Putin sinks his own ship
Only one month ago, he had been the star of the G8 meeting at Okinawa. Until recently, Yeltsin’s successor had been described by many as a statesman and considered the solution to the 74 years of miserable economic and spiritual ruin that was the by-product of communism.
In one week, the new president of Russia managed to destroy the hope of his countrymen as well as his international reputation, by showing his true colors: the grayness of dingy bureaucracy acquired at the red academy of communism.
According to a German newspaper at the time, the first order given by Moscow to its military men and functionaries based in East Germany on the night of the fall of the Berlin Wall was: “Lock yourselves up in your barracks, withdraw into yourselves, and turn to ice.”
Putin was among those functionaries, a KGB agent in East Berlin. It was there that he learned the rules of civil conduct Soviet style: a contempt for life, scorn for your own if necessary and for others when convenient. The same condescension that stripped their consciousness of any respect for the individual, that bred indifference to those killed in the Gulags, and to workers condemned to suffering and succumbing in service to the party. Putin was well trained at the school of scoundrels in the conspiracy of silence and the shelter of pusillanimity. And it is to those lessons that he returns to instinctively in moments of danger or drama.
When news came of the plight of 118 Russian marines and officials trapped in the submarine Kursk at the bottom of the Barents Sea, Putin was not to be seen. He didn’t hasten to comfort the family members, encourage his anguishing countrymen, or do something that might have saved the victims instead of sacrificing them to delirious pride and nationalism by the initial refusal to accept foreign assistance. Instead, he locked himself in his villa in Soci on the Black Sea, withdrew into his summer vacation, and allowed his icy indifference to melt only when confronted by surprise with the wrath of his compatriots.
Fourteen years have passed since Chernobyl and nothing has changed in the style of the Russian ruling class: The same old craze for concealment, hoping that information will simply slip into the general stupor; the same smug immodesty in refusing foreign aid; the same mendacity and apathy for the fate of others.
The crossing over into a new millennium encouraged countless confessions and apologies for the errors of history, but there has been no true catharsis for the communist catastrophe. None of the true participants have rendered explanations of their past actions, admitted to their own congenital criminality, or offered a comprehensive condemnation of the hideous crimes committed in the name of their cause. The Berlin Wall has physically fallen, but it still stands mentally in the minds of the post communists, although for them it represents a failure they would rather forget, not a liberation of consciousness and peoples.
Putin has shown the world that he is a veritable personification of these vices. Nevertheless, although there may be nothing new on the horizon in terms of the soulless indifference of Russian rulers and bureaucrats, something has indeed changed in the resigned curved shoulders of the Russian people. Putin hardly reckoned with the anger toward old style communist ways that has finally installed itself in the spirits of Russian citizens and journalists. In taking safe cover in his own cowardliness, along with the fate of those who lost their lives in a submarine at the bottom of the Barents Sea, Putin may have also sunk his own ship.
August 2000
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