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This week’s high-profile court cases, from the 25-year sentence of opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza to the prosecution of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovic, look like a shift to totalitarianism. But they may also be a sign of a nation set to implode.
-Analysis-
It’s been a busy week at the Moscow City Court — and across town at the State Duma.
A federal judge Monday sentenced Russian opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza to a stunning 25 years for treason. The following day, in the same courtroom, another judge rejected an appeal by The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last month on espionage charges, and now faces up to 20 years in prison.
Also on Tuesday, Russia’s national legislature, the State Duma, passed an amendment that makes treason in Russia punishable by life in prison.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Kremlin watchers have drawn the obvious connections between these judicial and legislative decisions — and aptly called them, “Stalinist,” as if there was any doubt left, Putin has clearly passed from authoritarianism to totalitarianism.
Yet the decisions this week may actually reveal a very different reality rumbling under the surface in Russian. Not only is the current Kremlin strongman no match for Joseph, “Man of Steel,” with Stalin ruling unchallenged until his death of natural causes in 1953. But the dynamic now driving Putin is ultimately something very different than a totalitarian regime growing stronger: it increasingly resembles a nation bracing for civil war.
It’s worth going back a few months, when independent experts said that Putin was focused on maintaining popular support before 2024 elections, and would do everything to avoid high-profile court cases and a national mobilization to draft men into the military ranks. However, the situation at the front and the lack of clear support from China has forced the Kremlin to put aside such calculations, and bet everything on victory.
The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested last month on espionage charges, is now facing up to 20 years in prison.
Vladimir Pastukhov, a political scientist and a freelance senior fellow at University College London, spoke on Monday with Novaya Gazeta Europe about the uptick in repression as part of the isolation of Russian society now spilling out through the war in Ukraine.
The hatred the West, the war on would-be Nazism, the victory over Ukraine, he argues, are all false constructs fulfill one important role: to unite Russian society. When the war in Ukraine is over, all the problems that have accumulated for decades will erupt with violence and mass discontent within the country itself — and the only way out will be a civil war.
A quick victory could quiet the anger.
"Ending the war will be even scarier than starting it," Pastukhov believes. "All these severed heads, severed genitals, sledgehammered heads, (Pastukhov talks about videos of executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war), we only see a small fraction of what's going on there. And it will all come out; people instinctively understand this and want to subconsciously break (Ukraine) somehow, not out of patriotic feelings but out of fear of retribution. The entire nation has blood on its hands."
According to Pastukhov, the events at the front and inside Russia are interconnected. If there is no war victory, any dissent must be forcibly removed and shut down. If victory over Ukraine had been quick and easy (as Putin had been made to believe) few would have condemned the Kremlin's actions and aggression against a sovereign state.
External aggression was supposed to release the steam of tension that has been building up in Russian society — a quick victory could quiet the anger of the growing class and ethnic inequalities across the vast nation. This is indeed what happened with the annexation of Crimea, after which Putin's rating soared.
Kremlin watchers have referred to judicial and legislative decisions in Moscow as “Stalinist,”. Putin has clearly passed from authoritarianism to totalitarianism.
The images we most often see of life in Moscow and St. Petersburg, where living conditions are more or less similar to those in Europe, hide a pressing reality. Outside these two cities is a vast country of many millions living often in squalor, without adequate education, medical care, sometimes even without electricity or gas, and certainly without a chance of a better life. It is a system as corrupt as it is poor. Even before the war, the famous Russian blogger Ilya Varlamov made a series of stunning videos about the “real” Russia, having traveled to far-flung regions of the country to show the brutal reality of life there.
Now this civil war is going on outside.
On top of the economic conflict, there are major unresolved clashes of religion and morality, which the state having launched a hunt for any dissent or threats to so-called "traditional values." This includes crackdowns on LGBTQ people, human rights and environmental organizations, independent media, and any civil unions in defense of the rights and freedoms of Russians.
"There is already a civil war going on in every sense," says Pastukhov. "This is the exhaust of hatred for one another, of the unsettledness of Russian life. Now this civil war is going on outside, and it is not yet visible because there is a place to stratify hatred."
Finding an external enemy or starting a war with a neighbor is, of course, not a novel way of trying to deal with domestic problems. Plenty of rulers before Putin have applied this recipe. And it often ends the same way: war finds its way back to the one who started it in the form of funerals, wounded veterans, criminals, guilt, economic problems, and the associated discontent within society.
Even beyond the bloodshed of its war in Ukraine, lesser acts of aggression by the state are a clear expression of the intentions of Vladimir Putin's Russia.
-Analysis-
They are "minor” incidents compared to the bloody frontline near Bakhmut, or the missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities. But these same incidents say a lot about what is going on in Russian society, behind the relatively normal facade that has been preserved for a year.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
Two arrests occurred Thursday, one of a Russian citizen whose story is one of aberrant cruelty; the other of an American journalist turned hostage in the proxy confrontation between Moscow and Washington.
Aleksei Moskalyov is a single father of a 13-year-old girl, Maria, a status which is in itself considered abnormal in Russian society. But above all, Maria was taken away from her father and placed in an orphanage for having drawn an anti-war picture at school. Her own teacher reported her to the authorities.
The father was sentenced to two years in prison for having criticized the Russian army. He fled, but was arrested in Minsk, the Belarusian capital, probably betrayed by the activation of his cell phone. He risks an even harsher sentence, and likely will not see his daughter again for years.
Yes, another scene from daily life in a totalitarian country.
Wall Street Journal warning
The Wall Street Journal journalist, Evan Gershkovich, was arrested in Ekaterinburg, a large industrial city in Russia. With a dozen years of experience in Russia, Gershkovich is accused of espionage while on a reporting trip.
Washington immediately protested the arrest, which Anthony Blinken, the Secretary of State, likened to a "hostage situation". The United States is also asking its citizens to leave Russia immediately.
It is a lever on the United States.
Yes, spies do exist, and some of them — the Russians know something about this — can pass themselves off as journalists. But either Moscow will quickly present tangible and credible elements, or this arrest will only be considered as an attempt to intimidate all foreign journalists still present in Russia. They can suffer the same fate at any time.
It is also a lever on the United States, as was the case with basketball player Brittney Griner, who was exchanged in December for a Russian prisoner, the arms dealer Viktor Bout.
WSJ journalist Evan Gershkovich being arrested in Moscow on March 30
Each in its own way, these two events show us a society in tumult, where a climate of mistrust and a relentless hunt generated by the war generates signals of distress. If a child's drawing can be subversive, and a journalist is necessarily a spy, we see the toll that one year of war has taken on a nation.
This is a sign of a conflict that is set to last.
Add to this Vladimir Putin's pessimistic statements about the Russian economy, and the admission that Western sanctions may have a negative effect in the medium term. These words, in a televised speech, contrast with the image of a implacable Russia, where the sanctions would not have hurt one bit.
Is Putin readying the population for a tougher war economy, with sacrifices imposed by the sanctions? In any case, this is a sign of a conflict that is set to last, not a climate conducive to negotiation; it is also a sign of a president who is ready to challenge threats to his rule on any front.
Many lives have been lost, rights trampled and dreams crushed. But through the haze, the world took the right turn on many fronts this past year, from Ukraine to Iran to China. Trying to take stock amid the suffering.
The starting premise is a bit daring: to associate 2022 with good news seems naïve at best.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused the death, rape and torture of thousands of people.
In China, the iron-fisted 69-year-old Communist leader Xi Jinping strengthened his control over the Chinese population and looks set to stay in power for life. Meanwhile, in Iran, clerics continue to brutally suppress women’s protests for equal rights; in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan threatened to invade Greece.
Of course, it’s hard to speak of a “triumph” of Western democracies, many of which are stuck in sluggish, inconclusive elections: a French executive that lacks a clear majority, Liz Truss in the UK and the probably transient Giorgia Meloni in Italy. And yet...
Despite the violent, threatening and deadly waves facing democracy, one could argue that there’s a much stronger tide coming, bringing victories for democracy, and against authoritarianism.
Russia pushed back in Ukraine
First, let’s talk about Russia. Who would have imagined, in February 2022, that the Russian army would be torn apart by the bravery of Ukrainian people with the support of Western weapons? And that as a result, that same army would move back?
Who would have thought that 300,000 conscripted Russian men would have rushed not to their Kalashnikovs, to die in the name of mother Russia, but instead to travel websites, to get their hands on a ticket to hide out in Turkey or Georgia? Who would have thought that the strategic partnership between China and Russia would have, in the end, led to nothing?
A mural depicting a Ukrainian soldier central Kyiv
In China, the methods used to fight against COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic are being completely overhauled. Isn’t this a large-scale demonstration of the challenges that authoritarianism has in confronting the complexity of the 21st century?
And what about Iranian women taking on the country’s clerics and protesting for their rights before, perhaps, bringing down the regime?
We should be able to believe more in ourselves
In Turkey, even if the regime maintains its expansionist diplomacy and networks in Africa, Europe and Eurasia, it still faces an election in June 2023 and triple-digit inflation.
In Myanmar, the military junta is hanging by a thread, which will soon be cut by rebels keen on democracy. In India, democracy, apparently confiscated in the past by Gandhi’s family and party, has never been so vibrant and solid. Finally, in Brazil — a young democracy of just 30 years — the Bolsonaro parenthesis ended without a bloodshed.
At a protest against Myanmar military's government in Bangkok, Thailand
“Deep down, do we actually believe in democracy’s strength? In freedom’s strength?” This is what the former President of Sciences Po asked me back in 2015. This is the paradox of our time: everywhere in the world, freedom’s ideas are expanding.
The U.S. survived Trumpism — which is on the retreat — and the attack on the Capitol. The UK survived a year of Brexit and of Boris Johnson’s and Liz Truss’ misdirection. And Italy survived the departure of Mario Draghi.
The only trap that exists is to lose hope and to let a “totalitarianism” of fear and resignation expand in our minds. Instead, we should be able to believe more in ourselves, and to listen better and address these expectations — in terms of the physical, economic and social security and societal stability of a people who are deeply attached to freedom and democracy.
Welcome to Wednesday, where Russia reports an attempt by Ukraine to recapture the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power, Iran’s climber explains why she competed without a veil, and researchers conclude that yes, you do need that beauty sleep. Meanwhile, Marc Pfitzenmaier for German daily Die Welt takes the temperature on the Swedish island of Gotland in the Baltic Sea, the “last bastion” between Russia and the entire Batlic region.
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• Ukraine tries to retake Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, Russia calls for Kherson evacuation: Russian says an attempt by Ukrainian armed forces to recapture the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant has failed. Meanwhile, pro-Russian forces have called for the evacuation of Kherson, as Kyiv appears poised to try to reconquer the southern city.
• Iranian climber explains why she didn’t wear a veil: Elnaz Rekabi, the Iranian climber who competed in Seoul without a headscarf, said she did so unintentionally, amid reports that she had refused to wear it out of solidarity with Iranian protests ignited by Mahsa Amini's death in morality police custody. Rekabi said on her way back to Iran with the rest of her team in a post on her Instagram page.
• UK summons Chinese diplomat: After footage was shared of a Hong Kong pro-democracy protester being attacked on the grounds of the Chinese Consulate in Manchester Sunday, the U.K. has demanded talks with a senior Chinese diplomat.
• Ethiopian army captures several towns in Tigray: Ethiopia’s military has taken control of three towns in the northern Tigray region, amid fighting between Tigrayan rebel forces that has continued on and off since late 2020. The conflict is rooted in long-running rivalries and opinions of how power should be balanced between federal and regional authorities in the area.
• Blast at Myanmar prison: At least eight people have been killed and another 10 injured in explosions at Myanmar’s Insein prison, where close to 10,000 prisoners are held. No party has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.
• Flesh-eating bacteria in U.S. after hurricane: After a hurricane tore through southern states of the U.S. last month, a surge in cases of flesh-eating bacteria illnesses and deaths are said to have caused 29 illnesses and four deaths in the area. The bacteria, Vibrio vulnificus, can enter the body through open cuts and thrives in warm, still pools of water, like flood-waters.
• Anna May Wong to be first Asian American on U.S. currency: Anna May Wong, considered the movie industry's first Chinese American star, will be the first Asian American to be featured on the back of new U.S. quarters as of Monday.
“Berluscomic,” titles Italian daily Il Fatto Quotidiano after an audio file revealed that Italy’s former Prime Minister had said during a closed-door meeting with his allies that he had re-established relations with his long-time friend Vladimir Putin and that they had exchanged “sweet” letters and gifts. Berlusconi denied a resumption of relations with the Russian President and said his comments referred to a past episode. The scandal comes as Giorgia Meloni, Italy’s likely next prime minister, is struggling to form a government.
Results of a study done by PLoS Medicine say that at least five hours sleep a night may cut the chances of certain chronic health problems in people over 50. According to researchers, people around that age who slept five hours or less had a 30% greater risk of multiple ailments than those who slept seven hours, and shorter sleep was associated with a higher risk of death due to chronic disease.
Gotland, the Swedish island standing between Russia and NATO vulnerability
The Swedish island of Gotland is the last bastion between Russia and the entire Baltic region. Sweden has been busy fortifying the island, with the stakes even higher as Stockholm is set to join NATO, and life for locals makes it clear that something has changed, reports Marc Pfitzenmaier for German daily Die Welt.
📍 More than 1,000 kilometers separate Sweden from the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine. Yet since February 24 nothing on Gotland is as it was before. With the start of Moscow's invasion, the decades-old abstract scenario of having to defend one's homeland from the imposing Russian neighbor became a plausible future. Nowhere in the country is this more evident than on the scenic Baltic island of Gotland, which occupies a key geographical position. If it were to fall into enemy hands, the Baltic states would be all but lost, and the Nordic Baltic states would be largely cut off from NATO aid by sea.
🎖️ Since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, defense capacities have been expanded, and the government in Stockholm put together a financial package of around 150 million euros to expand the infrastructure on the island so that significantly more servicemen and women can be based here and ready for action in the future. Several hundred Swedish soldiers are now permanently stationed on the island — and there are even more volunteers who live on the island permanently and now spend significantly more time on the military grounds training for emergencies.
🇸🇪🇫🇮 But Sweden's rearmament is by no means limited to Gotland. After more than 200 years of military non-alignment, the country has also decided to join NATO. Similar to its neighbor and friendly rival Finland, public support for membership had hovered between 20 and 30 percent for two decades. But then an unprecedented change of opinion took place after the invasion of Ukraine, to which Stockholm had to react. Joining NATO would mean much better protection for Sweden and Finland, and two strong new members for the Alliance, having long invested in modern land, sea and air forces.
When Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova interrupted Monday’s nightly news with an anti-war protest, most figured her stunning act of political courage would be brutally punished. But she’s received just a small fine and continues to move and speak freely in Moscow. Paradoxically, it may actually be the final tack in Vladimir Putin’s brutal, unpredictable propaganda machine.
-Analysis-
It was a lone act of extreme political courage that brought the world back to the 1989 images of “Tank Man” of Tiananmen Square.
Stay up-to-date with the latest on the Russia-Ukraine war, with our exclusive international coverage.
On the night of March 15, Marina Ovsyannikova, a veteran journalist on Russia's leading state TV newscast, burst into the studio holding up a sign that read "No war ... you are being lied to here."
The defiant act came in a country where critics of the government are poisoned, journalists jailed simply for covering protests, and with a new law last week: anyone who even refers to Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine as a “war” can expect up to 15 years in prison.
Putin's propaganda formula
Yet for her frontal challenge to Vladimir Putin, seen in prime time by tens of millions of Russians, Ovsyannikova was only required to answer to an administrative court and fined a mere 30,000 rubles, less than $300. By Wednesday, she was appearing on CNN to slam the war again.
What explains the mere slap on the wrist? Why didn’t Putin just pack her off to the Gulag?
The first response is that Ovsyannikova is not yet out of the woods, and could face criminal prosecution in the future. The second, mentioned by several political observers in Russia, is that the Kremlin feared a negative reaction of sending a high-profile mother of two to prison.
It's a strongman's head fake.
Yet ultimately, the incident reveals a subtle truth about Putin’s propaganda formula: the repression of freedom must never arrive at 100% for it to have maximum impact. In other words, there must always be room for the proverbial “exception that proves the rule,” a strongman’s head fake to keep everyone off balance.
Indeed, the authoritarian bent of post-Soviet Russia never reached near the severity of China and North Korea, for example. Moscow and St. Petersburg had long included a flourishing independent press and mostly open access to the Internet. Yet since he began his second term in office, Putin’s expanding use of censorship has been slowly squeezing the independent media in Russia towards oblivion.
Don't call the war a war
After the annexation of Crimea and the occupation of Donbas in 2014, Kremlin propaganda was ratcheting up at full speed, pressing even harder on remaining publications and journalists. By 2017, a new law was passed that used the label “foreign agents” to stifle press outlets and NGOs that don’t serve as mouthpieces for the government. In the months and weeks before the invasion, limits on freedom multiplied.
On March 4, the Russian Duma and Federation Council approved amendments to the Criminal Code that included the penalties of up to 15 years in prison for “false reports” on the use of the Russian armed forces, Kommersant reported. That includes the ban on calling the conflict a “war,” replaced with the phrase "military operation.” The use of the banned word has led to the arrest of not only journalists but also activists and even church officials.
All of the media outlets that had previously been listed as foreign agents were shut down, their websites shut down, and their editorial offices raided and arrested. Echo Moskvy, Meduza, Dozhd, Present Time, Krym.Realii and others were subjected to censorship and have effectively ceased to exist. Famous blogger Ilya Varlamov was forced to stop covering this topic on his YouTube channel after several videos about the war, while another well-known blogger, Maxim Katz, continues broadcasting from abroad.
A window is still cracked open for a tiny handful of independent media, and other free voices in today's Putin's Russia, Either it is because Putin fears taking away the last crumbs of freedom from Russian citizens and thus awakening a popular revolt or the transformation into a totalitarian regime is simply still not quite complete.
George Orwell taught us that the elimination of freedom of speech is the form of totalitarian oppression that serves all the others. "Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows."
We are terribly ashamed to take this step.
Earlier Russia's last remaining major independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta, whose editor-in-chief won last year's Nobel Peace Prize, published a message to its readers: "Today the Russian parliament has finally introduced military censorship without actually declaring it. We news journalists can get up to 15 years in camps for "spreading deliberately false information about the use of the Russian Armed Forces. "Deliberately false" information is data on prisoners, people killed, and the shelling of civilians in Ukraine. We are asked to admit that none of this happened."
The editorial board decided not to leave Russia but also not to publish the official information of the Russian Defense Ministry: "We are terribly ashamed to take this step while our friends, acquaintances, and relatives are going through real hell in Ukraine. And on both sides. We remain to cover a huge range of topics," the newspaper writes. “But trying to 'feed' the reader a picture of reality with only bulletins from the Russian Defense Ministry and news from peaceful life? No, that will never happen.”
Cause and effect
The war in Ukraine is both cause and effect of a final end to any semblance of freedom in Putin’s Russia. For many Russians, especially those whose news and information diet is not limited to state-run outlets, the brutal invasion of a neighbor was also the last straw in tolerating the regime.
That was by all accounts the case for Marina Ovsyannikova, who indeed had spent years participating in the propaganda. After her dramatic on-air gesture, Putin dismissed her as a traitor, a tool of foreign agents. By now we also know that this one man could decide at any given moment to level whatever punishment he sees fit. Whether facing a mother of two or not, we see what he’s unleashed against civilians in Ukraine.
Still, after her court appearance alongside her young lawyer dressed in fashionable casual clothes, Ovsyannikova held an impromptu press conference on the steps of the courthouse. The scene looked strikingly familiar, the modern choreography of free speech in action. But look again: the reporters are asking questions in English, Ovsyannikova responds in English. It will never be seen on Russian TV so long as Vladimir Putin is in charge.
Cuba's dissident artists are challenging not just the communist state's repression, but also its claim to be the socio-cultural guide for the nation.
-OpEd-
HAVANA — Joseph Stalin's famous response to Pope Pius XII's criticism of the Soviet regime was to brush aside the pontiff, asking: "How many divisions does he have?"
Totalitarian terror is safe indeed inside its borders, a machine designed to control society without armies. Stalin could claim victory when novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn was thrown out of communist Russia, and yet faced posthumous defeat when the Soviet state rehabilitated its critic, the scientist Andrei Sakharov. Arms play no role in totalitarian terror's anonymous routines and quiet paperwork. That is something sectors of Latin America's political left cannot understand, not seeing in Cuba that the bloody antics of dictatorships live on.
Totalitarianism is clear on one thing: To govern, it must demolish the disruptive field of symbolism. That is why Stalin won't disappear. He has migrated to Cuba, instead, to face down the Movimiento San Isidro, a dissident artists' collective.
Paradoxically, the Castro brothers were evolving toward an authoritarian model wherein civil liberties were starting to be a less costly and dramatic bone of contention, provided the state's hegemony was not challenged. Independent music, art and poetry festivals were suppressed as they could become public venues and gathering spaces for an active mass of psychedelic youngsters. But small-format spaces managed to find a way of living alongside the regime of the Castro brothers in its terminal phase.
But their successor government, whose belated attempt to lift the Communist party into the leading role, has recovered Stalin. So, while the Castros must face history's judgement, the government of President Miguel Díaz-Canel is up against a combined crisis of legitimacy and leadership. And in that situation, culture becomes a central challenge.
The San Isidro Movement is at the root of the government's dual-legitimacy problem: as the single party wielding all power, and as the country's ideological home.
It is poetic justice.
With a decree to contain the cultural movement at the start of its administration, its authors were reacting to a robustly emerging reality on the margins: that of all those expelled from the institutions and pushed out of society. The San Isidro movement sums that up. Its symbolic power unites a sidelined social body and street anger, with the creative mind of free artists who cannot be confronted aesthetically, conceptually or imaginatively.
The party's repressive response merely highlights and accelerates culture's movement from inside to outside the state. This libertarian movement and its wealth of multiple manifestations, like its social hymn, Patria y Vida, is changing the paradigm that serves as reference to Cuban society.
Emerging as it did from street-level cultural resistance, the San Isidro movement pitted itself against the state in the two areas where original Stalinism had triumphed: the destruction of the bodies of victims and the disappearance of their art. With its dismal communication strategy, the Cuban state has legitimated the latter — and to safeguard its weakened image, launched an operation to rehabilitate the artist Luis Manuel Otero Alcántara. In the street.
It's poetic justice. In its new, impoverished version, Stalinism is defeated in San Isidro. Culture can be transgressive, corrosive and liberating when it hits you by surprise.
PARIS — As we prepare to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the author of The Gulag Archipelago, his widow and intellectual accomplice, granted a rare and exclusive interview to Le Figaro. Natalia Solzhenitsyn evokes her husband's gigantic literary and historical work in identifying the causes of the Russian tragedy. She recalls that Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, though he spent his life fighting against totalitarianism, was in favor of a strong government in Russia. This undoubtedly helps to explain Vladimir Putin's sympathy for him. Deploring the humiliation Russia suffered in the 1990s, Natalia Solzhenitsyn considers that "Crimea is Russian" but that the Kremlin should never have interfered with the Donbass. She also regrets the fact that President Emmanuel Macron recently snubbed the official Russian stand at the Paris Book Fair (though Russia was this year's guest-of-honor), and says that Russia needs help rather than condescension.
LE FIGARO: You shared your life with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the most important figures of the 20th century, the man who destroyed Communism with his pen. What do you see as the most important aspect of this extraordinary life?
Natalia Solzhenitsyn: Everything was important, really everything. Our life circumstances were very difficult. But between us, it was happiness! Really! All around, things were complicated, but we went through these difficulties together. We didn't agree on certain tactical choices, and with my confrontational temperament I would stand up to him. But we always agreed on the essential, the strategic things. I think we were both very lucky. People often ask me: was it hard to live with such a man, so focused on his goal, so focused on the great things? Is it hard to sleep with a genius? I think there are no rules and it depends on both parties! For me, it was both natural and exciting. The limitations imposed on us seemed acceptable to me because there was a much greater goal to achieve, for which we were fighting.
This year Russia will celebrate the 100th anniversary of your husband's birth. Do you feel that the country is ready to welcome his lessons?
The lessons are necessary but not welcomed in their entirety. Our society is fragmented on almost all issues, including on Solzhenitsyn. He is taught at school and high school, but as far as University is concerned, it depends on the professors. As far as books are concerned, he is constantly reprinted, which shows that people read him. But of course, there are opponents, especially among the Communists who find him responsible for the end of Communism and bring up all the lies propagated in the Soviet era.
It's no secret that the current Russian power has a good relationship with you...
It's Putin himself, personally, who feels sympathy towards Solzhenitsyn. I would say that he gives him "inner attention". I don't know exactly why. But I know, for example, that his Reflections on the February Revolution, published by the newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta a decade ago, was given to Putin. It was seen later on his working desk, with annotations. What has brought them together is undoubtedly the fact that Solzhenitsyn is, like him, a supporter of a strong government.
At the same time, the power refuses to face up to the past and puts Stalin back in the spotlight. Opponents are emigrating... Is it starting all over again?
I'd say we're dealing with a form of schizophrenia. On the one hand, a lot of books about Stalin are being published, we celebrate his birth and death, but on the other hand, saying that the government is encouraging it isn't fair. Putin says nothing to support such initiatives. But it's true that he does not oppose it. On October 30, a new wall to the victims of all political repression was erected and Putin came to this inauguration ceremony. His presence was an anti-Stalinist gesture and was perceived as such. He gave a speech in which every word was right. The contradiction you point out is a reflection of the schism that runs through our society. Putin no doubt believes that as president of all Russians, he must accept this coexistence.
Radicalism is part of our national character.
What was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's main lesson from his study of 1917?
He believed that the main cause of the February Revolution was the fatal confrontation of power and educated society, a confrontation that had lasted for half a century. In theory, such a confrontation is normal and healthy, but not in such a radical form, when there is no room for compromise.
Why was there no compromise?
Partly because of the Russian character, the radicalism of the national character. But also because of the obtuse nature of power, which when it's absolute isn't capable of an organic link with society. Admittedly, on the eve of the revolution, that power was no longer absolute, but the amount of hatred accumulated was such that there was no capacity for compromise. Solzhenitsyn always said that in such cases, both parties have a share of responsibility, even if the government's is greater. This is a great lesson for the future.
Is it out of fear of this radicalism that you remain open to dialogue with Putin's authorities?
Yes, I'm trying to have a centrist stance. After spending so many years studying our history, I'm very afraid of another fatal confrontation. I have no desire whatsoever for our educated society to persist in a position of absolute intransigence to the point of absurdity. We must criticize power but also engage with it.
Would the man from The Gulag Archipelago have accepted dialogue?
He would never have accepted dialogue and compromise with the former Soviet power, which was totalitarian and which he considered anti-human. But with this government, which to be sure has made huge mistakes, no doubt he would have. Because the country is different! Yes, there is some corruption and lies. But it is not total. It's like in all dictatorships on the right. There's a way out. To escape totalitarianism is something completely different. Only Russia has experienced this and has not yet fully come out of it. Today, we have a form of autocracy, which is was what Solzhenitsyn thought actually. It is, therefore, possible to make democracy grow, but this won't be possible without dialogue.
In Rebuilding Russia, Solzhenitsyn had put forward the idea that Russia should abandon the empire. Isn't the government letting itself be dragged into new fatal foreign ventures like in Ukraine?
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn had indeed called for an end to Russian imperialism, to the empire. But I don't think there's any real danger there. We have to distinguish between Crimea and the Donbass. I regret very much what happened in the Donbass, the Russians should never have gotten involved. But as far as Crimea is concerned, despite a questionable approach from the point of view of international law, this region belongs to Russia. Imagine a divorce between a man and a woman in totally unforeseen conditions, those of a war for example. They don't have time to think, to get lawyers. As a result, the woman or the man takes something that absolutely doesn't belong to her or him. That is exactly what happened with Ukraine's independence. No one asked the people of Crimea or of Ukraine what they thought. From my perspective, the return of Crimea does justice to history.
If we accept your reasoning, tomorrow Russia may decide to recover a piece of the Baltic countries that were in the Russian empire in the name of historical justice...
I know that my position is very controversial in the West, but the Baltic countries are a completely different matter. That will not happen. Crimea is special, it's a historically Russian land. Of course, what is happening in the Donbass gives arguments to your concerns about the idea of a precedent. I think it was a huge mistake and Russia will regret it. But it won't go any further, simply because it doesn't have the strength.
You said in an interview that Solzhenitsyn would have died if he had seen the conflict in Ukraine.
This rift was upsetting for him. A large part of Solzhenitsyn's family was Ukrainian. If he had seen the 2014 Kiev conflict, he would have died of grief. At the same time, he always said that Ukraine would leave. He knew it would be very painful but likely. But the fact that Crimea and Sevastopol had left Russia put him in a state of indignation! NATO has a huge responsibility in this matter because it never stopped trying to install its fleet there.
We must take care not to be crushed beneath the rubble.
French President Emmanuel Macron boycotted Russia's stand in solidarity with London, after the mysterious chemical attack against a former Russian agent. Do you understand his position?
No! Russia was the guest of honor at this (literary) exhibition and he didn't come to the Russian stand. I regret that. Your president talks about the necessary dialogue between the people of Russian culture and the French but, at the same time, he abstains from it. Even during the Cold War, France allowed itself to have an independent stance on cultural matters that had nothing to do with loyalty to military allies. In the Russian delegation were many writers who are de facto members of the opposition and write critically about the government. This boycott is therefore very disappointing and even a little pathetic.
What did Aleksander Solzhenitsyn like about France?
Life played a good trick on Solzhenitsyn. He didn't consider himself a Francophile at all, in fact, he didn't take France very seriously. He was more familiar with Germany and would read Schiller and Goethe in German, he also had a high opinion of the Anglo-Saxon world. But when he arrived in Switzerland and then in Germany, he felt very much hemmed in. On the other hand, when he arrived in France, he liked everything right away. The warmth, the atmosphere. Moreover, people in France are readers. France was the first Western country to read, translate and publish him. In short, he fell in love with France, and even called it his "unexpected homeland."
When he died in 2008, was he worried about the course of events in Russia?
He was very worried. He'd understood that the Cold War was going to come back and that Russia had made many mistakes, as had the West by encircling it with military bases. Remember the first lines of Rebuilding Russia: "Time has finally run out for Communism. But its concrete edifice has not yet crumbled. And we must take care not to be crushed beneath its rubble instead of gaining liberty." That is exactly what is happening, and especially in people's minds. The love for Stalin and nostalgia for the end of the USSR have a protest aspect. The promises of the 1990s could not be kept. The introduction of the market economy without preparation turned into a heist. That's tragic. Russia is going through a period that no other country has ever been through. It needs help, but not dictatorial and condescending help, as the United States has been doing with the IMF. The great mistake of the U.S. was to think that it had won the Cold War and that Russia would no longer be a player. A catastrophic approach! Because when pressured Russia bounces back like a spring. It felt humiliated, encircled. Much of the support for Putin can be explained by this feeling of humiliation. You must be firm with Russia, but issuing ultimatums is totally counterproductive.
SAO PAULO — One of the biggest lies in modern politics is the belief that freedom is a universally-shared passion. It isn't. Freedom implies a burden of responsibility not everyone is willing to bear. In this school of thought, I believe Thomas Hobbes was right: People fear violence, scarcity and death. The majority, therefore, wishes for security, not freedom.
Totalitarian experiments of the 20th century proved this. It is worth remembering that fascism and Nazism both enjoyed support from the masses. Was that because they defended individual liberties? Of course not. After the ruins of World War I, and the devastating consequences of the Great Depression, there was a tragic longing for security among Europeans even if that meant, as indeed it did, the suspension of liberal democracy.
The same goes for Communism or, to be more precise, the end of Communism. The thirst for freedom only became pressing once the illusion of security disappeared. The utopia of a world without hunger, without exploitation, without fear, was nowhere to be found. To put it in absurd terms, if Communism had guaranteed the material comfort it had promised its followers, the issues of liberties would never have become a priority.
That's why I praise Holly Case's essay "The New Authoritarians' on the always brilliant aeon.com. In it, the history professor from Brown University tries to understand the new authoritarianism embodied by Putin, Erdogan and Órban.
What about freedom, I hear you ask.
Case makes a brilliant observation: Old authoritarianism wanted to achieve a "new man," a brutal effort that, due to its idealistic nature, led to equally brutal cruelties that eventually condemned these utopias to self-destruction.
The 20th century was made up of "labor camps," mass propaganda, cults of personality and other bloody fantasies aimed at elevating the proletariat to truly Homeric heights.
New authoritarianism, on the other hand, isn't interested in creating "new men." It's happy with both the state and people abiding by the "social contract" with their respective cynicism: The state guaranteeing the essentials in life, and with individuals staying away from the sordid world of politics. What about freedom, I hear you ask. Dear reader, did you not read what I wrote at the beginning?
Holly Case's diagnosis is spot on. But it's missing a conclusion. The new authoritarianism is more likely to succeed than the old one. And that's precisely because of the absence of totalitarian vocations such as the creation of a "new man."
Having abandoned this utopian ambition, authoritarianism in the 21st century is already on its way to working.
PARIS — France is at war. At war against a terrorism that is totalitarian, blind and horribly murderous. We've known it since the attacks against Charlie Hebdoand the kosher supermarket in Paris in January.
And yet, despite the French population's exceptional show of unity four days after those attacks, despite the shows of solidarity from the leaders of all the world's democracies, President François Hollande, Prime Minister Manuel Valls and France's top security officials had warned repeatedly: the threat still exists. It wasn't a matter of whether there'd be more attacks in France, but when.
So it happened this Friday, November 13. More bloodshed in and around Paris. And this tragedy demonstrates that these terrorists who have decided to target France have set no limits to their deadly endeavour.
The result of their massacre — 128 people dead and more than 300 wounded, including 80 in serious condition, at the time of writing — is odious and unprecedented in our country. They triggered what senior police leaders feared more than anything else: several simultaneous attacks in the capital and its surrounding suburbs. Near the Stade de France stadium, where 80,000 people including President Hollande were gathered to watch a friendly soccer game between France and Germany, in front of four cafés and restaurants in central Paris and finally even inside the Bataclan venue, where more than 1,000 people were watching a concert and ended up being taken hostage before the police launched a raid.
For the first time in France, some of these terrorists didn't hesitate to turn themselves into human bombs. They wanted to plunge France into panic and fear. They wanted to break France.
This folly calls for only one response. To show dignity in the face of panic. To show resolution against the sowers of death. To show lucidity in the face of chaos. And as the President of the Republic rightly said during the night, to show sang-froid the "cold blood" of steely calm and determination in the face of terror. And above all, to again show the nation's unity in the face of our ordeal.
Up to the task?
There's no shortage of questions. They are legitimate and they must be answered. The first is this: Is France's general security threatened? It's also the most pressing issue, especially less than three weeks before the COP21 climate conference in Paris, where dozens of international leaders are expected to gather, and before regional elections planned for December.
The government has declared a state of emergency and reinforced border controls. These were essential measures in this war that the jihadists want to wage on us and our country. But maintaining the climate conference and the elections is just as essential. Delaying, postponing or cancelling them would mean giving in to the terrorists.
The second question regards the ability of the government and law enforcement to successfully combat terrorism on our territory. Is our policy up to the challenge of this threat? Is it efficient enough? Over the past two years, France hasn't stopped reinforcing the powers of the justice department and the police. All democracies have done the same, doing their best to preserve the balance between safety and freedom.
We are not without means nor determination. The French police have foiled many planned attacks over the past few weeks and months. What that tragic night of November 13 showed us, alas, is that there isn't one obvious way of preventing such attacks, not without becoming a police state or selling illusions.
The third concerns France's foreign policy and its military interventions in the Middle East and Africa. Are they the cause of this deadly spiral? Should those choices be reconsidered? Of course, France is targeted because it stands on the front line of the fight against jihadism.
A chosen target
In sub-Saharan Africa, it's fighting alongside others to prevent an immense desert area from falling into the hands of criminal networks. France's intervention in Mali in early 2013 probably saved the capital city, Bamako, from an Islamist assault. Without it, the city could have become what Kabul, the Afghan capital, was for al-Qaeda until 2001, namely a crucial supply base for terrorist operations all over the world.
Paris, as well as some 50 other countries, also responded to Baghdad's request, and French warplanes have been taking part in the war there against ISIS. But the international coalition's involvement in the region isn't justified by the sole abomination of this barbaric organization's actions. Again, it's also about defending Europe's and France's strategic interests. The oil fields controlled by ISIS provide it with the means to carry out its attacks in the West. European involvement in Iraq can therefore be seen as a form of self-defense.
Since early this autumn, France has also been carrying out airstrikes in Syria, declaring that it was acting in self-defense as it targeted training camps. Islamist commandos, it said, had been trying for a few months to hit France and were preparing their operations from Syria.
Paris' role in the fight against jihadism puts France at risk. But we shouldn't confuse cause and consequence. The French authorities aren't fighting against armed Islamism because it clearly identified France as one of its main targets. You'd have to be blind or deaf not to understand what ISIS, al-Qaeda and other Islamist movements have said. Their call is clear: to export the "holy war"� to Europe, to kill the "infidels,"� the "Jews," the "Crusaders."� This isn't just rhetoric. We have to take their word for what it is.
Who can say with certainty that inaction would guarantee our immunity? This is the very nature of the enemy we are now forced to fight. In our 21st century, religious fanaticism, Islamist in this case, has replaced 20th-century totalitarianism. Le Monde has written it before: the Islamism of absolute radicalism is indeed a totalitarianism.
And this "party of the pure ones," to reuse an expression coined by political thinker Pierre Hassner, prefers to target democracies. It fights us for what we are, at least as much as for what we do or don't do. One of the conditions of our success in this war against fanaticism is simply to remain ourselves.
