When you were busy celebrating (or not) the turn of the millennium on December 31, 1999, and concerned that the year 2000 was going to bring about the complete destruction of all of our time sensitive technology systems, Boris Yeltsin was resigning from the presidency of Russia, and handing the country over to one Vladimir Putin. I don’t remember ever reading, or seeing clips from, Yeltsin’s resignation speech, but it included the following: “Russia has to enter the new millennium with new politicians, with new faces, with clever, strong and energetic people. And we, who were in power for many years, must leave….” He then apologized to those who “believed that we could, in one big swing, in one thrust, jump from a gray, totalitarian past into a bright, rich and energized future. I believed this myself…..it seemed one thrust, and we would do it. We did not…..I’ve done all I could. A new generation is coming to replace me….a generation of those who can do more and better.”

This excerpt (obviously translated from the Russian) was quoted by Arkady Ostrovsky, now a columnist for “The Economist”, a Russian born journalist, in his 2015 book, The Invention of Russia, which I highly recommend. And it clearly shows the frustration of the outgoing, alcoholic, quite popular first President of the Russian Federation after his attempt to create capitalism and a western-oriented society in Russia was clearly on the road to failure. And, after he was replaced by the quiet, KGB trained Putin, even an attempt to create a Russia that looks like the countries of western and now central Europe was abandoned.

Ostrovsky’s book, like so many others, attempts to tell the story of what happened, and it succeeds by looking at the passing events from a Russia-oriented viewpoint, but explained to a western-oriented readership.

Obviously, I can’t tell you everything that is in the book. You will have to read it if you want even to come close to that. But, a broad outline might be possible. Ostrovsky starts with the death of Stalin and the immediate cessation of the type of dictatorship Stalin ran – the terror, the purges, the sporadic attempts, often successful, to push Russian science and industry forward, the famines, the strict collectivization, the tragedies of World War II. We know that Stalin was succeeded by Malenkov and then by Khrushchev and others, but what I had never thought about was that these individuals were not inevitable choices, nor unanimous ones. That there was a large amount of behind the scenes debate and political jockeying, trying to figure out who should come next, and what should be the next stage in the life of the Soviet Union. He explained how, within this in-fighting, hung the specter of Stalin, his strength, the fear he engendered, but also how on some level he held the respect of everyone engaged in this secret debate, as all of the owed their position to Stalin’s favor. And the true shock when Khrushchev, at the Party Congress in 1956, gave his secret (but leaked) speech on the vices of Joseph Stalin, and their deleterious effect on the Soviet Union.

Things changed then. No more Stalinist terror. But the Soviet Union remained the Soviet Union, under ambitious and charismatic (Khrushchev), or ambitious and bureaucratic (Brezhnev) leadership, until it was clear that things were heading in the wrong direction, that the economy was faltering, the satellites getting more and more restless, and the West was moving ahead further and further.

Then came Gorbachev. Gorbachev was right about some things and wrong about other things. Sadly, he was more wrong than right. He was right in thinking that change must happen, that the USSR was on a downward trajectory, falling further and further behind the West, and that it couldn’t be corrected without massive changes. He was probably right when he said that one of the changes had to be the opening up of the political system. He was wrong thinking, as a life long Communist, that you could open up the political system and remain a Communist or Socialist country, that the majority of the citizens would agree with him that holding the economic course was crucial. And he was wrong in not seeing that so many, or all, of the Soviet Republics would try to break away from control by the Russian Federation. Whether he could have stopped the collapse of the USSR is a question; it is a fact that he didn’t try very hard and that, once he made clear that military action to stop an SSR from exiting was off the table, there was no stopping the breakup.

Regarding Putin, Ostrovsky makes a number of points. First, that Putin was relatively unknown and therefore not feared, particularly when he came with the imprimatur of Yeltsin. Second, that although Putin had a KGB background, no one really focused on that; times were changing and that just didn’t seem to be very important. Thirdly, that as the opposite of the extrovert Yeltsin, Putin was not only very quiet, but he was quite secretive; he was very good at making people think he agreed with them at first, he was very good at playing a role.

Ostrovsky of course also talks about the evident failures in bringing capitalism to Russia, something that can be ascribed largely to the eight years Yeltsin was in power. As you can see from the quote at the start of this post, Yeltsin was a Westerner at heart, and he thought the transition to capitalism would be relatively easy and relatively smooth. He did not recognize (and maybe his much too frequent alcoholic state had something to do with this) how a small group of ambitious men (all men, to be sure) were able to wrest control (sometimes with Yeltsin’s help) of the major industries in the country, how the “voucher” program which distributed putative shares to all Russian citizens to be invested in business enterprises didn’t benefit the shareholders, but simply gave this small group of would be oligarchs another target for their greed, leaving common citizens without any share in the new capitalistic economy.

The Oligarchs became all powerful (until one or another of them lost favor under Putin) and this power not only extended to their business activity, but to involvement in and control of Russian media, especially all-influential Russian television. He describes times when Oligarchs battled each other, and times when they cooperated, each time having great influence over Russian policy, but always in coordination with Putin. Once the system was established, cooperation between Oligarchs and government was needed to keep the country again from going on the path to self-destruction.

Ostrovsky also discusses the typical Russian views on various topics and how they influence and help Putin. Certainly there were Russians who became totally Western and globalist in their thinking, but they were far from the majority, and many of them have now left Russia behind for greener pastures elsewhere. Most Russians, though, are not globalists; they have no experience as globalists. They are proud Russians. And for them what is important is that Russia be a powerful, independent country, acknowledged as such throughout the world. And they generally feel that the only way for this to be accomplished is for the Russian “state” to be powerful. Yes, Ostrovsky says, Russian people like freedom, but if they had to choose between a powerful state and freedom, the powerful state would win hands down.

Further, the Russians have never forgiven Gorbachev for what they believe is the destruction of the USSR (and they haven’t forgiven Khrushchev for his 1954 “gift” of Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR). His failure to hold the Soviet Union together made him as unpopular in Russia as it made him popular in the former Soviet republics and in the West.

These observations of Ostrovsky, assuming they are accurate ones, go a long way to explain Putin’s actions, both domestically and with regard to Ukraine (and perhaps other former SSRs – at least those with Slavic majorities). They go to explain the internal support Putin gets at home, how is personal power is not begrudged, how his aggressiveness is tolerated, and how his fear of being subordinate in power to the United States and a united Europe is shared by many.

Ostrovsky talks about the “fake” elections, about the continuing role of the media, no longer Oligarch controlled, but controlled by the Kremlin, giving its audience the news “it needs to know”, helping create support for administration goals. And he talks about the original entrance of Russia in the Ukraine into Crimea and the Donbass region, once the pro-Russian president of Ukraine was deposed. To Putin, all of that was a Western operation designed solely to make Russia look weak and evil, requiring Russia to respond as it did. Want proof? Look at Russian TV

For this reason and others, The Invention of Russia is, I believe, well worth a read.