Posted on 11/18/2017 10:28:57 AM PST by GoldenState_Rose
The central argument of the book is that Russia has returned to the dangerous stagnation of the 1980s, largely thanks to the resurgence of the old KGB. The authoritarian squeeze will worsen at home, Mr Kovalev predicts, while foreign policy will become increasingly hostile and unpredictable. In the long run he fears a break-up of Russia, before—possibly—the dawn of democracy, the rule of law and modernisation.
His language is strikingly blunt. Mr Putin is a “mumbling, stammering knock-kneed brow-furrowing ex-KGB agent who speaks the language of the gutter and values power above everything”. Echoing Alexander Herzen, a 19th-century émigré who declared Russia to be suffering from “patriotic syphilis”, Mr Kovalev diagnoses in his country “manic-depressive psychosis…acute megalomania, persecution complex and kleptomania”. Foreigners who write like this are accused of Russophobia. But it is hard to bring that charge against the erudite Mr Kovalev, with his long and distinguished public service.
He paints a convincing first-hand picture of the confusion of the Gorbachev years, the dysfunction of the Boris Yeltsin era and the ebb and flow of KGB influence in the highest reaches of power. Mr Kovalev’s finest hour was ending the practice of coercive psychiatry. As a senior diplomat dealing with human rights, he brought the power of the reformist foreign ministry to bear on the secretive health ministry, which flatly denied that any abuse was taking place. He also pioneered reforms to improve religious freedom.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
In this trenchant exposé of Russia’s totalitarian pathology, Kovalev—who was a member of Mikhail Gorbachev’s secretariat and also worked in the foreign affairs ministry under Boris Yeltsin and Vladimir Putin—blames the country’s enduring “slave psychology” for many of its ills, from the time of the czars to the present. The author, whose high-level career took him into the apogee of government power and whose own father was an eminent Soviet diplomat, approaches the unending Russian cycle of tear-down, reaction, revanchism, and stagnation like a social psychologist. In his early job in the late 1980s, Kovalev worked on the “elimination of punitive psychiatry,” which has helped him diagnose Russia’s chronic problems.
second review can be found here: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/andrei-kovalev/russias-dead-end/
Reagan advocated a “Marshall Plan” for Russia after the fall of Communism, he understood that if Russia didn’t quickly recover economically from 70 years of Bolshevism, she would soon fall into her old habits.
Mr Putin is a “mumbling, stammering knock-kneed brow-furrowing...
I used to be a Putin fan too. Till I had to live in his country.
Really? I didn’t know that. So George H.W. Bush / Clinton obviously screwed foreign policy up in the 90s.
Exactly...
The KGB types rose to power in Russia because they were the ONLY people who dealt in truth and reality, in the entire Soviet system.
Indeed they did. They wanted to do a "Victory Lap" over Russia. The whole Kosovo thing was meant to send a message to Russia that their power was gone.
Which was precisely why we pursued De-Nazification in Germany after WWII. They needed De-Bolshevism in Russia.
Lots of very hard choices during this period with no optimum one in sight. Do you tolerate the hard-liners in the interest of stability (given their nuclear arsenal)? Or do you hope for a sweeping change that clears the country's leadership for something more free and damn the consequences? Or do you do what we really did, muddle through and hope for the best, bearing in mind that very little of this process was subject to foreign influence? Personally I'm happy we managed not to blow up the world.
Hmmm. Reagan could negotiate with Russia in the 80s. But Trump isn’t allowed to negotiate with Russia today
Putin’s not perfect and neither is Trump but both care about their respective nations and are willing to fight for it while limp wristed book writers pontificate about how they’d do it better in theory.
Look at this guy - “it’s all the peoples fault for being into slave psychology” That’s unmitigated BS.
Russia in the 80s was communist and officially atheist. It’s troops occupied half of Europe
Russia today has a flat tax of about 12 percent, according to an article a few years back by Steve Forbes. That’s way lower than the GOP tax bill in Comgress right now!
Christianity is honored in Russia today
And Russia no longer occupied Eastern Europe.
Yet this book says Russia is as bad as when ? it was an atheist communist empire? BS
Can you explain that please? One Russian professor I talk to does not seem to agree with the mainstream “West screwed up everything in the 90s” storyline. And my gut hunch is that a Marshall Plan style initiatives may have played out differently as the social-psychological context was different from postwar Germany.
I didn’t necessarily mean the West screwed it up, as much as they missed an opportunity to bring Russia into the fold.
A lot of neocons seem to hate Putin mainly because he foiled their plan to do in Syria what Obama did in Libya - bring down the government and give free rein to jihadi crazies. From what I’ve Syrian Christians who would have been slaughtered are grateful to Putin. Assad is no angel, but he protects them from bloodthirsty jihadis
WilliamIII, the point of the book is that Russia is in “psychosis” mode precisely because it can’t make up its mind about what to condemn or celebrate about its past. For a good while, I lived in a Russian home and slept under a portrait of Stalin next to an icon of Jesus.
Consider the following statement made by historian Irina Pavlova in her article about the modern Russian struggle to settle on a consistent ideology (translated from Russian)
“Today we can already state the fact of schizophrenia of public consciousness in Russia. It paradoxically coexist assessment of the October revolution of 1917 as a disaster and a desire to return to the Soviet past, condemnation of the repression and the veneration of Stalin as a statesman, anti-Westernism and talk about democracy.”
Modern-day Russians have no use for Lenin, Brezhnev or any other Communist leader, but Stalin is different, they don’t even see him as a Communist. They see him as the one responsible for making Russia powerful, despite his methods, much like Ivan the Terrible.
I’ll take whatever they’re drinking if it would get me the 12 percent flat tax that they reportedly have in Russia! The author may call that “crisis”. but it certainly isn’t communism. If he wants real crisis, the author should write about California, Illinois, or NY. That’s where modern communism has found a home
We’ve got high tax, dictatorial state governments in US that should concern us more than being worried about ex-communist (and reportedly low tax) Russia!
“patriotic syphilis”
WTH does that even mean?
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