Of course, it would be quite presumptuous to make any confident predictions about the development of the situation in Crimea right now. Yanukovych, who has materialized like Moriarty from a well-known series, with his “decree” and his “Central Rada,” the armed seizure of the local parliament—all this so far resembles something of a farce. Right now it looks as if someone is trying to impose some sort of arrangement rather than start a little war, since the local parliament decided to hold a referendum on “improving the status of autonomy” on May 25, not on immediate separation.
However, whatever the case may be, whoever specifically stands behind these events and whatever “scenarios” are being attempted now, in any case one of the players—willingly or unwillingly—will be Putin. It doesn’t matter whether he himself organized all this, or simply went with the flow; in any case, he will be drawn in. Therefore, for us it is important to understand what lies at the very basis of his actions.
I will not speculate here about the prospects of armed conflict, Ukrainian Ossetia, and so on—all this is merely means. The goal of Putin, like that of any other state (in Russia, it seems, it has been reduced to one person) is the preservation of power: the ability to give orders to other people and dispose of their property.
In practice, this is a very difficult task. Naive people assume that “force gives right” and that whoever has the gun rules. They may rule, but not for long. For a state to have power over people, those people must not only and not so much fear it, but above all believe in its usefulness. This belief is what we call legitimacy.
There is a constant game between society and the state, which in the language of political scientists is called “the search for consent.” The state constantly tests society for consent to new regulation of public life, and depending on the reaction, either introduces it or does not. All this is impossible without myths and legends explaining why all this is needed. Sometimes such myths and legends read like pure fiction—for example, those explaining the bans on raw milk and homemade lemonade in the USA—but since such bans exist, it means there are enough people willing to believe in them.
In general, the less the state interferes in citizens’ lives, the easier it has it with legitimacy and the invention of myths and legends. Conversely, the more you interfere, the more elaborate the constructions you have to fabricate. Let us recall that totalitarianism, in which citizens actually belong directly to the state, is forced not only to periodically shoot them, but also to invent whole volumes of mythology, accompanied by rituals and ceremonies. All this applies to Putin as well, who from the very first days of his power was preoccupied with “the search for consent.”
So, when predicting Putin’s actions, we must understand that they are determined by the existing Russian state mythology. Putin acts primarily with an eye toward internal, Russian consumption. In this sense, Putin’s interest does not lie in solving the Ukrainian or Crimean “question,” but in ensuring that such “questions” exist for as long as possible. Putin’s interest is in destabilization, not in annexation. His mythology holds that everyone who separated from Russia suffered for it, that all this is America’s doing and that of other enemies. Therefore, only “fraternal” regimes like Lukashenko’s have the right to exist on Russia’s borders; in all other cases, Russia will always support internal conflicts and destabilization.
And now the time has come to speak about the logic of the development of state mythology itself. As we have already said, the more power you want, the more intricate and fantastic your mythology will become. Russia is now a country of triumphant Pelevin (the St. George’s Ribbon alone is worth something), but all this phantasmagoric absurdity has a reverse side—the higher it rises, the higher the risks that one day the legend will collapse in the most unexpected way.
I never tire of reminding people of the history of the USSR, which fell into ideological marasmus. The USSR ended when its mythology collapsed, and this happened by historical standards quite rapidly, lightning-fast. Something similar awaits Russia. In our history, this means that a peaceful and prosperous Ukraine is simply unacceptable for the Putin regime. And so one needs to try to transition to this state as quickly as possible.