HISTORICAL CHUTZPAH #1,882:Vladimir Putin and ‘colonial thinking’
Posted by arkahar on July 25, 2007
chutz·pah also hutz·pah n. Utter nerve; effrontery: “has the chutzpah to claim a lock on God and morality”—New York Times.[Yiddish khutspe, from Mishnaic Hebrew u pâ, from ap, to be insolent; see p in Semitic roots.]
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Oh, when it comes to chutzpah, Russian autocrats do exceedingly well.
This week, Russian President Vladimir Putin responded to British calls for the extradition of ex-KGB agent Andrei Lugovoi, the chief suspect in the murder of Aleksandr Litvenenko.
Was Putin being ironic when he dressed like this for his presidential address?
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And how does Putin respond to this demand?
Here’s Putin, on Russian state television:
“What they propose is an obvious vestige of colonial thinking. They must have clearly forgotten that Britain is no longer a colonial power, there are no colonies left and, thank God, Russia has never been a British colony.”
Um, right.
This coming from Putin, the increasingly dictatorial leader of Russia.
This coming from Putin, a former high-ranking officer of the KGB and former head of the FSB.
What I’m getting at is this:
One might expect the leader of Russia, an imperialist power, to comport himself with a bit more — hmm, let’s say — subtlety or modesty on matters colonial. If for no other reason than PR — to avoid drawing attention to Russia’s colonial crimes.
What can one possibly say?
When Vladimir Putin says this, it presents many of us with a Lehrer-Kissinger moment.
Indeed, there’s that old saw about persons in glass houses not chucking stones.
Of course, numerous Russians I’ve known possess that lovely sense of dark humour one encounters in the Near East. It’s sort of like irony, but with a gallows after-taste.
But, alas, Putin hasn’t displayed much in the way of humour — unless the topic is rape. In fact, Putin comes across as an astoundingly irony-deficient man.
So, again, what can one say?
Since the wannabe-tsar invokes history, I’ll respond in kind — with a suggested reading list historical in theme.
For head-spinning examinations of “colonial thinking,” here are a few mighty tomes (below) that are always worth reading or re-reading.
(Unless, of course, one distrusts books and facts; instead plumping for gut-checks and “truthiness”… like one fictional “Stephen Colbert” and one real-life Russian president who shall remain nameless in this last paragraph.)
- Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope: A Memoir (1970; 1999)
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (1972)
- Czeslaw Milosz, The Captive Mind (1956)
- Robert Conquest, The Great Terror (1968; 1990; 2008)
- David Remnick, Lenin’s Tomb: the Last Days of the Soviet Empire (1994)
- Anne Applebaum, Gulag: A History (2003)
- Anna Politkovskaya, A Dirty War: A Russian Reporter in Chechnya (2003)
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Anonymous said
HE WHO LAUGHS LAST LAUGHS BEST
Jon said
Does that mean there were only 1881 chutzpahs before Putin? I counted past that digit and I wasnt even at the Reformation.
Skip said
Stop this sinister speculation at the expense of Mr. Putin. It is based on a false assumption which is in turn grounded in a cultural prejudice against heavy metals (including radioactive ones).
This is part of Russian culture. Any Russian male worth his salt (pun intended) imbibes heavy metals, either naturally or in the form of supplements.
It is no secret, that Latin Americans use lead in confections and folk remedies. Ukrainians nibble on dioxin — right up to the president himself. Russians ingest radioactive heavy metals. They do because they can. These elements are universal. Everyone has a high tolerance to them and no one dies from them. Litvinenko probably died of AIDS, not radioactivity. This is not a lily-livered Westerner.
Russians throughout Siberia grew up drinking water from rivers contaminated with slag waste. Everyone has a high tolerance to cadmium, copper — you name it.
Litvinenko even had a set of toothpicks made for him out of a cesium alloy by his grandfather. He used to use them after bouts of sushi-eating. He ate the sushi not because it was Western or elitist, but because like any Russian male with a high metabolism, he needed the mercury.
Currently the nutrient in favour is polonium and thorium. Not everyone can get the most delectable isotopes — they are being stockpiled by the oligarchy. (I do not condone everything Putin does).
Putin himself takes ldaily ead and polonium supplements.
andro said
but was Russia an actual “colonial” power?
what actual ‘colonies’ did they have?
as a cold warrior i’m not suggesting that their imperial thrust didn’t flow into the Warsaw Pact?
but “colonial”?
that’s more of a western European notion.
it may seem like a fine point, but i caution you against easy concepts and knee-jerk catch-phrases when it comes to the Russian mind– even those of us westerners who swim in the same gene pool don’t have quite the same dark edge to our sensibilities– we are mere iron to their steel in the absence of the refiner’s fire.
was he being ironic in a sailor’s uniform? i think so– remember “Mission Accomplished” in flight suit? Putin is a patient man.
in light of the current Ossetia situation, not only will Bush 43 do nothing to assist Georgia [who did provide ~2000 bodies for cannon fodder since returned to the motherland] because he needs to preserve Russia as an ally in re Iran.