What aspirations does Vladimir Putin, leader, president of the Russian Federation have? For himself? For his country, Russia?
Of late, the world and its democratic peoples and their leaders worry that President Putin is at heart an autocrat. Recent actions taken by him cause democrats and human rights advocates alike great concern. He amasses great power under central authority. He seems to exercise this authority efficiently. He is generally popular with voters.
On the cover of The Ukrainian Observer, Vladimir Putin looks into the mirror and the likeness refracted is that of Peter Alekseevich, known to history as Peter the Great. What thought lay behind the idea for this cartoon cover? What message did we intend to communicate through it?
Clearly, one might conclude that the creator perceives the president to have high thoughts of himself. Why, the little man sees himself as a man like the Great Peter. Peter Alekseevich, the direct inheritor (after approximately 80 years) from the first Romanov, Mikhail, whose selection as tsar began a new Russian dynasty. Peter I, whose reign begot the age of Imperial Russia. Peter I, who at Poltava in 1709 defeated the young King Charles XII of Sweden and caused all of Europe to take notice of a new Eurasian power to the east, then commonly referred to as Muscovy. Peter the first who informed Europe and the world that Muscovy was henceforth to be called by its proper name, Russia. Peter I, who at the beginning of his reign was master of a large, though backward, Eurasian fiefdom, and who, by its end in 1725, was tsar of an empire that was recognized as
a European power.
So perhaps the creator of our cartoon cover means to portray Mr. Putin in an unfavorable light. Seeing himself as the Great Peter. To expose Putin to ridicule. Here, a man with a complex? One with delusions of grandeur, a megalomaniac, perhaps?
But, this is not the intent of the caricature at all. I know this for
a fact. How do I know this? Because, I asked that person, and she told me. Again then, what intent? What meaning?
The creator responds: "Simply to cause thought. Thought and historical comparison." And further she said: "In order to attempt to find answers to the questions you raised in the first paragraph of your article."
And from there we proceeded to serious discussion.
"Consider," she said, "the period of Russian history and its peoples is long. Forever, it seems there has been expansion of territory. A search for security lay in that quest. The need for borders, routes to the sea, a stopping point to be found where, finally, there was security."
"Consider also," she continued, "the people, historically mostly poor, backward and in a state which can be said of a large portion of them in slavery, or near thereto, serfdom. These people, the mass of them went from paganism to followers of a religion that taught good principals and bred virtue and goodness, but also departed possibly little from its predecessor in that the worship of icons and the concept of following were paramount. They were little affected by the Reformation. Likewise, time and circumstance left them little affected by the Renaissance and only their scholars and aristocrats knew of the Enlightenment."
"Consider too, in their lands and estates, the people participated more as product in their association and little as owners with serious proprietary interests. At least no rights that were well protected by any form of legal evidence. No, mostly through time they participated at the will and on the sufferance of others higher born."
"And this too: Where was there a Magna Carta, or anything like it? The feudal period for the mass of people never evolved as it did further west."
"But, forever, the aristocrats, the gentry...well, they looked out for themselves. One leader, the tsar, was the ruler. He or she decided all. The tsar was, or became, both political and religious leader. For the masses, the religious aspects were particularly important in history. For their own purposes, to keep order among the nobility, to keep the faith of the people, and to maintain order, peace and security, the tsars served all."
"One may argue the time, the century it began, whether the sixteenth or seventeenth century or even later, when the concept of nationhood began to meld in history. Before nations there were empires, and before that, people and tribes and places. During the long period of empire, a large part of the people constituting the subjects of any particular empire were largely disassociated with it. So families and tribes and other relations subsisted as they came first under one empire and then another. The age of nations brought forth the concept of individual citizenship and loyalty unknown in prior history, save a few examples not really comparable such as the Roman citizen."
Here she stops briefly, seeming to ponder further, then asks reflectively, "Is it possible to think of Russia as other than an empire? Russia, a country, the leading country of an empire, yes, but a nation? Itself? Only?"
Then, "[P]erhaps, the revolution and the reign of the communists was but a brief interlude... a pause, in the long history of the Russian people."
"But I say the Russian people. The empire was more than its Slavic people. It is in my mind Turkic and Asian and perhaps more. There were, are, all a part of that entity...the empire."
"You know," she said, "maybe the only part that's not really a part is the part gone now. The unwieldy part held together after The Great Patriotic War and that became a part of the Warsaw Pact? That part is more European. Peter I and those that followed wanted to be influential and powerful in Europe but, maybe, they never became Europeans?"
She sits up abruptly. Pauses. And she begins again, more strongly: "But Ukraine and Byelorussia, they are Russian. Ukraine is not Russia, that book. I haven't read it. The question raised is wrong. The question is this. Is Russia Russia without Ukraine? Is there valid empire without its very beginning? Is Kyiv not the mother of Russia? Hasn't the left bank been Russian territory physically since Periaslav? Less than a hundred years later almost all of present-day Ukraine but for Galicia was empire. Three hundred and fifty and two hundred and fifty years! How old is the United States? Italy, Germany, as countries, nations?"
"A people look for security. They seek order in their lives. They desire peace, leadership, and some direction. And they want to belong to something. A large prosperous, dynamic country. One respected in the world. An empire..."
The creator trails off, her voice fades...the image in the mirror begins to disappear. I had thought her a muse.
In the distance... looming larger... ever larger... I see Vladimir Putin.
Glen Willard is editor-in-chief of The Ukrainian Observer.
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