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Washington Profile
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Putin: A Man of Several Different Dimensions
An Interview with Paul Starobin, contributing editor for The Atlantic Monthly and author of “The Accidental Autocrat,” an article that appeared in the Monthly’s March edition describing the complex nature of Russia’s president.

Washington Profile: Does the international community see Vladimir Putin as a new kind of leader or just another ‘strong man’ of Russia?

Starobin: I think he’s a man of several different dimensions. He has maybe one foot in the future, one foot in the past…and actually maybe there’s a third foot. A second foot in the Soviet past and a third foot in the pre-Soviet past. So the first foot represents the fact that he’s basically a believer in the market; he doesn’t want to go back to the Soviet style of economic planning. The second thing is he is a man of the cheka, so he believes in methods of state control…And he is also a man of the orthodox faith and, in some sense, he has an idea of traditional Russia that extends before the Soviet period. I think we see this kind of elements coming back into the center of today’s Russia; nationalism, for instance. We are seeing a kind of new Russian national identity being formed. And that’s something I see Putin being a part of…

WP: What do you mean when you say a ‘new Russian identity?’

Starobin: The main thing is that post-Soviet Russia is something like 80 percent what we would call ethnic Russian. The Soviet Union when it collapsed was something like 50 percent ethnic Russian. You have a real concentration of Russians in Russia itself. It’s less multiethnic, plus you have this ongoing northern Caucasus problem; it’s not even just Chechnya, it’s the entire region. It’s sort of a Muslim issue…there’s this idea in Russia among some people of ‘Russia for the Russians.’ I don’t think Putin exactly represents this way of thinking but he has to deal with it. And in some way he manipulates it; for example, with the Rodina party you saw in the parliamentary elections… So the national idea is more of a factor now in Russian politics.

WP: Is it possible that Russia could become a more ethnically diverse country in the future, or will it continue down the path of ‘Russia for the Russians?’

Starobin: I think if the economy stays relatively level…fortunate with oil prices and so forth, then I think it won’t be like the situation in Germany during the 1930s. It was the collapse of the economy that turned people toward the fascist idea. I think if the Russian economy were to suffer and collapse, you might have a movement of this kind because the liberal idea in Russia is still suffering. It’s identified with the Yeltsin years, disorder and economic crime and oligarchs as sort of gangsters, and nobody wants this again. They want two things, and I don’t say that democracy is the first. I think they want economic security and a sort of physical order security. And then maybe after that, they want their liberty, but I think the main thing is: no more August 1998…

WP: Journalists often talk about political leaders in terms of eras. What’s your view on Putin? Will he stand out in history as having created his own era?

Starobin: Well, it’s not a question that’s been answered. He might be a transitional figure, it’s possible, a bridge from the Soviet era and the disorder of Yeltsin to something different, something new. Maybe he is a man of the past. But we don’t know this because who is the man of the future? Is there a man of the future for Russia now? If there is, I don’t think we have met him.

WP: In Russia, like in any other country, there have been many prominent historical figures, like, for instance, Peter the Great, Nicholas II and Stalin. Which one of Russia’s past leaders, in your view, would be the best for Russia today?

Starobin: That’s difficult to answer. Peter the Great is not the worst example in the sense that Russia needs to be modernized and it doesn’t have to be [modernized] in a western way, but this is where a lot of modern ideas are coming from, and Peter the Great realized that. He was at some level successful although he created the back lashes as well. He did things in an autocratic way. This is the model of the liberal autocrat… I would say that perhaps Russia needs some kind of balance between Yeltsin where things really were very disorderly, but to get carried away with the idea of the autocrat is not such a good thing either…Russia needs a new man who can be a new man of history, and I don’t know if any of the men or women of Russia’s past are appropriate. The answer is not Stalin, the answer is not really Gorbachev…Nicholas II was a kind of reactionary. So this is a problem. Russia is trying to find its way in a new world, where there are not a lot of parallels from the past that can be of great service to it.

WP: What in your view are the greatest challenges facing Russia now?

Starobin: I would distinguish between the problems of the Russian elite and those of the ordinary people. I think for the political elite, their great problem is adjusting to Russia’s current status in the world; it is barely holding on to its great power status; and except for the nuclear weapons, it would not even really be considered in this category. This is a huge psychological adjustment that they have still not made. The idea of the empire now is so reduced…Ukraine has been lost in some sense; the Baltics are part of NATO; Russian influence in Georgia is clearly not what it once was… I’m not sure for the regular people that this is their big concern. I think the problem there is more the practical problem of adjusting to a market economy; the practical problem of understanding that you cannot have all these subsidies from the times of the past…These are painful adjustments that have to be made; the shift to a more entrepreneurial society where the initiative has to come from them. The time a spent in Russia for four years from 1999 to 2003 I studied a lot of businesses and I was often told by the people at the factory floor level they are used to being told what to do, this kind of command model… very hierarchical…

WP: Historically, the perception of Russia in the West has been extremely negative. Why?

Starobin: I think there are some negative attitudes among the American political elite, unfortunately, which apply to how Russia is regarded. I think this is, to some degree, a legacy of the Cold War. I think actually in the American political elite it’s not always appreciated how far Russia has fallen. There’s a kind of fear of the ‘bear;’ I think the bear might have a hurt paw and is not doing terribly well as a geo-political actor. And the political elite in America has not quite adjusted to that. There is still a kind of Russia phobia. And it’s complex and partly influenced by the satellites that broke away…America now, I think, regards them in some ways as countries they have to protect and recruit; so you see Poland in Iraq, and so forth. I think the attitude toward Russia is not terribly hostile, but it remains suspicious.

WP: Can Russia somehow improve others’ attitudes about itself?

Starobin: [It’s] a difficult thing for Russia to influence. It just has to give people opportunities to meet with the Russians, with leaders, maybe better exchanges…People just need to better understand what the situation is now. It’s not another Cold War, even with the problems in Ukraine. This is nothing like the Cold War…

Mr. Starobin was interviewed by Aleksandr Grigoriev on March 24, 2005.