Russian President Vladimir Putin is exhausting
Whenever I write this on social media, a cadre of paid troll accounts and a few useful idiots inevitably show up to tell me what a bad person I am. In light of the Ukraine crisis — Ukraine is where I was born, just by the way, and most of my family still lives there — their words are meant to exhaust me too. They’re also meant to make others doubt me. After all, a divided United States, plagued by infighting and steep political and ideological divides, is convenient for the Kremlin.
Still, even if Putin was just a horrible nightmare we could all wake up from, recall that all autocrats and wannabe autocrats will drain you. They are the real vampires, who have been with us all along.
The purpose of autocracy is to destroy buffers between the individual and the state, as exemplified by the autocrat — or for those buffers to never be created in the first place. Only then does the autocrat have the power to feast on you.
It’s why autocrats and people who aspire to be them are so suspicious and paranoid and keep banging on about traitors and evil-doers (think about Trump railing against the U.S. intelligence community for a good example) — if you’re loyal to a system, to legal principles, to rules, to ethnic and religious communities (think of Soviet suspicion and hatred of Jews), you may not necessarily do their bidding.
A long time ago, when I still worked in Moscow, I was having a drink with a fellow journalist, when — admittedly after “a drink” became three drinks or so — we came up with the notion that autocrats are scarily reminiscent of black holes. Our knowledge of astronomy wasn’t exactly perfect, but we saw similarities in the way true autocrats bend entire epochs and societies around them, the way they consume people and resources.
I feel like I am being pulled somewhere I don’t want to go, and as if I am on the verge of discovering a terrible truth that will ultimately destroy me.
Moscow was the perfect place to have this conversation, because it is a modern city that still lives in the shadow of Stalinist Terror. That terror still echoes in the heads of ordinary Russians today — why else do you think they’re so scared of a possible revolution? Or even an evolution? They know the kind of bloodletting that can occur when you decide to torch the system.
These days, I frequently feel as though I am back in that Moscow cafe, with its decent wine and rubbery escargot, and a vampire is standing in the shadows by the coat rack. I feel like I am being pulled somewhere I don’t want to go, and as if I am on the verge of discovering a terrible truth that will ultimately destroy me.
If that sounds a little crazy to you, you’d be right. There is only so much pressure that a human being can stand, which is something that autocrats readily count on. Putin has guns and rockets aimed at the people and places I love; retaining composure is impossible. Your mind turns into a dark, spinning vortex as you consider all of the possibilities.
Democracy is imperfect, frequently tedious, disappointing, and fraught. But democracy is worth preserving precisely so the autocrats don’t sink their teeth into you. There’s a lesson here for Americans, and for many other people.
This world has never been a place where the right answers came easily. It will be like that long after we are gone. All I can tell you is that you shouldn’t let the vampire in — no matter how attractive.
Ukrainians are trying hard to slam the door on a vampire right now, and that’s enough reason to support them.
Image credit: Paul Kline