In his recent 17 page (in Russian) diatribe about Ukraine and Russia, Putin makes a most telling introduction: " I emphasize again that Ukraine for us … is not simply a neighboring country. It is an inalienable part of our own history, culture, and spiritual space (italics mine). These are our comrades. Those close to us, among whom are not just colleagues, friends, formerly people who served together, but also relatives, and people connected to us by blood and family ties.” (my translation)
In the piece, Putin emphasizes what he sees as an aberration of history, promulgated by Vladimir Lenin, who instituted his brand of Marxism, strangely nationalistic, to replace Orthodoxy. Consequently, Lenin promoted an independent Ukraine and thus planted the seeds of separatism, an action that Putin asserts is the source of all the problems between Russia and Ukraine in the present day. This castigation of Lenin would be an unheard of heresy in the Soviet Union and is an indication that Putin’s model is the restoration of the old Russian empire based on Nikolai I’s tripartite formula of Orthodoxy, autocracy and Russian nationalism.
Soviet scholars (Yuri Lotman and Gleb Uspensky) have pointed out that the Russian consciousness tends to think in binary oppositions. They attribute this tendency to Russian Orthodox dogma, which says that there is a heaven or hell but no intermediate purgatory. Within this set of binaries, the Russian Orthodox belief system proclaims a God that exemplifies strength through unity and order.
Opposite to this is individuality and freedom, which exhibit a separation from God and inevitably result in a weakness of chaos. This “splintering” of society and nations (as Dostoevsky referred to it) is a condition that the Slavophiles of the 1840s attributed to European societies and would be the cause of “fall” and disintegration of the West.
This concept has been rekindled by Putin whose oration to the Russian people (and the West) reveals his binary thought process and emphasizes his belief that Orthodox unity and strength must prevail against the chaos of Western and individualism and separatism. Ukraine has fallen into the Western world and it must return to the fold and be an integral part of the Russian “spiritual space” where it historically belongs.
Gene Fitzgerald, Emeritus Professor of Russian Lang. Lit. And Culture, U. of U., Salt Lake City
