(By MH, guest contributor)
We Russophiles, we lucky few who have experienced Russia in depth, over the years, repeatedly, without the language as a barrier, know how wonderful it can be, with, on a personal level, unequalled hospitality, and with, on a cultural level, unrivalled refinement and professionalism. I dare say for us, but certainly for me, the shock of what we are witnessing under Putin is as unexpected as it is devastating, provoking the inevitable question: what had I missed, how had I so badly misunderstood, where was that other Russia concealed all those previous years that was now coming to the fore?
What we are witnessing now in Ukraine is not just war – an undertaking that is inevitably awful – but one carried out with exceptional cruelty – as we have all witnessed in newly-retaken Bucha, Irpin, Izium. The targeting of civilians, of infrastructure, the leveling of entire cities has been seen before, to be sure, and especially on Russian soil, under the universally despised Nazi heel, or in the equally terrible ethnic cleansing carried out by Bandera’s followers in ’43-44 (not to mention the nearly universally forgotten, but supremely horrific, Revolution and Civil War, 1917-1921). All the more reason, one would think, that such events would not be tolerated by Russians themselves.
Yet they are, and in spades. Perhaps most atrocious of all, this cruelty is not just limited to outrages committed against Ukrainians, but – most unbelievably – by Russians upon themselves. We have all seen the abandoned bodies of Russian soldiers scattered here and there. Ukrainians report massed attacks without supporting armor, ie without tanks, repeatedly, on Bakhmut especially but not uniquely, fully earning the description of the indiscriminate, even senseless, use by Russians of available cannon fodder. What has been much harder to see are the special purpose Russian crematory trucks that are used to gather and incinerate, on the spot, Russian soldiers with little or no effort to identify and record those rendered into ash. (Whether the chief purpose here is to foreclose the possibility of death benefits to the surviving kin, or to dispose of bodies before they could possibly provoke embarrassing political questions, is anyone’s guess. What is not in dispute: the disgrace of such a callous, loathsome deed.)
Western sensitivities to this apparent barbarity, to this indifference to their own, has been met by Russians with the observation that modern western ‘leave no one behind’ war mentality is very modern, only in effect since WW2. In efficacy, perhaps, but not in sentiment. Take a look at any French town or village and you will invariably find a monument close to the center, ie close to the most central and sacred spot, a monument to the dead of WW1, but not an abstract monument to those dead, rather one inscribed with their individual names! The American Battle Monuments Commission is charged with maintaining military cemeteries around the world, including – perhaps most especially – a list of those interred while also ensuring that they are essentially spotless, invoking a quasi-religious aura for these ‘defenders of the homeland’ (whether they did so willingly or not), with WW1 cemeteries in their remit. And we are all aware of the continuing organized governmental efforts to identify Americans missing in action, from any recent war, with new finds occurring frequently, especially in Vietnam. You will not observe anything equivalent in Russia. Oh yes, there are monuments aplenty, but they are, with the very rarest of exceptions, absent individual names, they are instead a memorial to a deed ordained by government, a monument in effect to government itself (instead of to its individual defenders).
What to make of this? Is it evidence, as Ukrainians are wont to state, of Russian indifference to life, of its fundamentally ‘Asian’ nature?
What are we to make of the targeting of civilian infrastructure, not to mention civilian residences? Perhaps some of the latter can be excused as ‘collateral damage’, not intentional at all but a consequence of ‘high accuracy weapons’ improperly functioning. But, the former, which has increased markedly in intensity recently, after Ukrainian battlefield successes, can most plausibly be explained as intentional, as revenge, as acts of desperation given few, if any, alternatives.
And, finally, what is to be made of the support for this cruel, awful, needless war among the vast majority of Russians? Yes, they are fed a diet of pro-war sentiment on all easily available channels of mass information– but other channels, including YouTube and Telegram, are available. True, they take more effort and time, and if your needs are satisfied already by central TV, why bother?
If we remind ourselves just how Russians took pride, in Imperial and Soviet Russia, in Russia’s immense size, in, essentially, its imperial essence, the pieces start to fall into place. Cosmopolitan Russia, i.e., that of Moscow and St. Petersburg, the Russia we all knew best, was very different from the rest, from provincial Russia, where pride of size was most marked, and most central to national identity. And it is an appeal to those ‘hicks’, those provincials, that is intended, as they are central in Putin’s base of support.
For me personally there was yet another surprise in this ‘unrecognized Russia’: Putin himself. I regarded his accession as largely salutary for the country, as here was a sober (in contrast to Yeltsin, the inebriate), smart, energetic younger man who could, I believed, redirect Russia along the track of democracy and open markets and thus overturn the 70 year mistake – read disaster – of the Soviet experiment. My mistake, my failure, was fundamental: I erroneously presumed that his KGB background was immaterial, that the organization had been crushed in 1991 and with it its entire belief system.
Oddly, from a western perspective, Russians generally regarded the KGB as a very reputable, highly esteemed organization containing idealists, men (virtually exclusively) thoroughly tested and trained, dedicated to the safety and welfare of the government (if not the country – this crucial distinction being very rarely understood). Only exceptionally was it seen as a key element of the Purges, and even less of the horrific events in the Katyn forest.
But those beliefs have a long background and are virtually impossible to eradicate, as they precede even the Bolshevik regime: the Okhrana were the predecessors of the KGB, if vastly more humane and restrained. There was, in Russia, a vast system of repression from time immemorial, a system that employed thousands, nay millions of Russians, directly and indirectly, as paid gendarmes and as paid or unpaid informants. One can even call this a class, dependent on, while simultaneously ensuring, the good-will of the monarch. If you have seen the eager faces of those black-clad, truncheon bearing riot police arresting, with barely restrained violence, any and all anti-Putin protestors, you have looked into the abyss of this class. And, as with all classes, they are loath to abandon their livelihoods and privileges, much less eager to exam any aspect of the immorality of their conduct. They are legion, occupying a recognized and valued place in Russian society.
With minimal effort, Putin was able to resurrect this class, as it was waiting, just below the surface, for just such a call. That Russian society as a whole accepted this call, without significant protest, is proof, it seems to me, of the historical roots of this class, and its recognition, requiring no justification. With a monopoly on the use of violence, they have reestablished themselves as the real rulers of the country, yet still under the authority of the recognized suzerain – this is not a military dictatorship or banana republic, but something else, uniquely Russian. With a jury trial removed from the purview of crimes deemed to be against the State, there is no independent judiciary available to stand between the citizen and the overmighty State.
Given the ‘Asiatic’ cheapness of life, given the imperial ambitions of the average (provincial) Russian, it seems evident to me that Ukraine cannot ‘win’ this war, ever – in the sense of imposing lasting peace, without continuing bombardment from Russian territory – without the credible threat of it itself inflicting the pain of war upon Russia as well. For this reason, it seems to me that Biden’s restraints, especially on supplying to Ukraine the ATACMS missile for the HIMARS equipment is artificial and essentially counter-productive. Instead, it is vital to make it clear to Russia that the country is not immune, and that it is subject to pain. In fact, I do not see why it is not possible to supply those missiles to Ukraine under the provision that their use be subject to approval by the US, and that that approval would be granted for every attack by Russia upon Ukraine civilians and infrastructure. Otherwise, as Russia has no incentive for termination, this war can endure without end. And, as the war continues, we are far more likely to stumble into an expanded conflict, even the WW3 that Biden fears, than if we demonstrate our inflexible determination to bring it to a close for benefits to both sides.
How terrible it is to envision my friends in Russia having to suffer some direct consequences of real war (though it is far less likely to happen to them than to those in the provinces). Yet I see no other way of exerting effective action against this barbaric regime – and, the sooner, the better.
