Let me begin by first placing a few bona fides on the table.
First, my Russian, poor at best, works in taxi cabs and in restaurants, learned
from a fellow lifeguard in New York City in the early 1960s who was Ukrainian,
so when I spoke Russian, I sounded like some émigré Ukrainian! In the early
1970s while at MIT I was involved in the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a
Democrat right wing group in Massachusetts and worked closely with such
scholars as Richard Pipes at Harvard. I found Pipes a brilliant man and yet not
having spent time in the Eastern European sphere did not have a basis for many
of his ideas. From Pipes and the others in CDM came many of the current
neo-cons.
Now my first extensive direct contacts with the Russians was
in the 1970s when I spent time as a senior technical consultant to the Arms
Control and Disarmament Agency supporting the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty
Negotiations during the Carter Administration. My role was to design and
consider the operations of the monitoring network and as such was involved in
several meetings with the Soviet groups. I assume that both sides had bios and
profiles of the other side and there were real technical people and there were
real KGB folks. The treaty did not reach any conclusion. As a young neo-con at
the time it frankly was an achievement since one could not in my opinion trust
the Soviets.
In 1993 I managed to spend time in St Petersburg, again
fine tuning my Russian but staying in an Intourist hotel as one of the few if
only westerner there. The other westerners were in the fancy European hotels.
But staying in the old Soviet hotel gives one a better understanding of the
comings and goings. In 1996 I started my international Internet carrier
company. My first meeting was in Moscow, and there I met my erstwhile partners,
a mix of Soviet era technologists and otherwise. It was clear that in the mix
was an array of former KGB folks and that they knew who I was so there is an
advantage to old profiles.
From there my Russian partners introduced me to a Czech
partner, the Soviet chosen Czech who was the former Minister of Communications,
PhD from University of Moscow, and now working for various western telecom
companies. He would become my partner, and the six degrees of separation had
become two degrees. Thus I found myself in the midst of a collection of Cold
War players. We built our network on Gazprom lines and had partners ranging
from old time Moscow players to Stasi holdouts in Munich. For ten years we
built out networks and installed Internet systems. During this period I made
friends, and dealt with adversaries, and did so not as any US entity but as one
who had the technical and financial where with all to effect the network,
dealing with vendors, and handling political issues. I managed to meet a
collection of characters which fill out the book by Hill and Gaddy. My travels
through Russia and its environs was as a somewhat accepted insider who had been
an adversary, thus I had the unique opportunity to see the buildup of Putin and
the current political structure in Russia.
Let me begin with two observations. First in 1993 in St
Petersburg I saw people in churches, weddings and funerals, and crowds returning
to Orthodoxy as if nothing had transpired. As Catholicism was to slowly slide
away in Poland, Orthodoxy became the replacement for the Communist control, but
a culturally accepted and even desired replacement. It was out of this St
Petersburgh that Putin arose and the recognition of the power of Orthodoxy most
likely was evident to him as well. Second, in 1996 driving to and from the
airport in Moscow one passes an old tank, a German tank, clearly a remnant from
1943, just sitting there. Possibly oblivious to some residents but clearly
seared into the minds of all Russians. Whether it was Napoleon, Hitler, or the hoards
from the East, the Russians always felt vulnerable and thus wanted to have
buffers between them and any adversary. Thus in those days the buffer was
Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, and even Mongolia.
Thus in the Russian mind post the fall of the Soviet was the
power and influence of Orthodoxy and the need to have buffers from their
putative enemies. It was clear to me but I felt that it was not clear to many
back in the US. If it had been then things may have turned out quite
differently.
Now to Hill and Gaddy. Their book is alleged to be a
psychological profile of Putin, what made him what he is. The book is a complex
and difficult work to follow, mainly because the authors have the habit of
jumping from decade to decade in a single paragraph and then back again.
Secondly the authors are clearly neo-cons in their outlooks.
Let me now examine several sections of the book:
pp 76-77 The authors discuss the Survivalist mentality of
Russians and Putin in particular. Putin was born after the end of WW II. Thus
he did no endure the siege of St Petersburg but his family did as did those
with whom he grew up. St Petersburg suffered more than Moscow, hundreds of
thousands died as a result of the German hoards. Moscow remembers the attack
stopping at the gate if you will, St Petersburg remembers the dying days of
winter and the abandonment by Stalin as well. Moscow was burned down when
Napoleon entered, and if one goes back even further one sees attack after
attack, and survival was the standard. Thus to understand the Russian one must
as I noted earlier understand survival, and survival demands a strategy of
stand-off isolation.
p 89 Stories are what define us. I think of the philosopher
Cassirer and his semiotic constructs, we live through stories and myths. Putin
tells his stories and they are metaphors for a philosophy of being. The authors
present an interesting argument here but frankly this is a classic way to
deconstruct a person, looking and examining the tales they tell, as ways the
teller wants to be perceived. It is never clear what the true event were but
the teller of the tale constructs and molds it in a manner in which they want
others to perceive them and to understand them.
p 97 Nationalism, and being a Russian was a significant
issue examined by Stalin. It was an argument that ensued between the Stalinists
and the Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg. To Stalin, and in a sense to Putin,
Russia and Russians are a united whole, and individualism is an anathema. That
is in sharp contrast to de Tocqueville's Americanism, a slowly fading way those
in the United States had viewed themselves.
Chapter 6 discusses the Outsider in Putin. This is a common
understanding of the non-Muscovites. It frankly is even worse for those from
east of the Urals. But in many ways St Petersburg always competed with Moscow,
culture, universities, history. They complemented and contrasted each other and
that is even more so today. Those from St Petersburg on the one hand felt
inferior because of their location but superior due to their perceived class.
St. Petersburg retained its history and class whereas Moscow rapidly assumed
the culture of the west, becoming almost a downtown Tokyo! Thus this may help
understand Putin, yet one can assume he may have shed this differential due to
his KGB training as well as time spent in Germany. The authors make this an all
too simple explanation for a highly complex environmental inculturation.
p 117 is a classic example of the extreme use of the authors
conjectures. They state that Putin while in Dresden may have lost touch with
what was happening back in Russia. First Dresden was not the end of the world.
I lived in Prague and it was a two hour drive to Dresden. Dresden also linked
to Leipzig and thus a window on the culture of the west. Access to the events
both east and west, and especially of the east via the west, such as Radio Free
Europe, was significant. One would have expected a KGB agent to have been
exposed to RFE. However, for Putin that again is conjecture. This is a strong
failing in my opinion about this entire work, excessive conjecture. Worse the
conjecture is all too often a means to portray a neo-cons world view of Putin
and Russia.
p 211 This is an interesting and telling tale of why many
feel that democracy and democratically elected positions fail. Putin does not
tolerate fools well, and as such if one fails to function properly the
consequences are often much more sever that not getting reelected. Thus often,
the argument is, things work better. At least that is what the authors try to
relate. Putin does "buy" his loyalty with the oligarchs. However
Putin and Russia face a bigger problem. I would call is the Walmart deficit.
Namely for decades China was a supplier to Walmart, and one could never find a
"Made in Russia" product. That is because Russia has two main
economic engines; extraction economies like gas and oil and weapons. For Putin and
any Russian leader to survive they must keep those elements functioning, thus
the meaning of the conjecture on this page.
p296 NATO was created to stop the Soviet menace. It was a
vehicle to protect a weak Germany, a disorganized France and a decaying
England. It was an American artifact whose raison d'etre post the collapse of
the Soviet Union was in doubt. However Putin saw that as the west expanded NATO
to include the Baltic states and onward to Ukraine that this step was an existential
threat, it breached the key element of their isolation strategy, namely placing
western arms on the Russian borders. Putin saw this evolve and its evolution
was a neo-con dream driven by the United States. Unfortunately the neo-cons saw
this as a sine qua non step whereas Putin saw this as more tanks lining up on
the road to the airport. It was a gross mis-step by the west, especially the
United States, driven by neo-cons who lacked any understanding of Russia and
the Russians.
p 301 The 9/11 fiasco was clearly anticipated by Russia and
Putin. The Russians knew Afghanistan quite well have bled badly there. Russia
also had good intel in place whereas the US was generally clueless, focusing on
other issues at that time. On September 9th the leader of the
Northern Alliance was assassinated by ben Laden and his forces and this was a
clear red flag even for the Russians, especially since the Northern Alliance
had CIA contacts and ben Laden was aware of them. The Russians felt the next
step was a mass move against the US. Putin tells Bush and Bush seemed
clueless. The neo-cons dismissed the information and the results are well
known. Unfortunately the authors seems to miss all of these linkages.
pp 388-397 Here the authors lay out Putin as the existential
threat. Unfortunately the true existential threat is China not Russia. China
has strategic locations in the Pacific, the South China Sea. China has a massive
economic infrastructure and its work in bio-tech dwarfs even the US in many
areas. Putin and Russia could and should be co-opted "European"
allies to counter the Chinese threat. To do that one must understand Russia and
the Russians and thus Putin. Putin wants a safe zone between Russia and its
putative adversaries, and having a Ukraine NATO alliance is a direct attack
against that. It was a well known and deliberate assault. It would be as if we
agreed to take Hong Kong as a new Pacific territory. It would not only not work
but it would be perceived, and rightly so, as an assault.
Overall the authors in a rather haphazard manner align
various "facts" about Putin to set him up as a new evil empire overlord.
He is a Russian in Russia. That is a fact we have to live with. To live with it
we must have some way to communicate with him and his country. Regrettably many
like these authors in my opinion find that an anathema.
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