Fascism, page 15
The positive news is that, through all the political turbulence, Erdoğan’s economic plan has not turned inward; the country remains intent on prospering in the global marketplace. That is important because the republic is approaching its centennial with big plans. Should Erdoğan’s Vision 2023 agenda be realized, Turkey will become one of the globe’s ten largest economies, attract fifty million tourists a year, and join the EU.
However, if any of those goals are to be reached, the president must modify the course he has been pursuing these past few years. It might feel good to castigate Europe and the United States, but Turkey is not going to achieve either its economic or its security goals without help. Erdoğan’s original foreign policy mantra, “Zero problems with neighbors,” now mocks him. Turkey has misplayed its hand in Syria and exhibited fundamental strategic differences with the Arab states and Iran. Erdoğan won no friends in Israel when he attacked that country’s policy toward the Palestinians as having “surpassed Hitler in barbarism.” His approach to Russia has swung back and forth between launching verbal attacks one month and the next signing a controversial arms deal. Globally, the government in Ankara has become notorious for jailing more reporters than any other.
In fairness, Turkey faces real terrorist threats, from both ISIS and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK. It has also borne the brunt of the continent’s refugee crisis and could probably have done absolutely everything asked and still not overcome all the obstacles to EU admission, including hostility from Greek Cyprus, Islamophobia, and cultural differences that have caused the goalposts to move whenever the Turks draw closer. The country is right to demand the West’s respect, because, as a NATO ally for more than seven decades and currently the possessor of the alliance’s second-largest army, it has earned it.
Domestically, Turkey’s divisions are deeply etched, and, for as long as he is president, Erdoğan must decide how best to respond to that. He still has a chance to mend his nation’s democracy by moving away from recrimination and toward dialogue, heeding criticism from moderates within his own party, and ceasing to equate legitimate political opposition with treason.
No Turkish leader has succeeded in building—or even really tried to build—a democratic society in which citizens who have far different visions of what it means to be Turkish can nevertheless live together productively, freely, and in peace. That would be a worthy monument to any statesman. Might Erdoğan choose that path? I think he could, but only if he were to accept that the primary obstacle to advancement is neither the Gülenists, nor the terrorists, nor rival political parties—it is the voice inside telling him that he and only he knows what’s best for Turkey. That’s the siren’s song that transforms power into an end in itself—and leads toward tyranny.
Twelve
Man from the KGB
VLADIMIR PUTIN PLEDGES NO ALLEGIANCE TO THE DEMOCRATIC articles of faith, but he does not explicitly renounce democracy. He disdains Western values while professing to identify with the West. He doesn’t care what the State Department puts in next year’s human rights report, because he has yet to pay a political price in his own country for the sins reported in prior years. He tells bald lies with a straight face, and when guilty of aggression, blames the victim. He has convinced many, apparently including the American president, that he is a master strategist, a man of strength and will. Confined to Russia, these facts would be sobering, but Putin, like Mussolini nine decades ago, is watched carefully in other regions by leaders who are tempted to follow in his footsteps. Some already are.
Though Putin was born in 1952, his story begins earlier, with that of his parents, who survived—just barely—the Second World War. During the Siege of Leningrad, when famine gripped that city, his mother collapsed from hunger and, before reviving, was laid out for burial among corpses. His father, a member of Stalin’s secret police, was assigned to carry out sabotage operations behind German lines in Estonia. The unit blew up a munitions depot but was informed on by unsympathetic locals. Enemy soldiers and their baying hounds chased the senior Putin, who escaped by submerging himself in a marsh and breathing through a reed. Of the twenty-eight men in his unit, just four eluded capture or death. Quickly returned to combat, he suffered a leg wound from a grenade and was hauled by a fellow soldier across a frozen river to the hospital. He limped for the rest of his life. Save for these extraordinary events, Vladimir Putin would not exist.
The man who has led Russia longer than anyone since Stalin describes himself as “a pure and utterly successful product of a Soviet patriotic education.” A restless, energetic youth, he channeled his physicality into the martial arts, grappling, throwing, parrying, and pinning his way to the judo championship of Moscow. At twenty-three, he fulfilled his childhood dream, engendered by a fascination with spy stories, and became an operative for the KGB. He was in East Germany masquerading as a translator when, in 1989, the Wall came down, shattering the political and ideological system to which he and his family had dedicated their lives. Thus was born Vladimir Putin’s redemptive purpose. Two years later, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, he was working for the mayor of St. Petersburg. Colleagues dutifully hung in their offices a photograph of the new president, Boris Yeltsin; Putin did the same with a portrait of Peter the Great.
The former KGB agent’s worldview, like mine, was shaped by the Cold War, though from the opposite end of the telescope. There were, as I noted previously, no innocents in this period. Both sides sought allies in every region, and neither was entirely scrupulous about the means used to support favorites. The crucial difference is that the West came down on the side of freedom when it could, while Communists condemned democracy as a bourgeois trick. In 1991, after Yeltsin took power, the United States hoped for a fresh start in relations with Moscow, and the initial signs were positive. The Russians had supported the senior President Bush in rolling back Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait; Yeltsin then joined in cosponsoring an ambitious conference on Arab-Israeli cooperation. Buried beneath the surface, however, were contrasts in national experience and outlook that a few demonstrations of teamwork could not wish away.
Not long before the USSR’s breakup, I participated in a survey of Russian attitudes regarding democracy and free enterprise. What we found was a population worn down by Communism but with little understanding of what democracy entailed. Reliance on the state for jobs, housing, and other benefits was deeply ingrained. People accustomed to the Soviet system had no clue about competitive markets and found alien, even disturbing, the concept of demanding more productive work as a condition for higher pay. Freedom of the press had a nice ring to it but signified little.
My conclusion was that centuries of living under authoritarian rule had left an indelible mark. How could they not have? Patience was essential, therefore, and had the evolution from a centralized system to a market economy been more gradual—perhaps by a factor of ten—the transition might have succeeded, and democracy taken hold. But history is not chess, and Yeltsin had no time to plan his next move. Instead he had to improvise while being assaulted from all sides by half-baked advice, which he half took. Caught between two eras, the nation’s economy, like the Soviet Union, fell apart fast.
During the Great Depression, America’s economic output declined by one-third. In the 1990s, Russia’s shrank by more than half. Tax revenues dried up, and so, too, foreign investment. Supermarket shelves were stripped bare by hungry shoppers and much of the economy had to do business on a barter basis. The average Russian worked less, got sick more, and died sooner. By decade’s end, seven out of ten lived at or below a subsistence level. Meanwhile, privileged insiders scooped up publicly owned companies at a small fraction of their value, turned the assets to cash, and lodged the profits in offshore accounts. Well-wishers in the West urged perseverance and attributed the crisis to the country’s lack of a democratic tradition. However, on January 1, 2000, a new leader arrived in the Kremlin who blamed every problem on the West and who sought to revive a different tradition—a Russian one.
Like several other men profiled in this book, Vladimir Putin inherited power because his predecessors were thought to have fallen short. Like them, he was not expected to last long. Few in the international community were familiar with him, and even in Russia he was not well known. Who was he, and why had Yeltsin sought him out? Traveling to Moscow that same January, I was determined to find answers.
PUTIN’S FIRST COMMENT WHEN I ARRIVED FOR OUR MEETING WAS about the distinctive pin I was wearing. I said the hot-air balloons were to show how hopes in Russia were rising. He smiled, then looked stern, turned to the cameras, and complained, “The U.S. is conducting a policy of pressure against us.” When the media left, he smiled thinly once more, telling me, “I said that so your domestic critics will not attack you for being soft.” As soon as we sat down, he gathered up then tossed away a bundle of staff-prepared talking points—a simple gesture but also a way of showing independence from the Kremlin bureaucracy. My own opening words wouldn’t be out of place if spoken today. “Russia has become controversial in my country,” I said, “and the U.S. is controversial in yours. This is partly due to real differences and partly to the elections in each country. The only answer we can give to those who criticize us for working together is to prove we can get things done.”
As our conversation progressed, I was struck by the contrast between the buttoned-down Putin and the “bottoms up” Yeltsin. The new president didn’t bully, plead, or flatter. He spoke earnestly about the need to revive his country’s economy by enforcing contracts, exposing corruption, and creating a friendly climate for investment. He expressed doubt that the United States—despite its protestations of goodwill—had Russia’s best interests at heart. After all, the only leaders America has looked on favorably are Gorbachev, who dismantled the USSR, and Yeltsin, who left office with a domestic approval rating of 8 percent. Putin was particularly annoyed by the alarms we had broadcast concerning human rights in Chechnya and Central Asia. He said that terrorists were overrunning the entire region and that only uncompromising action could bring those dangerous lands under control. “Do not try to squeeze Russia out of these countries,” he warned, “or you will end up with another Iran or Afghanistan.”
Flying home, I typed up my impressions:
Putin is small and pale, so cold as to be almost reptilian. He was in East Germany when the Berlin Wall fell and says he understands why it had to happen—a position built on walls and dividers couldn’t last; but he expected something to rise in its place, and nothing was proposed. The Soviets simply dropped everything and went away. He argued that a lot of problems could have been avoided had they not made such a hasty exit. Putin is embarrassed by what happened to his country and determined to restore its greatness.
Like Chávez in Venezuela, Putin gained momentum early on from rising oil prices and, similar to Erdoğan, he benefited from the unpopular but necessary reforms put in place by his predecessor. In Putin’s first years as president, annual economic growth approached 7 percent—Asian Tiger territory. This allowed the government to restore employee salaries and pensions. The value of the ruble went up, making it easier for locally produced crops and goods to find shelf space in markets. Foreign reserves doubled and redoubled while the middle class grew. After the crucible of the 1990s, Russians were pleased to find themselves with thick enough wallets to buy cars, take out mortgages, patronize restaurants, and even go on holiday in Europe or Crimea. Observing all this, our embassy in Moscow reported, “There is a new bounce in the national step.”
Putin isn’t the most electrifying speaker: he’s no arm-waving pounder of lecterns, and he lacks any unique gift for rhetoric, but his unflappable manner conveys steadiness, and he attends to his duties. For years, he has appeared on marathon television shows to answer questions from reporters and citizens alike. Whenever a request is made for help, the government is sure to follow up with a well-reported account of a family assisted or a problem solved. Putin excels at telling people what they want to hear in part because he is genuinely proud to be a Russian. In his visits to St. Petersburg, he touts his country’s many contributions to baroque and neoclassical architecture, jewelry, music, literature, and painting. He has brought religion back to the center of national life, understanding that not even seven decades of Communism could stamp out the reverence many Russians feel for their onion-domed churches, sacred rites, and esteemed icons. The president invokes military history, as well. He reminds his people that it was their ancestors who sucked the lifeblood out of Napoleon’s Grande Armée in the Patriotic War of 1812—then later saved the world from Hitler with, in his version, little help from anyone else.
Putin is also a show-off. It is hard to imagine any other Russian leader (Yeltsin? Brezhnev? Lenin?) thrusting himself in front of cameras to demonstrate judo moves, pose shirtless with a wriggling fish, shoot a crossbow, shake hands with a polar bear, rub noses with a dolphin, or fire a tranquilizer gun at a rogue tiger. In 2012, the sixty-year-old Putin maneuvered his no longer lithe frame into a white jumpsuit, hopped into the pilot’s chair of a small plane, and showed a flock of apparently slow-witted Siberian cranes the proper direction to migrate. Not even Mussolini did that.
SADLY, PUTIN’S SHOW HAS LACKED ENTERTAINMENT VALUE FOR those—including me—who hoped to see Russia develop a more open political system, with warmer ties to the West. The president has pointed to the debacle of the 1990s to discredit democratic institutions and to accuse Washington of trying to encircle his country or, in the vernacular of the Cold War, contain it. In his imagination, American decision-makers lie awake at night thinking up schemes to weaken Russia. How else to explain NATO enlargement, U.S. support for democracy along the Russian periphery, and the deployment of an antimissile system in Central Europe? What Putin refuses to admit is that other countries have rights and that, after decades of being dominated by Moscow, many of the former Soviet republics and satellites valued their independence and were keen on pursuing integration with Europe. NATO took in new members because they were anxious to join and to prevent the resurfacing of old rivalries such as that between the Czechs and Germans. The antimissile system was installed to defend against Iran. And U.S. policy throughout the difficult 1990s was aimed at helping Russia to regain its footing and become part of the West, not at threatening the country or trying to hold it down.
Presented with these facts, Putin refuses to accept them. Politically, he has been under more pressure from the nationalist right than from the smaller and more moderate middle and left. He insists that his government isn’t doing anything the West hasn’t already done: invade countries, meddle in elections, exert economic leverage, and plant false stories in the media. Every time he complains about America’s “almost uncontained hyper use of force—military force—in international relations,” he wins plaudits at home. Besides, if Russia didn’t have enemies, Putin wouldn’t have the excuses he has relied on to tighten his grip on power.
In 1787, Catherine the Great and a group of foreign ambassadors traveled by barge down the Dnieper River to Crimea, which Russia had recently snatched from the Ottoman Empire. At the direction of Catherine’s adviser and lover, Grigory Potemkin, feverish efforts were made to impress the visiting dignitaries by creating attractive portable settlements, complete with smiling peasants and trim houses, for the emissaries to marvel at along the way.
There is more than a touch of the Potemkin village in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The political system features opposition parties, but most are mere shells created to foster the illusion of competition. Elections have become rituals for extending the terms of favored candidates. Television networks are propaganda organs. Civil society, when not tame, is condemned as the cat’s-paw of foreigners. As one law student told a reporter in Moscow, “We have no democracy, our Parliament is not real, our politicians are not real and our mass media are not real.”
Putin isn’t a full-blown Fascist because he hasn’t felt the need. Instead, as prime minister and president, he has flipped through Stalin’s copy of the totalitarian playbook and underlined passages of interest to call on when convenient. Throughout his time in office, he has stockpiled power at the expense of provincial governors, the legislature, the courts, the private sector, and the press. A suspicious number of those who have found fault with him have later been jailed on dubious charges or murdered in circumstances never explained. Authority within Putin’s “vertical state”—including directorship of the national oil and gas companies—is concentrated among KGB alumni and other former security and intelligence officials. A network of state-run corporations and banks, many with shady connections offshore, furnish financial lubricants for pet projects and privileged friends. Rather than diversify as China has done, the state has more than doubled its share of the national economy since 2005.
Putin wants his subjects to believe that he is politically invincible. He strives every day to discourage potential competitors from trying—or daring—to develop a serious nationwide coalition against him. He prefers opponents who sit around their apartments, sipping vodka and complaining to one another about how hopeless it all is; and that’s what many of them have done.
To retain his appeal, Putin has never tied himself deeply to any ideology or party. Instead he seeks to portray himself as the face of the entire nation. Though he can be vicious in attacking opponents, he isn’t intentionally polarizing in the manner of Chávez or Erdoğan. Unlike rightists in Europe, he is respectful toward Jews and Muslims. He saves the bulk of his verbal ammunition for foreign enemies, the arrogant hypocrites who live in glass houses, lie about Russia, and conspire to encircle and strangle his country. When he does go on the offensive against a domestic opponent, it is not to engage on a question of policy but to accuse the adversary of being a traitor. Allegations of treason are the hardest to survive, because, even when the charges are not proven, the aura of disloyalty remains. Putin has stayed in front of the corruption issue by pinning the label on those who have displeased him and then arranging for prominent news coverage of governors, bureaucrats, and other officials being led away in handcuffs, their homes searched, and piles of cash confiscated. Most Russians believe that corruption is a big problem; many think Putin is the remedy.
