A Scholar of Stalin Discusses Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and the West – The New Yorker

Sadly, this encouraged people all up and down the regime to start stealing other peoples businesses and property. It became a kind of free-for-all. If it was good enough for Putin and his cronies, its good enough for me as the governor of Podunk province. The regime became more and more corrupt, less and less sophisticated, less and less trustworthy, less and less popular. It hollowed out. Thats what happens with dictatorships.

But such people and such a regime, it seems to me, would care above all about wealth, about the high life, about power. Why would they care about Ukraine?

Its not clear that they do. Were talking, at most, about six people, and certainly one person as the decision-maker. This is the thing about authoritarian regimes: theyre terrible at everything. They cant feed their people. They cant provide security for their people. They cant educate their people. But they only have to be good at one thing to survive. If they can deny political alternatives, if they can force all opposition into exile or prison, they can survive, no matter how incompetent or corrupt or terrible they are.

And yet, as corrupt as China is, theyve lifted tens of millions of people out of extreme poverty. Education levels are rising. The Chinese leaders credit themselves with enormous achievements.

Who did that? Did the Chinese regime do that? Or Chinese society? Lets be careful not to allow the Chinese Communists to expropriate, as it were, the hard labor, the entrepreneurialism, the dynamism of millions and millions of people in that society. You know, in the Russian case, Navalny was arrested

This is Alexey Navalny, Putins most vivid political rival, who was poisoned by the F.S.B. and is now in prison.

Yes. He was imprisoned in the run-up to the invasion of Ukraine. In retrospect, it could well be that this was a preparation for the invasion, the way that Ahmad Shah Massoud, for example, was blown up in Northern Afghanistan [by Al Qaeda] right before the Twin Towers came down.

You have the denial of alternatives, the suppression of any opposition, arrest, exile, and then you can prosper as an lite, not with economic growth but just with theft. And, in Russia, wealth comes right up out of the ground! The problem for authoritarian regimes is not economic growth. The problem is how to pay the patronage for their lites, how to keep the lites loyal, especially the security services and the upper levels of the officer corps. If money just gushes out of the ground in the form of hydrocarbons or diamonds or other minerals, the oppressors can emancipate themselves from the oppressed. The oppressors can say, we dont need you. We dont need your taxes. We dont need you to vote. We dont rely on you for anything, because we have oil and gas, palladium and titanium. They can have zero economic growth and still live very high on the hog.

Theres never a social contract in an authoritarian regime, whereby the people say, O.K., well take economic growth and a higher standard of living, and well give up our freedom to you. There is no contract. The regime doesnt provide the economic growth, and it doesnt say, Oh, you know, were in violation of our promise. We promised economic growth in exchange for freedom, so were going to resign now because we didnt fulfill the contract.

What accounts for the popularity of an authoritarian regime like Putins?

They have stories to tell. And, as you know, stories are always more powerful than secret police. Yes, they have secret police and regular police, too, and, yes, theyre serious people and theyre terrible in what theyre doing to those who are protesting the war, putting them in solitary confinement. This is a serious regime, not to be taken lightly. But they have stories. Stories about Russian greatness, about the revival of Russian greatness, about enemies at home and enemies abroad who are trying to hold Russia down. And they might be Jews or George Soros or the I.M.F. and NATO. They might be all sorts of enemies that you just pull right off the shelf, like a book.

We think of censorship as suppression of information, but censorship is also the active promotion of certain kinds of stories that will resonate with the people. The aspiration to be a great power, the aspiration to carry out a special mission in the world, the fear and suspicion that outsiders are trying to get them or bring them down: those are stories that work in Russia. Theyre not for everybody. You know many Russians who dont buy into that and know better. But the Putin version is powerful, and they promote it every chance they get.

The West has decided, for obvious reasons, not to go to war with Russia, not to have a no-fly zone. Economic sanctions have proved more comprehensive and more powerful than maybe people had anticipated some weeks ago. But it seems that the people who these are aimed at most directly will be able to absorb them.

Sanctions are a weapon that you use when you dont want to fight a hot war because youre facing a nuclear power. Its one thing to bomb countries in the Middle East that dont have nuclear weapons; its another thing to contemplate bombing Russia or China in the nuclear age. Its understandable that economic sanctions, including really powerful ones, are the tools that we reach for.

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A Scholar of Stalin Discusses Putin, Russia, Ukraine, and the West - The New Yorker