Putin Is Losing Sleep Over His Place in History
Having made one of the greatest mistakes in Russian history, he is now repositioning himself for posterity
The boy from Leningrad, the pencil-pushing KGB agent stationed in East Germany at the end of the Soviet Union, is worried. He is not worried about how many of his subjects die in his flawed war of genocide. He is not worried about how many of the innocent neighbors in Ukraine die while attending weddings and other family gatherings. Vladimir Putin is concerned about his place in Russian history’s repetitive and not-so-rich canon.
Spoiler alert: Regardless of his best efforts at rewriting the facts of the war in Ukraine, his place in Russia’s history will not be favorable.
Putin blew it
Russians have never had a leader who was more or less focused on the good of the people. For the last seven and even more centuries, the relationship between the people of Russia, who were primarily peasants and so bound to the land, has been one of a god-like authoritarian leader responsible for all that happens.
The good and the bad are doled out from the leader of the moment. Corruption, theft, alcoholism, violence, and heartbreak have always characterized Russia’s weakly defined history, and much of it is due to its culture of governance. Within this context, we realize that Putin was not such a bad leader.
Putin’s ascension to the presidency was never about him being a charismatic, behind-the-scenes genius. It was not because he was a Bond-like super-spy whose physical presence inspired then-President Boris Yeltsin. Putin’s past work in East Germany and overall demeanor were much better suited for a Holiday Inn conference of office managers.
He was a rat-like human whose constant snooping around in people’s lives resulted in amassing an extensive database of “kompromat” on those in power. Having discovered where a lot of the stolen Soviet booty was stashed in off-shore accounts, Putin would let the “owners” of that wealth know that he knew and could keep a secret. Corruption is a human flaw that races the heart of pencil-pushing spy-wannabes like Putin.
So impressed were the Yeltsin people with Putin’s ability to keep his mouth shut that as they planned Boris’s retreat into retirement, they were comfortable with the prospect that their ill-gained wealth would be protected — and it was. None of them were ever prosecuted or investigated. Putin played his role marvelously, and if he had just focused on the prototypical stealing and gorged himself on the expectations that all Soviet leaders had of being treated super-duper special, then Vladimir Putin would have gone into history as one of Russia’s better leaders.
If Putin had retired after 2008, he would most likely be regarded as one of the best in Russian history within the context of Russia — in any normal country with a liberal-democratic system, he would have been Trump-like.
From 2012 on, after the large protests over the fixed elections — modern Russians actually thought they had a democracy — Putin realized quickly that he had gotten used to regarding the wealth of Russia as his own; he understood that if he tried to step away, forces were coming for him that would see him spending the rest of his life in prison.
Something had to be done
No one ever really threatened his hold on power. Nonetheless, when Putin saw how vehemently middle-class Russians were opposed to him during the protests of 2012–13, as a student of history, he understood that such emotion could easily ignite like flash paper against him. Alexey Navalny was not a viable leader of Russia, but he was a rallying point, and this scared out little coward with the fictional Bond biography.
And so Putin understood it was time to play on the national sense of “hurt feelings” — 70 years of sacrifices went up on December 25th, 1991, when the Soviet Union was buried — and because Russia never really came to terms with the Soviet era, Putin was able to twist the facts and make shit up to blame it all on the United States.
The rhetoric of the land of “make-believe” used emotions so potent and recognizable to most historically ignorant Russians that even Putin fell for it. The army of sycophants around him never believed much of the made-up new history, but it was in their interest to pretend — they were running the government day-to-day.
When Putin shocked everyone and started the war with Ukraine, the reactions of the sycophants varied, but most thought it was an insane move. Nonetheless, if the war could be won quickly and the victory was convincing, then most would have been willing to get behind that crime. Bringing the entirety of Ukraine back into the corrupt fold of Moscow would ultimately be a windfall for everyone close to the Kremlin. Things, however, have not worked out that way, and the imagined infallibility of the wannabe spy from Boskov Alley in Leningrad was punctured.
All of the “hard work” Putin and his criminal aides put in to make Russia a leading nation and a significant regional power evaporated when it was realized that the Russian military and its space program were a paper tiger. All of the progress the world thought had been made by the Russian people in becoming modern and civilized was learned to be fake. Despite its nuclear arsenal, which it threatens to use to end life on Earth nearly daily, Russia is the weakest it has been in over a century. Its isolation is on a level of the 1970s, and more foreign influences are erased daily.
Putin will go down in history as a Russian dictator who lost himself in the lies. He overconsumed the wealth of the Russian state, and when his rhetoric became so abhorrent to the world, he launched a war of genocide against historical brothers in Ukraine. As a result, the Russian nation was endlessly shamed and has suffered untold sorrows — again! Rather than admit he was wrong, he closed the world to foreign influence. All of this was done because he wanted to ensure that his wealth — which belongs to the Russian people — couldn’t be taken away from him.
The program currently being launched in earnest in the schools of Russia, beginning with first grade, is designed to recreate the narrative. If Putin can live long enough and enough young minds can be corrupted to accept his lies and reality, then Putin’s place in history will be right next to Stalin’s.
If Putin dies sooner, before the poison can take effect in the minds of the youth, he will go down as one of the worst leaders in Russia’s subpar history. This fact scares the hell out of our little rat from Leningrad.