From Rurik to Putin is Measured in More Than a Thousand Years . . . and Less Than a Couple of Hundred Miles
Once upon a time I was really into Russian history, literature and music. I went through a long spell reading their great writers - Pushkin, Gogol, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev and Yevtushenko - listening to their musical masters - such as Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and Shostakovich - and learning about their historic underpinnings going all the way back to the days of the legendary Rurik (830 CE - 879 CE), a Varangian (that’s Scandinavian or Viking) warrior who, in the mid-to-late 9th century CE, founded the first significant dynasty in Russian history. It would be called the Rurik Dynasty. Rurik and his heirs also established a significant geographical and political formation known as Kievan Rus’, the first incarnation of modern Russia. (Notice how the name consists of two entities - Kiev and Russia - which are all over the news these days? Some things never change)
The line of Rurik (that’s a bronze statue of him on the left) continued to rule Russia well into the 16th century and the mythology surrounding the man Rurik is often referred to as the official beginning of Russian history.
All this can be read in the first book of Russian history, known variously as either The Primary Chronicle or Tales of Bygone Years, which is the history of Kievan Russia from the year 850 to about 1110. It’s not an easy read . . . but then again, neither are novels by Dostoevsky, or poems and plays by Pushkin. I vividly remember reading these Tales of Bygone Years sometime in the late sixties; at the time Leonid Brezhnev was First Secretary of the Communist Party, although he had yet to consolidate his power to become the regime’s ultimate leader (he would hold that post until his death in 1982, and then be replaced by the long-forgotten Yuri Andropov).
One of the things I came away with from reading this ancient work (in English translation, of course) was that even as far back as the 10th century, these mythical, eponymous figures who would one day lead the Russian Soviets, were already showing signs and symptoms of possessing an historic, geographic and political inferiority complex classically defined as “an intense personal or historic feeling of inadequacy, often resulting in the belief that one is in some way deficient, or inferior, to others.” It has also been described to as “a sense of incompleteness” or “a gateway to narcissism.”
In keeping up with the latest news surrounding Russian President Vladimir Putin’s shocking and - to my way of thinking, mindless - attempt to rewrite history, I see the unmistakable fingerprints of Rurik and the monks of Kievan Rus’. Like the ancients, Putin and his small inner circle of multibillionaire oligarchs are still trying to figure out who they are and where they belong on the world stage. Are they Europeans? Are they Asiatic? And what arrows do they have in their quiver to hold all the disparate nationalities, language groups, religions and time-zones (there are 11 of them ) together into a unified whole?
What is Putin’s ultimate goal in invading (or not) the Ukraine? To continue the process of reassembling the old Soviet Union? To earn for himself newer and greater chapters in history books yet written? To put NATO in its place? And where does this all stop? At the gates of Finland, Poland or Estonia? It seems to me that anyone who can plumb the depths of his mind and ultimate intent, is likely also capable of squaring the circle (completing a seemingly impossible task) . . . in this case, granting Russia the identity and superiority which has eluded it since the beginning of time.
Putin certainly knows and understands that invading the Eastern Ukraine is going to unleash an economic embargo against his country the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades. Russia’s two greatest assets are, of course, nuclear weapons and oil. The second is of tremendous importance. Within the past couple of hours, Germany has pulled the plug on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (a 765-mile-long natural gas pipeline from Russia, running under the Baltic Sea to Germany. The project is intended to enable Russia to circumvent Ukraine and other countries and pipe its gas directly into Europe), as the UK and European shares see-saw and the ruble has already sunk to a two-year low. Hauntingly, this does not seem to worry Putin at all . . . at least in public. He no doubt understands that sanctions from the U.S., UK and other Western economic powerhouses will likely have a negative echoing affect on these economies . . . such as significant raises in the price of oil. Then again, a rise in the price of oil in Europe can be a boon to American oil companies.
Here on the home front, President Biden has, in my opinion, been handling the situation with a far greater degree of intelligence, aplomb and political craftsmanship than his predecessor ever could have hoped for. Responsible members of the Republican leadership in Congress, along with - believe it or not - the editorial page writers of the Wall Street Journal have had some pretty positive thing to say about Biden’s handling of this looming international event.
One Republican no one has heard from during the past several weeks and months is the former POTUS .. . . until just today. The former President slammed President Biden’s handling of the crisis with Russia, insisting that Vladimir Putin would never have invaded Ukraine on his watch. Touting his close relationship with the Russian autocrat (“I know Vladimir Putin very well, and he would have never done during the Trump Administration what he is doing now, no way!” ), Trump suggested on that he would have figured out a way to prevent Putin from moving troops into breakaway provinces of Ukraine, without offering any specifics. Even for Trump, the harsh attack on Biden marks a shocking break from the traditional deference that the opposition party leaders typically give to a sitting president during a mushrooming global crisis.
When all is said and done - and there is so much yet to be said and done - Putin’s reasons for invading (or not) the Ukraine are as unknowable as the Russian soul, as cold as a frigid Muscovite winter. He seems bent on earning for himself an entire chapter in the saga which began with Rurik oh so many centuries ago. At the same time, his immediate goal, Donetsk, is a mere 535 miles from the Kremlin.
The one person who likely understands Vladimir Putin the best, died 71 years before the future Russian strongman was even born: Fyodor Dostoyevsky. For in his immortal novel, The Idiot, (his own personal favorite), he writes: “Don’t let us forget that the causes of human actions are usually immeasurably more complex and varied than our subsequent explanations of them.”
Copyright©2022 Kurt F. Stone