The ideology of totalitarianism is eternally consistent and Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime is no exception, Russian-American journalist and author Masha Gessen says.
Gessen is currently a staff writer for The New Yorker.
His books include The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia and The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin.
The latest is Surviving Autocracy, a book described as an inventory of awfulness that draws parallels between Putin and former US President Donald Trump.
“If you think about Putin's ideology, and this is similar to other current autocratic ideologies all over the world, they're all past oriented.
Photo: Tanya Sazansky
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“So, whether it's Trump in the Republican Party in the United States, or Putin in Russia, this they have in common, it's they base their political actions and their political agenda on a mythologised view of the past.”
In the case of Putin, it is a glorious Russian empire, Gessen says.
“A great empire passed that was based on traditional values, it has nothing to do with reality, but the mythology is that people lived in traditional marriages, there were no gay people, no trans people in the country, and everybody was happy and went to church, not true, but that's the mythology.”
The third element is harking back to World War II, he says.
“Russia is forever fighting the righteous war and saving the world from the Nazis.
“And that's how you end up with this completely insane seeming mix of let's go back to the USSR by fighting Ukrainian Nazis and gays.”
The Russian narrative that they are a liberating force in Ukraine is entirely untrue, Gessen says.
“This entire story of the oppressed Russians in the east of Ukraine and a separatist movement is utterly manufactured.”
Evidence of this came to light when the Malaysian airliner was shot down in 2015 over Eastern Ukraine, he says.
“Because of the finally completed investigation into the downing of the Malaysian airliner in 2015 and because of other documents that became available along the way, we can now see with absolute certainty that there was no separatist movement in the Donbass until Russia decided to manufacture a separatist movement and introduced its agents and its disinformation machine into the Donbass.”
Putin’s motives are classically imperial, Gessen says.
“It's totalitarian, it’s imperialist, empires expand and totalitarianism in its classical form is built on expansionist imperialist power.
So, if Russia bit off part of Ukraine, it was going to come back to bite off more. That's inevitable because that's the logic of empire.”
A totalitarian leader has few tools to maintain legitimacy, Gessen says.
“One of them is imperialist expansion. Another one is domestic terror. And really that's about it. So, he is switching back and forth between using these two tools.
“And when he stops, he risks losing power.”
The most likely scenario is that the war drags on, says Gessen.
“All the other scenarios that we can imagine are extremely unlikely.
“With all the atrocities that have come to light in the liberated territories of Ukraine, the possibility that the Ukrainian government would have a mandate from the Ukrainian people to negotiate some sort of peace with Putin where Putin gets to occupy part of Ukraine, when we know what happens to Ukrainians in the occupied territories. That is impossible to imagine.”
An outright defeat of Russia or a total Russian victory are also unlikely scenarios, he says.
“We are going to see a prolonged war of attrition. I hope I'm wrong, but that's what I fear.”
The sanctions being imposed by the West won’t work, Gessen says.
“Sanctions have never worked against the Putin regime. The Putin regime is ultimately made stronger by sanctions because totalitarian regimes thrive on hardship, because the Russian economy is, for various reasons, well-protected against the kind of sanctions that the West applies.
“But also, because the myths that sanctions are based on; the myth that there will be mass unrest that will topple Putin, or that there will be an elite uprising that will topple Putin.
“Both of these myths are based on absolutely nothing but wishful thinking, they’re without precedent, these imagined events, and we have no indication that this would ever happen, except for somebody's cockamamie theory that it could happen.”
Gessen fears Western resolve may weaken as the war drags on and unity in Europe and NATO against the invasion hasn’t made a material difference.
“It hasn't been enough to close the sky over Ukraine. It hasn't been enough to supply Ukraine with sufficient arms and it hasn't been enough to evacuate grain from the port of Odessa, which the European Union and NATO are in a position to do, but are unwilling to do because of a myth of escalation.”
Putin has already said he sees sanctions as an act of war, so any action by the West will be viewed as aggressive, Gessen says.
“He can interpret anything he wants as an act of war. So, this idea that you can possibly avoid escalation is delusional but it's very helpful to Putin.”
Masha Gessen will be appearing in person at the Auckland Writers Festival on 23 August. Head over here for more information.