Putin Weaker than Lenin and Lacks Resources to Create a Stable Dictatorship, Gozman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 2 – Many Russians both inside the country and abroad hope that Putin will soon leave power but increasingly recall that their predecessors had the same hope about Lenin and that Lenin’s system outlasted all of them, Leonid Gozman says. That is currently generating enormous pessimism among many.

            But they shouldn’t succumb to that, the Russian opposition politician and commentator says, because “Putin is weaker than Lenin” and “there are no resources in present-day Russia for the establishment of a stable dictatorship” of the kind the Bolshevik leader created and that lasted 70 years (https://novayagazeta.eu/articles/2023/02/02/putin-slabee-lenina).

            According to Gozman, “the communists collapsed when their resources – human, financial and moral – ran out. What resources does Putin have in comparison with Lenin?” Lenin had seemingly inexhaustible supplies of slaves from the peasantry, but now Putin doesn’t because the villages are empty.

            Trotsky was able in a remarkably short time to create an effective Red Army, but Putin hasn’t been able to do so as events in Ukraine show. And he can’t even ramp things up by mobilization because of draft evasion, desertion, and the decision of some Russian soldiers that surrendering to Ukrainians is better than fighting.

            Lenin inherited infrastructure from the tsarist times and built upon it, Gozman says. Putin is surrounded by destruction and has only made things worse. And all this is “not all.” The West has finally recognized that Putinism is “an existential threat” and is showing ever greater willingness to take it on and defeat it.

            That contrasts sharply with Lenin who was quite prepared to make sacrifices to hold onto power, allowing Poland, Finland and the Baltic countries to go their own way and signing the Brest Peace, all actions that it is impossible to imagine Putin being capable of undertaking, Gozman continues.

            As a result of Putin’s unthinking aggressiveness, “there are now more countries and resources deployed against his state than there were against Hitler.”

            The only sector where Putin seems to have matched Lenin is in the country’s repressive organs. But even there, the situation is very different. Lenin’s chekists were “not simply handmen but people who believed in an idea and in their leaders.” One can’t say the same about Putin’s. They may die out of fear or for money but they won’t die for him.

            Among the Russian people, Putin is also in a much worse position. He has no authority and few in the privacy of their homes drink to his health. They certainly aren’t interested in what he has to say anymore. The support they show is “not of him and his policies but of power as such.”

            “Lenin enjoyed high authority in his circle,” Gozman says. But the Putin entourage “obviously” is disappointed in him because they understand that he has not only driven the country into a swamp but  destroyed their lives by landing it under sanctions which prevent them from peacefully using their billions.”

            According to the opposition politician, Putin is more like Paul I than Lenin, and every Russian knows what happened to that tsar.

            Gozman concludes by pointing to an exchange between Yegor Gaidar and US Vice President Dick Cheney some years ago. After their meeting, Cheney asked Gaidar whether the system Putin had put in place would last 70 years as Lenin’s had. The Russian economist responded that “no, the maximum for that is 15 to 20 years.”

            “Gaidar was rarely mistaken, and that time has already come,” the commentator says. “Don’t give up!”