The Germans have a word for this – as they always do. Putinversteher – the one who “understands” Putin. It is intended as an insult and recently gained strength in the Western Circles of IR (International Relations), but Professor Geoffrey Roberts, Russia’s British historian, embraces the term. “I think it’s a very good term,” he told me last week. “It’s my professional responsibility to try to understand Putin.”
It is one of a growing number of “free thinkers” that are rejecting the standard western propaganda model that frames Putin and Russia as evil traders, rather than attributing them to pragmatic and ordinary reasons. This leaves a lot of room to criticize the Putin regime and its hardball geopolitics. These academics, however, assumed the role of the intellectual of challenging the dominant narrative and exposing the underlying lies (“totally unlucky war”, “Russia wants to conquer all Ukraine”, “if we don’t stop them in Ukraine, the Russians will continue”, etc.).
“This material is absurd absurd,” says Roberts. “Yes, Putin has ambitions; he has ambitions to change global policy in ways that fit the interests of Russia and Russia.”
“Putinversteher” and Putin’s vision for a postwar world
Professor Roberts sat in rooms with Putin, heard -speaking at length and, unlike 99% of people in the West, devoted time to studying their words not mediated by the various arms of Western media. He seeks to disrupt the perceptions of a world uninformed by good -boy/caricature narratives that make the resolution of crises virtually impossible.
“Putin is a visionary whose comprehensive goal is to end American global hegemony,” says Roberts, “and inaugurates a new post-western system of international relations-a multipolar system of sovereign states based on their diversity, equality and common safety.
In October, I wrote an article “USA We spent $ 28 billion to colonize your brain”, which described the impressive sums of money spent on US misinformation/perception management campaigns involving integer journalists, editors and media, and seeking to master our mental landscape, purging alternative voices. Swimming in this ocean of Russophobic synophobic propaganda makes it almost impossible to evaluate Russia, the Chinese or, until recently, the Palestinians, of anything that approached in a balanced way.
The former chief of the CIA Russian table, George Beebe, spoke eloquently recently of the duty of analysts of “sympathizing” with the Russians, of walking in their place – which, he pointed out, is different from “sympathizing” with the Russians (accepting their positions). Together with the former USA Moscow Jack Matlock, Quincy Institute Anatol Lieven, and people like Pascal Lottaz, Professor Glenn Diesen and others, Geoffrey Roberts enriches our thinking at a time when western media seems unable to differentiated dialogue.
British colleague Robert Skidelsky, a member of the Chamber of Lords, spoke about neutral studies last week about the danger of dragging the war in Ukraine and having numerous hostility with Russia.
“The whole European position is false. It’s deceived. It’s self -taught. It’s as if people have had pieces of their lobotomized brains so that they can’t think of these things anymore. I find it terrifying.”
This is why, despite all the madness, dangers and inconsistency, Trump’s moment can at least be a circuit breaker, an opportunity for the West to rediscover the lost art of diplomacy.
Challenging Putin’s myths
Geoffrey Roberts has 50 years of scholarships about Russia and the Soviet Union behind. Author of many books, including Stalin’s General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (who led the Soviet victory in the Battle of Stalingrad) and the Soviet Union in World Politics: Coexistence, Revolution and Cold War, 1945-1991 (The Creation of the Contemporary World), it also has a small and innumerable.
“One of the things I have been trying to do all my life is to combat this defamation of Russia and, more recently, the demonization of Putin – the complete distortion of Putin’s opinions.”
Historians like Geoff Roberts prefer long vision, looking at events in the distance, which helps them to be so disappeared, as objective as possible. But sometimes history calls historians to comment when the smell of cordite is still in the air.
In terms of Russophobic propaganda, says Roberts, the last three years have been more toxic than anything he saw. This forced him, he says, to avoid some of his academic habits – being a “archive rat” – and enter the ring.
Through articles, interviews, Youtube platforms and his own email database, he seeks to “provide alternative perspectives and cut the advertising Blizzard from Ukraine. I also do this to understand it alone.”
Its 2022 article “Now or never: the immediate origins of Putin’s preventive war in Ukraine” appeared at various points of sale, including the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies. This made a significant contribution to the discussion. In June last year, Brave New Europe published its “negotiating now or capitulating later: ten incentives for Ukraine to make up with Russia”, which exploded in clear and sober fulfillment that the harsh realities that are increasingly obvious to all: Ukraine faces an overwhelming defeat, if the West is indifferent to that Ukraine faces, A, Ukrien, which Ukrien faces the defeat Ukrinha Sea, Ukraine should follow an agreement now.
Most Ukrainians, says Roberts, now believe that even bad peace will be better than the continuation of a disastrous loss of war. Delaying and fighting makes no sense. As some discussed years ago: Ukraine would have a brighter future as a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe, not as a fortified advanced post on both sides.
The courage to oppose a dominant speech has a price. Powerful forces are pressuring academics and others who dare to express alternative views. Keeping yourself silent or imitating the party line is the safest option. Geoff Roberts is made of more severe things.
“I had this option to be quiet, keeping my head down. But at one point, I think in 2014 when the crisis broke, I was obliged to comment. It was easier for me to disagree because I’m retired. I’m hating criticizing the truth.
I admire independent thinkers like Geoffrey Roberts. They are at risk of defamation to promote the truth and understanding that Ukraine is a thorny issue with failures on all many sides of this disaster. Without this healthy perspectivism, making up and moving on is blocked. Does this make me a putinversteher? So it is. Ich bin putinversteher.
Eugene Doyle
Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He wrote extensively in the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia region. He hosts the Solidarity.co.nz public policy platform.
