The New Yorker Out Loud Podcast - Putin's Russia
Conducted just days before Russia's intervention in Ukraine, this discussion gives interesting insight into Russia's, which is to say Putin's, behavior with regards to Ukraine, LGBT issues, and Russia's aggressive posturing generally.
TL;DR Russia (Putin) is suffering a crisis of identity rooted in the humiliating disintegration of the Soviet Union, and is attempting to rebuild a strong national identity that distinguishes itself from the West. Putin is also terrified of an Egypt- or Ukraine-style overthrow and suspicious that the West may foster one.
Notable excerpts*:
Conducted just days before Russia's intervention in Ukraine, this discussion gives interesting insight into Russia's, which is to say Putin's, behavior with regards to Ukraine, LGBT issues, and Russia's aggressive posturing generally.
TL;DR Russia (Putin) is suffering a crisis of identity rooted in the humiliating disintegration of the Soviet Union, and is attempting to rebuild a strong national identity that distinguishes itself from the West. Putin is also terrified of an Egypt- or Ukraine-style overthrow and suspicious that the West may foster one.
Notable excerpts*:
...in 1991 the Soviet Union collapsed and what followed was a decade...[that] was one humiliation after another: NATO expanded , the Warsaw Pact disappeared, the economy collapsed, ... millions ..of Russians were now parts of other countries: Kazakhstan, Ukraine
Interest in that part of the world fell of the cliff following 1991. They were no longer the great Other, they were just another problem area of the world... this is part of what frustrates and humiliates somebody like Putin. He wants to be the Other.
Part of the way he's trying to establish himself as a rival, reestablish Russia...is to create a new state ideology of Russian nationalism that's tied to a certain kind of moral conservatism
...what Putin is saying implicitly is "back off, back off. Why should it be that we have to develop at exactly the same rate as you do, on every issue?" He's extremely sensitive about and angry about Western moralizing, Western grandstanding, Western interference in the sphere of Russia's perceived influence. That's the source of the conflict.
Russia, in his [Putin's] view, needs a new sense of itself, it needs more confidence, it can't be in a constant state of self humiliation and self criticism and defeatism.
Two years ago there were big demonstrations on the street. this is something that Putin could not countenance. when Putin sees things like Tahrir square and now Maidan square in Kiev [Ukraine]...that is the ultimate fear, that somehow ..with Western complicity and Western funding, this could happen in Moscow.
*imperfectly transcribed by me from the audio
