Like Stalin, Putin Views His Soldiers and His People as a Threat to His Rule, Lea and Taskin Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 24 – Putin’s escalation of repression with the creation of the Military Counterintelligence Directorate is the result of the same “systemic dynamics” that drove Stalin to set up the Smersh [“Death to Spies”] organization during World War II rather than some “evil decision” by either Kremlin ruler, Aaron Lea and Borukh Tashkin say.

            The two Israeli analysts of Russian background argue that the actions of both dictators “perform the same function of compensating for the lack of voluntary motivation with coercion” and thus suggests that Putin will become more repressive not less just as Stalin did at the end and after World War II (region.expert/repressions/).

            Indeed, the two suggest, “Russia is now moving along the same path” Stalin tread and that “the longer the war drags on, the greater the role of structures engaged not in fighting the external enemy but in maintaining internal discipline and repression again is becoming not a side effect but a key mechanism for managing the war and the entire society.”

            When a regime “views its own army as a zone of risk rather than as a pillar of support,” Lea and Tashkin continue, it “inevitably builds a system of internal surveillance, filtering and coercion;” and in the current case represents “a transition to a model of a military state where the main threat is seen as coming not from the outside but from within.”

            Russia’s “soldiers and officers in ‘the special military operation’ are objects of suspicion rather than subjects of trust,” with the only difference from Stalin’s approach is that “today Russia has neither the ideological motivation of 1941 or Lend Lease” assistance from the Western powers.

            That means, the two Israeli analysts say, that in Putin’s Russia, there is now “only fear, violence and drones with missiles and bombs.” But “without a material base, this model is doomed not to victory but to self-destruction.” That will be clear to everyone when Muscovite state “again places executions behind the backs of soldiers” and threatens all who might retreat.