Putin’s New Russia: History Rewritten, Dissent Silenced, Anti-West Doctrine

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, HOST: Now, the political tension that we were talking about in Georgia and the war in Ukraine each have a common cause, yes, Vladimir Putin’s efforts to deny them democracy and integration with Europe and expand Russia’s sphere of influence. David Herszenhorn is a specialist on the region for “The Washington Post” and spearheads its “Russia Remastered” series. He’s joining Hari Sreenivasan now to explore Putin’s dramatic domestic transformation which prioritizes a military posture.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: David Herszenhorn from “The Washington Post,” thanks so much for joining us. You have a new series out, “Russia Remastered.” And it fascinated me because there was just so much that I didn’t realize was happening in Russia because I have, probably like most people on the planet, been looking at news about Russia in the context of the Ukraine war. Why did you decide to launch the series?

DAVID HERSZENHORN, RUSSIA, UKRAINE EDITOR, THE WASHINGTON POST: That’s exactly right, Hari. Because so much bandwidth, so much attention is focused on Ukraine, a lot of attention has shifted away from this giant transformation that’s underway in Russia. And if we step back, this obviously a civilizational fight between Ukraine, which wants to be a democracy, to be a member of the European Union, to be a member of NATO, to join the western community of nations, and Russia, which has a totalitarian system, an authoritarian leader for the past quarter century. Vladimir Putin just inaugurated. We can’t even call it a real presidential term because, of course, he’s been circumventing term limits for decades now. And in the context of that war, folks have lost sight of Russia itself, just how much change is going on there. And the fact that for Americans, especially for Western European residents, it’s Russia that is the focus that Russia that is the threat, Russia that has the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. So, keeping that in mind, we wanted to bring readers attention back to what is happening under Vladimir Putin. This has been going on far longer than the invasion, which began full-scale, of course, in February of 2022. But indeed, it is accelerated. Putin has leveraged the war, leveraged the invasion to speed all of this up in a very dramatic fashion.

SREENIVASAN: You have these ways for an outsider to look at what’s legitimately called Putinism, right? And one of those, you point out is forging an ultraconservative, puritanical society mobilized against liberal freedoms and especially hostile to gay and transgender people, in which family policy and social welfare spending boost traditional Orthodox values. What is his interest in trying to, you know, kind of harken back to a nostalgic Russia, a make Russia great again campaign? What’s he trying to do?

HERSZENHORN: So, part of this is an appeal to more traditional societies in the Global South, but mainly it’s to position Russia as the antithesis of the U.S.-led global order, to up in that global order, to present a challenge to it. Russia, of course, for all of its communist decades, you know, didn’t put religion to the forefront. Now, Putin is basically in an unholy alliance with the Russian Orthodox Church. The Patriarch Kirill has effectively blessed the war in Ukraine. The — as you described, the crackdown, the persecution of LGBTQ rights. I mean, where Russian court has outlawed the international LGBTQ movement, as if that has an address, as if that’s a person that’s even possible. But this, of course, began going back years with anti”-gay propaganda laws,” laws that were supposedly to protect children from gay propaganda, what it effectively meant was anything that referred to a nontraditional lifestyle in Russian press was outlawed. So, this has been growing and growing and growing. The motivation for Putin to present Russia as a renewed superpower, as an alternative and a challenger and the global leader against the West and the U.S.

SREENIVASAN: What is he doing to marginalize or silence critics? Obviously, he’s not a fan of anybody who’s saying that his stance on the war against Ukraine is wrong, but you point out that this is — he’s trying to have a chilling effect across society in different ways.

HERSZENHORN: So, we need to be very clear about this. The Russian opposition at this point is either exiled, imprisoned, or in the case of Alexei Navalny, who I wrote a book about, dead. Navalny, of course, was being persecuted. There was an assassination attempt against him with a nerve agent in 2020. The persecution of Russian political opposition leaders is not new. But in the context of the war in Ukraine, it has accelerated. Obviously, Navalny died in an Arctic prison. His family asserting that he was, in fact, murdered. We know that KGB — FSB assassins were after him previously. Vladimir Kara-Murza, contributing opinion writer to “The Washington Post,” just won a Pulitzer Prize, sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason. Why? Because he wants a democratic Russia, where free and fair elections can take place. Ilya Yashin, a colleague of Navalny’s, who is also in prison, long prison sentences. Their intimidation can’t be overstated at this point. You know, Navalny’s wife, who’s tried to take up his baton, operating from outside of Russia now, same with his anti-corruption foundation. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, named the Russian opposition leader, Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion, all now either exiled, or if they remained in Russia, it seems imprisoned or dead, quite a chilling effect on the Russian opposition there. Again, not new, but accelerated since the invasion of Ukraine with criticism of the military outlawed, even one-time allies of Putin. Remember, Yevgeny Prigozhin, the leader of the Wagner Mercenary Group, known as Putin’s chef, because he made billions off of catering contracts with the Kremlin, who had challenged Putin and the regular defense ministry, a brief rebellion that he then called off and ends up dead in a very mysterious plane disaster. So, any challenge to Putin clearly is meeting very, very strong and forceful pushback.

SREENIVASAN: Putin just swapped out the defense minister in the time — in a time of war. What’s behind that?

HERSZENHORN: Well, we’ve seen Russia change commanders at numerous points throughout this war. Sergei Shoigu, the defense minister, has now been moved to head the National Security and Defense Council. So, he’s hardly ousted. In some ways, he’ll be closer to Putin himself. But indeed, it’s a shakeup within the Kremlin security leadership. And part of that is because of endemic corruption in the defense ministry. Now, we know Russia has long suffered from extensive corruption among high level officials. Navalny made his name as an anti-corruption crusader. Now, curiously, the war has served as an anti-corruption tool in the sense that it is now hugely important. There’s a great imperative in Russia to make sure that resources directed to the defense ministry are not stolen, but in fact, yield weapons and soldiers and uniforms, all the material that’s needed at the front. And so, we have a new defense minister coming in, who’s actually not a military guy. Belousov, Andrey Belousov is an economist, a former economic development minister, believe his mandate in part will be to oversee and exercise some tight control over a vast increase in military spending that Putin is authorized to be sure that, in fact, those rubles are spent on weapons, on the bombs, on the shells, on the uniforms that are needed to fight in Ukraine and not lost to graft.

SREENIVASAN: You have an incredibly well reported piece on the education system and the higher education system in Russia and how radically that’s changed in such a short period of time. And you can even — you know, there’s several different ways to measure that. Tell us.

HERSZENHORN: In the case of the education system, we know that campuses can be hotbeds of political activism. We see what’s been happening in the United States, for instance, in response to conflict in the Middle East. In Russia, the response there has been for pro-Kremlin administrators to move very rapidly to embrace Putin’s nationalist zeal, to shut down humanities programs that focused on liberal arts that engaged in partnerships with the West. Our article looks at a program at St. Petersburg State University called Smolny College that was effectively shut down. This was a program that had been run by Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister, very close, confident of Putin for many years, liberal economists who had helped Russia build in the kind of buffers that modern economies need to prevent shocks. The crises that had taken place in the 1990s had robbed Russians of their savings as the country went into default. Kudrin, again, not the most liberal in terms of politics, but it had been the dean of this college, out. The college itself effectively dismantled. Courses on international politics, even English language courses ended. Professors and students who had exhibited any criticism or any opposition to the war in Ukraine fired, expelled, ousted. And this has happened in other places in other schools. Meanwhile, Putin has promised that there will be a new elite of workers and warriors. And part of those benefits, accruing to the new elite, are places in prestigious universities that he’s now allocating for the children of military veterans who have fought in Ukraine, bypassing some of the traditional entrance requirements. Russia can be a very competitive place, very rigorous academic standards. The demand for good grades and test scores out the window and instead, basically a reward for fighting in Ukraine. And Putin himself has spoken about how important it is for military veterans to work as teachers. In his yearend news conference twice, he said, wars are won by teachers. And he talked about his own experience in law school at St. Petersburg State University, where some of his teachers, he said, were veterans of World War II and how influential they were and how important it was to build this nationalist ideology that he’s now trying to build in the new Russia.

SREENIVASAN: Is there any indication that if Vladimir Putin was successful in his takeover of Ukraine that he would stop?

HERSZENHORN: in the minds of the closest in Russia watchers, I’m thinking about the Baltics now, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, there is no doubt, Putin will not stop in Ukraine. That if he is able to succeed in completely disrespecting internationally recognized boundaries, if he’s able to derail Ukraine’s self-determination, its desire to be a democratic country in the European Union that, in fact, he will continue and exert that Russian authority, that Russian violence in other places as best he can. We know there are Russian troops stationed in Moldova, in the Transnistria region. We know Russia, in 2008, invaded Georgia. Georgia experiencing mass protests these days over a Russian style foreign agent law, the same kind of law that Putin has used to crack down on political dissent, on free speech. So, Russia’s reach is quite long. Again, largest nuclear arsenal anywhere in the world. We see these threats against the West all the time that if it overreaches and, in fact, intercedes too strongly in Ukraine that Russia will resort to a weapon of mass destruction. So, for the West, there is a real need to recognize what kind of a challenge Putin is presenting, especially as he builds a generation, trains an entire new generation to see the West as its enemy. That’s just the reality of Russia today. And it is exactly why, Hari, we’ve been working on this series to explain to people just what’s happening inside Russia these days.

SREENIVASAN: How does that propaganda change? How does, you know, a 12- year-old at school get a new version of reality, a new history of Russia?

HERSZENHORN: It is literally a rewriting of history and a rewriting of textbooks. New textbooks being issued, for example, to minimize Ukraine as an independent nation. Important for folks to remember that even during Soviet times, Ukraine had its own seat in the United Nations General Assembly, the Soviet Republic of Ukraine was regarded as independent enough to have its own seat there, as did what is now Belarus. In fact, the textbooks, the history lessons are being rewritten to make it out as if Ukraine was always just some part of Russia. And as you know, this argument has found some currency in the United States, including in the Congress, this idea that Russia is, you know, exerting its proper authority over a sphere of influence rather than understanding that, in fact, Ukraine has its own, you know, thousands of years of history and its own desire to live as a free democratic country. If there is that democratic model next door, there is no reason why Russia itself should not be democratic and free. I’ve lived in Russia. I absolutely believe that democracy was possible in Russia and is still possible in Russia. There is no reason why one man has to rule that country as he has for a quarter century, circumventing all the term limits and having a democratic Ukraine would prove that point.

SREENIVASAN: Is the point to break international law? I mean, does that help with Putin’s own credibility of trying to build a Russia that makes its own rules?

HERSZENHORN: That makes its own rules. Indeed. That ignores international institutions or presents those institutions as bankrupt, as beholden to the United States, whether that’s the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant for Putin on war crimes related to the illegal relocation, illegal deportation of Ukrainian children. Whether that’s the U.N. itself, where we know for a long time, Russia has used the Security Council sometimes allied with China, sometimes on its own, taking that veto to prevent action on many important topics around the world. This a no question that over the years Russia is showing its desire to return as a great power on the world stage, but not just in the world as it exists, but in a world that is a bit retrograde, again, divided up back into spheres of influence among great powers.

SREENIVASAN: There have been widespread and well documented reports of kidnappings that have been happening in Ukraine where those children are essentially put up for adoption inside Russia. What’s the point of that?

HERSZENHORN: Well, there’s a mythology that’s been created around this invasion. Several in fact. One is, of course, that Russia’s in this existential fight for survival against the West. The other is that Russia is defending Russian speakers in Eastern Ukraine, who are being persecuted, who are under attack. I can assure you that even with my bad American accent, it was possible to speak in Russian from one side of Ukraine to the other without anyone ever giving you a bad look. That was before, of course, the big invasion. Now, of course, a lot more pride being taken in speaking Ukrainian, in separating Ukraine from Russia because it is bombing and destroying Ukrainian cities, killing thousands of civilians. In the case of these children, some of them, again, it’s a matter of building this new generation, convincing them. And we’ve seen the child’s right — child rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, who along with Putin has faced an arrest warrant from the international criminal court describing how she herself adopted a Ukrainian orphan, took him in and had to retrain him essentially to love Russia, to reprogram him to not think of Ukraine as his home. Quite chilling. Some of these stories that we’ve heard from children who have escaped, who have gotten back to their families in Ukraine, who have managed to get this in terms of long circuitous route to get there. So, again, this part of this effort to essentially prove that there is a greater Russia. There is no independent Ukraine. Putin has described that in public interviews. This view that Ukraine has just always been a part of — a small part appendage of Russia and that, in fact, Russia should reassert its influence. Seizing these territories, four regions in addition to Crimea, that he’s intent on annexing. He’s declared to be annexed in violation of international law. And the relocation of children is just part and parcel of that, pretending as if they’re being rescued in some way.

SREENIVASAN: What does Putin want to be seen as?

HERSZENHORN: Well, there’s certainly been a renewal of Stalin worship, one might call it, a resuscitation of the image of the brutal communist dictator, sent millions to the gulag, you know, responsible for untold numbers of deaths and crimes against humanity. In fact, Memorial, the — one human rights organization that had documented those crimes is now outlawed and shut down in Russia, was a co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. So, indeed, there’s an effort to resuscitate. The image of Stalin and Putin would like to see himself perhaps as a cross between Stalin and Peter the Great, the modern czar. I think you can put it as making Russia great again. He will be the leader who restored Russia to a level of power and influence in the world that it lost when he was a KGB agent stationed in East Germany and Dresden. There have been a lot of biographies that have described this, Putin calling Moscow as the Soviet Union was crumbling and Moscow being silent, and he had vowed that under his watch, Moscow will never be silent. In fact, it will be the opposite. It will always have an answer to any challenge. And this what we see. And this incredible transformation that’s going on in the country right now.

SREENIVASAN: David Herszenhorn, the Russia and Ukraine editor for “The Washington Post,” the series is called “Russia Remastered,” thanks so much.

HERSZENHORN: Thank you, Hari.