A Review of
Putin and the Return of History: How the Kremlin Rekindled the Cold War
By Martin Sixsmith
Bloomsbury Continuum
Hardcover; 368 pages
Historical context provides perspective into Putin’s iron fist
By Jay Wiener
Special to the Mississippi Clarion-Ledger
Winston Churchill referenced Russia as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma” in a speech delivered on October 1, 1939—soon after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was signed on August 17, 1939 with the subsequent invasion of Poland by the Nazis on September 1, 1939 and the Soviets on September 17, 1939.
The world remains puzzled by Russia, eighty-five years later: inexplicable actions appear counterproductive. Efforts to reassemble the Russian empire suggest that an enduring English language nursery rhyme is unknown in Russia: “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.”
Endeavors to comprehend Putin’s endgame prove elusive: coverage of Russia’s Ukrainian quagmire, reminiscent of American miscalculation in Vietnam, focuses upon superficial facts rather than trenchant analysis.
“Putin and the Return of History: How the Kremlin Rekindled the Cold War” by Martin Sixsmith provides pertinent perspective. The book is essential reading for those desiring to discern detail.
Kiev and Moscow have displayed different mindsets since late in the first millennia. The former, originally settled by Vikings, trends Western and democratic: “In 1237, [Kiev] was overrun by the Mongols, who would rule for the next two and a half centuries, implanting their own highly militarized, repressive model of governance. When the Mongols left in 1480, the autocratic system they had introduced remained in force, adopted by the native princes who replaced the civic participation and respect for the law, glimpsed before the Mongol invasion, with the absolute, unchallengeable diktat of an all-powerful state.
“These two models—the European-oriented proto-democracy of Kievan Rus’ and the isolationist autocracy bequeathed by the Mongols would become opposing poles in Russian political thought, each of them attracting followers who would promote their rival templates for Russia’s future.”
Sixsmith continues, “Large numbers of educated Russians have traditionally looked to the West. The intelligentsia of the nineteenth century were repelled by the authoritarian nature of what Russians refer to as the silnaya ruka, the iron fist of centralized power. They argued for a decisive turn towards Western values of law and social justice, coalescing into a powerful school of so-called Westernizers. But an equally vigorous movement emerged, in stark disagreement, championing the supreme ‘Russian values’ of Orthodoxy, collectivism and nationalism.”
Democratic tendencies defined Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin and, to a lesser extent, Nikita Khrushchev. Orthodoxy characterized the Tsars, Joseph Stalin and Leonid Brezhnev. Vladimir Putin is their heir.
Failure to fathom competing ideas inside Russia—more than a monolithic mindset—is disastrous. The volume is commendable for clarifying misperception.
Putin is oblivious to international interdependence mandated by Industrial Age armaments; particularly thermonuclear bombs, able to annihilate life on earth: “Putin seethes with anger. The hatred that eats at him and has driven out reason is the cause of the obsessive unreason behind his decisions over Ukraine…[h]e played on Russians’ feelings of loss, their natural desire to regain control and restore international prestige, to argue that Russia could prosper only by reviving the siege mentality and the iron fist.”
Putin thinks that Russia is invincible. Putin has “quoted a warning attributed to Alexander Nevsky, the thirteenth-century Russian prince who defeated the Teutonic Knights, that whoever comes to us with a sword, will himself perish by the sword. ‘The USSR was subjected to a terrible, unforgivable attack by Nazi Germany,’ Putin told the TASS news agency, ‘in which we lost 27 million people [but emerged victorious] … and if anyone ever dares to do anything like that to us again, we will do it again.’ He is happy to endorse the element of religious fervour attached to Russia’s role…”
The book concludes that “[t]he 1990s were an anomalous glimpse of democratic experimentation in Russia. Now history is back, with a Russian president’s vengeance.” Incapacity to comprehend megalomania menacing democratic institutions internationally is perilous.
Jay Wiener is a Jackson attorney.
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