The Would Be Once and Future Tsar of Some of the Russias

I was cruising around the interwebs yesterday, doing some research on the Ukrainian Thing and The Evil That Is Putin, and I came across RT's coverage of the Inauguration of Vladimir Putin as President of the Russian Federation in 2012, and I was struck with how strangely it resembled the Coronation Pageant of the Tsars, and yet how much it differed as well.



There are movies of the Tsar Nicolas II's Coronation Pageant in the Kremlin, which utilizes some of the same locations as Vladimir's inauguration, prominently the Grand (Red) Staircase beside the Faceted Palace adjacent to the Grand Kremlin Palace where the Inauguration and parts of the Coronation Pageant took place.

The difference, however, is that in Vladimir's Pageant, he is either alone or accompanied only by Dmitri Medvedev whom he is to replace as President. He and Medvedev are driven in huge Mercedes limosines through empty Moscow streets accompanied only by guards on motorcycles and in SUVs, they walk through the squares of the Kremlin by themselves, they pass through the vast and elegant halls of the Grand Palace alone, not even their ceremonial guards accompany them. As they pass through the halls of the Palace, the crowds of well-wishers are kept behind stately velvet ropes. Vladimir doesn't notice them or acknowledge their applause. The guards pose like toy soldiers in elaborate Tsarist get ups at every gilded doorway and along all the expansive stair cases, and they cock their heads becomingly as Vladimir passes by, very much as one imagines the Tsar's ceremonial guards must have done in times past.

The inaugural ceremony itself is very simple, and it takes place on the podium where the thrones of the Tsars once were (and will be again, once this pageant is done). The ceremony includes speeches by Medvedev and Putin, an oath taken on a bound copy of the Constitution of the Federation, and the singing of the (Soviet) anthem (with new words, of course, written by the same man who wrote the Soviet anthem in 1944 during the Great Patriotic War. Continuity, you know?)

After a few handshakes, it's done. (Which, if I recall correctly -- and who knows -- was pretty much the inaugural ceremony of the Soviet era, a very simple ceremony that, however, did not include Tsarist trappings or pageantry.)

During Tsarist times, the Tsar was accompanied by hordes of family, relations, courtiers, priests, and military functionaries where ever he went. During the Coronation Pageant of Tsar Nicolas II, the Grand (Red) Staircase beside the Faceted Palace was filled with so many of these people, it is nearly impossible to pick out the Tsar if you don't know what to look for. The squares of the Kremlin were also filled with people, whereas during Vladimir's inauguration, there are only a few ceremonial troops to greet him.

By contrast to the Tsar's Pageant, the whole city of Moscow itself -- let alone the Kremlin -- is made to appear empty, as if it were a stage set, for the inauguration of Vladimir Putin. There is no one in the halls at the White House from whence he departs for the Kremlin, there are no crowds on the streets cheering the passage of his limousine, no one is assembled in Red Square to sing his praises. In fact, apart from a handful of guards and a small detachment of military personnel, Vladimir encounters no one else at all until he is well inside the Grand Palace, and he does not acknowledge those assembled in the Palace to witness his inauguration until after it is done.

So Vladimir does not exactly emulate the coronation of the Tsar, though he does utilize some of the same locations and imagery. What he does, by making the city and the Kremlin appear to be empty for this pageant, though, is psychologically more profound. He focuses the attention on him alone, rather than on the pageant of which he is a part -- as well as apart from. There are very limited aspects of Tsarist pageantry: the ceremonial guards, the crowds in the Palace, the small assemblies of troops passing in review. None of these elements of pageantry, however, is allowed to overshadow the star of the show, Putin himself. Thus, if anything, he outdoes the Tsars, not by overdoing but by underplaying the pageantry and by focusing attention on himself rather than on the pageant.

It's slick.

Until I saw it yesterday, I didn't know that's how he did it. Now that I've seen it, it seems clear enough that the idea that he is "Hitler" or "Stalin" reincarnated is even more absurd. No, this is not someone trying "desperately" to revive the Soviet Union, as I've heard so often on the teevee. He is certainly not someone seeking to conquer new territory and wipe out the subhumans for the benefit of the Race. (Good God, anyone who believes that is insane.)

No, from what I've seen of him -- admittedly superficial -- his mission is more like that of Peter the Great, to bring his country into the Modern Era, integrate it with the West to the extent that can happen without destroying the cultural and historical uniqueness of Mother Russia, maintain control of its borders and protect its people at home and nearby, and to be respected and taken "seriously" by other world leaders -- because he is worthy, not because he demands it like a petulant child.

In this respect, what he's doing with regard to Ukraine and Russia's interests therein are obviously not the acts of a "madman" "desperate" to become the New "Stalin-Hitler." Those who are saying so are looking more and more foolish. Putin, almost alone among world leaders, comes across as resolute and responsible, somewhat weary to be sure, but not at all the "madman" acting out of "desperation" he is made out to be by the incessant and relentless anti-Putin/anti-Russia propaganda machine. No wonder he is regarded so highly by Russians themselves, and no wonder he seems to have earned the respect of Western European leaders, though some still wish to rail against him and Russia (Cameron, Hague, eg).

This is not meant to express any love for Putin or his ways and means. Rather, I'm trying to inject some reality into the consideration of the Ukrainian situation and its relationship to today's Russia -- instead of focusing on some image of the Soviet Union and Stalin-Hitler which seems to be dominating the media in the US and elsewhere.

Even Bob Gates on Charlie Rose was saying in essence, "Chill the fuck out." What we may think is going on is probably not what's going on, and Russia has valid national interests in Ukraine and Crimea and all along its borders. To assert otherwise, as some in the American and European power elites have attempted to do, is what's "crazy," not Putin. Figure out what Russia's real national interests are. Don't just dismiss them as if this were some bad movie replay of the Cold War.

Of course the Ukrainian People are caught in the middle, benefiting not at all from any of it. When will someone think of their welfare? Or are they simply disposable?

If only the Tsar knew....!

(Money quote: As always, the Tsar has known, and approved, all along...)

Stalin-Hitler!!!!®©@™

I'm just a bit too young to recall either Hitler or Stalin in the flesh -- Hilter, of course, didn't survive WWII ("they say"/s) and Stalin was dead before we got us a teevee at our house, so the only time I saw images of them was in the newsreels and the propaganda movies -- which were ubiquitous in those days.

I've written many times about American propaganda in the 1950s-- primarily anti-Communist/anti-Soviet -- but it's hard to imagine what it was like if you weren't there or don't recall living through it. People who have no memories of those days like to think we're living in the most oppressive and propagandized era of American history, and it's just not so. It's laughable, really. Practically every previous era in American history has been worse when it comes to matters of oppression, conformity and propaganda.

That's as may be, and it doesn't mean we are not living in a heavily propagandized, surveilled and controlled society. Of course we are. The point is that, as bad as it is, this isn't the worst of all possible worlds, and it isn't in part because we have so many informational tools -- and the freedom to use them -- which we didn't have in the 1950s and early 60s, and if we have any critical thinking skills at all (sometimes I wonder), we are far more likely to recognize propaganda as such now than we were able to then.

The question is whether we can think critically any more and whether we can ask the right questions when we question authority.

Since the advent of the horror show called The Great and Glorious War on Terror(ism), Americans have once again been immersed in propaganda which has involved some of the most egregious lies and deceptions we've been subjected to in generations, lies and deceptions leading directly to international catastrophe after catastrophe.

One of the recurring features of this propaganda campaign is the declaration that this or that dictator who must be removed is the modern equivalent of Hitler or Stalin, sometimes elided into a hybrid creature: "Hitler-Stalin" or "Stalin-Hitler" depending on whether the Evil One is more Nazi or more Communist.

Right now, the prime candidate to be the modern "Stalin-Hitler" is Vladimir Putin, "dictator" of Russia, aka the "Soviet Union." It's hilarious in some ways. I saw Ray McGovern defending Putin and Russia on DN! last night, but referring to the "Soviet Union" quite unconsciously as if it still existed. People of a certain age do this all the time. They cannot let go of what they were socialized and propagandized to believe in earlier times, and the notion that there is no Soviet Union any more doesn't compute. McGovern ran the Soviet Desk at the CIA under Bush the Old, and even though he didn't see the Soviets as enemies then and he doesn't see Putin as an enemy now, he's unable to let go of the "Soviet" images he was immersed in when time was.

Many anti-Putinists and anti-Russian commentators, especially on the so-called "left," seem more than eager to pretend that Putin is a reincarnation of Stalin who wants to re-constitute the Soviet Union entire or in stages, and his "invasion" of Ukraine is "only the first step." Well except for the others. Before this one. That is.

In fact, there was a fellow droning on and on about this very thing while McGovern was trying to figure out what's wrong with saying "Soviet Union." It was funny and sad at the same time.

As far as I'm concerned, Putin is not Stalin and he's certainly not Hitler. The comparisons and conflations are stupid. The Soviet Union no longer exists, it's gone, and there is no way I know of to reconstitute it, especially given the fact that a) Russia today is far more in sync with its Tsarist predecessor, and b) it is suffused with religious nonsense.

They hide Lenin's Tomb during parades in Red Square, as if the Communist era never happened. That seventy years has been largely erased from Russian history -- except when it is convenient to recall it, typically as something too horrible to believe. There is no going back to Stalin, let alone Lenin. The idea is absurd.

Instead, if anything is a revival in Russia, it is a semblance of the last phase of Tsarist rule, say from Alexander III through Nicolas II as if, somehow, WWI had never happened and the Revolutions that followed had not succeeded.

That's what I see in Russian culture and psychology today. It's imperial, yes, but not at all what our propaganda interests want us to believe it is. It's not Soviet, it's not Fascist. It's royal and imperial, something we haven't seen on the world stage since the collapse of the British Empire.