Timothy Snyder: Vladimir Putin’s politics of eternity // Mark Galeotti: A tale of two Putins
Americans and
Europeans have been guided through our new century by what I will call the
politics of inevitability – a sense that the future is just more of
the present, that the laws of progress are known, that there are no
alternatives, and therefore nothing really to be done. In the American,
capitalist version of this story, nature brought the market, which brought
democracy, which brought happiness. In the European version, history brought
the nation, which learned from war that peace was good, and hence chose
integration and prosperity.
Before the collapse of
the Soviet Union in 1991, communism had its own politics of inevitability:
nature permits technology; technology brings social change; social change
causes revolution; revolution enacts utopia. When this turned out not to be
true, the European and American politicians of inevitability
were triumphant. Europeans busied themselves completing the creation
of the European Union in 1992. Americans reasoned that the failure of the
communist story confirmed the truth of the capitalist one. Americans and
Europeans kept telling themselves their tales of inevitability for a
quarter-century after the end of communism, and so raised a millennial generation
without history.
The American politics
of inevitability, like all such stories, resisted facts.
The fates of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus
after 1991 showed well enough that the fall of one system did not create a
blank slate on which nature generated markets and markets generated rights. Iraq might have
confirmed this lesson, had the initiators of America’s illegal war reflected
upon its disastrous consequences. The financial crisis of 2008 and the deregulation of campaign contributions in the US in 2010
magnified the influence of the wealthy and reduced that of voters. As economic
inequality grew, time horizons shrank, and fewer Americans believed that the
future held a better version of the present. Lacking a functional state that
assured basic social goods taken for granted elsewhere – education, pensions,
healthcare, transport, parental leave, vacations – Americans could be
overwhelmed by each day, and lose a sense of the future.
The collapse of the
politics of inevitability ushers in another experience of time: the
politics of eternity. Whereas inevitability promises a better future for
everyone, eternity places one nation at the centre of a cyclical story of
victimhood. Time is no longer a line into the future, but a circle that
endlessly returns the same threats from the past. Within inevitability, no one
is responsible because we all know that the details will sort themselves out
for the better; within eternity, no one is responsible because we all know that
the enemy is coming no matter what we do. Eternity politicians spread the
conviction that government cannot aid society as a whole, but can only guard
against threats. Progress gives way to doom. In power, eternity
politicians manufacture crisis and manipulate the resultant emotion. To
distract from their inability or unwillingness to reform, they instruct
their citizens to experience elation and outrage at short intervals, drowning
the future in the present. In foreign policy, eternity politicians
belittle and undo the achievements of countries that might seem like models to
their own citizens. Using technology to transmit political fiction at home and
abroad, eternity politicians deny truth and seek to reduce life
to spectacle and feeling. Inevitability and
eternity translate facts into narratives.. read more:
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/16/vladimir-putin-russia-politics-of-eternity-timothy-snyderMark Galeotti: A tale of two Putins
Having turned the law
into an instrument of state policy and private vendetta, and having turned the
legislature into a caricature without power or independence, can Vladimir Putin
afford to become an ex-president? As the Russian leader prepares to be
re-anointed in an election on 18 March, Mark Galeotti explores Putin's options.
On 18 March, Vladimir
Putin will, it is safe to predict, win re-election. The real questions relate
to what happens after the election, with some predicting a thaw, while others
expect even more authoritarian policies. Will Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev be
replaced? Will there be renewed overtures to the West? In many ways, though,
this may betray our own biases, as Kremlinologists from democratic nations naturally
assume that an election represents a boundary point from one state to another.
Yet in a system such as Putin’s, sometimes described as a managed democracy, it
is much more clearly managed than democratic. Indeed, of late it has come to
feel as if the Kremlin regards the various trappings of democracy – not just
elections but also press conferences, legislative sessions and consultations –
as an increasingly irritating burden.
Nonetheless, it is
likely that there will be changes of some kind after the election, or at least
there are many insiders and near-insiders telegraphing this. Much less clear is
precisely what the changes will look like – reflecting an uncertainty of Putin
and his inner circle and a fundamental division between two sides of the regime. Putin is both an
individual and a synecdoche – shorthand for a group of powerful movers and
shakers around ‘the body’ (as his confidantes call him). Both Putin-the-man and
Putin-the-governing-cabal are dynamic phenomena, changing over time. One
interesting question is whether this year will see them evolving in step with
each other, or growing apart?.. read more:
