Evgenia on the third anniversary of the Z war
On this third anniversary of the war in Ukraine, I want to repost an essay Evgenia wrote a few months after it all started. I reread it today, and even now, all these years later, it provides a necessary and mostly missing background — both political and cultural and historical — to understand this conflict…well, at least from the Russian side. You won’t read anything better.
—Yasha
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I was shellshocked by the war like everyone else. Now after my initial panic has subsided I wanted to say a few things.
Here in America, most of the “experts” interpret Putin’s enduring rule in general and this new war of his in particular as Soviet reboot. He’s supposed to be some sort of Stalin 2.0. But that view of things is wrong on just about every level. I believe it’s actually a much worse narrative than simply “Back to the USSR.”
Despite how bad the reality of the USSR could be and how cynical its nomenclature was, at its core the Soviet Union did pursue communism — a liberatory utopian ideology. It inspired people all over the world. So on paper at least, the country did stand for something good, something to aspire to. The USSR wasn’t just a continuation of Imperial Russia under a new name and flag but with the same exploitative ideology. That’s a very simplistic Cold War lens that shows a complete lack of understanding of Russian history and politics.
But Putin’s regime — one that is finally taking a much more definitive shape — is very different. It is not rooted in any utopia. It doesn’t offer any alternative or any new inspiring way to organize society. It was pragmatic from the start and what it aimed to do was to preserve a semblance of stability in post-criminal-privatization-Russia of the early 1990s. Now it’s taking a new turn and foregoing stability. But it’s not that surprising that many people in Russia are cheering for it.
After decades of quasi-socialism and poverty in the Soviet Union, people were plunged into the quasi-capitalism, much more feudal and raw than people experience in the West. A majority of Russians became even more impoverished, a minority benefited form the privatization of state industries and the new business opportunities that opened up in a capitalist society. The entire country turned into a brothel, lacking any ideology whatsoever. Some people of course turned to the Russian Orthodox religion in a desperate attempt to have some meaning in their lives because the old paradigm was destroyed. But it’s hard to call those people truly religious, the same way there were not really Marxist-Leninists before that...
Welcome to the "RuZZkiy Mir"
Evgenia talks about the cultural and political foundation of today's Russia.
Dear Evgenia, I agree with a part of what you say, but not with everything:
The idea that Putin wants to resurrect the old Russian empire, I see nothing to support it. He did not want to go to war, tried to uphold the Minsk agreements for 8 years, but was pushed into the war by the US. The shelling of Donetsk and Lugansk increased radically in the weeks before the war started. If he did nothing, Ukrainian army would take Donbass back with a huge bloodbath, Ukraine will enter NATO, and the nukes will be pointing to Moscow from a very short distance.
“…Putin once saying how the collapse of Soviet Union was the biggest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, and maybe he believes it. But “catastrophe” he’s referring to is not the loss of the USSR as a socialist state, but the loss of land — it is about losing the “historic Russia” he keeps talking about now.” And why not to think that his words were about death - death of despair - of an immense multitude of people? In years 93-95 there were about 2 millions excessive deaths in former SU (compare with about 1.2 millions of victims of Stalin’s terror in 37-38).
“…Their point will be to give a feeling of unity and pride to the impoverished Russian people, who have to live in this Ruskiy mir…It is already happening.” Is it? After 3 years of war, there is no trace of impoverishment in Russia. The trains stopped to go by schedule in Germany, not there. “Feeling of unity and pride” are for the fat cats on the top, but for normal people, and there are many of them, the feelings are much more complicated. And they include the utter dislike of the fat cats.
“…now it’s exactly this part of the population — the screwed-over, poor, and bitter Russian people — that is being engaged and weaponized by Putin’s propaganda, whipped into a patriotic frenzy to support a war that’s presented to them as confrontation of Holy Russia and the Satanic West.” I believe the majority rather sees it as a war of Independence from the US with zero “religious” overtones. Also there are quite a few people, who do not belong to either of the two sides you mentioned - the screwed-over masses that are for the war, and fat “liberals” who are against it. For example, a friend of mine, a young lady that teaches philosophy at a Moscow University, was one of the well-to-do liberals you’ve described, in summer of 2014 decided not to believe what she was told by the public around, but drove to Donbass to see what happens there by her own eyes (no “true liberal” did this). She was shocked, and since then she was collecting help with her friends, driving supplies there in a van, bringing it to the poorest people most affected by the war. A couple of years before the war started she told me that she does not see any way to stop the continuous shelling (about 14 thousands people died there before the war started) but bringing the Russian troops.