Is Putin turning Russia into an Eastern, Asian country? While the huge number whom he claims voted for him, impossible in a Western state, has no reality it can be seen in small Asian polities. Would this more suit his rule?
I agree dear Stanley Wilkin . Putin does turning Russia into an Eastern, Asian country! He also wants to take Serbia there!
"Russian President Vladimir Putin has secured a fifth term in office, claiming a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election on 18 March. Election officials say he won a record 87% of votes. This outcome came as a surprise to no one, and many international leaders have condemned the vote as not being free or fair..."
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00863-6
"Is there a man who does not love freedom? There is a. That man is Russian.
Before we go any further, we have to take a step back here, i.e. to the question. Someone, in fact, will think - perhaps many - that it is pointless. Because what kind of man would he be - if he were a man at all - who loves chains and padlocks. The question, however, is not meaningless precisely because the answer - as we saw in the specific case - is positive. Such and such a man is, therefore, a Russian.
So, in fact, Serbian Russophiles think. Because it is Russophiles - and not Russophobes, for example - who believe that in the recent presidential elections, Russians voted unanimously for a dictatorship, i.e. they chose non-freedom. At first glance, this seems paradoxical. How can those who put Russians in prison and at the same time claim that it is for their own good be Russophiles? moreover, that the Russians themselves want it. Don't they in this way dehumanize the Russian man as a human being and the Russian people as a human race. The question is, of course, rhetorical.
The paradox, however, is apparent. Russophiles don't really like Russians, they like Russia. And not Russia as a country, a geographical term, but Russia as a political term. More precisely, as a political regime. That is, as a dictatorship, as a regime characterized by the unlimited power of one man. In one word - Putinism. After all, their media already declared Putin the Tsar a long time ago..."
https://pescanik.net/pretnja-mirom-srbi-rusi-i-kant/
Ljubomir Jacić
Of course you are right. Russophiles love Russia for what it symbolises while Russophobes despise Russia for what it is.
It is an aberration in the modern world that has not changed for 800 years. Sacral leadership throughout the middle ages until now. Wretched leaders from the siting of Moscow.
OCCRP Russian member center spoke with experts with differing views about whether Vladimir Putin’s regime is guided by an underlying political ideology. One argues the current government is driven by a belief that Russia has a special civilization that’s indispensable for the region and must be preserved at all costs. Another believes the modern state is only upheld by the self-serving interests of a kleptocracy...
https://istories.media/opinions/2024/03/25/ideologiya-ili-kleptokratiya/
Ljubomir,
It is difficult to see the special civilisation of Russia at present and hardly one that needs to be preserved no more than Nazi Germany, which also saw itself as special. My own work suggests that Russia lies outside of European civilisation, and more recognition of that is necessary not to berate or belittle the country but rather to accept reality.
The second option of course is true. Putin achieved eminence by accident. He was chosen to be President on the basis that he could be more easily manipulated by the oligarchs and gangsters then as now in power. But he wished to be the top oligarch and gangster and has achieved that end.
Dear Stanley Wilkin and Ljubomir Jacić
I found an interesting book about Putin on Academia, in free access :
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/oa-mono/10.4324/9781003438045/putin-dark-ages-dina-khapaeva?_gl=1*1m1png5*_ga*MjEzMDk0MDM0NS4xNzEwNTQzMDY2*_ga_0HYE8YG0M6*MTcxMTgyODcyNi43LjAuMTcxMTgyODcyOC4wLjAuMA..*_gcl_au*MTExMjYzNzYxOS4xNzEwNTQzMDY2
Xavier,
I have referenced her in some of my papers and the medievialism is indeed accurate but I added a point to this and that is it echoes the medievaelliasm of ISIS, etc. Use of Satanic to describe the West. This appears to have begun in Iran's turning the clock back to priestly rule in 1979.
Dear Xavier Rouard has fine preprint on PUTIN!
Biographie politiquement incorrecte de Vladimir Poutine
Preprint Biographie politiquement incorrecte de Vladimir Poutine
Full agreement with Ljubomir Jacić , with respect to Oriental Despotism !
______
Oriental Despotism: A Comparative Study of Total Power is a book of political theory and comparative history by Karl August Wittfogel (1896–1988) published by Yale University Press in 1957.
In my last paper on Ukraine and Moscow/Muscovy I have a reference to a Ukrainian academic who claims that Moscow was still involved with the remnants of the Golden Horde in the 15th century, were in fact part of their culture still. The Kipchaks referred to them as the Golden Horde White khanate in the West.
This is significant I felt in understanding Russia. Conquest tropes, and all that!
Another nugget! According to European visitors to Muscovy, 50 percent of the population was Tatar, and many of the elite, those who converted to Christianity, were Tatars.
Am in agreement Stanley Wilkin that a real history of Muscovy is still missing, e.g. in ethnographic terms.
Stephen,
Its been deliberately kept out because it does not fit in with the ethnic European myth, white, Caucasion, Christian. The present area of modern Ukraine was of mixed ethnicity with Tatar populations occupying one third and the Tatar and Slavonic populations, but also Finn, Baltic, complementing each other. Ukrainians or Kyiv Rus fought like Tatars. The Karsar empire was the template for the Kyiv federation.
Moscow grew by taking Tatar territories in the east once belonging to powerful Kipchak neighbours. Russian society evolved largely from Kipchak polities. Lastly, urbanisation came at the same time, the 9th century in Poland, Kyiv Rus, and Volga Bulgar. Large cities rose in the steppes. The boost may possibly have been not just Europe but also Islam and vastly increased trade coming from the Middle East.
Russia's so-called claim to Kyiv Rus arrived initially with the mixed-race dynasty, thereby culturally mixed, of early Moscow under Alexandre Nevsky. The Mongols (a true story or Russian mythology) gave Moscow Kyiv Rus as Kyiv rapidly declined. Incidentally, the dynasty around Moscow in the 12th century was already mixed, the North Eastern Slavonic group already mixing with the powerful Kipchak dynasties to the east and possibly south. It did not have the European influences of Kyiv.
I've mentioned this before,but sacral rule noted within Putin's rule comes from the khasars, Mongols and Kipchak polities. Ukrainian rule involved the choosing of leaders from an extended family group. No leader enjoyed absolute power.