yet another reason for this choice of design,” one that journalist Yelena Tregubova described in her 2003 book, Tales of a Kremlin Digger” where she talks about Putin’s mastery of mimicking or copying those he interacts with as a means to their manipulation.

            “The ability to ‘mirror’ an interlocutor is a variable habit for a manipulator,” Khots agrees. And Putin’s skills in that regard help to explain why he copies so many others so precisely, a copying that gives him an advantage even as it puts others on the defensive just as he intends.

            “I understood,” Tregubova wrote, that Putin is simply a brilliant ‘reflector,’ that he like a mirror copies his interlocutors in order to force them to believe that he is just the same as they are.” Her experience showed her that he was able to do this quickly in both small ways and large “with frightening exactitude.” 

            And what is most important the journalist said is that Putin “does this so cleverly that his interlocutor doesn’t notice” and accepts the mirror image as being what Putin really is. 

            According to Khots, “it is clear that in ‘the kingdom of curved mirrors,’ the type of automobile of the first person must correspond to ‘the portrait’ of its owner. Even more because Putin as the one who ordered it confirmed the design.” The car even looks like him: narrow eyes and all.

            And it is noteworthy, the commentator continues, that increasingly Putin chooses for key posts people who not only think as he does but look like him as well.  Such resemblances “seem to the leader an additional guarantee of reliability,” Khots continues, at a time when his system is clearly in trouble. 

            One way or another, he concludes, “the design of Putin’s car is no accident. It is a reflection of ‘the master,’ but it is also a reflection of Russia at the same time: uncertain in its self, derivative in its approach, and full of complexes about both.”