A-Infos (en) Italy, UCADI #203 - STORIES OF YESTERDAY AND STORIES OF TODAY (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

I had the opportunity to read two books in sequence, published at 
different times, which deal with apparently distant but both extremely 
important topics. ---- Let's start with the weighty biography of Putin 
written by Philip Short[1]. Published in 2022, shortly after Russia's 
invasion of Ukraine, it is an extraordinary work of research, supported 
by an extensive bibliography and an impressive quantity of sources. 
----- The biographical genre, in the hands of historians capable not 
only of digging but also of connecting sources and having a broad 
perspective, is still able to shed new light on many historical questions.
This work of almost a thousand pages does not deal with history seen 
through the "keyhole", but instead highlights a great ability to bring 
together certain aspects of the Russian President's public and private 
life, closely connecting them to the general events of his country and 
its relationship with other states. In short, it is history tout-court, 
as can be intuited from the title itself.
It is not easy to summarise this work here, not even in brief. What I'm 
interested in, however, is reviewing some suggestions that might be 
useful for understanding some current dynamics, from which the "Western" 
information system is not only absent, but constructs its narratives on 
propaganda that increasingly appears counterfactual. In short, Europe is 
at war, and its information is that of a country that has now 
constrained the debate.
The reconstruction of Putin's private and public life here goes hand in 
hand with general history and our own, in a constant game of mirrors 
that negates any moral superiority over complex issues.
According to the "ceremonial Mainstream" there should be a premise here 
in which one distances oneself from Putin, exactly as in the Gaza affair 
one must always be careful when condemning "October 7th". It goes 
without saying that the undersigned will never join this ridiculous and 
outrageous pantomime, while it is instead worth pointing out that Short, 
precisely because he is so far from any feeling of "Putinism", manages 
to bring into focus the enormous repressed memory of the West. Here, 
then, is one of the fundamental points of the book. Russia, since the 
"fall of the wall"[2], has not only been treated like the last of the 
pariahs, but has also been considered off-stage, a sort of younger 
brother, who could join the Western banquet but only after a 
bloodletting. Now, obviously, speaking of Russia in such a general way 
would seem useless as well as unproductive, but, following the way we 
speak of the West, I don't see a great scandal. In reality, we can 
indeed speak of "Russia" because the consequences of the management of 
post-socialist realism have been devastating for the population. And 
this is fundamental to understanding the current situation.
After the end of the so-called "Real Socialism," Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and 
Putin (who was more than Yeltsin's collaborator, a fact that is often 
forgotten) had as their objective the Westernization of the former USSR. 
But the first two, above all, caused an unprecedented disaster (in 
Gorbachev's case, I would add, it must be recognized that he acted 
without violence and repression). Transforming a country like the USSR 
into a market economy, as was to be expected, caused a severe backlash 
to people's living conditions. Yeltsin was the perfect and useful idiot, 
compared to whom the "West" not only allowed the bombing of parliament 
but openly interfered in the 1996 elections. I quote from the book:

"The 1996 elections were a watershed moment[...]the consequences for 
Russia of Yeltsin's means to win were equally far-reaching. In 1993, 
when the president had used the army to crush a rebellious but 
legitimately elected parliament, claiming he had no other choice because 
Russia was becoming ungovernable, the West had supported him, even 
though the use of armed force to stifle political dissent was a clear 
violation of democratic principles.[...]The 1996 elections marked a 
further qualitative leap.
To ensure a communist return to power, the United States and other 
Western governments financed Yeltsin's re-election[...]this was the 
first time the West had directly influenced the outcome of the vote in 
Russia[...]secret loans, accelerated aid from the International Monetary 
Fund, an official visit by President Clinton during the election 
campaign, and the dispatch, at Russia's request, of American spin 
doctors to advise Yeltsin.[...]
Meanwhile, Yeltsin's election committee had undertaken what Pyotr Aven, 
a former minister who later became one of the country's richest bankers, 
called it "a gigantic manipulation of public opinion." The television 
channels ORT and NTV not only supported Yeltsin, but also smeared his 
communist opponents with every kind of imaginable slander.[...]
Russia's departure from what the West considered democratic norms did 
not begin with Putin. It began in the 1990s, when a friend of the 
Americans, Boris Yeltsin, was in power."[3]

Yet even the strongest strings eventually give way.
The 1999 intervention in Kosovo is crucial to understanding the slippery 
slope that led to an increasingly evident estrangement between "the 
West" and Russia. Although there were other, even more serious, armed 
interventions disguised under false pretenses, Kosovo epitomizes the 
model of Western hegemony, or rather, the presumptuous attempt to 
"overwhelm" after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Under the lie of a 
nonexistent genocide (precisely what will never happen in Libya), NATO, 
without any UN mandate, bombed civilian infrastructure for weeks, 
causing thousands of innocent deaths and scattering the land with toxic 
bombs. But there's more. That intervention altered the geography of a 
country, accommodating one side's demands for separation.
These are exactly the same ingredients Putin will use for the 
intervention in Ukraine. The West's supposed moral superiority lies 
solely in its narrative and its belief that it is always right.
But there's more. The armed intervention will first of all provoke the 
wrath of Russia, which has always defended the Slavs, so much so that it 
almost came to a direct armed confrontation between Russia and NATO: the 
Pristina incident quickly and badly forgotten.[4]
Even the good-natured and alcoholic Yeltsin was aware of the real 
international situation.
Well, one of the focuses of Short's book is precisely the increasingly 
clear and evident disillusionment that will see first Yeltsin, but above 
all Putin (made of a very different stuff, also from the point of view 
of life and professional experiences) lose all hope in the credibility 
of the West, increasingly rediscovering the Russian "specificity" and 
increasingly building an authoritarian regime, yes, but with a real and 
broad consensus on the part of the population. A population that has 
seen, unequivocally, an improvement in its living conditions, which had 
deteriorated after the Soviet collapse and the end of the illusions of 
the beauties of the "market", and that has absolutely no desire to 
return to that situation.
The Ukrainian issue is also shed light on another level. Namely, that, 
well before 2022, the US was fully aware of what it represented for Russia:

"Ukraine's entry into NATO is the impassable border for the Russian 
elite (not only for Putin). In more than two and a half years of 
conversations with the main players in the country's political and 
economic scene, from the most obscure characters in the recesses of the 
Kremlin to the most acute liberal critics of Putin, I have yet to find 
anyone who does not consider Ukraine's entry into NATO a direct 
challenge to Russia's interests. At this stage, the MAP offer is not 
considered a simple technical step[...], but a real gauntlet. Today's 
Russia will react."[5]

As I said, it's impossible to summarize this weighty and fundamental 
volume here. As with the outbreak of the First World War, the current 
situation is characterized by the increasingly evident end of an 
unyielding hegemony and a world in turmoil. What is certain is that if 
the West continues to sell itself as the bearer of all virtues, failing 
even to consider its adversary worthy of the slightest attention, the 
famous slippery slope is destined to become a precipice.

The second book, released in recent weeks, would appear to have nothing 
to do with the one just discussed. It is a contemporary history text, 
yet another one, one might say, on Hitler's rise to power, written by a 
brilliant and still young French historian.[6]
Chapoutot approaches a seemingly stale topic from an original angle, but 
which is also the angle with which Marxist historiography, now thrown to 
the winds (in the name of the "history of mentality" and the postmodern 
approach that still seems to be hegemonic today) had attempted to tell 
the story of Weimar.
In this volume too, the ideas are truly many, many, and the author is 
not afraid to measure himself against the present, identifying some 
essential nuclei, even if they relate to different historical 
situations. One of the striking aspects is that in Weimar Germany, whose 
parliamentary democracy was undermined and destroyed as early as 1930, 
the SPD's choice to support the "lesser evil" to avoid the worst 
prevented neither. "Worse" and "lesser evil," moreover, were completely 
overlapping and fully integrated into that path of destruction of 
democracy and social rights, in favor of a politics totally dominated by 
capital. A path in which the Nazi Party, purged of violence (which was 
considered "bad"), was not only fully accepted by the "liberals" but, at 
times, even appeared too left-wing.
To move beyond historiography and return to the present, I would say 
that these two readings can help us understand how certain paths taken 
in the past, and others in more recent years, have led to the dramatic 
situation we are experiencing. A situation that is not the same as the 
rise of Hitler, or the Second World War, but which
contains within itself some of those elements deposited by history.
For example, deflationary and antisocial policies as a choice that was 
not only economic but, indeed, fully ideological, scientifically 
developed to strike at the "dangerous" classes, to attack and undermine 
social rights.
Ordoliberalism as a breeding ground for National Socialism itself which, 
beyond the parades and words, was an incubator for the largest German 
companies and even for managerial organization.[7]
In reality, Weimar democracy was by now hated by the entire ruling class 
and the fact that power was ultimately handed over to the Nazis was the 
result of an internal clash at the top.
Which, if you think about it, I would add, was the same mechanism that 
allowed Italian fascism to come to power with a handful of deputies (and 
the same attempt, that is, an authoritarian state without a leader, was 
the one put into action with the ousting of Mussolini).
Today we know what happened in the last century, but the steps taken in 
the last forty years are the same as then: destruction of the welfare 
state (just read Von Papen's program, which after World War II became 
almost anti-Nazi), tax breaks for companies, a call to order. The state 
was not only minimal,
according to the dictates of classical liberalism, but rather, a state 
avowedly pro-capitalist.
After decades of microhistories and "histories of mentality" and 
"complexity" (a completely misunderstood and mystified term), it's 
refreshing to see historians unafraid to address contemporary issues, 
returning, as one would once have said, to the fundamentals. Also 
because today they are dramatically useful again.

Andrea Bellucci

[1]P.Short, Putin. A life in his time , Marsilio, 2022
[2]A fall celebrated badly and imprudently, in Italy especially by the 
heirs of the PCI. A kind of historiographical infantilism that produced 
in the early 90s a vertiginous fall in the quality and level of 
discussion, especially at the
media level. Obviously forgetting all the possible consequences of that 
affair and even keeping quiet about its origins.
Consequences that the USA understood immediately, starting in 1991 a 
first international war with the applause of all Western countries and 
the futility of a half-destroyed Russia.
[3]Philip Short, Putin. , cit., ebook, pos. 6213-6229
[4]https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incidente_di_Pristina
[5]William Joseph Burns, ambassador to Russia until 2009, CIA director 
from 2021 to 2025 to Condoleezza Rice - Secretary of State from 2005 to 
2009 - February 8, 2008. Burns to Rice, Russia Strategy (Secret) 
https://carnegieendowment.org/features/back-channel?lang=en . Cited in 
Philip Short. "Putin. A life, cit.", Marsilio, 2022)
[6]J, Chapoutot, The irresponsible. Who brought Hitler to power? , 
Einaudi, 2025,
[7]J. Chapoutot, Nazism and management. Free to obey , Einaudi, 2021.

https://www.ucadi.org/2025/12/23/storie-di-ieri-e-storie-di-oggi/
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S  N E W S  S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Subscribe/Unsubscribe https://ainfos.ca/mailman/listinfo/a-infos-en
Archive: http://ainfos.ca/en