According to Putin propaganda, which is becoming more absurd by the day, the ‘special military operation’ revolves around the ‘denazification’ of Ukraine, which in the meantime necessitates the total destruction of the population, because now Israel, as the anti-Semitic heir of the Jew Hitler, is also behind the Zelensky regime installed in Kyiv by the CIA plutocrats. I hope that this sums up somewhat fairly – which is different from: understandably – what currently appears to have become Putin’s Kremlin’s official view of world history, as articulated by His Masters Voice, His Excellency Minister Lavrov.
Tomorrow, of course, it may turn out to be slightly different, if, say – I’m just taking a few – Orbán decides that for his future it would be a bit more convenient not to completely enclose with Putin, Erdogan takes more distance or Xi with a view to in the western sales market, which is important for China, will be somewhat more compromised. Then in Moscow the Habsburgs, Turks or Mongols are probably referred to as the diabolical historical enemy of Mother Russia.
And let us not forget the Vatican, should Pope Francis again express strong criticism of Putin’s butchery practices: the Catholic Church has always been able to push the hysteria among the Orthodox to unprecedented heights, because since the schism of 1054, Rome has been regarded as the greatest danger that has had a hand in all anti-Russian plots for a thousand years.
Favor of the dictator
Lavrov, once a respected diplomat, has, in order to remain in the favor of the dictator, landed on the path of lies that more than three quarters of a century ago many formerly respected German diplomats also walked by acting without fail as Hitler’s talking phone.
In any case, the parallels between Putin and Hitler are becoming clearer by the day: starting a war out of misunderstood delusions of grandeur, coupled with the willingness to wipe out an entire people if this proves to stand in the way of that ambition, leading to increasing radicalization.
Not only has there not been such a brazen raid on a sovereign country in Europe since Hitler; the barbarian occupation terror, deliberately instigated from above, to crush all resistance, also comes straight from the Nazi school. That is precisely what makes the Russian ‘denazification’ discourse so brutal. But only the big lie is believed, as Goebbels already knew.
No less than Hitler’s Nazi regime, Putin’s is also based on such big lies, in the concrete case of the invasion of 1939 and 2022: that it is not Germany or Russia, but Poland and Ukraine respectively, that are the aggressor. The Russian people have been poisoned from the Kremlin for years with the message that Ukraine is a threat.
Indeed, in one respect it is: for the power of the Putin clique in the Kremlin itself. The fact that Ukraine, after an almost equal start with the self-dissolution of the Soviet Union, has gradually developed in a democratic direction, and Russia in a dictatorial direction, also makes it clear to the Russians that an alternative may also be possible for their dictatorship.
An exemplary role
The latter precisely because of the perceived cultural affinity, where the Baltic trio is considered too ‘different’ to automatically fulfill a convincing exemplary role in the discourse of Russian opponents. That sense of kinship has been emphasized for years by Putin to legitimize the claim that Ukraine does not belong to the West, but to Russia, and now, to forcibly “bring Ukraine back” to the camp in which it belongs. The dangerous alternative must be destroyed.
A successful democratic Ukraine is not only a threat to Putin’s domestic position of power. It also limits – and this is the second threat – Moscow’s radius of action, because such a democratic Ukraine would prefer to belong to the European rather than the Russian sphere of influence, as is also apparent from Zelensky’s aspiration to become an EU member. Russia is becoming increasingly isolated on the west side, after the old Soviet satellite states, and then the Balts had made the switch. It becomes a front state itself and loses its old buffer.
Russia itself could have avoided this danger of isolation if the elite after 1989 had reached the same conclusion that the Germans were forced to reach after 1945: namely, the need to become a decent country from now on. Only that would have meant that that elite had had to give up many of its privileges, and that sacrifice was too great: not the interest of Russia or the Russian people, but the self-interest for the KGB kongsie of old nomenklatura and new oligarchy was paramount.
Putin’s seizure of power thus went in the opposite direction – and it is in this direction that Russia itself has alienated potential partners. The rot is also too deep in Russia to be able to disinfect the country from the outside, and that will also make a denazification of Russia after Putin’s fall much more difficult than that of Germany after Hitler’s fall at the time.
The fact that the Kremlin continues to choke on its denazification myth is logical for one reason: it has no alternative to legitimize its own aggression. The struggle against Hitler is about the only thing Russia has done politically for the past thousand years and of which it can be proud. The Russian political history offers little else than oppression and aggression.
Thomas von der Dunk is a cultural historian.