Vladimir Putin's goals?
Historian draws dictatorship comparison and fears "entitlement to total rule"
Created: 08/17/2022, 04:47
By: Patrick Mayer
Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, walks up a stone staircase on the Neva River during celebrations of Russian Navy Day.
(Archive) © Dmitri Lovetsky/dpa
Does Vladimir Putin want more than Donbass or Ukraine?
A historian compares the Russian presidential system to communist dictatorships.
A colleague from Munich agrees.
Munich/Moscow - How far do Moscow ruler Vladimir Putin's goals in the Ukraine war go?
Beyond conquering the Donbass or the whole country?
What drives him to this violence?
And can today's Russia be compared to an autocratic state from a historical perspective?
Since the attack on the western neighbors, historians have been trying to name and explain Putin's actions and the political regime in the giant country with around 144 million inhabitants.
Russia-Ukraine war: What drives Moscow ruler Vladimir Putin?
The American historian and journalist Anne Applebaum now ventured an approach for an explanation.
She sees "many similarities to the fascist and communist dictatorships of the past" in Putin's political apparatus.
In her opinion, Russia is now “an autocratic system.
It is a system tailored to a single leader that has no flaws and cannot be replaced.
There is no regular successor.
There is no legitimate way to criticize him," Applebaum said in an interview with the ARD magazine "Kontraste": "And there is no way to show a contradiction.
Any form of opposition is banned in Russia today, as are all types of non-governmental organizations.”
Among other things, Applebaum is a member of the advisory board of the Center for European Policy Analysis and a member of the think tank Council on Foreign Relations.
Her scientific work on recent Eastern European history has received several awards.
The historian Martin Schulze Wessel, on the other hand, is a professor for the history of Eastern Europe at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich.
It is based on rulers such as Peter I or Catherine II, who made Russia territorially larger.
The historian Martin Schulze Wessel on Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin's goals?
Historian - Russia President sees the West as "weak"
In his view, Putin sees himself “in a clash of civilizations against the West, which he despises and fears as weak at the same time.
Above all, he fears that Western values will spill over into Ukraine.
At the same time, he is pursuing a historic mission.
It's about restoring the old splendor that he associates with the Tsarist Empire," he explained to the news portal
t-online
and said: "He is based on rulers such as Peter I or Catherine II, who made Russia territorially larger." Does the Kremlin boss want to join them?
Wessel believes so - and suspects that this is a motive on the part of the Russian President for the war of aggression against Ukraine.
According to Wessel, Putin sees this as “his historic mission.
In Russian historiography, rulers who conquered East Slavic - i.e. Belarusian and Ukrainian - territories are praised for 'collecting the Russian soil'," explains the historian from Munich: "This is the narrative framework in which Putin is acting.
A chasm opens up between claims and reality in war.
Putin wanted to bring back the glory of the Tsarist Empire, in fact he is taking Russia back to the darkest days of the 20th century.” In his view, the British
Observer
aptly described Putin's course as “Stalinization”, drawing a comparison to the former communist dictator Josef Stalin.
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Historian compares Russian invasion of Ukraine to post-Yugoslav wars
The historian Ulrich Herbert from the University of Freiburg was asked in an interview with the
taz
whether he saw plausible historical coincidences for Vladimir Putin's regime.
“Yes, like Milosevic, Serbia and the post-Yugoslav wars.
There are striking parallels that historian Marie-Janine Calic has pointed out.
Here as there, a collapsing post-communist state is transforming into a nationalist autocracy on the inside and an aggressor on the outside,” Herbert replied, recounting: “Milosevic unleashed a civil war that claimed around 150,000 victims.
He followed the Greater Serbian doctrine: Serbia is where Serbs live, with the aim of annexing large parts of the neighboring states that have become independent.”
In the video: Compact - The most important news about the Russia-Ukraine war
Why the Ukraine war?
Historian believes - Vladimir Putin wants Greater Russian Empire
This is also a justification for the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, said the Freiburg scholar: "The extreme nationalism of the Putin regime and the prospect of regaining the territories 'lost' in 1990 through the dissolution of the USSR through the creation of a Greater Russian Empire are the key features of the regime.
The regime in Russia is nationalist, revisionist and imperialist.”
What does that mean for the further course of the war?
Applebaum said on ARD: "Any attempt to end this war will only begin when Russia is defeated or even has the feeling that it has lost or could lose the war.
I don't think the war will stop until the Russians are convinced the war is lost and they are imperialist."
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