From Russia with hate - the hang-ups of history with Jade McGlynn

The Lowdown Ep 8/ Is Russia destined to live under tyranny

You can hear the Lowdown on the Apple player below. We are also on Spotify, Google and every other podcast host you can think of!

I hope you enjoy it,

Nick

If there is a constant theme in my writing, it is an opposition to determinism. I hate the illiberal belief that culture, history and religion ensure that society can never change. Yet nearly every serious historian of Russia I have read since the invasion of Ukraine has emphasised that it has always been an empire in thrall to myths of exceptionalism and victimhood.

As the succession of tsars, communists, and Putinists shows, most Russians want a strongman leader with little concern for civil liberties, let alone the rights of neighbouring nations.

I know of no better person to discuss this question with than Jade McGlynn of King’s College, London. Her books “Memory Makers: The Politics of the Past in Putin’s Russia and “Russia’s War (not Putin’s War, notice but Russia’s War) dissect the dark belief that, when the state is strong and the people united, Russia achieves greatness. It defeats Napoleon and Nazi Germany, and launches Sputnik. When the state is weak and the people disunited, however, the West takes advantage.

Western support for Ukraine is not in this worldview a response to Russian imperialist aggression but part of a long Western “war” to keep Russia weak and therefore exploitable. Why else, Russians ask, would a debauched West support Ukrainian Nazis if not to use Ukraine as a proxy for perpetuating the West’s centuries-long quest to keep Russia divided?

In our conversation we talked about the poverty that afflicts vast areas of the Russian empire, and how the regime offers military service as an escape. Below is a piece of mine on how army recruitment ads promise men living hopeless lives the chance to make money, find status and attract desirable women.

There’s a paywall. But you can jump it with a free trial or, and apologies for the hard sell, by taking advantage of a discount summer subscription rate by clicking on the link below!

Escape your worthless life! Join Putin's army for sex, money and status!

A beautiful woman gazes at her distinctly average ex. The sight of his uniform persaudes her to ditch her current husband and go back to him.

Russia is a poor country that thinks it’s a superpower. Nowhere is the gulf between the imperial aspirations of the rulers and the weariness of the ruled exposed more ironically than in the regime’s attempts to persuade men to join its invading forces in Ukraine.

The émigré photojournalist Dmitri Beliakov has an eye for clashes between rhetoric and reality. He has written a blistering dissection of his native country’s propaganda efforts[i].

Beliakov’s theme is the vulgarity and desperation of an “idiotic” regime that enlists prisoners and tries to bribe men by promising sex and money if only they will throw themselves into the army’s “meat grinder”.

Instead of looking at Putin speeches, from the rare occasions he condescends to explain himself to the Russian public, or the bombast of state television’s podgy hawks, Beliakov’s “The Aesthetics of Russia’s Official Militarism” examines the tawrdiness of the Russian empire in what may be its last days.