But Putin, whose passion is for empire, not communism, has a different view. One particularly savage and revealing slice of that history, however, is a moment when the state was anything but unitary: the Russian Civil War of a century ago, when assorted forces known as the Whites tried for three bloody years to dislodge the new Bolshevik regime from power.īefore the U.S.S.R.’s collapse, in 1991, its rulers portrayed that war starkly: The Whites were evil reactionaries who tried to delay the glorious triumph of Soviet rule. School curricula and a nationwide array of historical theme parks now lavishly celebrate one incarnation after another of a strong unitary state made stronger and larger by all-powerful leaders-from Peter the Great to Stalin-who defied foreign meddling. In recent years, Putin has determinedly justified his expansionist ambition by spreading his own version of Russian history. Russia’s past is also crucial to the mix. Putin, whose passion is for empire, not communism, would love to restore the power of both czarist Russia and the Soviet Union.Īny search for perspective on the invasion’s brutality must include Putin’s background in the secret police, his dictatorial rule, and his drive to extend the reach of that rule. In eastern Ukraine, many victims of Russian atrocities are native Russian speakers- as is the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky. But both Russians and Ukrainians are white, Slavic, and, if religious, usually Orthodox Christians. Consider the Crusades, the Holocaust, the lynchings of thousands of Black Americans in the South, and, for that matter, the two recent Russian wars against the Muslim Chechens. Most often, we find cruelty like this when human beings are divided by religion or ethnicity.
Read: Liberation without victory, an interview with Volodymyr Zelensky But in today’s war, even as Putin insists that the would-be conquerors and the invaded are “one people,” the Russians almost seem to have an additional aim: to humiliate the Ukrainians, to dehumanize them, to see them suffer. That war, like this one, was over territory.
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Yet Captain Boris Sergievsky, a fighter pilot in the Imperial Russian Air Service stationed in western Ukraine, who as an émigré years later married my aunt, told me that if you fatally shot down a German aviator over Russian territory, you buried him with full military honors you then dropped by parachute onto the German airfield his personal effects and a photograph of his funeral. The First World War, for example, killed millions. Yes, all wars are bloody, but they’re not all fought like this. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
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