Analysis & Opinion | The Great Debate

Tsar Vladimir Putin is always right

By Nina Khrushcheva
March 12, 2015
In Russia, the old saying goes, the tsar is always right.
Whether an imperial Romanov, a Soviet commissar or President Vladimir Putin, no matter how
harsh the regime, Russians have traditionally viewed their leaders as virtually infallible.
Contrary to the logic that oppression breeds discontent, Russians have endured some of the worst
despots in history, yet they have a near-apocalyptic fear of change of power. The end of a regime
promises not hope but a cataclysm.
Throughout Russian history, the population has supported its leaders regardless of the policies
they implement, often despite them. This explains the Russian peoples enduring devotion to a
strong hand ruler, and their equal distrust of pluralist democracy. In addition, when the other
for example, the United States or European Union lectures the Kremlin on its oppressive
politics, Russians band together even more tightly behind their ruler. As we are seeing with Putin
today.
So the hopeful expectations that the Moscow protests sparked by the assassination of opposition
leader Boris Nemtsov might sweep out the Putin regime may be far too hopeful.
Polls in February, just days before Nemtsovs murder, show that only 15 percent of the public
sympathized with the opposition, while 68 percent did not. A majority, 54 percent, think Russia
under Putin is heading in the right direction.
Russians continue to like Putinism, a hybrid of central power, KGB-ism, state-controlled market
economics with such freedoms as selective protests or publication of a few independent
newspapers. Yet critics insist that if Putinism made sense in the 2000s, it doesnt any more.
High oil prices earlier this century gave Russians a stable job market and access to consumer and
luxury products they had never experienced before, this argument goes. The stability helped
foster widespread public trust in the superiority of Russias state-directed, oil-driven businesses
over an uncontrollable free-market version of capitalism.
Putins policies, however, have now brought on crippling Western economic sanctions in
response to Moscows annexation of Crimea last March. Political opponents are no longer just
arrested, as was anticorruption lawyer Alexei Navalny; they are being killed. There were, of
course, deaths before anti-Kremlin journalist Anna Politkovskaya was gunned downed in her
buildings elevator. But Nemtsov, once a deputy prime minister and Putin colleague, was the
first prominent politician to lose his life to Putinism.

Yet only 12 percent of Russians think that they should confront Putin through demonstrations.
The rest believe that it is far more important that Putin is standing up against the West. For they
also believe the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization want to see Russia
weak and brought to its knees.
True, Russians are not getting all the news. Roughly 90 percent of the population receives
information from the Kremlin-controlled TV networks, which are afire with U.S. bashing and
European Union thrashing because of their unwillingness to accept Russia as an equal. The
problem may be, however, that Russians want to believe this inaccurate view. Alternative news
sources, including the Internet, are available but remain largely unused.
Consider: Russians dont want to think of themselves as aggressors in eastern Ukraine, so they
choose the news that tells them the West created the Ukrainian crisis to undermine Russias
position in the world.
Russians dont want to be the citizens of a weak, insignificant country. It is hard for them to
admit that since the end of communism in 1991, Russia has been losing size and status, even as
Western cultural and economic influences increase. Russians historically came to believe that
influencing Ukraines affairs is their right because Ukraine had long been a part of the immense
empire. They may feel that the deaths of Putins opponents are sad occurrences; but they argue
that, ultimately, its the critics fault because they are Western puppets hatefully presenting the
Kremlin in an unfavorable light.
To show that Russia hasnt entirely lost its famed soul to Putinism, an estimated 50,000 marched
in Moscow to honor Nemtsov last week. Thousands more came to his funeral but only
because these events had few political slogans.
Russias reluctance to protest, though there have been occasional large waves of dissent,
including the 2011-12 protests against Putin returning to the Kremlin for his third presidential
term, reflects both our love for the tsar and our ingrained anti-Westernism. The 19th-century
Russian Tsar Alexander III, a conservative, anti-European nationalist, once announced that
Russia has only two allies the army and the navy.
This attitude was shared by 20th-century Communists, including Vladimir Lenin and Joseph
Stalin. They both closed Soviet borders in an effort to restrict Western influences. Stalin
repeatedly eliminated his political opponents for example, prominent Bolshevik ideologue
Nikolai Bukharin by accusing them of being British capitalist spies.
Competition usually makes the Russian people feel insecure. When they dont feel on top of the
world, they accuse others of sabotaging their success. Nemtsov was wrong to say that Putin, a
former KGB recruiter who used to read people for a living, has programmed Russians to hate
strangers. Putin didnt need to do this. We Russians can be patriotically bigoted and
nationalistically narrow-minded all by ourselves.
Therefore, tens of thousands of challengers who went to the streets to pay respect to Nemtsovs
memory wont pose a threat to the Kremlin rule. There will still be millions who support the

state, dutifully rallying behind the flag against the West and warning of chaos that may come if
Putin is dismissed.
One hope remains, however: a palace coup. Other politicians, frightened by the prospect of
untimely death in Putins Russia, may decide to put an end to Putinism.