What Drives Vladamir Putin?

by

       Phillip Todd

      Most Russians look back on the 1990s and they see this as a time of humiliation and chaos, where the U.S. was able to — quote, unquote — “dictate to Russia” what it should do. Putin’s claim to fame, his appeal to his population is that he has brought Russia back from a humiliating political system and despite the West’s best efforts to portray Russia as the perennial villain on the global stage, it actually remains one of the last bastions of family-oriented values in a world that is being swept away by a tidal wave of godless liberalism. Russia really offers a different model to the world.


      Putin has now claimed a turf for Russia, saying that Russia is sort of the leader of a new conservative international system. He blames the United States and the Europeans for having lost their way, that Russia is now the harbinger of traditional family values. He also appeals to the Christian world for that, and that in fact Russia is now the harbinger of true Christian values, and that it respects the absolute sovereignty of other countries. It doesn’t go around the world telling other countries how they should live or what kind of political system they should have. He, rightfully so, blames the United States and the Europeans for behaving like the Soviet Union and trying to impose their value system and their political system on other countries.

      That is the problem or a very big part of it, that in the ’90s we really thought that

Russia wanted to become like the West, wanted to adopt our values, our political system. It became increasingly clear that it didn’t. With the death of its Marxist-Leninist ideology, Russia was moving back toward its religious and Orthodox roots. Secretly baptized at birth by  his mother, Putin has embraced this. Increasingly, religious Russians look on America, with our Hollywood values and celebrations of homosexuality, as a sick society, a focus of cultural and moral evil in the world. They cite as proof the U.S. medias demand that our governments stand with "the persecuted rock band" of young women who desecrated with obscene acts the high altar of Moscow's most sacred cathedral. It is clear to them that the U.S. motivation was the defense of homosexuality and the destruction of religion and family. It is the direct opposite of Russian values.

      How can it be that Russia dumped the Bolsheviks and later dumped Communism, and by 1980 (under Andropov), they and their leaders had embraced Christianity; and all the while we in the West have no knowledge of these facts? Putin is openly Orthodox Christian, and lives his religion through the integrity he practices. He has gained worldwide respect for his diplomacy and peacemaking; yet to read comments from the U.S. media one would think you are speaking of the USSR of 1970.  Meanwhile, while we slept, our leaders have abandoned  the Constitution that America once cherished, and have outdone one another in trashing freedom, our flag, our national anthem, not to mention, world peace constantly fighting multiple wars and ironically making USA the foremost terrorist nation on the planet.

      Russia isn't the Soviet Union, and Vladimir Putin isn't Vladimir Lenin. He represents the

aspirations of most of the Russian population, who support a strong state, a strong leader and who want to see Russia back on the world scene, and not necessarily accepting, embracing Western values or even interests. He doesn’t represent the aspirations of the educated urban elites who would like to live in a more modern western-type society with better governance. But even those people want to see Russia as a strong international player. They have national pride.

      Putin is largely a pragmatist. Is there corruption in Russia? No doubt. And the country is still in a post-communism transition state that may last for decades. France, for example, still hasn't emerged from the old monarchy mentality. The same class system still exists, with average citizens still expecting the state to provide for them. There is, however, a shift consisting mostly of independent businesspeople and entrepreneurs seeking freedom from the status quo, but it's a slow, painstaking process. This represents the Russia of the future. There will be slow evolution in Russia, that Russia will eventually become a more modern and probably a more democratic society but on Russian terms, not the horror they see when they look west. 

* Philip Todd in the European columnist for The American Constituionalist.