Beyond Putin: The National Psyche That Fuels Russian Aggression

-Analysis-

The threat from Russia is often reduced to Vladimir Putin, and there’s no denying that he and his inner circle play a crucial role in driving Russian aggression against Ukraine and beyond.

However, the Russian President’s enduring power — fortified by his reelection campaign in March that had no substantial opposition — stems from the alignment between his strategic ambitions and the instincts of both the Russian ruling class and mass consciousness.

Putin’s policies effectively fulfill the desires that the Russian elite and wider society has for historical vengeance and the resurgence of a dominant Eurasian empire.

In the first two or three years after the collapse of the USSR, it was assumed that Russia would become an ally of the West, weaken the role of the military command in the life of the nation and form a “belt of stability and good neighborliness” along its borders — that, in other words, it would respect the independence and territorial integrity of the independent states that emerged from the Soviet ruins.

This line, put forward by the first Russian Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, faced resistance from the army generals and the military-industrial complex, as well as the state security leadership, and most of the regional elites and academic circles. It was finally buried in 1996, when Yevgeny Primakov, director of the Foreign Intelligence Service, became head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“Among the security leadership, we were well aware that with the end of the Cold War the concept of “enemy” would not disappear,” wrote Primakov. “The leaders of a number of Western countries were acting to prevent Russia from playing a crucial role in stabilizing the the former republics of the USSR to avoid rapprochement with the Russian Federation.”

Primakov declared Russia’s most important foreign policy objectives to be opposition to NATO expansion, preservation of the Slobodan Milosevic regime in the former Yugoslavia, and the transformation of the former Soviet states into a strategic hinterland where Russian troops would be stationed for operations “on distant frontiers.”

None of these goals were achieved. But Primakov was able to transform the phobias, ambitions and expectations of the Russian elite into strategic concepts. The current Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is right: Primakov is indeed “the author of the key facets of modern Russia’s foreign policy doctrine.”

The outside world was declared a danger, and the main threat to Russia’s security was the establishment of a “unipolar world.” Washington was accused of undermining Russia’s international influence and pushing it out of its traditional zones of influence and spheres of interest.

Russia, Henry Kissinger once noted, has always been simultaneously looking to expand and always feeling under threat.

Primakov’s multipolarity

In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, the emphasis was on manipulating contradictions between stronger actors in world politics. This helps explain the concept of “multipolarity” invented by Primakov. Western unity during the Cold War, he argued, was the result of confrontation with the USSR. But as soon as the Soviet threat disappeared, contradictions between the United States, Europe and Japan undermined their former military-political and economic unity, and China turned into a superpower competing with Japan and the United States.

Moscow had to stimulate contradictions and conflict between these centers of power and, by playing on them, achieve its goals. However, this concept turned out to be stillborn. The Japanese-American military alliance remained strong. In the 1990s, NATO survived and expanded, and after 2014 and especially 2022, the North Atlantic Alliance became the focus of the military-political power of the West, opposing Russian expansion.

In Russia it is often argued that, having come to power, Putin sincerely wanted to be friends with the West and join NATO, and he supported the deployment of U.S. bases in Central Asia, necessary for operations in Afghanistan. But contrary to Moscow’s demands, the United States withdrew from the ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) Treaty, and the states of Central and Eastern Europe were accepted into NATO, including, which especially irritates the Kremlin, the Baltic nations.

Putin in Munich

Putin, in this context, could not help but react to the hostile behavior of the West. This version is sometimes repeated in the West: if the Baltic states had not been accepted into NATO, then today Russia would be an ally of the North Atlantic Alliance and world politics would be developing along a completely different trajectory.

in Munich, Putin’s declared Russia would forge “an independent foreign policy”

The reality, however, is very different. Indeed, once in the Kremlin, Putin tried to reduce tensions with the West — at that time Russia did not have the resources for a new confrontation with it. The war in Chechnya consumed almost all combat-ready units of Russia’s army. World oil and gas prices in 2000–2002 were only slightly higher than in the 1990s. Without the weakening of the confrontation with the West, Putin’s presidency would have gone down in history as a “presidency of disaster.”

But in 2003, oil prices shot up and a harsh anti-American campaign unfolded in Russia following the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Shortly before this, the State Duma postponed the ratification of the agreement signed with the United States on the reduction of strategic offensive capabilities.

In early 2007, in Munich, Putin gave a keynote speech, saying that the economic and military power of the United States did not correspond to its claims to “global leadership,” and that Russia had always “enjoyed the privilege of pursuing an independent foreign policy” and was not going to “change this tradition.”

It quickly became clear that “independent policy” meant a policy independent of the rule of law.

Prepped for aggression

The Munich speech reflected the ideas that had become entrenched in the Russian establishment about the strengthening of Russia and the deepening crisis of the West. As a result, Moscow believed, the possibility of taking “historical revenge” opened up: establishing military-political control over the territory of the former USSR and East-Central Europe, as well as the destruction of NATO, which should have been presented with a dilemma — surrender or nuclear war.

According to the Kremlin’s logic, Euro-Atlantic civilization has entered a period of decline, unable to cope with the growing crisis, and unable to resist by force the resurgent influence of Russia. And even if Western elites are able to stabilize the situation in the future, the Kremlin believes it is necessary to take advantage of their current weakness and ensure the most favorable positions for future confrontation.

The annexation of Crimea in 2014 reinforced Moscow’s confidence in the weakening of the West.

The response to the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008 and the annexation of Crimea in 2014 reinforced Moscow’s confidence in the weakening of the West. In both cases, the United States and Europe were faced with a choice: either a new Cold War or non-resistance to the aggressive actions of the Kremlin. The West’s reaction was ambivalent.

After the annexation of Crimea, Western states introduced economic sanctions against Russia, yet set as their goal the settlement of the Russian-Ukrainian confrontation on the basis of the Minsk agreements. This effectively legitimized the Russian occupation of Crimea and turned the so-called people’s republics of Luhansk and Donetsk into a powerful instrument of Russian influence in Ukraine.

Revanchist and militaristic

The revanchist and militaristic nature of the strategic thinking of the Russian establishment and the aggressiveness of Russian foreign policy are due to the peculiarities of the Russian psyche. According to the Levada Center, which publishes reliable data on the attitude of the Russian population to the war in Ukraine, about 70% of respondents consistently approve of it, approximately 20% disapprove, and the rest are indifferent.

Sometimes, sociologists can be trusted and sometimes they can’t. But one has to face facts. Anti-war protests at the beginning of the war were weak and even the death of Alexei Navalny saw a relatively modest challenge from public opinion.

Sociologists and psychologists have yet to explain this feature of Russian society. Moscow’s aggressive policy, experts say, fully corresponds not only to the conscious, but also to the unconscious attitudes and expectations of at least three-quarters of the population. The leading analyst of the Levada Center, Boris Dubin, wrote: “I want to emphasize: this is not at all about “imposing” on the masses or the notorious “manipulation” of mass consciousness, its “zombification” by the media and political experts, but about semantic permission, if anything – a blessing, and additional symbolic reinforcement of those moods and stereotypes that already exist among the masses, but in a vague and unarticulated form.”

In other words, propaganda liberated and legitimized gave a more or less stable verbal form to the aggressive, militaristic and revanchist mentality and emotional state of mass consciousness and consolidated the political stereotypes that originally existed in it.

Xenophobia and ethnic hatred

This calls into question the idea that a change in propaganda strategy, say, in the case of replacing Putin and his clique at the top of Russian power, will lead to a change in the basic imperial and revanchist attitudes deeply rooted in the consciousness of the average Russian.

The fact that militaristic propaganda is readily accepted by Russian society, with the exception of a relatively small part of it, means that this society consciously or subconsciously shares the very assessments, views and stereotypes that the pro-Kremlin media instill in it.

Numerous researchers have tried to understand the causes and origins of the militarization of mass consciousness, the widespread prevalence of xenophobia and ethnic hatred, mythologized concepts that justify and glorify war, and the search for an external enemy. Many works noted a deficit of critical-analytical thinking and, accordingly, adherence to an indoctrinated point of view, infantile dependence on the authorities and pro-government media, rejection of logical arguments and facts. There are many theories that describe and explain these phenomena. They do not contradict each other and together form a complete picture.

One is focused on the mentality of an “obedient subject” that’s been formed in Russia, accustomed to submission, unquestioningly carrying out not only the orders and instructions of one’s superiors, but also easily assimilating the ideological and political doctrines and views imposed from above.

According to another concept, the militarization of the Russian mass consciousness was a consequence of “negative selection.” The changes experienced by the population of Russia, wrote the Russian sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, “are typical of all major wars and revolutions. The latter have always been a tool of negative selection.” In particular, “the more strong-willed, gifted, morally and mentally developed” died in large numbers during wars. Persons who are morally defective suffered less. During the revolution, conditions were just favorable to their survival. In conditions of brutal struggle, lies, deception, unprincipledness and moral cynicism, they felt great; they occupied profitable positions, committed atrocities, cheated, changed their positions as needed, and lived a satisfying and cheerful life.”

Violence as politics

World War II dealt a terrible blow to public morality in the former USSR. In order to survive, they consciously or subconsciously forced themselves to believe in Bolshevik propaganda in order to avoid split thinking. As a result, a huge number of people became accustomed to communist dogmas, some deeply believed in them. And these dogmas, as one of the deepest experts on Soviet Bolshevism, Alexander Yakovlev, wrote, “harshly and strictly dictate the policy of violence as the “midwife of history.”

Communism in Russia died before the collapse of the USSR, but its inherent logic of thinking, ideas about violence as the main political instrument remained and, largely thanks to Kremlin propaganda, were transferred to the foreign policy sphere.

The annexation of Crimea gave such a powerful effect of triumph and self-satisfaction.

The main conclusions seem far from optimistic. The aggressive foreign policy of Putin’s Russia took its final form beginning in 2014, and expanded in 2022, generated not only by the views and geopolitical ideas of the president himself, but by the highest circles of the bureaucracy, military command, the owners of the military-industrial complex and the heads of the security services.

Russia’s aggressiveness on the world stage has deep roots within society and reflects expectations, phobias and other mental and emotional characteristics of the Russian mass consciousness.

“The annexation of Crimea gave such a powerful effect of triumph and self-satisfaction, a sense of demonstration of strength, that it eliminated or pushed aside all other claims to power,” wrote Levada Center director Lev Gudkov. “The demonstration of force towards the West have also sharply increased Russians’ self-respect. I would say they doubled it. And claims to power and ideas about power as corrupt and selfish are fed through the current regime.”

All of this makes Russia ever harder to control or predict, especially when it comes to foreign policy.