< p>When we think of what Vladimir Putin is doing with Russia and for Russia, we most often remember the figure of Joseph Stalin, whom he saved from the disgrace he had fallen into after Khrushchev's report delivered in camera on February 24, 1956. before 1,436 delegates to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. However, if the Russian president honors in the Father of Nations the man with the strong hand that everyone feared, his methods are more reminiscent of those of Yuri Andropov, head of the KGB from 1967 to 1982 before succeeding Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary of the CPSU. This is what the journalist and essayist Jean-Francois Butor wrote in an analysis for the online publication Desk Russie.
Joining the KGB in the late 1970s, Vladimir Putin trained under him. Andropov was not soft-spoken, on the contrary. He led the repression of Soviet dissidents with force and without hesitation, sowing cold and purposeful terror, but a far cry from the waves of mass and murderous purges of the Stalinist era. Putin followed suit, methodically reducing the expression of dissent to almost zero. If the war he is waging in Ukraine results in a very draconian turn of the screw, he didn't wait until 2022. for that. Remember that his presidency began by bringing the big Russian audiovisual media and oligarchs to their knees. He also did not refrain from occasionally resorting to the physical destruction of some of those who did not turn their backs or who "betrayed" him, thus continuing a tradition dating back to Lenin and his famous "poison laboratory". ;.
Handling the club was not Andropov's only talent. The latter also skillfully practiced seduction and disinformation. In front of the West, he had built for himself the image of a modernist, a sophisticated man who loves jazz... From the very beginning of his rule, Putin knew how to follow his example. Of course, in front of the Russian public he built an image of some kind of repentant thug who will not hesitate to use force, but initially he sold the image of a man who wanted to be a reformer while also showing strength to Westerners. A kind of post-Soviet Stolypin.
Tightening the silovaki's grip
Andropov was above all the first senior Soviet leader to understand the irreparable decline of the USSR and therefore proposed a strategy to restore power to the silovaki caste, the men of the "power structures" (army, police, security, services, etc.), in Russia and abroad. In the early 1980s, the former KGB chief doubted whether the Communist Party was capable of recovering from the stagnation it plunged the country into under Brezhnev. In fact, what happened to his nemesis Mikhail Gorbachev, whom he promoted thinking he could lead reforms, showed that the CPSU was nothing more than a dead star. On the other hand, under Gorbachev, the tools were developed - cooperatives and "private" banks - which made it possible under the noses of Westerners to give the "services " abroad the means to continue and expand their intelligence activity and influence. From there the oligarchs were born, who then realized the price of not being "loyal" to his patron...
Putin, after returning from Dresden in the GDR, followed in Andropov's footsteps to strengthen the power of the siloviki in Russia and beyond Russian borders. First he did this methodically in St. Petersburg, building there since 1991. a network of connections that brought him into the Kremlin administration in 1997. He was then able, with the support of this network, to establish himself under Boris Yeltsin, first becoming head of the FSB in 1998, then prime minister in 1999, before accepting the post of interim head of the Russian Federation, after which was elected in 2000.
In accordance with the Primakov doctrine
Putin is also inspired by another person, also a senior KGB official: Yevgeny Primakov. The latter, a major expert on the Middle East during the Soviet era, director of the prestigious Institute of World Economy and International Relations (IMEMO) from 1985 to 1989, head of Russian foreign intelligence since 1991, succeeded in 1996. Andrei Kozyrev himself as Minister of Foreign Affairs, leading to a real turnaround in Russian diplomacy. Kozyrev was "Atlantic": he believed that Russia's future lay in cooperation with the United States.
Former spy Primakov was convinced that restoring Russian power - "poor power," to use the expression of French economist Georges Sokolov - required the creation of partnerships with countries that wanted to break free from or oppose American dominance in Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. Of course, Putin saw to it that he was removed in May 1999, as the latter, then prime minister, became a serious rival capable of successfully running for the presidency of Russia. But Russian geopolitical actions, which since 2007 explicitly aim to oppose the West "Global South" of which the Kremlin wants to be the leader, is in line with the Primakov doctrine. Even if this cannot be done without China, it is Moscow that is behind the creation of BRICS, whose first summit (Brazil, Russia, India and China) was held in Yekaterinburg in 2009.
The two men shared their outrage in March 1999 after learning of NATO's intervention against Yugoslavia due to the worsening situation in Kosovo. Then Primakov flew to the USA, where he was expected on an official visit. Informed by US Vice President Al Gore of the impending airstrikes, he ordered his plane to turn back. Putin repeatedly refers to this moment to denounce the "unipolar world" and American hegemony.
The German Russia Syndrome
In this way, Andropov and Primakov served as a model inside and outside, for restoring the power of Russia, which is no longer mixed with the will of the party, but with the interests and projects of the "services". Putin went about it decisively: from the beginning of his rule, he wanted to demonstrate his uncompromising determination. Starting in August 1999. with the Second Chechen War with all its horrors and went through the chilling episode of the abandonment of the crew of the Kursk, that submarine that sank in the Barents Sea on August 12, 2000, even though those people could probably have been saved if he had accepted in time the help offered by the British and Norwegians. The Russian president intended to signal that Russia was now distancing itself from the West, regardless of the cost. It was a display of pride by a regime that never accepted the collapse of Soviet power, a regime that believed that Russia had not lost the Cold War, and a regime that did not accept that NATO survived the collapse of the Warsaw Pact.
This denial draws parallels between post-1991 Russia. and Germany after the First World War. For the Germans, the defeat of 1918 it is not isolated: the country remains intact and has not experienced war on its soil. The Treaty of Versailles is seen as an injustice, as a historical lie and, moreover, as the reason for the economic bankruptcy of the Weimar Republic. Revenge was necessary... Hitler presented himself as the man of Germany's renaissance. We know the rest. Since 1999 Vladimir Putin presents himself as one who intends to restore both the collective power and the honor of Russians and of Russia.
The question today for the West is whether, like the Führer, Vladimir Vladimirovich is finally locked in his monomaniacal logic, ignoring the damage that the war he is waging is causing to his own country, ruining it economically and demographically. In this case, we have no choice but to oppose him in the most decisive way, to his destruction. We have no choice but to make the Russians understand that their president is leading them to the abyss. It means not backing down and showing that we are ready to last for the long haul. Maybe then Putin will be inspired one last time by Andropov. Indeed, paradoxically, this uncompromising man, who managed to mobilize huge crowds of pacifists in the West, under the slogan "Better red than dead", managed on the edge of the precipice to temper the desire for power of the siloviki through solid realism : realizing that confrontation with the West in the late 1970s was leading the USSR to a dead end, he ended the Euromissile crisis by engaging with the dismantling of SS20 and the reopening of the road to negotiations. This led to the signing of the START 1 treaty in July 1991. by George H. U. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev. Although there is still time for Putin to come to his senses, there are no indications that he will go down this path. In the coming weeks, any sign of weakness on the part of the West can only convince him that despite the Russian carnage aimed at destroying Ukraine, he still has a chance to win.