 Now, keeping the world company here on Think Tech, I'm Jay Fidel, and our guest today, our esteemed guest is Jean Rosenfeld. She's an independent scholar, came from UCLA in history and the like, and she joins us today to discuss exactly what Putin's vision is, what his aspirations are, and how all of that helps us understand what he's doing. Welcome to the show, Jean. Thank you, Jay. So, just in a rough way, what are Putin's aspirations, and what drives him? What kind of strange, personal experience is he having to justify in his own mind what he's doing? I think we have to take the statement he made about the fall of the Soviet Union being the greatest disaster of the 20th century at face value. What matters to him more, it seems, is Russian nationalism, the history of Russia, and the future of Russia. So, it's a kind of patriotism then? It is a misplaced, extreme patriotism, and when you get into extremes of anything, you get into dangerous zones? Well, his dangerous zone seems to incorporate all these really grotesque things that he does, you know, like kidnapping children, torture, war crimes right across the board, and you wonder whether that is in his kit bag anyway. You know, you can be a patriot without doing those things. So, sort of ingrained in the DNA of his quote patriotism are some pretty nasty elements. Are those historically identifiable? Well, they're both personal and intellectual and ideological reasons for where he stands right now. Number one, you remember that when East Germany, the wall fell, that he was involved in burning all the documents in East Germany because he was a KGB operative now at FSB, and so that must have been a shock. That must have been a really shock, a big shock for him, and it's reflected in the statement we just talked about. But then, also, there's the context of the man. There is a history behind where he stands today, and that is, you go back to Peter the Great, who was one of the more important Tsars, the Tsar who was behind the colonization of North America and Russians. Russia's rivalry with the United States in the 19th century and the 18th century even. When Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French writer, observed in 1835 that Russia and the United States were quote, natural rivals. And still today, there's a battle for the Pacific then, there's a battle for the Pacific today. So that's not different. In Europe, it's the battle for that set of countries between Western Europe and Russia. Russia is always suspicious that that flatlands is going to be the subject of an invading army. Whereas Europe is very, very sensitive to invasion from the East. They've had the Mongol invasion, they've had the Muslim invasion, and they've had recently, since the Yalta conference in World War II, they've had the takeover by the Soviet Union of the countries from the Balkans to the Baltic. So we have a natural history, and history in a sense does repeat itself, but the details are different. Wow, so this is all something you could have, which de Tocqueville and others predicted. And here we are, and it almost seems it's inevitable to continue that it's always, my right, it's always going to be thus. Well, the relationship that we have with Russia is at some times very quiescent after all, it only took them a month to decide to sell Alaska to us and almost fortunate. We are a Pacific power. If you look at Alaska geographically, and I love geography, it turns out. If you look at Alaska geographically and you follow the Aleutian Islands, they almost touch Russia. And if you look at our Pacific Island holdings, if you look at Hawaii, for example, the Hawaiian chain, as you well know, goes to the northwest about 1000 miles and almost touches Asia. So we are legitimately a Pacific power. And you recall the lead up to World War Two was our rivalry with Japan. And so we were contending with Japan over the power of, you know, deciding the freedom or the control over the Pacific Island. Now, we have been a country that has gone into the Pacific Islands, the Philippines, we were in control of the Philippines at one time, but we give back. We don't keep territories. We have a Federation of Micronesia and Association with the United States, but all those small islands rule themselves. Samoa is divided between itself, Western Samoa, and American Samoa. But we don't control in the way Japan was controlling before World War Two, or in the way that China seems to want to control now, or that, you know, Russia colonized. So we have to kind of pat ourselves on the back. We don't do that often enough. Well, we pat ourselves on the back and yet let me, let me tell you a short story, reported in the Times, I think it was years ago when Trump first took office. It was a visit to the gun show, a large gun show and a large convention center kind of facility in the south. And the Times reporter walked through there. This is in what, 2017, maybe, walked through there and talked to people, how they felt about Russia. And most of the people that the Times reporter talked to said, we've given Russia a bad rap. They're really nice people and they have only the best intentions in mind. And, you know, my view of it is that they were getting that from Trump. They were getting that from the conservative Republicans and they still are. And so does the country fully understand, doesn't understand at all what you're talking about? I think not enough. I think, first of all, who forms a grand design that we need to learn about and keep in the forefront of our mind. And that grand design is called Eurasianism. And the two architects of that that develop the idea are a man who lived around the time of World War II and happened to be in Germany. And it was a kind of neo-fascist or proto-fascist, I would say, not neo-fascist. And that is Ivan Ilyan, I-L-Y-I-N. And then lately, there is Alexander Dugan, who is also a neo-fascist, who want, who look forward to Russia fulfilling its historic destiny. And that's something that Putin also agrees with. In other words, it's the Russian state that really matters. It should have control over the Eurasian continent. It should relegate Western Europe to basically the satellite economically and socio-politically of Russia. It enlists China in this and now North Korea to implement this vision, which Putin expressed in a very important speech in October of last year at the Valdai International Conference. And the Valdai Club is something founded in Russia. And the state is very involved in it, as is a leading university, in inviting to an international conference each year, countries that it wants to assimilate into its sphere of influence. And those are particularly the large developing countries, the BRICS, the so-called BRICS countries, which are Russia and China and South Africa and India and Brazil. But beyond that, they want to make inroads. And we've talked about this before. But the whole point is to divide and conquer, to take away from the United States the hegemony, the unicolor support for democracy of the world. I say we give back, not always, but we do give back when we take other territories. And we have to remember that we do that because we have a particular kind of political philosophy called democracy. And the people in this country who support Russia now don't understand that what they're doing is undermining what America stands for and has always stood for and still stands for. So this is an international thing. And it is a type of fascism. There's no doubt about it. Ilian, Ivan Ilian called it a third way, like Mussolini. He supported Mussolini. He supported Hitler for returning traditional values to Europe, which is what Putin wants to do today. He's anti-LGBTQ. He's only wants the Russian Orthodox Church in power. He is poor square behind, quote, morality and spirituality that reflect the Tsarist values of the traditional culture. And that is an extreme of traditionalism, which goes into alternationalism, which then becomes fascism. And it's happening here in tandem with that. And that is now the ideology they're exporting. In the Cold War, we were very conscious of the fact that there was a whole Marxist philosophy that Russia had adapted to its own unusual circumstances. Marx wouldn't have agreed and sent that throughout the world. Now we are contending with the type of Russian fascism. And we need to understand what it is, where it came from, what his vision is, and what he intends. Can you connect, you mentioned the Tsar, the monarchy in general, can you connect up what the Tsars were doing, what the monarchical Russians were doing that somehow influences Putin? Well, I don't think he wants to bring back the Tsars, but he does model himself after Peter the Great. And Peter the Great is the Russian Tsar who brought civilization, we would say, to Saint Petersburg, Putin is, I believe, from Saint Petersburg. And it is a fine example of a French culture imported by Catherine and Peter into Russia. And, you know, they really, they want to absorb these kinds of things from Europe, the culture and the beauty, but they want to control it. They don't want the democracy. They don't want the revolutions that occurred there. We have to understand that to Putin, Muscovy is the center of the universe. And that Muscovy has to be united with Belarus and Ukraine, because those are the three brothers of Rus, RUF, of the culture and civilization that he so admires and embodies and thinks is so much the center of the world. How did Russia lose Ukraine? Thank you, pardon? If that's the three brothers, how did Russia lose Ukraine? Lose? Yeah. Well, Yanukovych was in place until, I think, 2014. And then there was an election and he was deposed. And Russia didn't tolerate that because they had, you know, basic control over Ukraine through Yanukovych, their little satellite. And so Ukraine is a very important country, potentially. It is rich in agriculture. And it has access to warm water ports, which Russia has always wanted and needed. That's why Crimea is so important. And it then is open to the world, because Russia doesn't have warm water ports except a little piece in the Baltic Sea next to Lithuania and Poland. And that's why the Arctic is so important. When it's melting, now becomes the potential huge coastline. Half of the Arctic Ocean is Russian territory. So Ukraine, you know, we hear stories about the creativity of the Ukrainians, the resilience, the sense of patriotism, commitment. Is the Ukrainian culture remarkably different than Russia and Putin? Is it the kind of place that is actually more likely to be democratic? What is the difference between the Ukrainian ethic, the Ukrainian character, and the character that Putin elevates in Russia? Well, you know, you'd have to ask Tim if he's not Snyder of Yale about that. If you look at the most intransigent and terrible conflicts in history, they're always between siblings. And so we fought England, for example. And that was fun. And we fought them twice before they gave us up. So, you know, Ukraine is one of the three brothers. And actually, Russia began in Ukraine. It began in Kiev. And it was the Scandinavians that established Kiev. And they took the surrounding peoples, the Slavs, as slaves, not where we get the words slave. And for a hundred years, they were not Christians. But Russia has revised this narrative to say that Muscovy, the Black Brother, not Krasnyi or, yeah, the Red Brother, is really the dominant brother. And that it embodies Russia even more than Ukraine. And that Ukrainians are Russians, basically, they have the same religion, same culture, a similar language. And the territory is so important to control. So, do the Russian people understand what you're talking about? I asked you if the Americans understood what Putin was all about. But what about the Russians? Do they understand about the Slavs? Do they understand about the brotherhood with Ukraine? Do they understand the Muscovy that you described? Or are they just responding to an autograph? I'm not a poster for Russian people. And I agree with you, the Russian people have been saddled with bad governance for centuries. And I feel for them, and they're wonderful people. And they have great culture. Do they understand? Obviously, the cognoscenti, the intelligent class, the educated class, they understand all of this. And it's hard for them. And I'm sure almost all Russians who are ethnically Russian know about their history and their religion, their identity, their territory. And yeah, I imagine they do, just like our people in Appalachia or Idaho or anywhere know, or think they know. So, there have been, you know, programs at least for a couple of hundred years in Russia, anti-Semitism in Russia. Where does that come from? Is that ingrained in Russia now, today as well? What does it mean to Putin? I don't think he's so focused on anti-Semitism. And as a matter of fact, Jews throughout the world come to recognize the support Ukraine. And Ukraine has a Jewish president now. And all of that. As far as Russia is concerned, it's a terrible history of anti-Semitism. The protocols of the elders of Zion, that terrible conspiracy theory that was sent throughout the world about a small group of Jews want to control everything in the world. That began in Russia by people surrounding Nizar in 1905. And it was transmitted to the United States through the court of New York. And then Henry Ford took it up and re-published it in his newspaper and called it the International's Jew at a time when we were having a lot of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe and Russia to the United States because of pogrom, because the Cossacks. They understand that like every large territory, people by the same individuals who identify with one another, there are parts that are tolerant and parts that are very intolerant. And the Cossacks and the people who instigated the pogroms were intolerant and not very educated in many ways. They, like Putin, they see and value only what is theirs and which they claim in the circle of their identity. And this is a way in which tribalism, a mentality tribalism develops and people then fight one another and have more of a work. You know, one more piece to set the stage on where Putin is driven today is the whole thing about the Cold War, about Stalin, about the Lubyanka prison, about the Gulag and all those things that Solzhenitsyn wrote about. How ingrained in the Russian culture is that? How ingrained in Putin is it? Why do people accept that kind of brutality and for that matter accept Navalny being in prison for another 19 years or doing obviously nothing? What is it in the Russian culture and in Putin's approach that relates to or incorporates kind of Solzhenitsyn brutality? Well, interestingly, Alexander Solzhenitsyn was imbued with very much the same ideology of Russian nationalism and traditionalism and the Greek Orthodox Church. He listened to Ivan Ilyan and agreed with him in many ways. But he was, of course, a person with a very different experience in the Gulag and a very strong feeling about human rights and ethics. You know, we have a range of expression too. We have Abu Ghraib, we have Guantanamo, you know, Ron DeSantis was a lawyer at Guantanamo and oversaw, of course, the beating of prisoners, which is torture. We had abuse of prisoners, horrible abuse of prisoners. So, and we committed genocide against the American Indians. The longest war in our history, I don't think, was Afghanistan. It was the Indian wars of the 19th century. So, in that sense, we have a common humanity of both good and evil. And we need to look there for the reasons. In terms of the brutality of Stalin and Lugianca and everything, if you really believe the end justifies the means, you will go to any means to achieve the end. That helps explain Putin, then, doesn't it? If he feels the torture or kidnapping of children justifies the end, then he has no reluctance. Is that what's happening? I think we have to look at the human's goal, ethnic identity, to understand what people behave the way they do towards one another. And I'm doing that in my own research now, because I am doing research on fascism. The worst behavior of one group of people against another in human history was the Germans, the people they put in concentration camps and the genocide. So, we have to understand that. I want to understand that. And I have to go right down to the basics of human psychology. Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I always say we're mammals, and we're not always rational. And there are things that live within us that are not good. You were talking about your writing, but you wrote an article recently. Can you tell us about the article you wrote and maybe hold it up so we can see it, at least part of it? Well, once in a while, I write a few things, defense them to the star advertiser, and they've been kind enough to print one of them. And this was an inside article. I have to get it in front of me. And then if I put it in front of me, I can't see it. It was on Putin's mind. And I wanted to bring in the power of myth. I had the privilege of co-teaching with a scholar named Ivan Strensty. And he held the chair in the history of religions at the University of California at Riverside for many years. And while we were teaching one time, he had to go to the Caterine Burg in the middle of winter in Russia, which was a program funded by George Soros, to teach Russian PhDs how to teach religion, because during communism, religion was not permitted to be taught. And so he made a lot of contact among educated, intelligent Russian people. He's kept up those contacts. And he has been able to get letters and correspond with these Russians while the Ukrainian war has been going on with Russia. And he also has a Ukrainian descent. So he has contact relatives in Ukraine. So Ivan and I have talked and corresponded over these years. And he's a wonderful source of information. He's also gotten very interested in researching and writing about fascism, if he's doing, but in regards to Trump, which I'm also doing. So we have a lot to talk about. Anyway, he's the one who brought to my attention the myth of the three brothers and how Russia is committed to keeping these three brothers together within its confines. And that is Belarus and Russia and Ukraine. So it becomes an almost fratricidal war for him. He cannot let his brother go. And it's fratricidal wars that are based on ideological, particularly religious spiritual concepts are the most difficult to resolve. And so Zelensky, too, is implacable. He will not regard giving up Crimea. And Russia, of course, has been in a struggle of control for Crimea for centuries. And so we're just... You suggest, you know, that because of this brothers, the three brothers and the fratricidal nature of the war against Ukraine, that it will stop at Ukraine. If there are many people who speculate that it will not stop at Ukraine, whatever drives Putin will drive him into the Baltics and maybe the Balkans. And he will move west into Western Europe as and when he can. And that, yes, Ukraine is a strategic buffer, but it is also a jumping point. So, has that reconciled? In other words, if he's got a special thing about Ukraine historically, ethically, and all that, does it stop in Ukraine? No, it doesn't. Zelensky is absolutely right. And I felt that way from the beginning about this here because, you know, I'm half Lithuanian and they really know the Russia. Well, the best people, honestly. Anyway, not because I'm half Lithuanian, but because of the history of it all. Russia and Sweden have fought for that territory for centuries. And in 1709, at the Battle of Khoava in Ukraine, which was then part of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth, ruled by Lithuania and Poland and the king, Russia defeated Sweden and deposed the king and put its own king on the Commonwealth. And then they did this again. This was again during Peter the Great. You have to go back to Peter the Great to understand Putin. I think that's his archetypal person and what was going on then, both in the Pacific and in Europe. And what brings this all together today is this Ilyan-Dugan political philosophy of what's called Eurasianism. And that's what this great speech that Putin gave last year that we should all be familiar with is about. It's about Eurasianism, meaning that Russia wants to have geopolitical and economic control over the Eurasian continent from Vladivostok to double. We need to understand that. And not that they want to go into and take over France and the UK and Germany. They just want to render them neutered. They want to neuter them. And they want a different currency than the dollar. They want to use the resources of Siberia to become very wealthy. They want to control the ports and the trade. They want to enlist the cooperation of unaligned countries, which they're doing right now over the divide over support for Ukraine. They're beginning that. And they have an uneasy alliance with China. It will always be an uneasy alliance, by the way, I believe, because ultimately down the road, they are computing empires and metropoles. So this dynamic is going on right now and we need to understand that. You know, it strikes me that Putin is doing a lot of other things in the world. He's involved in all the diplomatic organizations and groups. He's trying to create and enhance groups that are anti-American. I think of Bricks, for example, but there are others too, where he creates these conferences, even if he can't go because he's under an arrest warrant. He still encourages them. And he whizzers without pregosion. He's got a presence in the Sahel, sub-Saharan Africa. And he's trying to be influential in Latin America as well. And I wonder how much of all of that, I haven't ended. I mean, there's many other things. You know, to say his social media hacking, to say his attempt to influence elections elsewhere, to say his espionage and his punitive treatment of people who turn against him, you know, who have to leave and they're then poisoned and so forth. It seems to me that everything the man does these days has got some connection with his drive to take over Ukraine. Am I right? Or are these driven by other factors? Yes, he's driven to undermine and get rid of what he calls the great hegemon, the United States. And this is, again, part of the neo-fascist philosophy of Russian nationalism, that Ilion and Dugan have developed. He's driven to make Russian civilization the great civilization of Russia. He's driven by nationalism. This is a spiritual commitment. So he wants to replace the world currently with maybe the Chinese Yuan. And he's involved in getting allies where he can, because we have sanctions against him. He wants to get rid of the sanctions. And he can't travel, as you pointed out, everywhere he wants to travel now, because there's this other great power in the world that is standing against the development of the future of Russian civilization and dominance. And it's not necessarily a territorial dominance, so much as it is sphere of influence and dominance in the way that we have created that kind of influence in the world. And it's gotten so close to him with Ukraine, with the overthrow of Yanukovych and the putting of a real democracy in Ukraine is insupportable because the enemy has democracy. And it's right on his, right as his doorstep. And he can't support it. One other thing before I ask you what I consider an important question is, constantly, he's saying that the Ukrainians are the fascists. They are the Nazis, which seems to be really ironic, because the Nazis killed a lot of Ukrainians, as they killed a lot of Russians. But Ukrainians are certainly not fascists. There's no indication that that's true. So is that completely propaganda? And why does he say that? Why would the ultra-right in the United States say that Trump is going to fix everything and that we need to change how we vote in the United States? We need to replace basically a dictator in the United States. We need to get rid of the civil service that will service and just point the people who are loyal to us. It's fascism and fascists will do what human beings do psychologically, and that is project their own sins and misdeeds upon the people they want to control and conquer. It's all about power. And truth means nothing because truth is negotiable. In fact, I mentioned Ivan Strensky. He's writing about the influence of pragmatism on truth and lies in Trump, because pragmatically, the philosophy of the United States that we embody is, you know, just make it happen. However you make it happen, make it happen. That's what counts. Do it. And if you have to make a lie into truth, you make a lie into truth. I mean, that's the weakness of pragmatism. Helian Conway, the ultimate reality when she, at the early time, I guess it was 2016, went up there on national television and defended lies. I said, we are really, really, really in trouble with this. How can you operate democracy on this basis? And what's odd is that her husband, maybe her former husband, George Conway, appears on liberal television and takes liberal positions. I don't understand it. I'm really wondering what their pillow talk is like. Never mind. In any event, my wraparound question for Eugene is this. So through this discussion and through the writings and through a lot of observers and commentators and analysts, we do know a fair amount how Putin's mind works. And we know, you know, the background, the cultural background, the philosophical background of his agenda and his vision and so forth. But is it realistic? Is it likely to succeed? And that's one part of my question. The other part which fascinates me is, is he like this? Is he doing these things because he really believes in it personally? Or is he doing these things for political purposes? Because he feels that he can stay in power if he projects these notions of a vision for Russia, an agenda for Russia. I really don't have a sense of what the answer to that is. Maybe it's a combination. What do you think? Operating on both levels. Because power is the essential ingredient of fascism. And the retention of power is the basic fundamental floor on which everything else rests. And the leader embodies that power. And in order to remain in office and enact the vision that he has, that he believes, that does he truly believe it? Absolutely. I'm absolutely certain. And even if we can't verify that, we have to just accept that is most likely because only by accepting that political philosophy as influencing him and that he really believes in can we predict his next moves and anticipate what he's going to do. No, this is not about just Ukraine. It's a lens that he's absolutely correct. It's about Ukraine and Lithuania and Poland and the United States. He wants to take power away from us to neuter us. Basically, there's an element of this incredible Roman patriarchalism and virility. Virtue, after all, is the word that pertains to males because veers is the Latin for male. So virtue naturally is defined in male terms. And anything that questions that or delutes that is unacceptable in fascism. And so it's all in the mix. One other element that might be in the mix, I'd like your thought on it, is when we talk about Trump and we look and see what Trump has done over the past few years, we think he must be out of his mind that he has psychiatric problems and that he's just a nutcase, unhinged as you will. So the question I put to you is, does Putin really believe it? I mean, does he believe that he can achieve these things? Is he being realistic about it? But also, is he a nutcase too? Does it matter? Was Hitler a nutcase? Was Stalin a nutcase? Does it really matter? I mean, what do we mean by nutcase? I'm not a psychiatrist. Do I agree that Trump is a nutcase? Well, if you took, say you took 10 billionaires and then you took 10 convicted murderers or rapists and you gave them all the same psychological tests, you might find that a lot common. Okay, great answer. Thank you, Gene. Gene Rosenfeld, an independent scholar and historian who joins us today to discuss the vision, the agenda of Putin and how we can figure out what he's going to do with it. Thank you so much, Gene. Thank you, Jay.