Jay Winik: Putin's Inspiration Is Much Older Than the Cold War
[Jay Winik's new book, "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800," will be published next month. He is the author of "April 1865."]
... The conventional wisdom is that Putin's background in the KGB is what ultimately drives his more notorious actions, leading foreign policy commentators to raise the specter of a renewed Cold War.
But if the West is truly going to come to grips with Putin and a resurrected Russian state, it would do well to see him not as something relatively new but as something old, drawing on historical roots stretching back to the 18th century and Catherine the Great. Indeed, it is far more likely that Putin and his allies are following not the ghosts of Stalin and Khrushchev but spiritual masters such as Empress Catherine in seeking to reestablish Russia as a great nation on the world stage.
Like Putin, Catherine II was a curiosity in her day, alternately bewitching and confusing her critics and supporters. From early on she was the liberal idol of the great Enlightenment philosophes of Europe. She corresponded with the eminent Voltaire, drew upon Montesquieu in governing Russia (nearly 20 years before the American Founders did), published Helvetius when he was being burned in effigy by Paris's public hangman, and subscribed to Diderot's famed Encyclop?die when it was banned in France. "What a time we live in," Voltaire enthused, "France persecutes the intellectuals while the Scythians protect them!"
Catherine even took the remarkable step of not only corresponding with Thomas Jefferson but helping midwife America's independence through her League of Armed Neutrality, which diplomatically isolated Britain during our Revolutionary War. King George III first approached Catherine, not the Hessians, to request her hardened Cossacks to fight George Washington and the upstart colonials; she turned him down. American-Russian ties thus go way back.
Yet, with eerie echoes for today's world, the once-heralded liberal empress became, within a few years, a reactionary. Though John Adams thought Russia and the United States would be natural allies, Catherine did not even deign to meet with the envoy of fledgling America, Francis Dana, who lamented that he knew "less of the empresses comings and goings" than did her groomsman. And when the French Revolution broke out, Catherine turned her back on decades of Enlightenment and unleashed modern authoritarianism.
She ruthlessly repressed intellectuals in Russia and, short of committing her armies, did everything she could to destroy the "democratic" Jacobin menace emanating from France. "What do cobblers know about ruling?" she barked, having decided that representative government was ill-suited to such a large nation as Russia. Then, in still one more about-face, she openly derided George Washington and condemned the American Revolution she had once professed to admire.
The current carnage in Iraq, along with Russia's latest overtures to Syria and its rising belligerence toward the old Soviet territory of Georgia, bring to mind how deftly Catherine took advantage of the French-led chaos that swept Europe in 1795. She acted to wipe the ancient Kingdom of Poland off the map and carve up its lands. (Ironically, the Polish insurrection against her was bravely spearheaded by Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of America's Revolutionary War.)...
So what should we conclude? It would be a great mistake to see Russia's actions as inevitably heralding a new Cold War. But it would be an equal mistake to ignore the fact that Vladimir Putin has learned well how to play Catherine's impostor game. Just as Catherine became a master of playing the budding democrat abroad while being a despot at home and of professing pacifism while beating the drum of bellicosity across the globe, so too has Putin. He should be viewed accordingly.
Read entire article at WaPo
... The conventional wisdom is that Putin's background in the KGB is what ultimately drives his more notorious actions, leading foreign policy commentators to raise the specter of a renewed Cold War.
But if the West is truly going to come to grips with Putin and a resurrected Russian state, it would do well to see him not as something relatively new but as something old, drawing on historical roots stretching back to the 18th century and Catherine the Great. Indeed, it is far more likely that Putin and his allies are following not the ghosts of Stalin and Khrushchev but spiritual masters such as Empress Catherine in seeking to reestablish Russia as a great nation on the world stage.
Like Putin, Catherine II was a curiosity in her day, alternately bewitching and confusing her critics and supporters. From early on she was the liberal idol of the great Enlightenment philosophes of Europe. She corresponded with the eminent Voltaire, drew upon Montesquieu in governing Russia (nearly 20 years before the American Founders did), published Helvetius when he was being burned in effigy by Paris's public hangman, and subscribed to Diderot's famed Encyclop?die when it was banned in France. "What a time we live in," Voltaire enthused, "France persecutes the intellectuals while the Scythians protect them!"
Catherine even took the remarkable step of not only corresponding with Thomas Jefferson but helping midwife America's independence through her League of Armed Neutrality, which diplomatically isolated Britain during our Revolutionary War. King George III first approached Catherine, not the Hessians, to request her hardened Cossacks to fight George Washington and the upstart colonials; she turned him down. American-Russian ties thus go way back.
Yet, with eerie echoes for today's world, the once-heralded liberal empress became, within a few years, a reactionary. Though John Adams thought Russia and the United States would be natural allies, Catherine did not even deign to meet with the envoy of fledgling America, Francis Dana, who lamented that he knew "less of the empresses comings and goings" than did her groomsman. And when the French Revolution broke out, Catherine turned her back on decades of Enlightenment and unleashed modern authoritarianism.
She ruthlessly repressed intellectuals in Russia and, short of committing her armies, did everything she could to destroy the "democratic" Jacobin menace emanating from France. "What do cobblers know about ruling?" she barked, having decided that representative government was ill-suited to such a large nation as Russia. Then, in still one more about-face, she openly derided George Washington and condemned the American Revolution she had once professed to admire.
The current carnage in Iraq, along with Russia's latest overtures to Syria and its rising belligerence toward the old Soviet territory of Georgia, bring to mind how deftly Catherine took advantage of the French-led chaos that swept Europe in 1795. She acted to wipe the ancient Kingdom of Poland off the map and carve up its lands. (Ironically, the Polish insurrection against her was bravely spearheaded by Thaddeus Kosciuszko, a hero of America's Revolutionary War.)...
So what should we conclude? It would be a great mistake to see Russia's actions as inevitably heralding a new Cold War. But it would be an equal mistake to ignore the fact that Vladimir Putin has learned well how to play Catherine's impostor game. Just as Catherine became a master of playing the budding democrat abroad while being a despot at home and of professing pacifism while beating the drum of bellicosity across the globe, so too has Putin. He should be viewed accordingly.