14.06.2016 Author: Phil Butler
What If
Vladimir Putin Does Know a “Third Way” for Society?
Column: Politics
Region: Russia in the World
Vladimir
Putin saved Russia from the scavengers of the Yeltsin era. What’s more, he’s
fundamentally re-forming the world’s biggest country in ways few understand.
Unfortunately, Russia has enemies bitterly opposed to the idea of Russians
taking a leadership role in the world once again. While think tanks and “new
world” evangelists in the west promise change and progress, Putin and his
colleagues are at work, resolutely forging a new Russia.
Many
people believe that Russia under Putin is a totalitarian regime. Meanwhile,
fanatical followers of the Russian president defend his moves as an effort to
hammer out some pseudo-American form of democracy. But neither of these
characterizations of Putin are accurate. Many have sought to study Putin, while
simply applying their own ideologies either “for or against” what they believe
Putin is. The reality is, there is a “third way” of reshaping Russia’s future.
It is abundantly clear that Putin, by far the best read leader in the world, is
forging a new Russia politic, derived largely from the teachings of the Russian
religious an political philosopher, Ivan Ilyin.
The
Spirit of Law
Most
reading this will not be familiar, but Ilyin’s ideas on the “conscience of law”
were seeming logic, but utter genius. His belief that the need for people to
understand laws in order to validate a legal society, they now reverberate in
the civil uneasiness that prevails today, and especially in the so-called
“west”. Ultra-liberalism, and the fuel of ultra-capitalistic trends as we see
gripping the United States, would for Ilyin signal an apocalypse. There is no
arguing that the law of and for any people, has to be understood in order to
stand. Without delving deeply into Ilyin’s theories, the philosopher believed
that “the people” can never identify with be part of “the system” under rigid
democratic forms of government. In contrast, Ilyin believed the right monarchy
tends to unite people to identify the state as “family”. Interestingly, Ilyin’s
being a monarchist mimics some of the founding fathers of the United States, in
that the values he espoused were based on religious piety and the family.
If we
look down into the crevasse in between the forward ideals of Vladimir Putin,
and America’s President Barack Obama, we can readily see Ilyin’s notions at
work. Obama’s America, as liberal as any government in history, is on a
collision course with deconstruct. America values today are naïve,
irresponsible, and destructive of everything Americans have stood for for
generations. Family is only a word, religion is worn like a badge of shame, and
a free lunch ticket has been issued for conscience. Laws in America are changed
at the whim of a special interest. Conservative people there hold back their
fear the United States is becoming a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah,
and only the neocons truly believe government is for them. Misunderstanding
their law, precedence, and its own governing principles, Americans do not even
understand this disintegration. Similarly, Russians do not yet grasp what Putin
and his fellows are up to. Somehow, they trust to be led though, and not
because they are complacent like Americans.
“I have
spent all my life under a Communist regime, and I will tell you that a society
without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed. But a society with
no other scale but the legal one is not quite worthy of man either.” –
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn -
Machiavelli
Knew All Along
I don’t
want to dig too deeply into Mr. Putin’s passion for the study of Ilyin, or
Vladimir Solovyov, or Nikolai Berdyaev, or even Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, but
these idealists’ brilliance are integrated into who the Russian president is.
More importantly, a “third way” of government is the goal Putin, Medvedev, and
even the powerful oligarchs of Russia seem bent on. In order to see this, one
has to realize the Russia that Vladimir Putin rescued from dissolution. In his
characterization of Putin, the article“Vladimir Putin – The Prince”,
Christopher Caldwell frames perfectly Mr. Putin’s Russia today:
“Had
Russia been led by someone steelier than Mikhail Gorbachev when falling oil
prices drove it into crisis in the 1980s, the collapse of Communism “might have
happened only two or three decades later in a world situation quite different
from the one in 1991.” Putin’s Russia is a system of “sovereign democracy”
moored between Orthodox Christianity and Machiavellian realism.”
Caldwell
“nails Putin” in his review of “The New Tsar: The Rise and Reign of Vladimir
Putin”, by Steven Lee Myers, and “Putinism:
Russia and Its Future with the Wes”t, by Walter
Laqueur . Or I should say, Meyers and Laqueur collectively understand
Russia’s leader. What we see going on in Russia, in the world, is a
metamorphosis. Those who examine Putin or Russia, with a mindset fixed on “what
is”, have no understanding of Putin at all. In order to fully understand
Putin’s “end game” here, researches need to see the transformation as if from a
train window, not from the 91st floor office window of study.
I found
a reference to the “third way” in the book “Metaphor and Gender in Business
Media Discourse: A Critical Cognitive Study”, by V. Koller this morning. While
I can assure you it is not light reading, it does shed light on the realm of
study Putin and Kremlin officers are engaged in. The author analyses cognitive
change within the context of business and societal strategies, and even Sun
Tzu’s war arts. My point here is, while western mainstream media parrots
simplistic Russophobic chatter, Putin’s administration has set course toward
real change. The Hillary Clintons of the world compare Putin to Hitler and
Stalin, and try and strike fear into people over a new Soviet Empire.
Meanwhile, the real ideologies are far from fascism, totalitarianism, or even
formal democracy as the neocons running the show in America define it. So the
overriding question; “What is Putin’s third way”, is never asked, it’s never
even hinted at. Instead, independent journalists like me are often cajoled into
studying the so-called “New World Order”, the George Soros, David Rockefeller,
and Jacob Rothschild machinations. When in truth the role of these men is
simply part of a mechanism of decaying imperialism. The beliefs of these people
are as archaic and juvenile, as those of the Soviet system of things, or of
Rome itself. The fact that westerners “believe” in democracy at all, is proof
enough that failed systems die hard. Understanding Putin is impossible, for
people in the other worldly view. This is evidence in a New York Times piece by
David Brooks from 2014. “Putin Can’t
Stop” shows us the faces behind western media and
hegemony. Brooks mimics the “think tank” view with:
“To
enter into the world of Putin’s favorite philosophers is to enter a world full
of melodrama, mysticism and grandiose eschatological visions.”
Brooks
is not unlike other self proclaimed conservatives in the United States, for he
appears to live under the cloud of his own delusions, of a kind of ideological
kinship with founding father, Alexander Hamilton. I call his ideas delusions
for the simple reason, that Alexander Hamilton was closer ideologically to
Vladimir Putin than anyone in the United States system of governing. Brooks has
to know this, so making the mysterious villain of Putin must have other
consequences. There is no mysticism in Russian ideals at the moment, which is
unless you are an atheist or Satan worshipper.
Like
Alexander Hamilton and others “monarchists” of that time, Putin has to wrestle
with the dilemma confronting his Russian people. Democracy clearly will not
work, for the world is lucky to still be partially in tact, even despite Wall
Street and Arab Spring melting points. Debt creation and well oiled printing
presses at the US treasury cannot be “the way”. Just as certainly as believers
in God will eventually rebel against agnosticism or devil worship, the people
will one day soon abandon failed economics models. Putin and his advisers know
this. We all do. Paul Craig Roberts’ proclamation that we have entered the“Looting Stage
of Capitalism”, is the most poignant evangelical point for 2016. To
synthesize his comments:
“Everywhere
in the Western world a variety of measures, both corporate, and governmental,
have resulted in the stagnation of income growth. In order to continue to
report profits, mega-banks and global corporations have turned to looting.”
So,
Putin’s Russia, even China and the other BRICS, are gravitating away from the
rapidly disintegrating capitalist/democratic experiment. And this is the root
of today’s crises, but there is something more, and the “third way” is both
emblematic in humanity’s legacy, and from within an ethereal context. “Spirit”
and enlightenment are a component of Putin’s “New Russia”. And to grow such a
construct will require a Machiavellian heart, only directed for a brave cause.
Unlike his western counterparts, Putin is a religious man, bent on defending
Orthodoxy, as well as “third way” ideas.
Against
an Illegitimate Enlightenment
Just as
the European Enlightenment undermined ideas of morality, and the notion of
“Lucifer”, the new age ultra-liberalized western world has been on a mission to
revamp spirituality and morals. The idea “everything is alright if it feels
good”, has been fed the intravenous drug of public acquiescence, especially in
America. But the reality of human spirituality cannot be legislated out, media
cannot propagandize an ancient tenant out of our systems. Just as 19th Century
artists recollected the mysteries of God and the Devil as a counterinsurgency
against the theoretical justification of evil’s passing, so too Putin and
modern players rekindle our imaginations. Excuse my metaphors again, but our
spirituality has been under assault for decades now. To quote Mark Hackard’s translation of
an essay entitled “IVAN ILYIN: ON THE DEVIL”, by Ivan Ilyin :
“There
appears the demonism of doubt; negation; pride; rebellion; disappointment;
bitterness; melancholy; contempt; egoism, and even boredom.”
And
isn’t this the “demonism” that now grips the western world? One does not have
to be a philosopher to see, the New World Order is a very old order.
Contemptuously, New York Times authors mimic the minions of banished ruthless
Russian oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky. Anyone observing these people can,
with a silent prayer to the almighty, lift the veil on a real Lucifer among us.
But the Biblical allusions do not stop at spotlighting soulless leaders and
societies. Ilyin continues,
reflecting on how the waiting word is drawn toward demonic idols.
“Byron;
Goethe; Schiller; Chamisso; Hoffman; Franz
Liszt; and later Stuck,
Baudelaire, and others display an entire gallery of demons or demonic men and
moods. Moreover, these demons are intelligent, witty, educated, ingenious, and
temperamental, in a word, charming and evoking sympathy, while
demonic men are the incarnation of “world-angst,” “noble protest,” and some
“higher revolutionary consciousness.”
The
author opens for me, a window into the back lot of some Hollywood studio lunch
counter, where celebrities chat glowingly on their own leftist melancholy. They
are idiots in the court of lunatics, led by a whore named Lucifera,
the anti-heroine of the Italian comic book. Goodness is turned upside down, and
it’s clear humanity needs to escape the cycle. What humankind is experiencing
today is one segment traversing from demonic self satisfaction into utter
Satanism, confronted by men like Putin who would assert another regime. As
conspiratorial and medieval as this may sound, the world has traversed this
territory many times before. Now the stage is set. Now we can understand if we
watch.
“Satanic
men are recognized by their eyes, by their smile, their voice, their words and
deeds. We, Russians, have seen them alive and in the flesh; we know who
they are and whence they come. Yet foreigners up to this point have
not understood this phenomenon and do not want to understand it, for it
brings them judgment and condemnation.” Ivan Ilyin (1883-1954)
Interestingly,
amazingly, “the third way” is a mirror image of what American neocons express.
IIyin’s third choice, Putin’s, is the only logical solution for government for
and by a people. Classic liberalism, being no more valid that the failed
conservative manifestations, leaves us with this “third way”, which is a more
flexible, if complex model. In another ironic twist, both east and west have
already visited IIyin’s concepts, if only briefly. Russia first ventured into
“third way” concepts before the October Revolution, while western democracies
toyed with, then developed past a balanced ideal. Russia revolted out of “the
way”, and America sprinted “past” the solution to the problem of governance.
The “third way” reconciled good and evil, and the rational versus the irrational.
What New York Times scholars write off as hocus pocus mysticism is in reality
reconciliation. In short, Putin and his experiments may provide the answer. For
example, author Alexander V. Zenkovsky attempts to reconcile mystical realism
as:
“Acknowledging
all the reality of empirical world, but also another reality behind; the two
domains of being are real but not equal: empirical being can only exist for the
account of mystic reality.”
The “Oh
So” Peculiar Russian Way (It may be “the” way)
As to
Mr. Putin’s enacting this “third way” liberalization of Russia, his nation’s
peculiarities and history, the whole (Russian idea), demands a more flexible
system for realizing the application of liberal principles. This is something
Putin has tried to explain to westerners many times, but which is also
purposefully overlooked. This Foreign
Affairs piece lets us know western think tanks fully
understand Putin’s strategies, but choose to convolute them for obvious
ideological reasons. Author Anton Barabashin is the Managing Editor of The
Intersection Project, which partners with the Centre for Polish-Russian
Dialogue and Understanding, which is affiliated with George Soros’ Open Society
Foundations etc. And his go-author Hannah Thoburn is an Adjunct Fellow at the
Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C., which is closely tied to the Rockefeller
family (see “Agency of Fear: Opiates and Political Power in America”, by
Edward Jay Epstein). Make no mistake about it, everything is being thrown
against the notion of change, by western institutions vested in their own
logic. We cannot expect western capitalistic democracy to willingly deconstruct
its ideals, now can we?
So, the
political immaturity of Russia, is reflected in the metamorphism we see Russia
undergoing now. It is this “immaturity”, and the necessary experimentation by
Putin, which present the biggest hurdles, and greatest potential for Russia and
the world. Yes, Putin’s government takes on the cloak of totalitarianism at
times, but this is a transient necessity. Remember, Russia is as much a
“process” as a thing. In my view, we shall soon see “Putin’s philospher’s”
ideas transform not only Russia, but the world system we currently live under
now. In fact this is already apparent, looking at how pitifully ineffective
leaders in the west have been in curtailing Russia’s progress. Sanctions don’t
work, vilifying Putin only makes him more loved, NATO cannot advance, Soros and
the others are being kicked from Russia, at every turn the inevitable gets more
real.
Finally,
IIyin wrestled with the idea liberal values could be reconciled with the public
will via another approach. The civil core of society needs the lawful
understanding of an authoritarian construct, while at the same time spiritual
and other freedoms finalize the Utopia. Put simply, Russia is in the perfect
position to experiment with a sustainable model for humanity. And Putin is the perfect
blacksmith for forging something new and improved. The people must really
understand any system, in order to trust the system. And the system cannot
survive in the chaos of ramped self interest. Communism and socialism won’t do,
and neither will dictatorships, or the capitalist devil. I say we give Putin a
chance. If there is no “third way”, we can always restart Babylon. It’s been
done 100 times before.
Phil
Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert
on Eastern Europe, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern
Outlook”.
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