WP op-ed, "Vladimir the Great?" Putin's Inspiration Is Much Older Than the Cold War

[DeepModem Mom]

Vladimir the Great?
Putin's Inspiration Is Much Older Than the Cold War
By Jay Winik
Sunday, September 2, 2007; Page B07


Catherine the Great (Hulton Archive -- Getty Images)

Having just grabbed a piece of the Arctic the size of Western Europe, the Russian military has announced ambitious plans to establish a permanent presence in the Mediterranean for the first time since the end of the Cold War. The guiding hand behind this Russian resurgence is undeniably Russia's enigmatic president, Vladimir Putin.

On the surface, enigmatic seems to be the word. Putin dons well-tailored suits even as he clamps down on domestic opposition and homemade democracy. He flashes a warm smile in the councils of international summitry even as he smashes dissent in Chechnya. He has charmed President Bush even as he stymies U.S. policy in Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. The conventional wisdom is that Putin's background in the KGB is what ultimately drives his more notorious actions, leading foreign policy commentators to raise the specter of a renewed Cold War.

But if the West is truly going to come to grips with Putin and a resurrected Russian state, it would do well to see him not as something relatively new but as something old, drawing on historical roots stretching back to the 18th century and Catherine the Great. Indeed, it is far more likely that Putin and his allies are following not the ghosts of Stalin and Khrushchev but spiritual masters such as Empress Catherine in seeking to reestablish Russia as a great nation on the world stage.

Like Putin, Catherine II was a curiosity in her day, alternately bewitching and confusing her critics and supporters. From early on she was the liberal idol of the great Enlightenment philosophes of Europe....Yet, with eerie echoes for today's world, the once-heralded liberal empress became, within a few years, a reactionary. Though John Adams thought Russia and the United States would be natural allies, Catherine did not even deign to meet with the envoy of fledgling America, Francis Dana, who lamented that he knew "less of the empresses comings and goings" than did her groomsman. And when the French Revolution broke out, Catherine turned her back on decades of Enlightenment and unleashed modern authoritarianism....

***

Another hallmark of Catherine's Russia with striking portents for today was domestic opinion on the West. To be sure, she took great strides to Europeanize the Russian colossus: She built the Hermitage, amassed a world-class art collection, improved schools and hospitals, and sent French-speaking Russians abroad in droves. But Catherine did little to change the attitude of the average Russian toward what was often disdainfully referred to as "the peninsula of Europe."...It would be a great mistake to see Russia's actions as inevitably heralding a new Cold War. But it would be an equal mistake to ignore the fact that Vladimir Putin has learned well how to play Catherine's impostor game. Just as Catherine became a master of playing the budding democrat abroad while being a despot at home and of professing pacifism while beating the drum of bellicosity across the globe, so too has Putin. He should be viewed accordingly.

(Jay Winik's new book, "The Great Upheaval: America and the Birth of the Modern World, 1788-1800," will be published next month. He is the author of "April 1865.")

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/31/AR2007083101533.html?nav=most_emailed

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. "Marke Ocho" --BAM !

[DRoseDARs]

2. "Having just grabbed a piece of the Arctic..." ?! Oh what a crock of shit! Moron journalism.

Russia hasn't grabbed squat. Their reasoning is that the continental shelf along Russia's coastline extends along under the Arctic. By that logic, the African river nation of Gambia should move its navy (seven fishing boats and a rubber dingy, I'm sure) into the ports of Vladivostok on the Pacific, Novorossiysk on the Black Sea, and Saint Petersburg on the Baltic to rightfully claim what is theirs. Stupid Russians, shut the Hell up. :eyes: