During my time covering the Soviet Union, when the late Mikhail Gorbachev was bringing in his groundbreaking democratic reforms, the hope – in the West anyway – was that once Russians got the taste of freedom and democracy, there would be no turning back. That once the genie was out of the bottle, it could never be put back in.
So how has that postulate played out? Mr. Gorbachev introduced democratic freedoms. Vladimir Putin has replaced them with police-state controls. Mr. Gorbachev brought in freedom of the press – Mr. Putin has ended it. Mr. Gorbachev freed dissidents, while Mr. Putin has locked them up or had them killed. Under Mr. Gorbachev, the Soviet war in Afghanistan was ended. Under the current ruler, a war on Ukraine was unleashed. Under Mr. Gorbachev, the Cold War ended. Under Mr. Putin, it has been reignited.
What other reasons, one wonders, might there be for Donald Trump’s admiration for the Russian despot?
Mr. Putin’s status as a freedom crusher is undisputed. But what of the Russian people themselves, a people habituated to authoritarian rule for hundreds of years? How much liberty do they really value? Americans, you might say, have had an anti-authority streak. Russians you might say, the opposite – a submissive mindset that has developed over centuries of oppression.
While Mr. Gorbachev became a star in the West, he was far from a hero in his homeland. When I was there, people were more angered about his crackdown on vodka sales than they were enthused about his political reforms. The educated appreciated him, the masses much less so.
When Mr. Putin started turning back the clock, tightening the screws, I thought Mr. Gorbachev would be more appreciated. But throughout the Putin crackdowns, Mr. Gorbachev continued to be out of favour. Even with his death in 2022, there was no big outpouring of affection.
How passive and easily propagandized the Russian people are is evidenced by Mr. Putin’s unprovoked and unsuccessful war against Ukraine. It has cost thousands of lives, but rather than cost him support, it has only tightened his totalitarian grip.
The news of the death of Alexey Navalny, the valiant leader of what is left of the resistance, produced only a trickle of protests – this in a country of 143 million people. Of course, anyone who ventured into the streets risked incarceration.
Yulia Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s widow, vowed to continue his fight. Her courage is admirable but her cause appears hopeless. Mr. Navalny himself was finding that. When in 2021 he returned to Russia after being treated for poisoning (in an apparent assassination attempt) there wasn’t the show of support he had hoped to arouse. Of glasnost there was hardly anything left.
While disappearing within, the resistance to Mr. Putin’s tyranny has lost force by way of the dovish turn of the Republican Party in the U.S. It was always a reliable bulwark against communism, oppression and authoritarian rule. In its reincarnation as the Trump Party, it is now blocking a big military aid package to Ukraine, something that would have been automatically supported in its hawkish past.
As president, Mr. Trump was rather cozy with Mr. Putin, and even after the Ukraine invasion the coziness remains. Exhibit A is the former president’s threat that, if re-elected, he might allow the Kremlin leader to invade Allied countries not spending enough on defence.
His constant drumbeat about having NATO allies pony up more on defence has an ulterior motive. It is tantamount to saying that since the Americans are the biggest supplier of military hardware to Canada and NATO countries, those allies should pay more to the United States. The Pentagon’s budget is gigantic compared to all other countries, but that vast superiority hasn’t translated to victories on battlefields, there being several variables for military success beyond dollars and cents.
Mr. Putin will easily win re-election in what will disgracefully pass for an election next month. He is entrenched. He has the support, by coercion, of his people. He has the backing of megapower China and the soft touch of Mr. Trump and media megaphones such as Tucker Carlson, who in his recent interview with the Russian leader pathetically didn’t even ask him about the status of Mr. Navalny, never mind pin him down on the matter.
And so the invader of innocent countries, the murderer of political opponents, the crusher of freedoms in his homeland, has his way.
Democratization under Mr. Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin has turned under Mr. Putin to something more akin to Stalinization. The freedom genie was jammed back in the bottle, leaving one to wonder how much it was really wanted by a people lacking a strong anti-authority streak to begin with.
Lawrence Martin