What exactly can I add to what has already been said? Everything has been written about him. Him. I can say what he is not. First, I have to say what I am. I am a poet. I’m not a philosopher. My philosophy, if there is one, is close to Brendan Behan (or Limonov), who were also poets.
I’m Russian, a Russian citizen but born in America. In Russian there are two words, one for Russian ethnic: русский and one for a citizen of Russia (me)…. россиянин. This applies to all citizens, newcomers like yours truly, Yakuts, Chukchi, Russians, Dagestanis, Karelian Finns, Veps, Nenets, Kalmyks, etc… all are “Rossiyane.” I don’t like it when people who aren’t from Russia say “I have a Russian soul.” I think our soul is made by our ancestors, it’s like DNA, but spiritual. So, I can never have a Russian soul. Putin can and does. He’s connected to his ancestors, I’m connected to mine. I don’t have a Russian soul but I do have a Russian mentality. I always have. Not 100%, a bit closer to Russia than my birthland or its satrapies.
To define him apophatically, in the negative, by what he isn’t: He is NOT the following: a new Hitler, a new Genghis Khan, another totalitarian. He is not a Communist, he is not a mass murderer. He’s not a new Stalin, he’s not the Anti-Christ, nor is he a Messiah. He is not a robot, he is not the new Tsar, he isn’t a panacea, pablum, not a Fascist, by any definition, especially using Timothy Snyder’s dumb definition. Snyder is a dumb neocon, what do you expect?
What is he? What is Putin?
He is a man. A straight man. He is an Orthodox Christian, he is a kind man, he is a wise man. He has taken this great country, a country that fell to its knees and the West came and, before kicking it in the head and ribs and groin, forced this great country to fellate it, the West gangraped Mother Russia. Let that sink in. Women flocked to the cities to become prostitutes, to be trafficked, men became gangsters or suicide statistics. Homelessness was everywhere, thousands of union workers disappeared. Workers were paid in lingerie, if that’s what they made, or rubber tires, or etc. In the streets was the sound of gnashing of teeth, wailing, weeping and the grim tattoo of gunfire. Gunfire was everywhere. It was Mexico then. It was a living hell. Unlike Mexico or the Philippines or El Salvador, Russia has a great history. It has an artistic history unrivaled by any country. For a long time, Russia was the gendarme of Europe, the staunch conservative. Russia was always hated, until she was needed by Europe. When she wasn’t needed, she was vilified, taunted, belittled, denigrated, her leaders called bloody, evil, totalitarian, authoritarian. What the West always wanted in Russia was a puppet. In Yeltsin, they finally had one. Unfortuantely, for the West, their days of rape and satraphood were shortlived, one man put an end to it. One man. The man who just overwhelmingly got reelected. I voted for him. It was my fourth time voting. Every time before I voted Communist. Once I voted for esoteric Trump. Those votes mean nothing.
This is the first time I felt shivers voting. Not that my vote really matters or that I have a fetish for democracy, I knew he’d win. Call it a hunch. He’s popular here, for how he turned Russia around, from on her knees to a powerhouse, this captain, who steers this massive ship through rough seas surrounded by sirens and hidden rocks and enemy ships. He is our captain. He is everywhere here. And he’s not. The people of Russia, my superstitious co-citizens, some believe he IS a new Tsar, and like this idea, some believe the real Putin died, that this Putin we see on TV? He is a double, some even think it is the fourth Putin. Some say he is Jewish, some say he is a Communist, some say he is demonic. Some say he is Ivan the Fool. Some, a few. We can laugh at them. Most of us respect him and make a low bow to him. Sometimes it’s as if the ship he steers isn’t just Russia, it’s Western civilization, he is almost alone among Europeans who is proud of European accomplishments, her glorious past and scornful of what has become of Europe and the European diaspora. He isn’t just Russia’s kapitan, he is Europe’s.
He is a cipher for all of our desires and hatreds. He is the extreme in our lives. His crimes are legion, if that’s what we want to believe. He is the most evil man on earth, if that’s what we want to believe. He is the grand hero, if this is what you want to believe. He is a savior, if this is what you believe. And I believe. He is not the Savior. But he has saved this land of Dostoyevsky, of oil, of the Bolshoi ballet, of thousands of villages with no electricity, of the most beautiful women on earth, of my son, this land of my dreams, of the Yakut, Chukchi, Dagestani, Koryak, Russian, Ukrainian, Nenets, Komi, Evenki, Veps, Mari, Chuvash, Tatar people, and more peoples, too numerous to name. He has dragged this nation out of the gutter the West dragged her into. This empire of Tolstoy, of alcoholism, of Shostakovich, of Gorky, of the Volga, Lena, Ob, of rivers galore and lakes so big the moon influences their tides, this empire that is humble, meek, but with a whip, the suffering beautiful land that infuriates, maddens, stupefies, emboldens, the only nation to be the last Rome. To be the last Rome demands us to see Him as a Caesar, as a Tsar. If so, that means the West is Carthage, and all that Carthage was, they sacrificed babies to their gods, the West does this still. Like Carthage, the West will fall.
He is hated by perhaps a billion nothings and loved by a few billion somethings. Not one politician on earth has this admiration, this power and this … this hatred. Very few in history have risen from spy to bugbear, from low St. Petersburg politician to whipping boy, from little towheaded boy to scapegoat. Bugbear, whipping boy, scapegoat. Putin is all three. He is the bee in the bonnet of the West. The ur-bee. He is a new species of murder hornet. Vespa Russiana. And since Russia herself is all three and has been all three for centuries, Putin and Russia are a good fit.
I was aware of Putin before I ever saw his face. In the run-up to the election of 1999, I was sitting in a Finnish cafe/sauna in Northern California when I first came across his name in a German newspaper. My girlfriend at the time translated the article for me. After Yeltsin resigned and Putin became zee prime meenester of Russia, I saw his face. I liked the fact that he was ex-KGB. If he had to, he could pop your ass. If he had to, he could garrot your pencil neck. If he had to, he could bring a dog in front of a famous politician with caniphobia and then say, “I had no idea.” If he had to, he could zap your terrorist face while you sat in an outhouse. After the Yeltsin years of puppetry, I had hopes for this St. Petersburg politician. I had no idea he would outlast every halfwit in the West. After the collapse and total chaos of Russia, the “Wild East,” with its daily shootouts, mass prostitution, suicide, krokodil and heroin epidemics, homelessness, general anarchy (sound familiar, America? England? France? Western Europe?), I had hopes, but they were little hopes, not elephantine hopes, more like parts of an amoeba. Not much. But more than under his predecessor. Over the years, I’ve looked to my enemies for my friends. If my enemies, liberals, social liberals, libertarians, economic liberals — all liberals — don’t like someone, that someone is probably going to be an ally. The more my enemies hate a person, the more I like the person. Over the years, they’ve turned the heat/hate up to eleven on Russia and Putin. That short stint with the Yeltsin marionette was rich for the West, they really thought they had it in the bag. Putin really socked it to them. He kept socking it to them: Chechen rebels (terrorists) supported by the CIA? He beat the living hell out of them. Kicking out Western NGOs, bam. Taking back Crimea after the CIA-backed coup in 2014, kablammo! Surviving, thriving after sanctions? ROTFL. Special Military Operation: a giant key right down the sides of your spiritual Mercedes-Benz, now some sugar in your gas tank and stealing your rims. Now some Semtex. Mercedes soul go boom boom. Putin just keeps getting better and better.
He is living proof that Western liberal democracy is retarded and is only good for the toilet.
America and her countless myrmidons hate him with an unreal, even a celestial hatred. It is pure, crystalline. I’ve only seen this hatred in a lesser form, with Qaddafi, Hussein, the Shah. This hate for Putin is the fentanyl of hate. Hate for Trump is codeine in comparison. This hate will make you do the fentanyl yoga poses. This hate they have for the recusant Russian is the only thing admirable about them. He irritates like a host of scabies in the nether regions. Their minds are a nest of scorpions (thanks, Macbeth) because of him. How could I not vote for him? Yes, of course, I’d love it if he got rid of democracy altogether and was more nationalistic, not less. More Bolshevik economics, not less. They hate him now with an unreal hate, but if he was more nationalistic, more bolshie, my God, he’d enter the area reserved for Genghis Khan, Napoleon and another man Ernst Jünger called “Kniébolo.” Putin is already smeared with Kniébolo’s name, with Genghis Khan’s genetics and Napoleon’s hunger for war, why not just give them what they think they want? Go ballistic. Go all out. Maybe. Maybe he will. If not, I’m fine with what we have.
Vivat Caesar! Or, as the Poles would say: niech żyje Putin, niech żyje nasz chwalebny przywódca.
