News
Putin's Real Enemy? People Power
March 30, 2022
Millions of refugees from historic cities, their treasures and
livelihoods destroyed, have poured into neighboring European
countries. Schools, theaters, maternity hospitals, bread lines, and
humanitarian corridors stretching for miles have all become targets.
Russians by the tens of thousands are fleeing their own country. How
did we get here?
We got here because Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin
weaponized personal grievances against NATO along with an imperial
view of Russian history. The brutality of the war reflects the level
of his grievance. Its geography reflects his mythology of the
“Russian world” (Russkii mir). Its real aim? Insulation from
democratic ideas and institutions, which makes the invasion a human
rights tragedy as much as a foreign policy crisis.
Russia’s claim of a sphere of influence from the remains of the
Soviet Union is really a wishful assertion of a sphere of insulation,
or what is sometimes called “strategic depth.” Putin has called NATO
“the knife at our throat,” but NATO stands in for a deeper issue: the
expansion of democracy, especially among young professionals in what
was once the Soviet orbit. They are smart, tech-savvy, cosmopolitan,
and western-oriented. Ukraine is exhibit A. It’s one of the largest
countries in Europe with a demographically and religiously diverse
society. It’s a functionally democratic Slavic nation, right on
Putin’s doorstep, and it elected a globally popular leader to be
president with 73% of the vote (free and fair). And it has rich
cultural traditions that predate Moscow’s. The same could be said for
many of the former Warsaw Pact nations.
This is about people power, something Putin can’t stop with an
overwhelming show of force, and we are drawing inspiration from those
suffering and resisting most right now.
I was in the
Soviet Union in August of 1991 when a coup against Gorbachev was
launched. Things looked bleak, but not for long. It was only a
matter of days until popular resistance thwarted the coup and hastened
the demise of the empire. I witnessed people power for the first time
and drew inspiration from it. Then came a lesson.
The emotion that comes with a popular movement is powerful and
memorable, but it’s not enough. Look at Russia and parts of eastern
Europe now. After the turbulent 1990s, Russia has been in the hands
of an authoritarian for over two decades. Emotion can’t sustain
democracy; only the slow, steady, unglamorous work of instilling
democratic ideas can. Demonstrations can’t sustain democracy; only
inclusive, representative institutions can.
Whether in Ukraine or our own homeland, democracy is proved when
tested. Ukraine is proving it. Let’s learn a thing or two from them.
By: Scott Van Lingenfelter (Adjunct Professor of History)