Putin’s Worldview: Themes and Variations
Loyalty vs. betrayal. Help loyal friends. Destroy those who betray.
Respect. Russia must be respected as a great power.
Humiliation requires a backlash. “Anyone who insults Russia won’t be long for this world.”
Incensed by ingratitude, e.g., former Soviet republics that resist Russian dominance and influence.
Ruthless will to prevail.
Russia’s uniqueness/historical exceptionalism
Anti-liberalism (liberalism = political and civil freedoms)
Orthodox Church: central to national and moral identity
Imperial nostalgia (Tsar Nicholas I – those were the days!)
Family values: “The main purpose of the family is to have children, about procreation, and thus, the perpetuation of our people and our centuries-old history”, per Putin, January 2024 (link)
Russia and the West: from Worldview to Policy
Russia as expansive nation-state with a “sphere of influence” that encompasses the Near Abroad (former Soviet republics), the diaspora (Russians who have moved to other countries), areas in other countries liberated by Soviet troops during WWII, and pre-Soviet Russian presence in other countries, e.g., Orthodox religious sites in Norway (link)
The West as morally, culturally, and religiously degraded, abandoning core Christian values and trying to destroy Russia’s spiritual purity.
Fear: democratic “contagion” will destabilize Russia.
Slippery-slope thinking about East-West rivalry: must prevent, stem and reverse losses or else West will gain momentum and “win”.
The US promised Gorbachev that NATO would not expand to include former Soviet republics. Subsequent NATO expansion in Eastern Europe was thus a betrayal by the US (although US says promise was never made and no written non-expansion guarantee exists, see link).
NATO’s intervention in Serbia and Kosovo seceding were an intolerable violation of Russia’s sphere of influence. NATO’s eastward expansion must be stopped and reversed.
“Responsibility to protect” Russian diaspora in other countries (pretext for military interventions - link)
Patriotic education, e.g. “traditional system of family values for our Fatherland”, “fundamentals of religious culture”, and military training (link).
“Patronalism”: encourages advisors to tell him what he wants to hear. Patronalism and intuition reinforce each other (vicious circle).
Putin appears set in his views, leading to a relentless movement toward a highly repressive authoritarian regime and retaliation for territorial losses (“revanchism”).
Putin is “building a fascist, totalitarian state, centered on the glorification of warfare” (George Breslauer*, UC Berkeley and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI)
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* Breslauer’s OLLI Putin lecture notes were the inspiration for this post.
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Links:
https://olli.berkeley.edu/course/2731
https://cepa.org/article/putin-and-the-weaponization-of-family-values/
https://jamestown.org/program/kremlin-patriotic-education-policy-hampers-countrys-development/
https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/04/how-kremlin-distorts-responsibility-protect-principle
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/09/16/russias-espionage-war-in-the-arctic