Photo by Mikhail Dzhaparidze, TASS.
There was a lot of discussion yesterday of Vladimir Putin's address to the Federal Assembly — I had some earlier and Boris Nemtsov summed it up pretty well.
Obozrevatel' noted that Putin didn't use the terms "Novorossiya" or "Russian World". Well, that's a plus. Was that part of this supposed "taming of extremists" that Gordon Hahn claims is going on (which I dissect here)?
Or was it just that this wasn't a speech for foreigners, but for a domestic audience, so he didn't have to go on about "Novorossiya" as much?
Instead, for the first time I ever recall, Putin talked multiple times about "freedom" — as if he were Ronald Reagan in 1986.
Maybe I just have Ronald Reagan in 1986 on the brain — here's the video I posted yesterday of a meeting in the White House on October 7, 1986 with Yury Orlov, a physicist just released from Soviet political imprisonment, and Reagan. You'll see a familiar face at 5:22 in the corner. And here the kind of speech Reagan gave in those years, mentioning freedom, even more than human rights, which is what conservatives tend to do more than liberals. Yet at the end of the day — still freedom with human rights, which is an important concept or otherwise freedom means the freedom to oppress other people's rights.
So what does Putin mean when he says "freedom"? See his speech and note the usages which I've grouped together here:
Let me reiterate, we remember high-level receptions for terrorists dubbed as fighters for freedom and democracy. Back then, we realised that the more ground we give and the more excuses we make, the more our opponents become brazen and the more cynical and aggressive their demeanour becomes.
No one will ever attain military superiority over Russia. We have a modern and combat ready army. As they now put it, a polite, but formidable army. We have the strength, will and courage to protect our freedom.
In this context, I will cite one quote: “He who loves Russia should wish freedom for it; above all, freedom for Russia as such, for its international independence and self-sufficiency; freedom for Russia as a unity of Russian and all other ethnic cultures; and finally, freedom for the Russian people, freedom for all of us: freedom of faith, of the search for truth, creativity, work, and property.” Ivan Ilyin. This makes a lot of sense and offers a good guideline for all of us today.
Conscientious work, private property, the freedom of enterprise – these are the same kind of fundamental conservative values as patriotism, and respect for the history, traditions, and culture of one’s country.
So Putin is drawing once again on his favourite philosopher Ivan Ilyin, who is more important than any Dugin or Kurginyan, as John Schindler has pointed out.
But what does that expression really mean? Note that it doesn't include freedom of conscience or expression. It is only freedom of faith — the right to believe in a religion or God — and the one prescribed is evident — Russian Orthodoxy. To be sure, there's the search for truth — but the way it is stated, it seems as if there's only one — and not tolerance of pluralism of belief systems. There's no First Amendment Here.
Surely there are states without First Amendment type of press freedom — America is really more of an exception than a rule among democracies — and freedom of expression can be tempered under international human rights agreements with concern for public safety or morals. But that's not Russia, which has seldom provided reasonable justifications for suppressing such freedom.
And what's this contradictory nonsense — "freedom for Russia as a unity of Russian and all other ethnic cultures."
It's as if every time Putin wants to accentuate Russian ethnicity, he has to tack on some multi-culti thing about "other ethnic cultures" but it's clear that Russian is the dominate one, that unifying force in that unity.
And unity — what does that mean? Do we have to?
And then there's this warning: "We have the strength, will and courage to protect our freedom." But there isn't freedom in Russia. That's just it. There isn't freedom of thought or speech or assembly or business or religion. What is being protected here? It's not "our freedom and yours," as the famous Polish rallying cry has it. It's our freedom — and not yours.
No, with his use of the word "freedom" here — which of course occurs in the context of Russia's war on Ukraine — Putin is talking about another thing — which is merely the right or abliity to expand his vision of what should be, the state, the Russian entity in his definition, that should be granted as much scope as possible.
But when you think of what Putin really does, and what this word really means to him — which is not LGBT rights or demonstrations or Navalny, you realize that "freedom" is more like Lebensraum.
Something expanding and taking over and harming others in its way is not freedom, but licentiousness or "might makes right."
Then there's the bad-faith spin Putin puts on the West's support of freedom — which he implies is some Maidan demonstrators using force to resist the force used on them, and Chechen and other exiles in the west. This is a consistent theme with Putin lately — the notion that the West deliberately fosters and incites terrorists and extremists to undermine Russia. Yet if they really were terrorists, the West wouldn't be supporting them.
Liberal democratic countries have no need to embrace terrorists in exile or violent movements abroad just for their own sake to reap havoc on other countries. The notion that there is some plan of "sabotage" of Russia like this that mind end up harming the West as much is ridiculous. If the Russians really cared about terrorism, instead of chasing the civilian government leaders of the Chechen government of the 1990s abroad, they'd have informed the FBI about the strange movements of Tamerlan Tsarnayev and his many passports, and the fact that he associated with one or two Islamists that Russian forces assassinated the same summer he was in Dagestan.
If the Russians really cared about terrorism, they wouldn't have continued to support Assad in Syria with a $1 billion in arms and political cover which has only fostered militancy and terrorism, not quelled it.
The recurring canard that the West's notion of freedom is only violent extremism or terrorism really should be countered more than it is. The US and UK have given asylum to leaders of the Maskhadov government, for example, because it was indeed a civilian government, it was democratically elected, and the OSCE declared it a fair election. Putin was never happy with this reality and has always sought to portray these people as terrorists, although there is no evidence for this. Regardless of what Maskhadov may or may not have done when Moscow persisted in their non-recognition, it is unfair to pin terrorism on people in exile abroad; Western law-enforcers have had no grounds to arrest or deport them nor should they, given certain torture in Russia's prison system.
It's this suspect pinning on the West of a wrongful notion of freedom that somehow includes coddling terrorists that sets us up to suspect everything about Putin's notion of freedom — yet even without this, we could wonder.
What does it mean to make a unified state under one ethnic group, that is free to pursue business (although we know what that really means in Russia) and "the truth"? The right to chose other beliefs or lifestyles or have parity if you are another ethnic group — where is that enshrined?
When you study Putin's references to "freedom," you feel indeed they are more like the idea of fascism or state corporativism in which a few define the realities for the many. Reaching back in the 19th century for inspiration not from Marxism but mystical Russian Orthodox conservatism doesn't make this "freedom" any more pallatable.
There is always the sense when Putin and others of this belief system talk that they are put upon, beleaguered, surrounded, persecuted by the West. But the West hasn't invaded Russia. (Unless you want to count the pathetic attempt to aid the Whites which ended in utter failure and brought us permanent revolution and state terrorism for 75 years). Russia has invaded Eastern Europe the minute it turned West or free, taking over entire countries that it still insists are somehow within its bounds judging from its air space incursions, espionage and sabotage.
This myth of the encircled Russia, still taking up a sixth of the planet itself and a fifth of the planet when you count its sequestered allies really can't be allowed to stand.
The idea that Slavophilism or Russian Worldism should have freedom to expand and freedom to encroach on neighbors and freedom even of conquest isn't an acceptable notion of freedom. If a real majority of Russians really existed in which they wanted to insist on Orthodoxy, perhaps we would be hard put to reject such democracy, such as it is.
But Russia really is a "multi-faceted" state in which there are serious minorities of Muslims and other religions, not to mention non-Russian ethnic groups. Putin's ideology is not one that can accommodate them, but can only antagonize them.
And this "willing majority" that Russians might aptly invoke for Crimea would be a lot more credible if "little green men" and lies weren't required to take it over, you know?
Then there's this — a duplicitious hybrid-war sort of statement if there ever was one — none of it is true as Russia's nearly year-long war on Ukraine illustrates:
Every nation has an inalienable sovereign right to determine its own development path, choose allies and political regimes, create an economy and ensure its security. Russia has always respected these rights and always will. This fully applies to Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.
We can see how mendacious this is when Putin goes on to explain the toppling of Yanukovych as a "coup" — although what really happened is that this highly corrupt and abusive leader who had sanctioned the use of force on demonstrators fled when his corruption and violent orders were exposed. He also claims that Yanukovych's postponement of the EU agreement was "technical," when the truth is there was pressure from Russia not to sign it. So much for the claim that Russia lets its neighbours sign trade agreements if they like.
As for the invocation of the Odessa fire, Putin is distorting the facts — and there really should be more pushback on this.
Putin's backed, armed separatists shot and killed peaceful demonstrators in Odessa first. These demonstrators then vowed revenge and came back and burned the tents outside the trade union building in revenge. But separatists then also shot people from the roof of the trade union building and themselves threw Molotov cocktails which caused some of the fires. No one was required to stay in the trade union building or blocked from leaving the area; videos of the tragedy show ample time to leave and there is no "forcing" people into a building to "burn them alive."
Instead they chose to barricade themselves into the building and hold it the way other buildings have been occupied by force throughout southeastern Ukraine. Their own barricade caught fire and prevented some exits. The people who sought revenge actually helped their enemies out of the burning building.
Lots of questions about the behaviour of the Ukrainian nationalists and of course the police who did nothing that day and allowed protesters through their ranks can and should be asked and anyone setting fires should be prosecuted. But today, Odessa is not under armed separatist control, like so many other cities, and that means its civilians aren't being shelled by either side in the armed conflict. The Odessa tragedy should be investigated and those responsible prosecuted. But so should all those armed thugs who took over more than a 100 buildings, kidnapping and torturing and killing people along the way who now have created another region essentially under Russian control.
Yet Putin and his armed proxies got an amnesty in the Minsk peace agreement for this outrageous violence, with utterly dwarfs any violence that might be attributed to the Maidan protesters or the Odessa fire-setters. Let's get a grip here.
And then there's this ominous notion, of a militant Russian Orthodox movement like the Crusaders:
In addition to ethnic similarity, a common language, common elements of their material culture, a common territory, even though its borders were not marked then, and a nascent common economy and government, Christianity was a powerful spiritual unifying force that helped involve various tribes and tribal unions of the vast Eastern Slavic world in the creation of a Russian nation and Russian state. It was thanks to this spiritual unity that our forefathers for the first time and forevermore saw themselves as a united nation. All of this allows us to say that Crimea, the ancient Korsun or Chersonesus, and Sevastopol have invaluable civilisational and even sacral importance for Russia, like the Temple Mount in Jerusalem for the followers of Islam and Judaism.
And this is how we will always consider it.
OK, consider it as you will, but then the West is right to maintain a policy of robust deterrence and containment against such a spirtually-animated oppressive movement, one that enslaves its own population and others.
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