“For God’s sake, this man can’t stay in power!” With these words, Joe Biden translated the anti-Putin wish of everyone on the planet. But the trajectory taken by a country is never dependent on a single man. Would Russia without Putin be so different? In this case, the answer is: yes, probably.
There was a moment, at the end of the last century, when diplomats and intellectuals dreamed of Russia’s entry into the European Union and even into NATO. It was the time when freedom of the press flourished in Moscow, when elections were held regularly even in the most outlying regions. On the ashes of the former Soviet empire, in the indescribable doldrums of an economy in tatters, nostalgia for the certainties of yesterday clashed, the desire to create a new world and the anxiety induced by uncertainty.
This dream of the extension of a politically and militarily pacified Europe, from Brest to Vladivostok (formerly evoked by de Gaulle), found few takers in the EU, which already had its hands full with the recent inclusion of the Spain, Greece and several Eastern European countries. Adding Russia would have posed titanic problems, altered the internal balance of power and made this maximalist Europe probably ungovernable. In the East, several states had jumped into planet Europe precisely to escape the orbit of their former Soviet aggressors. In Washington, where this hope was strongest, the signals sent were sometimes counterproductive.
The fact remains that we only form lasting alliances with our worst enemies of yesterday. France and Germany mutually invaded each other half a dozen times before becoming the bedrock couple of the new Europe. By integrating NATO, Germany joined, more or less, the club of its winners. Japan, twice victim of the American atomic weapon, is now one of the strongest allies of the United States.
A furrow, tenuous, could be traced towards this great reconciliation. The first president of modern Russia, Boris Yeltsin, had dissolved the Warsaw Pact (the Soviet counterpart of NATO), carried out massive nuclear disarmament, accepted the independence of former conquered republics, joined the G8 and the of Europe and established sustained relations with the EU. If we were patient and constant, from rapprochement to rapprochement, it was possible to tend towards this horizon where Russia would become an important (but not dominant) player in a new world order. That was when Yeltsin made the astonishing decision to choose a seasoned but little-known bureaucrat to succeed him. He put power back in his hands at noon on the 1er January 2000.
Vladimir Putin secretly boarded a plane that day to the Caucasus, from where a military helicopter was to take him to a town in Chechnya recently taken by the Russian army. The weather was so bad that the helicopter had to turn back. But Putin was keen on the trip, and did so by car in dangerous conditions. Arrived at his destination, he met soldiers dazed to see their new president arrive before dawn. He presented them with medals, saying: “This war does not only mean restoring the honor and dignity of Russia. It means putting an end to the dissolution of the Russian Federation. »
The anecdote, told by Steven Lee Myers in his excellent biography of Putin, The New Tsar, marks the beginning of the new Russian imperial temptation. Initially, Putin will hesitate between this temptation and that of rapprochement with the West. But his taste for the return of Great Russia will strengthen over the years. It will come to light when he decides, alone, to regain control of Crimea in 2014. There would be no going back.
One can list the variables that fueled the stiffening of Putin’s position. The installation of new missiles by NATO in Eastern Europe, even as Moscow massively reinvested in its army and its nuclear arsenal. Putin’s inability to impose the president of his choice in Ukraine. His horrified reaction when other autocrats were overthrown by mobs he believed were being guided by Washington. It is said that he listened to the images of the crowd attacking Gaddafi over and over, seeing in it, if he was not careful, the film of his own execution.
Still, we live in the world that Putin chose to build. The world of the restoration of the Russian Empire. No one has chosen to lead us in this direction more than him. At the end of his life, Boris Yeltsin regretted having entrusted him with the future of Russia. Yeltsin was certainly unpredictable, corrupt and alcoholic, but he valued freedom of expression and the right to vote which his successor trampled on. Putin, he said in a rare interview given before his death in 2007, made Russia “a different country” from the one he left it.
He did this by eliminating, sometimes physically, his opponents, by rigging or canceling elections, by totally controlling the media and, now, the Internet. By also determining a dangerous trajectory for him, his neighbors and the world.
The author Vladimir Sorokine thus described the country whose totalitarian abyss he recounts in his novels. The Russian nation is now “hostage to the psychosomatic whims of its leader. […] If he is paranoid, the whole country must fear enemies and spies; if he suffers from insomnia, all departments must work at night; if he is abstinent, everyone must stop drinking; if he is drunk, everyone must get drunk; if he does not love America, against which his beloved KGB fought, the whole population must hate the United States”.
And if he wants the restoration of the Russian empire with tanks and missiles, the whole planet must tremble.
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