This episode presents a description of the current situation in Putin's totalitarian Russia and analyzes whether there is hope for change coming from within the country itself. It is a vivid picture of how authoritarian regimes shape what citizens see, believe, and think and how this leads to a profound sense of hopelessness, isolation, a state of general anxiety and despair. Is the resurgence of Putin’s new imperial ambitions likely to bolster his power nationally and internationally? Can sanctions or economic sanctions in general give a hope in resolving the conflict?
Guests featured in this episode:
Masha Gessen, a distinguished journalist & staff writer for the New Yorker. Born in Moscow in the Soviet Union, Masha moved to the United States in 1981, only to return to Russia as a journalist a decade later. A strong critic of Putin’s regime from the very outset, Masha decided to leave Russia and return to the US due to the politically motivated crackdown on gay parents by Russian authorities.
They have authored 11 books, most recently, Surviving Autocracy (2020), an insightful account of the Trump Presidency that also draws on their experience of living in Russia. Two of their other books discussed within the podcast are; The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia, and The Man without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin (2012).
GLOSSARY
Who was Boris Yeltsin?
(00:19:15 or p.5 in the transcript)
Boris Yeltsin, Russian politician who became president of Russia in 1991, he was the first popularly elected leader in the country’s history, guiding Russia through a stormy decade of political and economic retrenching. During his first presidency Yeltsin publicly supported the right of Soviet republics to greater autonomy within the Soviet Union, took steps to give the Russian republic more autonomy, and declared himself in favour of a market-oriented economy and a multiparty political system.
At the same time, Russia’s parliament, the Congress of People’s Deputies, had grown increasingly hostile toward his free-market reforms. Yeltsin and the Congress were also deeply divided over the question of the balance of powers in Russia’s proposed new constitution, which was needed to replace the obsolete 1978 Soviet-era Russian Constitution. On September 21, 1993, Yeltsin unconstitutionally dissolved the Congress and called for new parliamentary elections. In response, hard-line legislators attempted a coup in early October but were suppressed by army troops loyal to Yeltsin. Parliamentary elections and a referendum on a draft constitution were held in December. Yeltsin’s draft constitution, which increased the powers of the presidency, was narrowly approved, but the anti-reform character of Russia’s newly elected parliament, the Federal Assembly, compelled Yeltsin to govern primarily by executive decree in the coming years.
In another spectacular comeback, however, he won reelection over a communist challenger in the second round of elections held in July 1996. He spent the months after his electoral victory recovering from a heart attack he had suffered that June during the rigours of the campaign. The state of Yeltsin’s health was a recurring issue.
In the late 1990s political maneuvering dominated much of the country’s government as Yeltsin dismissed four premiers and in 1998 fired his entire cabinet, though many were later reappointed. The following year the State Duma initiated an impeachment drive against Yeltsin, charging that he had encouraged the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, among other allegations The Duma, however, was unable to secure the necessary votes to proceed. Ever unpredictable, Yeltsin announced his resignation on December 31, 1999, in favour of what he characterized as a new, energetic leadership. He named Prime Minister Vladimir Putin acting president, and in turn Putin granted Yeltsin immunity from future prosecution. Source:
Who was Vladimir Zhirinovsky?
(00:29:53 or p.7 in the transcript)
Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Russian politician and leader of the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR) from 1991 to 2022. Known for his fiery Russian nationalism and broad anti-Semitic asides, he later acknowledged his Jewish roots.
Much of Zhirinovsky’s personal history is vague, unknown, or disputed. He left his hometown at age 18 to attend Moscow State University, where he studied Turkish and other languages. After graduating about 1969, he went to work as a translator in Turkey, but he was expelled under murky circumstances eight months later. After returning to Moscow in 1972, he worked in various state committee and union posts. He completed an evening law program at Moscow State University, earning his degree in 1977 and then working in a state-run law firm (from which he was later asked to resign). In 1983 Zhirinovsky landed a position as head of the law department at the Mir publishing company, a post that served as a springboard for his political career.
Zhirinovsky cofounded the LDPR in 1989. The following year the party was launched in Moscow, and Zhirinovsky was asked to become its chairman, but by October his views had provoked his expulsion. In the spring of 1991 Zhirinovsky created his own party, giving it his previous and party’s name, and in June he first ran for the Russian presidency; he ran several times for presidency during his long political carrier. A figure as colorful as Zhirinovsky was bound to be the object of rumour and speculation. It was widely reported that his career could have been possible only under the auspices of the KGB. Source:
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S.R: Welcome to "Democracy in Question," the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, Rector and President of the Central European University in Vienna, and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Center on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
It's a great pleasure to have with me today, the well-known journalist Masha Gessen, who is non-binary, and uses the pronouns, they and them. A Russian-American, who is a staff writer for "The New Yorker." They have authored 11 books. The most recent is "Surviving Autocracy," an insightful account of the Trump presidency that also draws on their experience of living in Russia. Let me also mention two of their books that'll be the subject of our conversation today, "The Future is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia" and "The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin," published in 2012.
Born in Moscow, in the Soviet Union, Masha moved to the United States in 1981, only to return to Russia as a journalist a decade later. A strong critic of Putin's regime from the very outset, they decided to leave Russia and to return to the United States due to the politically motivated crackdown on gay parents by Russian authorities.
I asked Masha whether there is hope for change from within Russia, given total state control of media that keeps most Russians in the dark. How do totalitarian regimes shape what citizens see, believe, and even think? Is the resurgence of militarized new Imperial expansion, likely to bolster Putin's power nationally and internationally? Can economic sanctions hope to achieve at least, a frozen conflict? I look forward to hearing Masha's thoughts on these troubling issues in our dark times. Marsha, welcome to the podcast. And thanks for being with me on the eve of your departure for Ukraine. I appreciate it greatly.
M.G: Thank you. It's very good to be here. And I'm actually a fan and a listener of the podcast.
S.R: So, let me begin with something which you told me recently about your visit to Moscow at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Could you describe the way in which the Russian State television dealt with the war, that could not even be called by that name? And say something about the making of those media stories and the journalists who are working on them, so that one understands the nature and the crafting of media messages in Russia today as a background to understanding how the war is being perceived. But how is it possible to have this war without having a public outrage in Russia?
M.G: I was in Moscow for the first week or so after the full-scale invasion began. And I tried to watch a fair amount of television. And what struck me about it was that it just felt normal, right? I mean, I was flying to Moscow actually on the first day after Putin declared the full-scale invasion. And during my layovers at airports, you know, everywhere, there were these giant screens, and you could see that the world was on fire. But in Moscow, everything was normal. Everything was normal in the streets. If you didn't notice the SWAT team stationed at every public square, which is easy not to notice because it's fairly normal. And then, you know, if you turned on the television, it was not just the content, but also the flow of the television, right? The newscasts were still five or six minutes at the top of their hour. The tone was very routine. They'd say something about the special operation in Ukraine. But then they would lead to a rescue airplane crashing in Romania during an operation, and seven people dying.
And so, you got this sense that even these disasters were part of, sort of, the routine fabric of life. Now, my assumption at the time, because obviously the pocket parliament, also immediately, passed a law that made it punishable by up to 15 years in prison to spread false information, so-called, about the special military operation. And among the things that would be considered false would be calling the operation a war, an act of aggression, or invasion. And it was also punishable to use anything but the Russian Defense Ministry's own reports. It became a crime to use other news sources.
So, I assumed that this ritualization of war coverage was part of the design. What I have learned since in my reporting is that actually, they just weren't prepared. It's possible that it's because they assumed that they would occupy Ukraine in a couple of days. So, no, sort of, big propaganda campaign was necessary as far as they thought. It's also, I think partly because we know that very, very few people knew that the invasion was going to happen. So, it's possible that the secrecy prevented having a briefing for the editors of mass media. Now, all mass media that are still allowed to operate in Russia, especially after the first week of the war, are either state-owned or statesupervised. And by that, I mean, the editor-in-chief was appointed by the Kremlin. And the editors gather for weekly meetings with Kremlin officials, and sort of, get their talking points.
Now, that they figured out that they need a strategy, they have an overwhelming media strategy. It's all war all the time. You turn on the television and, you know, there might be a couple of routine talk shows in the morning, sort of, family gossipy stuff, but then, you go into an hour-long show purporting to debunk false information spread by Ukrainians and the West. Then you'll have a long daytime newscast, primarily devoted to the war, in which the newscasters call Ukrainians Nazis, report on liberating towns and villages, talk about the heinous crimes that Ukrainians are supposedly committing. So, basically, they're saying everything that is true of themselves about Ukrainians. They talk about Ukrainians spreading false information. They talk about Ukrainians committing war crimes. They call Ukrainians Nazis.
And this is a device that Tim Snyder has invented, I think a very good term for, which is schizoid-fascism, when a fascist power calls its opponents fascists. Then after that in "Prime Time," there are three hours of drama series on World War II or what Russia calls The Great Patriotic War. Then there's another long newscast. And then there's a two-and-a-half-hour show of political crosstalk on Ukraine. It's hosted by, sort of, the most prominent propagandist, Vladimir Solovyov, who hosts six, two and a half-hour talk shows a week. So, a lot of it is fairly repetitive, which, of course, is very useful for propaganda. Among things that they repeat are talking points about the possibility of nuclear war. They make extensive use of two of Putin's quotes from 2018. One was when actually Solovyov himself asked him about the possibility of using nuclear weapons. And Putin said, "Yes, but we will go straight to Heaven as righteous people," meaning, we as Russians. "And they will just croak."
And it often becomes a kind of call, in response. And the other quote from 2018, also about nuclear war, is Putin saying, "What is the point of a world in which there's no Russians?" So, it's very much preparing Russians for the nuclear option in case of military defeat although they keep talking about victory.
And one last point, so how is this actually made? Solovyov and a couple of his very prominent colleagues are zealots. They make this stuff, and they talk directly to Putin. They feel empowered, but most of it is not made by zealots, it's made by drones. And not by the flying kinds of drones, but office drones with very, very small jobs. Jobs that involve writing lead-ins to reports that are sent in by government agencies, writing voiceover for silent video that is sent in by government agencies.
And they have incredibly cushy schedules, five to eight hours a day, seven days a week, every other week. So, it's basically a well-remunerated halftime job. But it's also, and I think this is really important, it's a meaningless job. It's a job that feels meaningless, a job that doesn't confer a sense of responsibility. So, when we think about, why do people participate in spreading these horrible lies? They don't really feel like they are making a contribution, with good reason, feel like if they weren't doing this mechanical work, someone else would be doing this mechanical work. But also, it's just this continuous, sort of, loss of a sense of agency.
And finally, just one illustration, I was talking to one person who works as an editor on one of the main state channels. And I asked them whether they thought truth existed. And they said, "Well, yes, truth exists for sure. But, you know, we can't know it unless, you know, you or I go directly to Bucha or Mariupol, we can't know." And I said, "But you, unlike, most Russians, have unfettered access to Western news wires. You can actually assess for yourself and decide what seems more true to you." And he said, "I don't think." And, you know, it actually posed a very funny editing problem when the story went to press in "The New Yorker," because when you write in English, "I don't think," then one expects that there will be a second part of that sentence, right? It's very hard to convey on paper or, you know, in print that that's the end of the sentence, I don't think.
S.R: Let me follow this up then with an observation and an argument you make in your brilliant book, "The Future is History," where you analyze, why it may be impossible to know what people think in a totalitarian society. So, how about ordinary Russian citizens? Could you say something about what they see, what they don't see, what they don't want to see, in the sense of, are they all not thinking. Because there is such a sense of hopelessness of despair that it's not even possible to have a sense of the catastrophe, which is unfolding before their very eyes.
M.G: Thank you for your kind words, Shalini. It means a lot. And, you know, the observation that it's impossible to know what totalitarian subject thinks was actually originally made by Hannah Arendt, who I think one of her great insights into the nature of totalitarianism, was that totalitarianism doesn't just demand of its subjects, that they spur back whatever is put into their mouths. It's that it robs them of the variability to form opinions. So, a common misunderstanding about the unreliability of opinion polls in Russia and in the Soviet Union before it, was that people said what was expected of them, but secretly harbored some other opinion. But, of course, that's not the case.
The psychic cost of harboring a secret disagreement is extremely hig and I think very, very few people are able to carry that on for any amount of time. One long-time senior employee at one of the Russian state television channels said, "If you can't say what you think, you start to think what you say." And I think that's a really, really good way of explaining how that works. It's that mask that becomes your face. And so, you know, that raises a bunch of questions, including what do we make of opinion polls that come out of Russia?
There has been a fair amount of criticism of the Levada Center, which is the only independent sociological organization in the country, which has been doing opinion polls and focus groups, and, you know, has been trying to get us figures. These figures are generally pretty similar to what the State Opinion Centers get. And I think that we actually have to put these together, right? Because what I think we get is a measure of the level of totalitarianism in society. We don't get a picture of what people think, in part, because people can't think. I mean, there's another argument embedded in all of this that I find fascinating, which is apparently there is a rule in sociology that you don't study opinion in a country at war.
And Levada actually has a response to us, which I find fascinating because they continue to do their studies. They say that because Russians don't think that they're at war, it actually makes sense to continue the surveys. I just find this, sort of, as an intellectual conduit, absolutely fascinating, and not qualified to take a position here. But I think, you know, what we're getting is a kind of, totalitarianism temperature. And it's pretty high. It's not extremely high. It's not as high as it was, for example, when society was truly mobilized around Crimea when the numbers coming back were pushing 90% support for the annexation. Now, it's like in the 70% range for support for the so-called military operation, which is still extremely high, but, you know, it also makes you think about the millions and millions of people who are represented by the 20 plus percent, who say they don't support the special military operation in Ukraine.
S.R: So, let me turn to an argument, Masha, you make in the other book of yours, which I reread recently, "The Man Without a Face: The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin". And it is a shocking book, especially if you reread it today. You published it in 2012. And you show in the book a captured judiciary show trials, censorship of the media, stifling of any dissent of any kind, the silencing of opponents, one by one, imprisoning them, poisoning them, the total control of businesses, apart from just amassing huge amounts of personal wealth. When I was rereading it for our interview, I thought to myself, given all the extremely careful detailed evidence that you present to us in the book, why is it that most of it was ignored by policymakers, politicians in Europe, and the U.S., who did not think Russia was a totalitarian regime? They continued to deal with it as if it were a regime on the way to more democracy.
Yes, there were a few missteps and a little back peddling, but there is no serious threat because this is not an entirely closed system trying to maintain complete control, which is what you already show in 2012. Now, I'm sure it doesn't give you much satisfaction to have your darkest forebodings and your really precise judgments proven correct. But what I ask myself is why was so much of it, although available, ignored by those who should have known better?
M.G: Yes. I've been joking that I'm releasing the 10th anniversary, I told you so, rendition, of that book. But it's such an interesting problem that goes so far beyond Putin. We are still close enough to World War II, to be able to compare the mistakes, and the reactions, and the narratives that surround Putin's fascism, to the mistakes, and the reactions, and the narratives that normalized Hitler's fascism. I certainly am 55 years old, and I grew up in the Soviet Union very much in an ongoing conversation about World War II. My grandmothers who had an immediate role in raising me were Holocaust survivors. And most of my family on one side perished in the Holocaust. I've written about World War II and spent time in their archives.
And so, I'd actually broaden out your question and say, "Why do we always do this? Why do politicians do it? Why do media do it?" And, you know, the difference, of course, is that now, recently, the way that we have done it is we have insisted that Putin, at least, isn't Hitler, because we have that reference point. And I think, I mean, this is simple and flippant, but I think also an accurate answer because when people would ask me at the beginning of the invasion, "Why didn't people believe it? Why didn't Russians believe it? And why didn't Ukrainians believe it?" And I would say, "Well, because it's unbelievable." And I think that's the secret. It's unbelievable. It is a fact of modernity that this kind of expansionist war, this kind of genocidal war, this kind of totalizing regime, this kind of control are possible and likely, and yet they're unbelievable. And I think that part of the way that we've thought about World War II is to portray it as something that has no parallels in history. But, of course, it had an immediate parallel in history right there in the Soviet Union.
To be more specific about Putin and our current moment, there was a very strong media narrative that I think was perpetuated for reasons of media inertia, that Russia was a burgeoning democracy, that Putin was a kind of, more normal, more predictable leader than Yeltsin, who preceded him. And that held for a long time, that kind of narrative. But the media attempt to perpetuate narratives and to be well behind the curve. And again, we've seen this consistently. And then there are all of our political institutions, which have this overwhelming, sort of, institutional drive to normalize, and to treat every counterpart as rational in the way that the West understands rationality. And we see it now, you know, even after the invasion, even with the emerging evidence of war crimes and just a footnote here, right, we're in an unprecedented situation, where evidence of war crimes emerges immediately after the war crimes were committed while the war is still going on. And yet with that happening in real-time, we hear voices on the right, and on the left, and in the middle saying that we have to negotiate with Putin, that we have to give him something, that he needs an offramp, that he needs to save face.
He has shown absolutely no indication of knowing he has a face to save. And yet, all of these tropes are applied, partly, I think, because not applying them would mean upending institutional worlds, partly because a lot of people would have to admit that they had been wrong, and people hate doing that, and partly because we actually don't have the tools to deal with an existential threat like Putin. And that's terrifying.
S.R: So, it is terrifying your portrait, not only of the system but also your portrait of the man. And as you just said, does Putin have a face to save? And I wanted to ask you for those of our listeners who haven't read your book yet, you titled the book, "The Man Without a Face." And I think it would be interesting to understand why you think he was, or is a man without a face, a man with no face to save. But the subtitle I found at that time equally intriguing, "The Unlikely Rise of Vladimir Putin," because so many people have been arguing, "This is not unlikely or contingent. It's inevitable." Russia has no history of a democratic culture, democratic institutions. How can we ever imagine that there could be democratic institutions, which would take hold, be domesticated, be part of people's aspirations?
M.G: So, the reason the book is titled "The Man Without a Face" is because Putin didn't have a public profile before he came to lead Russia. He was a faceless bureaucrat. Yeltsin, his predecessor, was looking for a successor. He knew it was his last term. He feared that if the opposition came to power, he would be prosecuted. So, he was looking for somebody malleable, weak, somebody who could be manipulated and controlled. And also, he had basically alienated, if not annihilated anybody who was politically colorful, charismatic, interesting. And so, he was looking at a lineup of faceless bureaucrats, and he plucked one out. Now, where I think I mean, it's unlikely obviously, because Putin had no aspirations of becoming president. Putin's aspirations actually lie elsewhere.
And I think it's an important thing to understand in order to understand how he operates still. He always wanted to be a secret agent. He always wanted to run the world from the shadows. It's very hard to run the world from the shadows when you are president. But if you think about how much stock he puts into being cagey, into striking when he's least expected to, you still see that dream of being a secret agent that is somehow, sort of, alive somewhere in that head. Obviously, he's changed a lot in the last 22 years. And I think very much has come to identify himself with the Russian State and has come to think that because we as humans don't believe in accidents, that it couldn't have been an accident that he became president. It was fate and it is his cross to bear. That's a really strong narrative for him.
So, the part of your question about the unlikely and, you know, was it preordained that someone like Putin would come to power? I don't think it was preordained. There were even at that point, the bunch of faceless bureaucrats that he also was looking at, had some variety in it. He could have picked someone older. He could have picked someone less greedy. He could have picked someone less aggressive. He could have picked someone more educated. He could have picked someone more curious. He could have picked someone who wasn't a psychopath. So, Russia is obviously shaped to a huge extent by its history of totalitarianism. It is an unparalleled experiment in totalitarian rule, 70 years of Soviet totalitarianism, and now an additional 22 years so far of Putinism have done, I think unspoken and yet to be described damage to the fabric of society, to the collective and individual psyche of Russians. But that doesn't mean that someone who would unleash an imperialist genocidal war was preordained.
S.R: Oh, Masha, probably, the only conclusion or the only argument in your book, which probably you want to distance yourself from, maybe, is the one where you say it was an optimistic conclusion of that book, "The Putin Bubble Will Burst," you say. And the question is, do you think we can expect this bubble to burst simply because it'll implode? You have been a very, very outspoken critic of the weak sanctions that Western countries have imposed against Russia. So, sanctions probably, definitely, will not make this bubble burst. So, the question to you would be, do you think military engagement from the West, is the only option left in order to get this bubble to burst?
M.G: I should probably explain because I bet a lot of our listeners did a double take when you said that I've been an outspoken critic of the weak sanctions. Because these sanctions are portrayed and perceived by many people, including Russians, as extremely strong sanctions, right? They're overwhelming. They are unprecedented. That's all true. I just think that they're the wrong sanctions. And a lot of what we refer to as sanctions are not actually sanctions. A lot of what we refer to as sanctions is a kind of spontaneous boycott by multinational corporations that are A afraid of running afoul of actual legal sanctions, and B, afraid of reputational damage.
Western corporations pulling out of Russia has led to a significant rise in unemployment and a significant shortage of consumer goods. But that affects primarily ordinary Russians. And because of the way Russia works economically, that affects primarily poor Russians. It makes life a lot harder for people who were already spending more than half of their income on food. And the lifeline of their actual regime is oil and gas, primarily oil. And that's why the West has been slow, uncoordinated, but keyword, slow. And where I've been really outspoken is in the very formulation that it's impossible for Western Europe to stop using Russian oil and gas. When we say impossible, we say it's very expensive. It's difficult and expensive, and it can really lead to a major change in the way life is lived. Well, that's because there's a war going on.
And we should think that thousands of civilians dying, and entire cities being erased from the face of the earth is more impossible than living with extremely expensive oil and gas and having to forego air conditioning for much of the summer. So, even now that oil and gas sanctions are being discussed in great detail, and some have been imposed, basically oil sales to Western Europe will not cease for another six to eight months. And that's six to eight months of, more or less, life as normal for the Russian regime. Imposing those sanctions gradually doesn't make a whole lot of sense. And at the moment, the continued oil experts have actually created this completely insane situation, where Russia actually has a trade surplus, and its currency has become extremely strong.
Again, not great for ordinary Russians. So, what can bring down the regime? I don't think sanctions, even good sanctions, even smart sanctions, even sanctions that hit the actual economy, which is oil and gas, can bring down Putin because he has destroyed all the mechanisms that could possibly bring him down. Mass protest is not going to bring him down because there are no mechanisms for protests to set in motion even if we imagine that protests were possible, which are extremely unlikely at this point, just because of the scale of repression. Is a palace coup possible? I mean, a palace coup is always possible, but he is more paranoid than any possible perpetrator of a palace coup is cunning. We have seen Putin take extreme precaution, you know, to the point where Vladimir Zhirinovsky the ultra-right politician died a couple of months ago. When Putin went up to the coffin to pay his respects, the honor guard were removed. Putin will not be in physical proximity to anybody who hasn't been vetted, tested for every virus, and otherwise cleared.
So, an actual palace coup is just extremely physically unlikely. It's also unlikely because of the structure of the Putin regime, which is basically a mafia clan where Putin is the mafia, who controls and distributes money and power. And so, as the pie of money and power gets smaller, what happens actually is elbowing each other out of the way to get closer to the center, not forging solidarity with other members of the elites. What we know about totalitarian regimes is that ultimately, they collapse from the inside. And it's a series of missteps that lead to collapse.
S.R: Let me end, Masha, with one question which takes up your comment about Putin being a faceless bureaucrat, but a psychopath. And the question for me then is, is there a method in this madness of the totally unprovoked aggression against Ukraine? What do you think is sought to be achieved here through this militarized new Imperial expansion? Is there sheer nostalgia or is there a calculus?
M.G: For the first, nearly 20 years of Putin's reign, people would ask the question, "Who is Mr. Putin?" And I found it very annoying because, okay, who's Mr. Putin? He just told us. You just, like, listen to him. And, now the question that's asked most often is, is he insane? Now I do think he's a psychopath, in the sense that he clearly has no empathy and no regard for fellow humans, but I don't think it's useful to think of him as insane because I think it's much more useful to, sort of, ask the question, what is the world in which his actions make sense? And I think it's a world in which he is a leader of a Russia that needs to be restored to greatness. That is his mission and his cross to bear because he really can't tell the difference between himself and Russia.
So, to restore to greatness, he needs to avenge some wrongs that have been committed in relation to Russia is that the post-World War II division of Europe hasn't helped. In his world, well, Russia sat down with the United States and Great Britain after Russia saved the world from Naziism. And they had a deal. And in that deal, Russia had all of the Soviet Union, plus a chunk of Poland, plus a chunk of Romania, plus a chunk of Finland, plus dominion, over most of Eastern Central Europe. And the United States had dominion over Western Europe. And then the U.S. unilaterally went and broke that agreement. That's his picture of the world. And so, on behalf of Russia, he needs to avenge that injustice. And he also needs to do that in order to maintain his regime, which is also part of his mission because he equals Russia. Why does he need to do it to maintain his regime? Well, because he's seen what happened in Belarus, which is that despite building a fully functioning totalitarian regime, Lukasheko faced mass protests on an unprecedented scale in 2020. And the only way that he has been able to stay in power is by Russia bankrolling his regime.
But Putin doesn't have a Russia to bankroll his regime, unless China chooses to bankroll his regime, which I don't think is terribly likely, but it could happen. And he, more importantly, might think that it could happen. So, totalitarianism requires expansionism. It requires full mobilization and a big war. That's I think the world in which what he's doing makes sense.
S.R: So, thank you very much, Masha, for this fascinating portrayal of Putin, and the totalitarian regime that he has built up over the last two decades, but also for these insights into Russian society. Thanks very, very much.
M.G: Thank you. It's so lovely to talk to you.
S.R: Let me summarize some of the main points of what we have heard. Russia has over the past 20 years, transformed itself, once again, into a totalitarian state and a totalitarian society. The tragedy in such a society is not that people have to hide their views. The tragedy in a totalitarian society is that they lose the very ability to form opinions of their own altogether. Opinion polls in Russia, therefore, reflect this utter inability. There is a profound sense of hopelessness, of isolation, a low-grade state of anxiety, and despair.
On Masha's visit to Moscow at the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they noticed a striking contrast between the public and the private. In the homes they visited, people were preparing to leave the country immediately. In public, life continued as usual. State media ignored the war in Ukraine in the first month, yet now, in Russian television, the war is center stage. The narrative, however, is an inverted one. In Russian propaganda, it's the Ukrainians who are the Nazis, it's the Ukrainians who are committing war crimes. And the Russians are providing humanitarian aid to so-called liberated areas where there is enormous support for them. The nuclear option is also being discussed to prepare Russian citizens for its eventual use perhaps. All independent media has meanwhile been censored, banned, or forced to leave the country.
Russian journalists and state-controlled media are mere cogs in the regime, atomized and disclaiming any responsibility for what they broadcast. Sanctions will not succeed in bringing down Putin's regime. Mass protests are unlikely and also impossible due to state repression. A palace coup is equally unlikely, given the structure of the regime. Putin was a faceless bureaucrat with no public persona. He came from the KGB, from the world of shadows. He was not a popular charismatic leader. He had to remake himself as one at the height of his visibility. He wanted to be a secret agent to run the state, the world from the shadows, to be able to be vengeful, to be able to be unpredictable. That is his mentality and his training. We should ask ourselves in what world would Putin's actions make any sense. In a world in which there is an inability to differentiate between himself and Russia, in a world in which his mission is to restore to himself and to Russia, its historic power, purpose, and glory, and thus to avenge the wrongs done to Russia due to the collapse of the post-second World War order.
This was the ninth episode of season four of "Democracy in Question." Join me for the final episode of season four in two weeks' time. My guest will be Yascha Mounk, the internationally renowned political scientist at [00:37:00] Johns Hopkins University. I discuss with Yascha, why diversity of race or religion, or ethnicity seems to pose a threat to liberal democracies, even in the United States, a heterogeneous society of settlers and immigrants.
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