Judge Dennis Davis
What is Russian Nationality?

Judge Dennis Davis | What is Russian Nationality? | 05.04.22

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- Just want to make a correction. The topic of the talk tonight of course is not What is Russian Nationality? But What is Russian Nationalism, and What Does it Have to Say to Us in the Present Crisis? I was reflecting on this in a much broader sense, thinking how to construct this talk, and I’ll come to that in a moment, but I was thinking about this in the sense of just what remarkable events have transpired during the period that we’ve had Lockdown University. Of course Lockdown University itself was essentially created because of the COVID pandemic, which seems to be interminable, and changed our lives in all sorts of ways. But in 2021 I recall us doing some lectures because of the extraordinary situation at the Capitol in Washington DC when a whole lot of people, I won’t say more, essentially sought to initiative an insurrection, was asked to call it. And certainly one in which Mr. Trump’s fingerprints were all over the crime scene, and we had to deal with that in a broader context about the future of democracy, and what it meant, not just the United States of America, but for the world as such.

And I speak to you tonight under the shadow of a draught decision, it’s only a draught opinion by the United States Supreme Court, which if indeed is passed will override 50 years of precedent in relation to Roe Versus Wade. And I will, of course, have a lecture on this once the judgement or opinion comes out because it seems to me that if this does happen, as is extremely likely, it really heralds incredible threats to constitutional democracy in the United States, one could really have to say that not only women’s equality, which is absolutely vital to any decent society, and the right of people to choose, and fashion their own decisions based on their own conception of dignity, together with, of course, what will be presumably the gay and lesbian marriage rights, which in a case called Obergefell Versus Hodges was passed by the Supreme Court, will also go, as will all sorts of rights to privacy.

Then, on top of that, on top of that, we have the Ukrainian situation, which is what I want to talk about this evening. Which unquestionably poses even more fundamental and existential threats to global governance, certainly as it was created after the second World War, and in a further lecture in which I will be dealing with as great constructors of International Human Rights Law, Lauterpacaht and Lemkin, who have been mentioned more than one lecture over time. It does seem that their construction is not increasingly under threat. And I’m sitting with you now no longer in Zambia, where I think they were against the war, but in South Africa, where my own government, my own country, seems to be utterly equivocal about it, and has not in fact followed the inspiring example, the example of Kenya, where the Kenyan ambassador, in this wonderful speech at the United Nations, essentially, I think, put us to extraordinary shame. So that is the topic for this evening. And the question I’m posing, what role does Russian Nationalism and Nationalism have in all of this?

Now, I’m not going to dwell on the intricacies of the history because William Tyler does that exceedingly eloquently, competently and thoroughly, and I’m not going to trounce on his territory. What I would like, however, to do, is to, as it were, give a bit of a map of trying to make sense of what is going on at the moment, and from a position of somebody just trying to understand what I regard, as you should, as a great existential threat to a fabric of international governments which now is under threat. So with that in mind, let me start with two propositions. Firstly, Putin’s goal, which unquestionably set out to destroy the Ukrainian nation, and whilst he certainly had significant unexpected defeats on the battlefield, that goal was genocidal in nature. The historian, Timothy Snyder, the Yale Professor of History on whose work I’m going to rely quite heavily this evening, because quite frankly I think he’s the best informed, and best contemporary historian on the topic, I would highly recommend his book “Bloodlands,” which is an absolutely superb book, and his other work, “Road to Unfreedom.”

There are many others, but he really is, and you’ll see in a moment when I play an interview with him, he really is the person who for me is my Rabi when it comes to trying to understand both the Ukrainian/Russian history, as well as the contemporary situation. And he said, quite rightly, referring to the genocide convention, that if you look at the Genocide Convention, which of course is part of that international law to which I made reference earlier, targeting even an elite of a nation for destruction and the anticipation that that nation will no longer exist is in fact a genocidal act. And whilst Putin claims to be fighting genocide through this war, in fact he really has started one himself. And significantly Professor Snyder compares Putin’s claims to those of Hitler in World War II. Hitler justified the war by claiming the Germans were being oppressed across the country’s borders in Czechoslovakia and Poland and therefore Germany needed to invade, and to destroy these states in order to protect German nationality. That was one of his justifications. And the rhetoric now is exactly the same. There’s a second proposition that apart from it being genocidal it is an imperialistic war, and hence the question of Russian Nationalism becomes important.

Putin did not want the state and people of Ukraine to have the right to self determination. Again, quoting Professor Snyder, “This is also the reason Putin does not want Ukraine to be permitted to join the European Union. That being said, there’s no deep seated conflict between Ukraine and Russia that provoked the war, it’s rather a one-sided tension amongst extreme Russian Nationalists, Russian nationalist leaders, who really believed in their own rhetoric that in fact Ukraine and Russia were one. And that was same Russian Nationalism and Imperialism which fueled the justification for the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014, during which time Ukraine, sorry, Russia.”

Now, can I just say this, that in July of 2021 Putin made a very significant and indeed bizarre speech, a very lengthy speech, which you can find on Google, and is well worth reading. I’m not going to spend my whole time reading it for you, but what I am going to just give you a little sniff of what he said in July 2021, which is relevant. He said “The incorporation of the Western Russian lands into the single state was not merely the result of political and diplomatic decisions, it was underlain by the common faith sheared cultural positions, language and other similarity.”

So Putin’s line in that particular talk, by completely reconfiguring Russian history, very different version to the punctiliously correct version that William Tyler began to embark on on Monday, Putin’s line is that there was just this one entity, and to a large degree Ukraine was not a proper country. But much more significantly for my purpose than that he proceeds to say as follows. In 1922, when the USSR was created with the Ukrainian Soviet Societal Republic being one, sorry, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic being one of the founders, a rather fierce debate amongst the Bolshevik leaders resulted in the implementation of Lenin’s plan to form a union state as a federation of republics. And here’s the crucial point. The writer of the republics to freely succeed was included in the text of the 1924 Constitution.

Then he goes on to say the authors planted in the very foundation of our state the most dangerous time bomb, which exploded the moment the safety mechanism provided by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union was gone, for Putin therefore the idea that you could have had a Constitution which gave to entities such as Ukraine, not withstanding this very long history, the right to succeed, a right which he sourced in realism was rarely the original sin. And for him that is what he was arguing in July of ‘21, was the end of the safety mechanism, and because of that ultimately this was this expedient exploitation of this right by the Ukrainians, which it countered to Putin’s version of history, and counter as it were to what he saw as really that original moment that was a state which incorporated all these territories, that which were essentially under the rubric of Russian Nationalism.

And so this speech that Putin gives in July 2021 gives you a significant inkling as to what he was on about in relation to this enterprise. But let’s draw back for a moment, and let me play for you a clip of an interview which Timothy Snyder gave to MSNBC, and which I think is quite illuminating in this regard. Let’s play it, and then I will try to unpack it for you.

[Clip begins]

• Tim Snyder is a professor of history at Yale University, he’s authored best selling books about authoritarian regimes, books like “On Tyranny,” “20 Lessons from the 20th Century,” and “The Road to Unfreedom, Russia, Europe and America.” Also “Bloodlands, Europe between Hitler and Stalin.” Tim Snyder’s been studying authoritarianism for years, so when he’s got something to say about Putin’s war in Ukraine I listen. Snyder wrote today that Vladimir Putin is intent on crushing the Ukrainian people, but at great cost to Russia. In his piece entitled “By Denying a Ukrainian Culture Putin Flattens His Own,” Snyder writes, quote, Vladimir Putin wants to crush people into one. He says God told him that Ukrainian souls are Russian. History revealed to him that Ukraine strives to be one with Russia. The very language he speaks entitles him to invade any country where Russia is spoken.

An official news service removed any ambiguity a few days ago, publishing a text advocating the complete elimination of the Ukrainian Nation as such, and so Ukraine must be crushed. And anyone who thinks or speaks of Ukraine must be eliminated, end quote. Joining us now is Professor Timothy Snyder, he’s a professor of history at Yale University. Professor Snyder, thank you for being with us tonight. We talked earlier in the show about how Russia is using propaganda and disinformation. Your piece today focuses on what this war is doing to Russian culture and identity, I’d love if you could tell us a bit about that.

• Yeah, I mean the central idea of empire is that the other side has no state. The other side has no nation, therefore, we the superior people, here the Russians, have the right to go in and say who should be in charge, and who is who. But the problem is that as you attempt to carry out these things you find yourself confronted with a real state, and a real people who resist you. And as you attempt to crush them you do terrible things to yourself. I mean as you showed in the last segment, the attempt to justify, to find some kind of circular logic that makes all of this somehow acceptable or understandable forces you into all kinds of contortions, and by the end of it the word propaganda doesn’t even really begin to describe it. I mean this is just a kind of perverted hate speech. And when all you’ve got is television, and all television is doing is this kind of hate speech, then at the end of the day, among the many other evils you’ve committed is a kind of destruction of your own culture.

• As Alana Makofsky said in the last segment, tens of millions of Russian Soviets died at the hands of the Nazis so this idea that Neo-Nazi are running Ukraine, and the country needs to be de-Nazified sounds bizarre to many people in our audience, but maybe that’s why it was settled on by Putin as the reason given to many Russians in support of the invasion.

• One thing that we have to just say about the history is that we have to remember that more Ukrainian civilians, not just proportionally, but in absolute terms, died in the second world war than Russian civilians. And Ukrainian soldiers also died in huge numbers fighting the German Army. More Ukrainian soldiers died fighting the Germans not than Americans, but than Americans, and Frenchman and British combined. So I just say that because Ukrainians also have every right to interpret the second world war, and it’s quite reasonable for them to say the second world war is about somebody invading Ukraine, and right now someone is invading Ukraine. But as to the Nazi business I think it’s very important to understand what’s happening here. The word Nazi has been stripped of any content. It is just a kind of general condemnation.

There was an article on Sunday in the official Russian Press Service called , which made this very clear. It called for the complete destruction of the Ukrainian Nation, beginning with the murder of anyone who identifies with it on the logic that all Ukrainians are Nazis, but it cleared something up. It said that what we mean by Nazi is not that they have any objective characteristics of a Nazi, it just means they’re not Russian, they refuse to be Russian. They insist it’s unsane that they’re Ukrainian or European, that’s what we mean by Nazi. And frankly that’s very clarifying because what they’re admitting here is that all they mean by Nazi is not us. But the other consequence of that is that when you strip the word Nazi of any meaning you can’t notice when you yourself are doing things that are very much like what the Nazis did. You don’t notice that you just invaded a country, that you’re trying to destroy it’s educated classes. You can’t notice that because all the word Nazi means is the other people.

• It is, that’s enlightening, and it’s one of the reasons why you and others when writing about authoritarianism and things like that are very specific with your language in that the Holocaust doesn’t mean all things, and Nazi doesn’t mean all things, they have specific meanings. We appreciate it. Timothy Snyder is the author of “Untyranny,” he’s a professor of history at Yale University. And as always, sir, we thank you for your time.

[Clip ends]

• Thanks, Lauren, if we can cut that down. So there are a number of points that emerge out of this. The point that he makes about Nazification is particularly important. So is this tension where on the one hand Putin’s argument, if you look at my references to his July 2021 speech, essentially is predicated on the idea that Ukraine is not a nation, that basically you have Russia, and I’ll get back to Lenin presently, and then on the other hand you’ve got this notion that they need to wipe out Ukraine, because Ukraine now no longer wants to be part of them. So there’s this kind of real tension between the two imperialist which Snyder spoke about, and I think that itself gets us a long way to understanding what is going on here. You may recall that on Monday night, I’m really getting because I thought it was last night, but actually it was Monday, when Sir Malcolm Rifkind spoke.

He referred to the famous statement of Winston Churchill, who sort of summarised the eternal Russian conundrum that it’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside of an enigma. And in fact I think that what Churchill was trying to grapple with was how does one actually analyse Russia, because on the other side of it, and anybody who’s been to Russia would, I suspect support this proposition, there’s a great deal of grandeur of Russian civilization, and it’s geography. One sees that particularly when one visits St. Petersburg for an example. But on the other hand there’s a strange persistent inability throughout history for the Russians to construct a resilient reliable state. And Russian leaders right across the of Russian history have sought, as it were, to try to create some reconciliation between on the one hand its wealth, its grandeur, and on the other hand the fact that it’s always been a weak state which cannot effectively produce a level of reliable governance.

And what I think one finds throughout this history, and I am admittedly short circuiting much of it, but I’m only touching on that which is absolutely crucial to my argument, is that Russian leaders throughout this period have sought, as it were, to construct a variety of tyrannies on a sort of scale of moderately thuggish to completely thuggish in the hope that these various forms of brutality would be the only way to establish some form of governance within the Russian state. And of course we’ve seen that right through Russian history, and indeed in the 20th Century we’ve seen the failure of the brutal and thuggish techniques creating collapses on two occasions, the first time in 1917, which then gave rise to Lenin and Stalin, and then of course if you read the latter 20th Century history, then to some extent there’s a reestablishment as the word tyranny, but some modicum of order under Khrushchev and Khrushchev, it collapses again under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, and now we then have Putin, who again showing a level of thuggish brutality leads to recovery.

And the point if that of course is that I suspect if we’re going to simply make the point right now about the future, it’s pretty unlikely that Putin is going to do any better than either Khrushchev or Brezhnev in establishing a stable successful regime which will unravel that conundrum to which Winston Churchill referred and which I quoted. And so what you then, when you start probing further, and I want to go a little bit further back in history, is there’s this real fear that some form of liberal philosophy or Republicanism, if you wish, which emerges in the West, will collide with this idea of Russia trying desperately to be held together by an authoritarian set of regimens, and that is where, as it were, the Russians look to as a great level of threat. And Russian history to a large degree reflects that trauma. Indeed it wasn’t all that long ago just on a personal level that I used to go to Russia quite often because as the judge president of the South African competition Appellate court we used to have competition conferences, Bricks conferences, that’s the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa conferences, and we had a number of them in Russia, in fact we even met Putin. Not that I can say I ever spoke to him, and quite frankly one wanted him to do as little as possible in case god forbid you annoyed, might never have returned.

But the point I was making is that somebody I knew well and who’s Jewish pointed out to me, because it was at a time there were lots of exhibitions about the second world war, I’m talking about 2005, 60 years after the end of the second world war, lots of exhibitions, and it was true that the trauma of Hitler’s invasion was one, as he said, if you don’t understand that you won’t understand very much about Russian history. But you can go back further, go to Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, which eventually resulted in the Russian Army getting to the, to Paris as a result of finally the crushing defeats of Napoleon at the time. And that sort of tension between, as it were, the Napoleonic vision of the world, and the Russian vision of the world characterised right through Russian history. So if you take the 19th Century, a decade after the Czarist Army entered Paris, there were a whole bunch of Russian aristocrats who start to embrace liberal ideas under the influence of the French Revolution, as well as the American Revolution. And Nicholas the First then, almost as it were foreshadowing the history that we’re now talking about, he reacts eventually to them by seeing that they are a fundamental danger to the Russian state. And in 1830, when the next French Revolution breaks out, the same sort of sympathy towards liberalism takes place, anarchism and here people like Herzen and Bakunin essentially emerge, and they’re chased out of Russia by Nicholas because he realises that an upsurge of liberalism of the boarders of his own country are not going to be a good idea for the balancing act to which I’ve made reference.

Comes to 1848, there’s overthrow of the king in France. Again there’s liberal and Republican uprising throughout Europe. And at this particular point in time again Nicholas the first is particularly concerned about the particular problem. And there’s a persecution of liberal intellectuals throughout this particular period, Chairs of philosophy are closed down because they’re teaching liberal philosophy, perhaps most prominently Michail Pitronsky, who is one of the followers had Dostoevsky, and they are essentially , certainly Dostoevsky is because Nicholas the Fist sees the particular threat of the kind of liberalism of the west, and then he responds by invading Hungary significantly, Hungary and Poland. And from his point of view these were wars of defence. They were there to stabilise his regime rather than straight wars of aggression. Put in the terms of Putin, they were special military operations, which were designed, no question about it, to inhibit the spread of the liberal ideas regarded as utterly subversive to his governance. And the uprisings of 1848, at that point Nicholas thought to having allowed 370,000 troops to be employed, he saw himself as the basic policeman of Europe. And the bottom line is that that particular tactic of invading neighbouring countries, suppressing any form of alternative speech, that held sway, until, of course 1917, when his great grandson Nicholas the Second was Czar, and we all know what happened there.

So what you’ve got throughout this particular period until now is you’ve got a situation of a Russian Nationalism which is essentially perpetrated by also propagated by an elite in which an authoritarian leader tries to hold the whole place together in terms of the state, which doesn’t necessarily operate. Consider for example in the 1848 Revolution the manifesto that Nicholas the First issued in March of that year where he said based on the treasured example of our orthodox ancestors calling for the help of almighty God, we are ready to meet our enemies wherever they will appear. We make sure that the ancient, that the ancient cry of full faith, Czar and fatherland will now lead us down the path to victory. So you can see that all through the particular period of the 19th Century the sense of the invasions into neighbouring countries, the sense of seeing yourself as a policeman to ensure that liberal influences do not peculate your country, and that as a technique to, as it were, to perpetuate the continued authoritarian leadership of Nicholas the First because that was the only way he could see to basically run this country. That is deeply ingrained in Russian history.

Now each of these propositions that I’ve advancing, each of them, obviously one can dissect into lectures themselves, but I’m trying to give you a broader sweep. Now it’s very interesting, come 1917, and of course we have the Revolution, and Putin himself then has alluded to watch the Russian Constitutional drafters 1924, and then in '24 in preparing a Russian Constitution with the problem. And what was the problem? The problem was that to incorporate a whole range of these states into the broad rubric of Russia in circumstances where they had their own histories, and were not, as it were, simply to show unqualified obedience to Russian Nationalism, that presented a fundamental problem to the Marxists, to Lenin, when in fact he took over. And I want to play, I want to, as it were, read to you a text that Lenin wrote, I draw this text that’s for the original Lenin text, but I came across this in a wonderful book published in 1975 by Marcel Liebman, L-i-e-b-m-a-n, called “Leninism Under Lenin.” Now let’s just have a look to see what Lenin had to say about the problematic of Russian Nationalism as an articulate. The attempt, as it were, to have a socialist society, and super imposed upon that a whole bunch of these particular entities, which didn’t necessarily adhere to straight Russian Nationalism. So here’s what he had to say in a text called “The Question of Nationalities Autonomization 1922.” As I say it’s the original text, but it was drawn to my attention because I have managed to get hold of the book by Liebman.

Now, he says “I suppose I’ve been remiss with respect to the workers of Russia for not intervening energetically and decisively enough in a notorious question of autonomization, which is officially called the question of the union of Soviets and Socialist Republics. When the question arose last summer I was ill, and then in autumn I relied too much on the recovery and on the question giving me an opportunity of intervening in this quest. However, I did not manage to attend the October meeting when this question came up, or the one in December, and so the question passed me by almost completely. I’ve only had time for a talk with Conrad, who came from the Caucasus and told me how this matter stood in Georgia when the same problem arose obviously. Obviously the whole business of autonomization was radically wrong and badly timed. It is said that a united apparatus was needed. Where did that assurance come from?” That means a united state. “Did it not come from that same Russian apparatus which as I pointed out in one of the proceeding sections of my diary we took over the from Czarism, and slightly anointed with Soviet oil. There is no doubt that that measure should have been delayed somewhat, until we could say that we vouch for an apparatus of our own. But now we must ask in all conscious with the country the apparatus we call ours is in fact still quite alien to us. It is a bourgeois and Czarist hodge podge, and there has been no possibility of getting rid of it in the course of the past five years without the help of other countries, and because we have been busy most of the time with military engagements and the fight against famine.”

Can you scroll down for me, Lauren? “It is quite natural that in such circumstance the freedom to succeed from the union,” here we go, “by which we justify ourselves with a mere scarp of paper, unable to defend,” I can’t read . “The that really Russian man, the great Russian chauvinist in essence a rascal and a tyrant, such as the typical Russian bureau is. There is no doubt that infantis mal percent of Soviet and Sovietized workers will drown in that tide of chauvinistic great Russian riff raff like a fly and hook. It is said in defence of this measure that the people’s commissals directly concerned with national psychology and national education would set up a separate bodies. But there’s a question that arises. Can these people’s commissiles be made quite independent? Secondly, were we careful enough to take measures to provide that no Russians, the real safe guard against a truly rationed bully? I do not think we took such measures, although we could and should have done so. I think that Stalin’s haste, and his infatuation with pure administration together with his spite against a notorious nationalist socialist played a fatal role here in politics despite generally plays the basis of relevance.”

It’s fascinating what Lenin is saying. Leave beside the jargon for a moment. What Lenin is effectively saying is that we cannot simply just shove all of these particular entities into one without giving them rights. And the only people who effectively are propagating this are in fact Russian bullies. We need to provide measures for non-Russians with safeguards. And isn’t it extraordinary therefore that what we’ve got in that text is Lenin of all people warning about precisely what’s happening now. And indeed he said that, I’m not going to quote you further, but his point was he feared that the kind of constructive nationalism of Stalin would ultimately suppress the other entities’ choices, and that the only way you could have a successful Soviet Union was to persuade Georgia and Ukraine, and he mentioned them directly, that in fact their socialist way was a better way than otherwise would be the case.

I don’t want to be misinterpreted here. I’m not suggesting Lenin was a wonderful Democrat, of course not, but what I’m suggesting is is it not fascinating that at the very birth of the Soviet Union their leader at foreshadowed and foresaw precisely the dilemma which was faced today of the Russian bully, the Russian tyrant, the Russian bureaucrat who was Stalin, and who is Putin. And both doing precisely the same thing because, and as Lenin warned, if one was going to take that particular view, well it was a view that ultimately would have endangered the entire enterprise of the Soviet Socialist Republics. I also want to say somewhat cynically that I wish that certain of the ruling party of this country who claim to have been educated in the Soviet Union, had read any Lenin, because if they had they would have realised that he too would have joined with the Kenyan ambassador in condemning what Putin had done, but that’s another point.

But it is interesting, is it not that of course once Stalin was, sorry, Lenin was gone, the Stalinist view, which was ultimately to crush any kind of individual nationalism and suppress it under the broad rubric of the Soviet Union, and at the same time to do with Nicholas did, which was ultimately to ensure that any alternative voices were sent to killed, murdered or kicked out of the country was the order of the day. And it is interesting that that particular policy conditioned. In 1956, when communist Hungary decided to explore, I suppose one would call nothing much more than very tentative liberal possibilities, Khrushchev saw this as extraordinary dangerous, an existential danger to the Russian state, in exactly the same way a Stalin would have done, and he invaded. And we know that the same thing happened. I’m merely mentioning this given Ukraine.

The same thing happened in 1968, when Dubcek wanted to move Czechoslovakia into a slightly more liberal, well it’s not liberal, but certainly a liberalising impulse which took hold, and we know that Brezhnev brutally put that down with an invasion as well. Now the interesting part about all of this, the very interesting part for me is that we therefore have got this replication of history, Nicholas, Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev all knew that they looked to the West, they were particularly concerned about any traction that any form of liberalisation of any of the eastern block could take place. But here’s the thing, they had a justification. They invoked the principles of communism. Now what everyone says about that, the principles in theoretical terms seem to be universal. They argued for human progress with Russia being in the lead, principles which in a sense would be established all over the world. And which as we know the communist party in many other countries which greatly admired them, including many who are now in the government of the country, of my country, in South Africa.

But the simple point I’m making is they seem to argue on a justificatory premise that the invasions were justified for all of these kind of communist reasons. But may I ask a rhetorical question? What is the doctrine that Putin justifies in order to invade? Well the only thing he’s got is to reconstruct a form of Russia Nationalist, which ultimately doesn’t necessarily exist because Ukraine had its own identity, which would basically be created over a very long period of time. And even if I’m wrong about that, one thing’s for damn sure, is that given the invasion over the last three months, there’s no question about it, Ukrainians feel a sense of identity, the kind that Putin couldn’t possibly have contemplated on any basis if he was honest with himself, which he clearly isn’t. So the pro-Putin justification is of course the justification of well there’s a Russian Nationalism, and therefore they’re part of us.

And the second prompt is of course his attempt to justify this on the basis of a hatred of Nazism. And he’s put a lot of emphasis on this. But his emphasis accounts for the support that he’s got, perhaps amongst Russia compatriots. But it’s not a particular, it’s not a doctrine. The role of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine in recent years is a visible one, there’s been graffiti, occasional speech demonstrations, but not a major role, not even a minor one. It’s been tiny, which means that Putin’s emphasis on Ukrainian Neo-Nazi seems to be, which is the only justification he offers is rather pathetic under the circumstance. So the source of his dilated belief that large members of Ukraine frightened by Neo-Nazis would be grateful to see Russian tanks rolling through the streets is clearly completely wrong. But other than that what does he have to offer? The answer is even the Stalins, Khrushchevs and Brezhnev had more to offer because they at least had, as bad and as completely insane as it was, some form of communist justification.

The Czars could explain by Russia had aroused the enmity of the liberal republic revolutions. They said it was because Russia stood for the true faith. Liberals and Republicans with enemies of God. Perhaps that’s the reason that business extends some of the right wing in the United States of America such as Tucker Carlson and others still kind of are particularly supportative of the Russian enterprise, I don’t know. The communist leaders could likewise explain why the Soviet Union aroused its own enemies. They said it’s because they were enemies of Soviet Communism. They were the defenders of the capitalist clause and therefore Russia was a threat. But when Putin speaks about it there’s nothing to justify. The Czars believed if they could defeat the liberals, atheists, they could offer true faith humanity. The communists believed that perhaps if capitalism was defeated so would fascism, and the world would in a sense move into some socialist promised land. But Putin doesn’t have any coherent ideology.

The only thing he has is an attempt of reconstruction of a fictitious form of nationalism, and much more important than that, all he’s got is the one aspect in his tool kit, which is Nicholas the First, and all of those that came before him and after him, their attempt to oppress. And that makes it extremely frightening to me that effectively when you look at what we’re talking about here, we’re talking about an enterprise which is rarely based, perhaps more than on anything else on the fact that that is the only basis by which Putin can continue to perpetuate his continued low. It is interesting in this regard, if I could make one final set of observations, and it’s this, that there has been a rise of very, not just in the west, but also a massive rise in inequality in Russia.

Again, quoting Timothy Snyder, “Whilst this inequality can see across the globe, it doesn’t seem to have been sharpest anywhere in the world during the Russian Federation, where a very small number of people seem to control the majority of the wealth, and where the president of the country’s at the head of the dominant alibaba clan. Accordingly in Russia post modern inequality has reached such an extreme level that the country’s become disconnected from the rest of the world both in terms of communication, and understanding how the world works. With increased inequality comes decreased social ability.”

Putin doesn’t have the desire, nor does he have the ability because that I think would be true of the conundrum that has faced all Russian leaders, hence a turtle’s point, to operate through domestic policy through a series of coherent governance that can steer Russia to look more to the west than tot he east, and more to democracy, and away from the totalitarianism. So he operates through foreign policy the same as Nicholas did. He invades other countries with an order to benefit Russian elites instead of the country as a whole. And that in a sense perpetuates a history which goes back a very long time, and which seems to me one cannot understand Putin without understanding that history. But there are differences, crucial differences, differences which to a large degree for me very frightening, which means that there’s no ideological cement that holds the whole process together other than tyranny, and an even more, a scintilla, of a discourse than otherwise would be the case. And you’ve got a country which essentially, given its history, has never been able to construct itself into any form of democratic regimen, and is unlikely to do so.

It is ironic and extreme that Lenin, who essentially started the whole process after 1917, which led to a level of kind of Russian oppression reporting to be called socialism or Marxism, who at least had the foresight to understand that unless you ultimately recognised the nationalism of the various entities that made up the USSR, and that you quoted them certain rights of succession, and certain Constitutional rights, inevitably the Stalinist totalitarian nightmare would essentially percolate throughout the society. It has done so now without any ideological underpinnings, and with only tyranny as its operative principle. And that is why for me I really don’t know how this ends, but I have ended, so let me take questions.

Q&A and Comments

I have supplied the names and members of the books, but let me give them to you again, because as I say, I do think that Timothy Snyder is about as good as you’re going to get. I would recommend highly “Bloodlands,” which of course is the examination of the entire interchange between Hitler and Stalin, and also “The Road to Unfreedom,” marvellous book. Marilyn, Timothy Snyder’s “Black Earth The Holocaust As History and Warning” is an excellent insight. It is. It’s a controversial book, Marilyn, and some people don’t like it. I do but others don’t.

Q: Steven, “Can we equate the relationship how Russia sees Ukraine through the prism of Russianism to how China sees Taiwan.” A: Obviously there are parallels, because obviously China sees Taiwan as part of itself, and it sees a great China in which Taiwan is there. I just think that there is a significant difference between the Russians and the Chinese because as tempting as the Chinese must be to invade Taiwan, they also essentially see their grand future in globalisation, and the globalisation of the economy, which is part of their growth, and the extraordinary lift out of poverty. And I think for them to start a war with Taiwan at this stage perhaps the costs are greater than the benefits. Putin doesn’t have that. And given as well you must remember that the Italian economy and all its chaos, is large than the Russian economy. It gives you a sense where, compared for example to China, what we’re talking about.

Q: Alex, “Is there not a desperate attempt by Putin to establishing new narrative of Russia? Communism has demonstrably collapsed, leaving the Russian people to question what was achieved, if anything by Lenin and Trotsky.” A: I agree. There may be a feel of vacuum. feeling of isolation and fear provide an uncertainty about the future. Yes, that’s true, Alex, and that’s what I’ve been trying to argue. There always has been that, but there’s been an inability within Russia to respond in a manner in which you could have a working state, which could ultimately produce, let’s say a standard of living throughout the country of a kind which could match the enablers. So there’s always been the threat of liberal influences. There’s always been the threat of neighbours, and there’s always been this thing that you’ve got to essentially subject the entire neighbourhood to the grinding conformity of either the Czar of Stalin or now of Putin. And therefore that sense of fear and isolation is absolutely certain, there’s no question about it.

Q: Is there a feeling of Russian Nationalism? A: Yes, within Russia there most certainly is. And the irony, of course, is that Ukrainians have there too. And, of course, as Snyder points out the biggest irony of all is that Ukraine was probably the major, major area of importance for Hitler in the war because of the oil and the wheat, the wheat which is why Snyder says so much of the war was fought there, which of course is a great irony that now of course he’s using this Nazification argument, Putin, against the very country who suffered as much if not more than anywhere else.

Robert, “Under an internal "had .” Yes, Ukraine was , absolutely. Eileen, “I worry that Trump may return as president.” So do I Eileen. I am purely petrified about this. He seems to be a puppet of Putin. I’m paraphrasing about the present Ukrainian invasion, but Trump said he approved of the action, he was sorry he did not do that with Mexico. Pro Trump has approved in that matter. I have to say it’s extremely hard to know, quite frankly, what Putin has on Trump. I mean there’s been all sorts of speculation about the bank being a conduit for Russian money, helping Trump out of these disaster business circles. But at the end of the day, the idea that you would have Donald Trump in this particular context running America to me would be as frightening for me as the possibility of Marie Le Pen even more so if she had beaten Macron. And I’m afraid to say I think people who don’t see it that way really therefore don’t share, it seems to me, the anxiety of the existential threat that we’re facing. But that’s my own view for what it’s worth.

Yeah, why is it that NATO would go in to remove have not come to defend… Well because we knew the most stocked up nuclear force in the world, Jennifer, not a good idea to waddle in to Ukraine with massive defence. That’s the tension that they’re facing all the time. No I don’t think, Joan, that the word Nazi just means ever, I think what Snyder was saying is they have prostituted the word Nazi for their own assiduous purposes. And if you don’t believe that, and you don’t believe that they’re trying to change history, just look what Lavroff had to say about Hitler and about Jews recently, which essentially raises a really profound question about how sensible the Israeli policy of neutrality was to these people.

And so, Sherry, yes, I agree, it’s an absolutely vile set of comments, and what can one say? You cannot get into bed with people like this. These are people who ultimately do not share, for the reasons I’ve argued throughout this talk, the views that we do.

Q: Abigail, what do you see as a solution to Putin’s current actions? It seems that no one has influence over him. A: Well I don’t know. I mean I think that Malcolm Rifkind also was asked that particular question, and there are various possibilities. I mean there is the possibility that finally there is some sort of settlement. There’s a possibility that the military finally remove Putin quietly. I do not know. What I do think is that as the Afghanistan War was absolutely disastrous for the Soviet regime towards the end, I’m hopeful that that might be the case here, but I’m not sure. instability in fact increases stability. Yes it’s an irony. It’s not that there’s stability Alfred, it’s not that there’s stability, it’s that every Russian leader, from, as it were, right through that period of the Czars, was faced with this particular conundrum. And you will not find any pattern which is different from the one that I tried to suggest, albeit that I sketched it in the widest possible terms.

Q: Have I underplayed Putin’s conversion to (indistinct)? A: I don’t know how frumy is Elaine, I don’t have the slightest idea. He and I don’t sort of share a beer. But I don’t think it’s that. I don’t think that’s at all the answer. I think as Malcolm Rifkind did say, he’s correctly observed and observed by many others that Putin regarded the disintegration of the Soviet Union as the worst thing that could have ever happened. I’m not sure that he thinks he can reconstruct it in its entity. But the fictitious idea that he has, and his antithetical view to Leninism, as I’ve indicated to you, are far more persuasive.

Yeah, you’re quite right, Bernie, the Japanese/Russian War, which I take it you’re talking about that war when Russia was the first country, as it were, to suffer defeat to an Asian enemy at the time, the early part of the 20th Century, and a complete annihilation of Russian forces. I think that does add There’s no question that Russian history has been a history of anxiety, neuroticism, defeat, and terrible fear, and that certainly was part of it. And it’s interesting that even reading Jonathan Dimbelby’s fascinating brilliant called “Barbarossa,” which I can recommend to all of you if you haven’t read it, it’s brilliant. In “Barbarossa” he makes the point that there were vast Russian forces on that eastern border because they were still fearful of what the Japanese might do, and it was only in desperation right towards when the Russians looked as if they may take Moscow they released their troops in order to reinforce the defence of Moscow to great effect. I can’t tell you why they…

Well the cruelty of Russian military forces is precisely because Timothy Snyder is right, when you define people as the other, if you stop thinking of them as your countrymen, that’s the contradiction, and you seem them as other, you dehumanise them, and there’s a level of cruelty, which is extraordinary, but of course you are right that that cruelty is not unique here. We’ve seen the way the Russians have operated recently in other parts of the world to the disgrace of the world that kept quiet. And there is a brutality which can possibly be explained by the notion of seeing me versus the other, but I’m not entirely sure. There’s got to be something broader than that, and I agree entirely.

Yes, Steven Caulkins’ stuff on Stalin is absolutely fantastic Abigail, and if you can read it, you read his book on Stalin, books on Stalin, absolutely fascinating. And you’re quite right, of course, Stalin did deceive Lenin, Lenin was very ill at that particular point in time. And I couldn’t recommend strong enough. Pete said “Given modern communications, isn’t there a chance that the younger generation of Russia will recognise the benefits of a liberal democratic state, or are you being too naive?” From your mouth to God’s ears. I can only hope so. What else gives me hope? Thank you much, Jennifer, for yours.

Thank you to everybody. Do have a good evening.