Comparisons of Putin to Regan and to de Gaulle

BZM · #1 (**permalink**) 12-05-2007, 07:06 AM

Time magazine, French President Sarkozy, and the Times Online broke with the standard Russia bashing over last weekend's elections in Russia. Time compared Putin to Ronald Regan and the Times Online compared Putin to de Gaulle.

Time magazine compared Putin to Regan in the article Putin's Reaganesque Victory because he restored Russia's pride. This comparison is not quite accurate -- Imagine if Ford had allowed California, New Mexico, Arizona and Texas to all return to Mexico. And then imagine that the ineffectual Carter had also been an absolute drunk and corrupt thief who was an national embarrassment every time he traveled abroad. (Remember Yeltsin bear hugging the pope or being unable to deplane in Ireland.) Inflation was high under Carter, but Carter paid the national debt and social security to pensioners. It is no wonder that Putin is popular, to quote the Time article:

Quote:

Putin's managed election victory has caused so little public discontent outside of small liberal enclaves of the middle class and die-hard supporters of the Communist Party. That lack of an outcry is just further proof that, despite what opposition figures liken to the authoritarian traditions of the communist era, Putin remains the overwhelmingly popular leader in Russia today....

while the margin of its victory might have been a lot narrower, few doubt that United Russia would easily have won even if the election had been free and fair. And it's not simply because of the party's policies — indeed, the centerpiece of the party's election platform, as much of its campaign media made clear, was Putin himself...

The explanation for Putin's popularity may be found in certain similarities to the man often credited with helping to bring down the Soviet Union. It's not that the former KGB man has any policy preferences or even a political style in common with Ronald Reagan, the great icon of contemporary American conservatism. But in the sense that he has made Russians feel good once again about their country, his appeal is Reaganesque.

Reagan's own popularity — even among many Democrats — owed less to his specific policies (tax cuts, arms buildup) than to his overall success in restoring Americans' national pride and optimism. If the Carter era had been associated with domestic economic woes and a string of geopolitical defeats that culminated in the Iran hostage crisis, Reagan managed, almost as soon as he took office, to convince the public that a new "morning in America" had broken, by getting tough with U.S. adversaries on the global stage.

Putin's success, similarly, is based on reversing the national sense of gloom and doom that accompanied the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. While lionized in the West for his anti-communist stance, Yeltsin is remembered at home for ushering in an era of economic and social catastrophe, rampant kleptocracy and a series of geopolitical humiliations at the hands of the West...

The Times Online article "No Wonder they Like Putin" breaks ranks with many other articles as well. It certainly has a powerful and clear message in its subtitle "The West should stop its finger-wagging. The Russian people know what they want and their message is clear."

Quote:

there is also a new feature in Russian political life, the emergence of a real public opinion, and no amount of criticism will sweep that away. President Putin is popular, and from a Russian perspective, you can easily see why. Indeed, the outcome of his recent election more than slightly resembles General de Gaulle's success in 1958.

Russia, like the France of that era, is emerging from a crisis that could have been deadly. In 1958 France was torn apart by the foul Algerian war. It was attended by savagery of lesser degree but in the same class as we have seen over the past decade or so in Chechnya. The Government collapsed; de Gaulle took over; a referendum on the new constitution gave him 80 per cent of the vote, and the political parties he patronised took two thirds of it. This is not very different from the figures attached to Mr Putin's success, and even the figure for turnout - again, more than three fifths — do him some credit, because one chief feature of elections held in “newly emerging democracies” has been profound apathy...

...Mr Putin has been doing well in defiance of a historic trend that, if continued, might have broken up Russia altogether. Nowadays all of Russia's graphs are moving up. This includes two vital matters. The first is the birth rate. Under communism, or at any rate in its last three decades, the birth rate went down and down...

Russia has lost its empire, but it is still a country with a great many minorities, chiefly Turco-Tatar peoples. It is a measure of something that they do not support separatist-nationalist parties...

It's not hard to understand President Putin's popularity. Russia is, in parts, booming, and not just because of oil prices. It is making things, and in well-run towns like Archangel there is a level of wealth that is quite new. Even a Tory MP observing the elections, angry at being cold-shouldered, interspersed his criticism of Mr Putin with the remark that some of the housing estates he had seen might have been in Surrey...

More generally, the Russians feel at last that someone is standing up for them. In the days of Boris Yeltsin, their Government seemed to be clownish — but, as Arthur Koestler remarked, “the face of a clown, seen close to, can seem sinister”. It was an era when huge amounts of corrupt money went abroad, when Russian living standards became dismal, when anyone who could, emigrated. The country was treated with scant regard by foreigners —and there has been much resentment that the British gave asylum to characters whom the Russians saw as criminal...

As with de Gaulle, he has not been popular with many journalists (of whom de Gaulle incidentally imprisoned 300). As with de Gaulle, he has proved that he can, in foreign affairs, be difficult, even a pain in the neck. But if Russians see him as the best hope, they should be understood.

French President Sarkozy called president Putin to congratulate him which has drawn the criticism from many.

Quote:

"Everybody knows that pluralism in Mr Putin's Russia is in retreat, and also the rule of law," said Arnaud Montebourg, a socialist member of parliament. "The question is this: to what extent should we abandon our principles for some elusive interests?"

Funny thing is that often "everyone knows" is often not true. It just tends to end the rational debate on a topic when "everyone knows" the one version of the truth. So thanks to the Times Online and to Time for providing a different view from everyone else.

When reading the regular accounts of the Russian elections, remember that the Georgian elections matched the Russian elections point for point with the criticisms brought up in an article on the Russian elections at the Economist. The only difference between the elections is Georigia's President Saakashvili is adored by the western press and governments.

For everyone who still thinks that Gary Kasparov had a chance or even matters in Russia, I'd like to remind you that the two parties to receive the most votes after the direct Putin supporting parties were the LDPR and the Communist parties. Read up a bit on the LDPR's Zhirinovski if you are not familiar with him, because he is who Russia would be much more likely to elect than Kasparov because an election is not a journalist's pipe dream.

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BZM · #2 (**permalink**) 12-05-2007, 07:21 AM

Somehow I ended up with a double post, so I am leaving this here because I am not sure which post might have the trackbacks associated with it.

Lavochkin · #3 (**permalink**) 12-08-2007, 02:18 AM

Will wonders ever cease?