On the Historic Heritage and Social Nature of Putin’s Russia

Let me begin with a pretty extensive citation from the Karl Marx’ “Secret Diplomatic History of the Eighteenth Century” [see its 1899 London edition]. The Guru of Communism wrote: “The bloody mire of Mongolian slavery… forms the cradle of Muscovy, and modern Russia is but a metamorphosis of Muscovy (p. 77).”

Then this really outstanding social scientist and historian continued: “From the very outset, Peter the Great broke through all the traditions of the Slavonic race. {…} …[T]he traditional limits of the Muscovite policy could be superseded and merged into that bold synthesis which, blending the encroaching method of the Mongol slave with the world-conquering tendencies of the Mongol master, forms the life-spring of modern Russian diplomacy (p. 87).” And it is the very essence of the story with the old “history of Russia” (but not of the Kyivan — or Kievan — Rus’ history!).

Is this picture familiar to you, dear readers? I am sure it is. Putin Khan and his Minister Lavrov are brilliant representatives of such “diplomacy”. But in the today’s context one must add several new moments.

Firstly, the Putin’s Horde is also among the main successors of the last centuryfascism. I rely on the definition by R.Griffin from The Nature of Fascism (1991): “Fascism is a genus of political ideology whose mythic core in its various permutations is a palingenetic form of populist ultra-nationalism (p. 26).” Please compare it with the Putin’s regime ideologists and propagandists hybrids’ crackpot cock-and-bull stories on “the sacred Russian Chersonesus” etc.

Secondly, the Putin’s Horde is the only tremendous-scale successor of the Stalin’s Russian Empire known as the Soviet Union of the totalitarianism period. As for me, this term is quite correct. Let me provide you with one more citation — fromThe New Penguin History of the World (2007) by J.M.Roberts: “Stalin, though himself a Georgian, looks a very Russian figure, a despot whose ruthless use of power is anticipated by an Ivan the Terrible or a Peter the Great (p. 908).” Putin’s Russia is full of similar “figures” differing in size, and they proliferate quickly…

Thirdly and finally, the Putin’s Ruscist Reich in fact is the newest social reincarnation of the Headless Horseman. This international gangsters’ horde has no progressive, rational, humanistic conceptions. It means evidently that the Ukrainian Revolutionary War of Dignity is — at the same time — not only the war for our independence, democracy and socioeconomic well-being but also the War of Progress, Rationalization and Humanism on behalf of the mankind as a whole.

“The Headless Horseman of Vladimir the Sick Prick Khan’s Hybrid Empire Pursuing a Democracy-Oriented Post-Soviet Nation”. The picturesque story is based on the painting by John Quidor (1858)

The author and the NEWSSKY Journal reject their responsibility for the folklore nicknames of any person mentioned. Sic!

Yuriy O. CHERNETSKIY (Kharkiv—Zhytomyr),

Doctor of Sciences in Sociology, PhD in Economics & Management, Professor of the “UKRAINE” University — specially written for the NEWSSKY Journal