Review: We Need To Talk About Putin challenges Russian caricatures

You could fill shelves, bookcases, probably even whole libraries with books that promise to explain Vladimir Putin. Often, these volumes offer grand theories about the Russian president’s behaviour; he’s a KGB placeman bent upon rebuilding the Soviet Union, he’s a kleptocrat amassing the world’s biggest fortune or he’s a nationalist ideologue, driven by mystical ideas about a Eurasian civilisation.

In his book, We Need to Talk About Putin, Mark Galeotti tackles western commentators’ habit of caricaturing Putin, based on “hype and hysteria”. He takes on each of these clichés in turn and portrays the man in the Kremlin as the leader of an ‘adhocracy’, where pragmatism and opportunism are at least as important as ideology and geopolitics.

Hillary Clinton famously said that while Donald Trump was “playing checkers”, Vladimir Putin had mastered “three dimensional chess”. Galeotti’s first target is this perception that Putin is outwitting the West by implementing a devilishly clever strategy that only he truly understands.

Instead, he compares Russia’s approach to international affairs to the president’s favourite sport, judo. A competitor in this martial art aims to use his opponent’s movement and momentum against him, to “seize the moment when it appears”. Galeotti rejects the chess player metaphor, preferring to liken Putin to a ‘judoka’, who takes any opportunity to put his adversary on his back.

He emphasises that Russia’s exploits on the world stage are primarily reactive and not part of a grand plan to dominate its rivals or rebuild the USSR. The notion that Putin is the figurehead in a KGB takeover of government is dismissed as not credible. The president’s intelligence career was inglorious and relatively marginal.

Putin was briefly in charge of the KGB’s successor organisation, the FSB, during his rapid political ascent under Boris Yeltsin. However, Galeotti believes that, though the President identifies heavily with ‘Chekists’, he is not the calculating spymaster depicted in western media. Rather, he is a ‘spook fanboy’ who starts each day with a series of intelligence briefings “that aim to enthral rather than educate him”.

This interpretation echoes one of Galeotti’s recurring themes. Many of the shadier aspects of Russian government are driven, he contends, by “policy entrepreneurship” among officials, who jostle to please Putin and attract his attention. This leads, for example, to some outlandishly one-sided election results in Russia’s southern republics. It also explains instances of alleged interference in the West’s political process, like the Kremlin’s apparent support for Donald Trump’s US presidential campaign and its low-key role in backing Brexit.

Lately, western commentators who want to provide a supposedly deeper insight into Putin’s mind are drawn to the theory that he is motivated by a Russian nationalist ideology called Eurasianism. In essence, this philosophy theorises that Russia is a unique civilisation, shaped by influences from the two continents it spans, with a mission to draw together the regions that once formed the Tsarist empire and the Soviet Union.

Newspapers like to make alarming references to the book Foundations of Geopolitics, by ‘Putin’s favourite philosopher’ Alexander Dugin, which they claim is a manual for rebuilding the USSR. This interpretation has led to some interesting work, like former Financial Times’ journalist Charles Glover’s history of Eurasianism, Black Wind, White Snow, which was sold as a glimpse into the president’s worldview. This esoteric subject is fascinating, but it’s of limited use as a guide to Moscow’s current motivations.

Putin, or at least his speechwriters, have used Eurasianist quotes and phrases from time to time, but Galeotti says that there is little ideological consistency to his outlook. He is happy to use bits and pieces of philosophy where it suits, but he doesn’t read philosophy. Dugin, while he enjoyed brief notoriety, is a marginal, eccentric figure, whose influence in the Kremlin has waned drastically.

Putin is not a nationalist mystic, but he is, according to Galeotti, “a gut level patriot who believes that Russia should be considered a great power.” His pugnacious behaviour is explained by the perception that, when it was at its weakest, his country was shown a basic lack of respect by western countries. Other writers who have taken the trouble to look beyond the myths around Putin, like the University of Kent academic Richard Sakwa, have drawn similar conclusions about the effects of an historical failure to listen to Russia or understand its perspective in the 90s and early 2000s.

In the West, we are always on the lookout for signs of dissent against the Kremlin. Recently, media reports have focussed on protests in Moscow and elsewhere, alleging that candidates have been unfairly prevented from standing in local elections. The idea that there is an uprising of feeling against the current government has, Galeotti believes, been overstated, but not invented.

Putin’s personal popularity remains relatively high, but Russians are not necessarily happy or contented. Low level protest is often channelled into localised campaigns, focussed on issues like the environment. The author points out that “Russians can be unhappy but loyal” and, while they might believe their president has revived the country’s fortunes after the troubled 90s, they may not be happy to support him in perpetuity.

It’s a balanced assessment of a political landscape that currently offers no viable alternative to Putin. Though Galeotti does not dismiss the theory that the president, who will be 67 next month, may step down, if he can find a worthy successor. The worry for the West, he implies, is that Russia’s next leader may be no more pliant or less formidable than Putin.

We Need to Talk About Putin manages to be authoritative without including irrelevant detail. Galeotti’s argument is concise and punchy – the book is only about 140 pages long – and he doesn’t burden the reader with reams of references and footnotes. The author is clearly no fan of Putin, but he is frustrated by sweeping, misleading analyses and offers a highly readable, occasionally rather funny antidote.

There is an almost insatiable appetite for books that portray Russia and its leader as inscrutable, threatening and sinister – Russia as Mordor, as Galeotti puts it. They may address a demand, but they don’t enrich our understanding of a country whose future will be critical to geopolitical stability in Europe and beyond. We need more authors who challenge the caricatures and received beliefs that shape our ideas about Russia.