Putin doing stuff

I love the animal ones they are SO cute, and i laughed out loud at tickling the polar bear comment, thankyou for sharing these.
ye same here :lol: :cool2: thanks for the laugh great photos
 
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And now I like to sing my version of "Lyin' eyes" by the Eagles, dedicated to president Obama and it goes something like this -


City churls just seem to find out early
How to open wars with just a smile
Some rich old men
And he won't have to worry
He'll dress up all in grace and go in style

Late at night the big Whitehouse gets lonely
I guess every evil subterfuge has its price
But it cheers his heart to think his task is
Only given to some men with hearts as cold as ice

So he tells them he must go out for the evening
To confront an old fiend who's feelin' down
But they know where he's goin' as he's leavin'
He is headed for the cheatin' side of town

You can't hide your lyin' eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lyin eyes

On the other side of town these men are waiting
with fiery eyes and dreams no one could steal
He drives on through the night anticipating
'Cause they make him feel the way he used to feel

He rushes to their arms,
They plan together
He whispers that it's only for a war
He swears that soon he'll be bombing Iraq forever
He pulls away and leaves them like a wh0re

You can't hide your lyin' eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide you lyin' eyes

He gets up and pours himself a strong one
And stares out at the stars up in the sky
Another night, it's gonna be a long one
He draws the shade and hangs his cat to dry

He wonders how it ever got this crazy
He thinks about the boy he was in school
Did he get hired or did he just get hazy?
He's so far gone he feels just like a ghoul

My, oh my, you sure know how to arrange things
You set it up so well, so carefully
Ain't it funny how your new life didn't change things
You're still the same old psycho you used to be

You can't hide your lyin eyes
And your smile is a thin disguise
I thought by now you'd realize
There ain't no way to hide your lyin' eyes
There ain't no way to hide your lyin' eyes

Sonny, you can't hide your lyin' eyes
 
Another one passed around for international women's day congratulations
rCIYf.jpg


:D
 
Here's a photo of the Russian President cuddling an Aussie when he was over here for the summit.
Sorry the spiel is in German. Most of the papers carrying photos of Putin with the koala were trying to put him in a derogatory light. This photo is a good one.

_https://kosmologelei.wordpress.com/2014/11/17/arme-koalas/

Enjoy.
 
I stumbled upon _http://imgur.com/ so I post your image on it Gaby. Eventually we can do it on all such kind of sites.
 
One of the suggestions for Putin's whereabouts during his recent disappearance was that he was at the Valaam Monastery.
It seems like a very interesting area. Founded in the tenth century, (according to the Wiki) the monastery is on a large lake, set among a group of islands with their own (relatively mild) micro-climate.


Doing an image search on Google:
"valaam monastery" putin
for instance shows up lots of photos of him there. Here is one:

photolenta_big_photo.jpeg
 
article published on Fort russ - 15 years of Putin, 10 major accomplishments - http://fortruss.blogspot.ru/2015/03/10-major-accomplishments-of-age-of-putin.html

Fifteen years ago, on March 26, 2000 Vladimir Putin was first elected to the post of the President of Russia. After coming to power in difficult times, he not only managed to keep the country united. 15 years later we can say: we have again become a superpower with a developed economy, industry, a powerful army and navy. And may be not everything is smooth today. But then, 15 years ago, many people actually thought that the country was finished. However, Putin has managed to prove to the Russians and the whole world that we can not be easily defeated.

In fifteen years, thanks to the "swift tiger," as President Vladimir Putin is called by Chinese journalists, our country is once again referred to with respect.

We have decided to make our own rating of achievements of Vladimir Putin and his team in the last 15 years, helped by experts from "Nightly Moscow":


1. THE SALVATION OF RUSSIA FROM DISINTEGRATION

Alexei Mukhin, political scientist, Director of the Center for Political Information:

- Putin's role in preserving the unity of Russian Federation is primary. The change in the territorial-administrative division of Russia, the creation of seven federal districts allowed to first slow down and then reverse the processes that were leading to a direct collapse of Russia into several pseudo-state entities. Fortunately, Boris Yeltsin timely sensed what was happening, and resigned as President. And Vladimir Putin in time identified existing threats and took a number of preventive measures.


2. THE END OF THE WAR IN CHECHNYA

Viktor Murakhovsky, chief editor of the journal "Arsenal of the Fatherland":

- Remember Putin's famous phrase: "Will smash in the toilet" ["If we find them in a toilet, we will smash them in the toilet" - KR] . As we remember, he was referring to the terrorists in North Caucasus. And Putin has played a huge role in that the First Chechen campaign, culminating with the Khasavyurt capitulation, was forgotten.

But the Russian army regenerated and played a decisive role in the defeat of terrorists. The key factor was not only the effectiveness of the armed and internal forces, but that the leadership of the country expressed a political will.


3. STRENGTHENING THE ROLE OF RUSSIA IN THE INTERNATIONAL ARENA

Mikhail Panchenko, political scientist:

Over the last fifteen years from a country ranking in the twenties-thirties by the degree of influence on world politics, we confidently moved into the top three - along with the US and China. The first ideological imperatives were laid down in the Munich speech of Vladimir Putin in 2007. But the first "applied" case when we showed iron will took place in August 2008 in South Ossetia. In essence Russia then stood up and said: "Tomorrow we will live by new rules!"


4. THE CREATION OF A SOCIALLY ORIENTED BUDGET

Maxim Safonov, Doctor of Economic Sciences, professor:

Over the past 15 years serious steps were made and the budget of our country has become truly socially oriented. But there is no limit for improvement, and I think we should not stop there. A good example is the joy of the inhabitants of Crimea after becoming a part of Russia. Because the level of pensions and social benefits there instantly rose to nationwide levels. Yesterday I was at a general meeting of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev was speaking. And he clearly said that the social obligations will be fulfilled, despite the economic difficulties.

5. EARLY PAYMENT OF STATE DEBTS

Vladislav Ginko, economist, Professor of the Russian Academy of National Economy and State Service:

Under Vladimir Putin, Russia has managed to significantly reduce the arrears to international financial institutions. Currently Russia, of course borrows in the foreign market, but in relation to the gross domestic product, this amount is small. First of all, it gives us the opportunity to pursue an independent policy.

Because loans from international organizations are very often accompanied by certain encumbrances. Which are often hidden behind vague wording. But often, after such "reforms" the standard of living of the population drops - we see it today in Ukraine. And, of course, if our debts were higher, the sanctions would hurt us more.


6. THE CREATION OF THE STABILIZATION FUND AND THE NATIONAL WELFARE FUND

Boris Shmelev, Professor, head of the Center of Russian Foreign Policy Institute of Economy, RAN:

The creation of these financial institutions was largely initiated by Vladimir Putin himself. Huge amounts of money was directed there - about two trillion dollars that the country made from the sale of oil and gas in favorable market conditions. And this money allows us now in the situation of economic crisis to mitigate its effects. In many respects the Stabilization Fund will be focused on supplementing government's social obligations.


7. REFORM OF THE ARMY AND THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX:

Igor Korotchenko, chief editor of "National Defense" magazine:

Today we have qualitatively new armed forces. It is no exaggeration to say that today our army is one of the best in the world. It is recognized by all, including our opponents. It is under Putin, that our armed forces again became respected. Over the past 15 years we've been through a restructuring of the military-industrial complex. On the initiative of the President powerful vertically integrated holding companies were created, each of which brings together the entire chain of developers and manufacturers. As a result, Russia ranks second in the world in the export of weapons.


8. CREATION OF INTEGRATION ASSOCIATIONS IN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE UNION OF INDEPENDENT STATES

Sergei Markov, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a member of the Public Chamber of Russia:

The creation of such associations is a key to sustainable economic development. Here is the emergence of new markets, and the possibility of joint development of technologies. But generally speaking, it is in fact the will of our people. The Russians want to stay close to those peoples who lived with us in the framework of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. And, very importantly, we see a positive response from our partner countries. The initiators of integration associations are, without a doubt, the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin and the President of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev.


9. THE 2014 WINTER OLYMPICS IN SOCHI

Yelena Isinbayeva, two-time Olympic champion in the pole vault, the mayor of the coastal Olympic village-2014:

A major achievement is not only that we had a great Olympics from the point of view of organization, but that people from all over the world have discovered a new Russia: strong, modern and victorious. I worked with people, saw it from the inside and noticed how their mood changed from suspicion to amazement.

But how many were skeptics at first! Remember how in 2007 thanks to the personal speech of Vladimir Putin at the meeting of the organizing Committee in Guatemala, we were able to tip the scales in our favor to host the games.


10. REINTEGRATION OF CRIMEA INTO RUSSIA

Dmitry Orlov, political scientist, Director of the Agency for Political and Economic Communications:

Reintegration of Crimea into Russia was of great importance for the whole country. From a political point of view, it helped to create and expand a new coalition supporting the government. Emerged the phenomenon of patriotic mobilization of public opinion, which continues to this day. It is also called the "Russian Spring". Today, according to research centers, this effect has not been yet exhausted. Of course, reintegration of Crimea was a very significant step, but, importantly, this is just one of the episodes of the era of Vladimir Putin.
 
What is Putin reading? Sputnik published a interesting article on the three Russian Philisophers Putin reads - Vladimir Solovyov, Nikolia Bererdyaev and Ivan Iylin. These seem, especially the first two, thinkers involved with Gnostisim. Putin also asks his Governors to read those philosophers. And to be expected, as these Russian thinkers were highly regarded in the West before, now suddenly they are demonized and used to explain the sick evil thinking of Putin.

to compare - here is Obamas reading list for his breaks on Hawai in 2011

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/president-obamas-summer-reading-list/

1. "The Bayou Trilogy," by Daniel Woodrell (496 pages) Crime novels featuring detective Rene Shade.

2. "Rodin's Debutante," by Ward Just (272 pages) A coming-of-age novel set against "the crude glamour of midcentury Chicago."

3. "Cutting for Stone," by Abraham Verghese (560 pages) A first novel telling the story of twin brothers "born of a secret union between a beautiful Indian nun and a brash British surgeon."

4. "To the End of the Land," by David Grossman (592 pages) Fiction involving "a mother's powerful meditation on war and family."

5. "The Warmth of Other Suns," by Isabel Wilkinson (640 pages) The lone non-fiction title tells of the migration of Black Southerners to Northern and Western cities in the mid-20th century.

The whole article can be read here: Demonising Putin's Favourite Philosophers - http://russia-insider.com/en/distorting_putins_favourite_philosophers/5124

a lenghty quote, discussing the philisophical thinking of the three - and most of the quoted works can be found back on Amazon.

Then and Now
When communism was abandoned in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it became apparent to thoughtful Russians and outsiders alike that a new concept of the state, a new concept of man, and a new public philosophy would have to be created.It was then, and remains today, an open question whether the new Russian identity would end up being an import from the West, something from the native vault of pre-Communist philosophical thinking, or perhaps a combination of the two.
As might be expected from the country that brought the world Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, when it comes to philosophy, Russia has got a deep bench.In the months immediately following the February 2014 change of power in Kiev, and the resulting growing tension between Washington and Moscow, three Russian philosophers, only two of them widely known outside of Russia, came to be increasingly associated with the name of Vladimir Putin. The subsequent interpretation of these philosophers on the pages of several of America’s most influential newspapers deserves to be considered in detail.
Maria Snegovaya, a doctoral candidate in political science at Columbia University, initiated the discussion with a March 2, 2014 article in the Washington Post. Putin’s “pro-Soviet worldview,” Snegovaya wrote, is poorly understood:
“To get a grasp … one needs to check what Putin’s preferred readings are. Putin’s favorites include a bunch of Russian nationalist philosophers of early 20th century – Berdyaev, Solovyev, Ilyin — whom he often quotes in his public speeches. Moreover, recently the Kremlin has specifically assigned Russia’s regional governors to read the works by these philosophers during 2014 winter holidays. The main message of these authors is Russia’s messianic role in world history, preservation and restoration of Russia’s historical borders and Orthodoxy.”
Mark Galeotti, writing in Foreign Policy (“Putin’s Empire of the Mind,” April 21, 2014) also found fault with these same three philosophers. “These three, whom Putin often cites,” Galeotti writes, “exemplify and justify [Putin’s] belief in Russia’s singular place in history. They romanticize the necessity of obedience to the strong ruler — whether managing the boyars or defending the people from cultural corruption — and the role of the Orthodox Church in defending the Russian soul and ideal.”
Finally, David Brooks, writing for the New York Times (“Putin Can’t Stop,” March 3, 2014), likewise expressed alarm about the influence of Solovyov, Berdyaev and Il’in. “Putin doesn’t only quote these guys; he wants others to read them,” Brooks wrote. Three main ideas unify Solovyov, Il’in and Berdyaev’s work, Brooks wrote:
“The first is Russian exceptionalism: the idea that Russia has its own unique spiritual status and purpose. The second is devotion to the Orthodox faith. The third is belief in autocracy. Mashed together, these philosophers point to a Russia that is a quasi-theocratic nationalist autocracy destined to play a culminating role on the world stage.”
Under the influence of these “guys,” Brooks continues, “The tiger of quasi-religious nationalism, which Putin has been riding, may now take control. That would make it very hard for Putin to stop in this conflict where rational calculus would tell him to stop.” Brooks concludes that Russia can no longer be considered a “normal” regime and “a Huntingtonian conflict of civilizations with Russia” may be the result.
Analyzing the Analysts
What are we to make of these analyses, all of them published in authoritative U.S. periodicals?
One thing is certain. These assessments represent an enormous and surprising reversal in the viewpoint of educated opinion in the West, particularly as regards Solovyov and Berdyaev (with Il’in, as already noted, being much less well known).
Up until these articles in March-April of 2014, I do not recall reading a single negative assessment of either of these Russian thinkers, at least not among Western specialists, nor a single one accusing them of being hostile to the West, nor a single one suggesting that they are friendly to Russian chauvinism or nationalism.
In Russian Thought after Communism, James Scanlan, a leading Western expert on Russian thought, described Vladimir Solovyov (1853 – 1900) as “by common consent the greatest and most influential of all of Russia’s philosophical thinkers.” In a recent Cambridge University Press history of Russian philosophy, Randal Poole writes that “Solov’ev is widely regarded as Russia’s greatest philosopher.”
There are, it is true, a handful of dissenters from this nearly unanimous assessment of Solovyov. The contemporary Russian philosopher Sergei Khoruzhy considers Solovyov a very great philosopher, but a bit too western in orientation to deserve the title of greatest Russian thinker in the narrow sense.
Moreover, even scholars known to be generally hostile to things Russian, such as former Harvard professor Richard Pipes, nonetheless speak respectfully about Solovyov: “The Orthodox Church never found a common language with the educated because its conservative outlook made it pronouncedly anti-intellectual … One by one it pushed away from itself the country’s finest religious minds: the Slavophiles, Vladimir Soloviev, Leo Tolstoy and the laymen gathered in the early 1900s around the Religious Philosophical Society …” (Russia Under the Old Regime, 243.)
In short, Snegovaya’s misapprehension of Solovyov could hardly be more thorough. In what possible sense can Solovyov, who had no inkling of anything Soviet, be considered supportive of Putin’s alleged “pro-Soviet world view”? In point of fact, the writings of this supposedly “pro-Soviet” philosopher – exactly like those of Berdyaev and Il’in – were banished by Soviet censors.
How can Solovyov be described as a “nationalist,” when his magnum opus, The Justification of the Good (the book which Putin is said to have urged his governors to read), states precisely the opposite? It is hard to imagine a more absolute condemnation of national exceptionalism than that contained in Solovyov’s definitive work of ethics:
“It must be one or the other. Either we must renounce Christianity and monotheism in general, according to which ‘there is none good but one, that is, God,’ and recognize our nation as such to be the highest good that is, put it in the place of God — or we must admit that a people becomes good not in virtue of the simple fact of its particular nationality, but only in so far as it conforms to and participates in the absolute good.”
This same anti-nationalist theme runs through Solovyov’s entire corpus. He argued bitterly against the Slavophile nationalists of his day. To learn of Solovyov’s views on this subject, Snegovaya, who reads Russian, might have consulted the book State, Society, Governance, a scholarly volume of liberal social science co-published in 2013 by Mikhail Khodorkovsky (not known for his fondness for Putin). In this Russian-language compendium of essays by leading Russian liberal theorists, Solovyov is marshaled as an authoritative critic of Russian nationalism, including the nationalism occasionally voiced by Dostoevsky. [S. Nikolsky and M. Khodorkovsky, ed., Gosudrastvo. Obshchestvo. Upravlenie: Sbornik statei (Moskva, Alpina Pablisher: 2013)].
In the article by Prof. Sergei Nikolsky, Solovyov is quoted at length precisely as an authoritative critic of Dostoevsky’s disrespect for other faiths and nations and specifically for Europe. For the sake of balance, Nikolsky might have noted that elsewhere, for example in his “Three Speeches in Honor of Dostoevsky,” Solovyov praises Dostoevsky in the highest possible terms and specifically denies that his political ideal is nationalist.
It is worth noting that Nikolsky, in this same article, attacks Il’in for his too rosy views of Russian Czarist imperialism. Nikolsky probably has a point here.
Criticizing the Church
Finally, far from being a fanatical proponent of the Russian Orthodox Church, Solovyov harshly criticized the Russian Church, calling it “totally subservient to the secular power and destitute of all inner vitality.” As ringing endorsements go, this one sounds decidedly weak.And again, all this is well known. Many, including even such prominent theologians as Urs von Balthasar, believe Solovyov renounced Orthodoxy and became a Catholic, so warmly did Solovyov praise the Catholic Church.
Solovyov, the supposed conservative Orthodox zealot, praised the Catholic Church, among other reasons, for what he saw as it independence from nationalist temptations, and for its readiness to act in the world.
“The East [meaning Eastern Orthodoxy] prays; the West [meaning Roman Catholicism] prays and acts: which is right?” asks Solovyov rhetorically in his famous Russia and the Universal Church. Mixing with the world is good if it is the world that changes, Solovyov continues. Changes in what sense? In some respects, in the same sense as that advocated by Western progress.
What the French Revolution destroyed – treating men as things, chattel or slaves, deserved to be destroyed. But the French Revolution nonetheless did not institute justice, because justice is impossible without the truth, and first of all the truth about man, but the French Revolution “perceived in Man nothing but abstract individuality, a rational being destitute of all positive content.”
As a result, the “free sovereign individual,” Solovyov continues, “found himself doomed to be the defenseless victim of the absolute State or ‘nation.’ ”
It is impossible to reconcile the Solovyov we find in his actual writings with Snegovaya’s and Brooks’s portrait of a religious chauvinist and Russian nationalist, one with pro-Soviet tendencies to boot.
The reference to messianism, coming from Brooks, also demonstrates a striking lack of self-awareness. But that particular example of the kettle calling the pot black has already been ably handled by Charles Pierce (“Our Mr. Brooks and the Messianic Mr. Putin,” Esquire, March 4, 2014).
Philosopher of Freedom
Berdyaev (1874 – 1948) wrote a great deal, and on a number of subjects changed his mind, but in as much as it was Berdyaev’s The Philosophy of Inequality which Putin urged his governors read, it makes sense for us to start with that.
Do we find here a repository of ‘pro-Soviet’ views? Not even close. Instead, we find an emotionally-charged condemnation of everything the Soviet Union’s founders stood for (the book was written immediately after the 1917 Revolution and Berdyaev was full of outrage and grief).
Berdyaev spends much of the book berating the Bolshevik movement for its exaggerated exaltation of a particular political form. But in truth, Berdyaev insists, political forms are always secondary to the human spirit. Whether a person is kind or vicious, devoted to justice or its opposite, has little to do with whether someone is a monarchist or a democrat, a proponent of private property or a socialist.
Why specifically “the Philosophy of Inequality”? Not because the philosopher is indifferent to exploitation and injustice. And still less because he favored tyranny – he was to the contrary a tireless critic of despotism, which is the word he used to describe the Czarist order.
Berdyaev never completely abandoned his early interest in Marx, even after his conversion to Christianity around the turn of the century. He was by temperament a person more of the left than of the right, despite a lingering influence of Nietzsche.
What concerns Berdyaev is the inequality between what is higher or lower in the realm of spirit and culture. Berdyaev mostly approves of liberalism and finds in it something aristocratic or at any rate not revolutionary. By contrast, democracy and socialism, precisely because they have pretensions to fill all life with their content, can easily become false religions.
At times Berdyaev’s philosophy even overlaps with libertarianism, which likewise rejects any abuse of the freedom of the individual person for utilitarian ends.
Berdyaev’s religious views are difficult to characterize. He was a Christian, an existentialist and someone who believed in the absolute primacy of freedom, but not necessarily all three of these at once (they are not entirely compatible, but then Berdyaev was not always consistent). The writings of Dostoevsky were of enormous religious importance to him.
It is easy to misread Berdyaev because of his lack of system, and because he looks at the same concept from sometimes contradictory perspectives. Take for example Berdyaev’s paradoxical understanding of national uniqueness.
Dostoevsky, Berdyaev writes, “is a Russian genius; the Russian national character is stamped on all his creative work, and he reveals to the world the depths of the Russian soul. But this most Russian of Russians at the same time belongs to all of humanity, he is the most universal of all Russians.”
And the same can be said for Goethe and other national geniuses, who likewise are universal not by being more generic, but precisely by being more who they are; in the case of Goethe, by being specifically German.
Berdyaev’s perspective here is particularly helpful if we want a world made safe for both unity and diversity. A global civilization that would level all differences is ugly, while a messianism that would exalt one nation over others is evil. [N. Berdyaev, Sud’ba Rossii [The Fate of Russia], (Moskva: Eksmo-Press, 2001), p. 353 and 361]
Christianity as such, however, is messianic, because it affirms what it considers a universal truth, the truth of Christ. But this truth has no coercive power.
Until early 2014, the view that Solovyov and Berdyaev represent particularly humane and attractive alternatives for Russia was not, as far as I am aware, doubted by anyone, at least, not by anyone who gave the matter any thought.
In the time of perestroika, when Russian philosophy was finally being rediscovered inside Russia, the likely positive influence of these philosophers was warmly affirmed. Bill Keller, writing for the New York Times, praised the Soviet magazine Novy Mir for focusing attention on “the more Western-inclined 19th-century Russian thinkers such as Nikolai Nekrasov, Aleksandr Herzen, and the Christian philosophers Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Berdyaev.” [Emphasis mine]
These were the sort of thinkers, Keller emphasized, who would help encourage “a humane alternative to zealous Leninism and the darker Russian nationalism.” By publishing such writers, Keller continued, Novy Mir was demonstrating that it “occupies a key centrist position, attempting to reconcile the Westernizers and the Russian patriots on a common ground of tolerance and democratic ideals.”
The ‘Liberal Conservative’
The case of Ivan Il’in (1883-1954), whom Putin regularly quotes and whom Putin is known to particularly respect, is more complex. Some of Snegovaya’s suspicions in his case are indeed accurate. Il’in has a conservative temperament.
It is fair to call him a nationalist, though one concerned with Russia alone, and with no messianic ambitions. As will be seen below, Il’in was not against authoritarianism. Il’in was, however, complex and worthy of much more careful consideration.
The suggestion that Il’in is a source of that famous “pro-Soviet” stance is easily disposed of. The Cheka interrogators who arrested and interrogated Il’in six times between 1918 and 1922 would have been very surprised at such a characterization.
According to Prof. Iu. T. Lisitsa, who has reviewed the records on Il’in from the KGB archives, Il’in “even in the hands of the Cheka, under threat of execution … remained adamant, precise, and articulate in his opposition to the Bolshevik regime.” [From “The Complex Legacy of Ivan Il’in, Russian Thought after Communism, in James Scanlan, ed., Russian Thought After Communism: The Recovery of a Philosophical Tradition (Armonk, New York, M.E. Sharpe: 1994), 183.]
The “pro-Soviet” characterization also does not jive very well with the fact that Il’in, along with Berdyaev and a host of other leading Russian philosophers, was banished from the USSR in 1922 for their anti-Soviet “agitation.” Il’in’s literary corpus is said to include over 40 books and essays, some of them written in scholarly, technical language, so it is not an easy thing to characterize his worldview, but a good place to start is Il’in’s Our Tasks.
Not only is this a book which Putin likes to quote, it is also another of the books, along with Solovyov’s Justification of the Good and Berdyaev’s The Philosophy of Inequality, that Putin urged his governors to read.
The book Our Tasks is a compilation of journalistic essays written by Il’in between 1948 and 1954. Their overriding theme is the need to put an end to Soviet rule, defeat communism and plan for Russia’s restoration and recovery from the devastating physical, moral and political woes visited on Russia by the Soviet system.
It is difficult to imagine a more uncompromising condemnation of Soviet ideology and practice than this collection of Il’in’s essays. If anything, one might fault him for exaggerating the faults of the Soviet system. It must be remembered, though, that Il’in (who died in 1954) did not live to see the post-Stalin era, or even to hear of Khrushchev’s speech condemning Stalin (in 1956).
And yet Il’in was not only a critic of communism, he was also a critic of Russia’s past leaders when they were vicious (as in the case of Ivan IV) or incompetent, as in the case of Nicholas II. Like Berdyaev, Il’in was also, on occasion, bitingly critical of the Russian people, who he felt were politically immature and in need of a crash course in legal awareness.
After the fall of Soviet power, a fall he was sure would eventually take place, he was skeptical in the extreme that the character of the people living in Russia at that point would be capable of wise self-rule, which is why he urged, as a temporary expedient, a transition period of authoritarian government.
‘Soviet Man’
Here is how, in Our Tasks, Il’in described the character of the “Soviet man” that the future Russia would inherit: “The totalitarian system … imposes a number of unhealthy tendencies and habits … among which we may find the following: a willingness to inform on others (and knowingly falsely at that), pretense and lying, loss of the sense of personal dignity and the absence of a well-rooted patriotism, thinking in a slavish manner and by aping the thoughts of others, flattery combined with servility, constant fear.
“The fight to overcome these unhealthy habits will not be easy … It will require time, an honest and courageous self-awareness, a purifying repentance, the acquisition of new habits of independence and self-reliance, and, most importantly of all, a new national system of spiritual and intellectual education. [I. A. Il’in, Nashi Zadachi (Our Tasks), sobr. soch. (collected works), vol. 2 (Moskva, Russkaya Kniga: 1993), 23-24.]
Il’in was indeed deeply concerned about the danger of Russia’s disintegration and indeed was concerned about the defense of its borders, although, of course, not their restoration. To avoid such disintegration, Il’in urged Russians to not repeat what he considered the fatal mistake of the February Revolution – its premature push for full democracy.
In this, as in many other respects, Il’in’s policy recommendations overlap with those of Solzhenitsyn, who was profoundly influenced by Il’in. That Il’in is a major influence on Putin’s brand of “liberal conservatism” was noted already in 2012 by the Canadian scholar Paul Robinson.
Unlike Solovyov and Berdyaev, in the early years of perestroika Ivan Il’in was poorly known both inside and outside of Russia, although Il’in had been quite prominent during the years preceding and following the Russian Revolution, including while he was living in exile.
His fame early in the Twentieth Century stemmed largely from a celebrated academic study of Hegel’s writings, a work still lauded both in and outside of Russia as among the best ever produced.
Il’in burst onto the post-Soviet scene in 1991, when essays from Our Tasks were first published, including the prescient “What Does the Dismemberment of Russia Bode for the World?” In this essay, Il’in wrote that the rest of the world will, in its ignorance of the likely consequences, eagerly underwrite the breakup of Russia and will to this end provide lots of development assistance and ideological encouragement.
As a result, Il’in wrote, “The territory of Russia will boil with endless quarrels, clashes, and civil wars that will constantly escalate into worldwide clashes …” To avoid this fate, as mentioned earlier, Il’in urged for Russia a transition period of authoritarian rule.
This point is made emphatically by Philip Grier in his Complex Legacy of Ivan Il’in. Grier, it should be added, who is the former president of the American Hegel Society, is also the translator of Il’in’s two-volume analysis of Hegel published by Northwestern University Press in 2011.
Although Il’in quite plainly admired the United States and Switzerland for what he saw as their mature democratic self-rule, it is not clear that Il’in was confident that democracy was tailor-made for a nation and culture of the Russian type.
What is absolutely clear, however, is Il’in’s fervent devotion to rule of law and legal awareness, something that sets him apart from the Slavophiles whom he in other respects resembles.
A Russia, Liberal and Christian?
There are very important differences between these three thinkers. Nevertheless, all three writers considered freedom essential to human culture and the human spirit, though they differed in emphasis. Undoubtedly, then, the worldview of all three is irreducible to a liberal formula even if their views include important liberal or modern elements.
All three agreed with the liberal world that all humans, regardless of nation, religion, or any other difference, are equally endowed with infinite dignity. But for them it was not a throwaway phrase when they added that this dignity is conferred on humans by God, which means, among other things, that a right to be absolutely secure cannot trump someone else’s right not to be tortured (Il’in’s absolute prohibition against torture, or anything even coming close to torture, in the above-mentioned book is excellent and quite timely).
There has been no space here to attempt more than a brief introduction to these thinkers. But it should already be clear that the tradition we have just described offers, if we would only engage with it, an opportunity: a chance to form a partnership with a Russia that, though different from our present state of mind, shares much of our own past, and perhaps suggests some ways forward as we negotiate an increasingly dangerous world.
As his reading list recommendations strongly suggest, “Putin’s Russia” represents an attempt to reconnect with this tradition, however flawed that attempt may be. Take Putin’s famous speech (to the Federal Assembly) in April 2005. Although Western commentators have ad nauseum berated him for showing his true colors and displaying nostalgia for the Soviet order, in reality, as the entire text and the following excerpt makes clear, he did no such thing:
Putin said: “‘State power,’ wrote the great Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, ‘has its own limits defined by the fact that it is authority that reaches people from outside… State power cannot oversee and dictate the creative states of the soul and mind, the inner states of love, freedom and goodwill. The state cannot demand from its citizens faith, prayer, love, goodness and conviction. It cannot regulate scientific, religious and artistic creation… It should not intervene in moral, family and daily private life, and only when extremely necessary should it impinge on people’s economic initiative and creativity.’”
Is it naïve to impute such idealism to Putin? Perhaps. But Putin is not in fact the issue, but Russia. We engage after all a country, not a single person in it, and the tradition we are describing has sufficient roots in the Russia that actually exists that, if we chose to engage with it, there would be the chance for an actual productive conversation, one capable of rebuilding trust and creating an order.
Critics say that Russia recently has become a nation filled with hate. But how are Russian citizens and President Putin himself to interpret the twisting (and what we have seen above is just the tip of the iceberg) of their own words and their most cherished traditions in such an apparently spiteful and even violent way?
Knowledgeable analysts have correctly noted that Russian nationalists such as Alexander Dugin consider the United States to be Russia’s implacable enemy. Representatives of this “Eurasianist” camp are waiting in the wings if Putin falls.
America’s efforts at “regime change” might even succeed at facilitating such a drastic change for the worse. And then, by means of that “curious logicality” of the American ideology, we will once again, with “stubborn devotion without regard for specific, varying factors,” have brought about yet another catastrophe.
A Brief Footnote on Ideology
For all the United States’ vaunted freedom, it exhibits surprisingly little freedom of maneuver when it comes to its foreign policy. Far from taking into consideration Russia’s vital security needs, to say nothing of Russia’s identity, U.S. ideologues have behaved as if both are either non-existent or fundamentally illegitimate. Such compulsive political behavior is the sure sign of ideological infection.
Brooks, Snegovaya and Galeotti apparently have all made use of the same basic logic when they examined the philosophical sources of Putin’s thinking. That logic went something like this: a) Washington considers Russia a problem, therefore, b) Vladimir Putin is a thug; and therefore, c) the Nineteen Century philosopher Vladimir Solovyov dreamed of restoring the Soviet Union to its former Christian glory and might.
Such sloppy thinking would not have happened were these three otherwise intelligent people not (one hopes temporarily) previously incapacitated by ideological blinders. Unfortunately, the same ideological thinking dominates nearly all of U.S. discourse vis-à-vis Russia, making a political settlement impossible.
After all, if America’s political ideal is as nearly perfect as can ever be achieved in this “fallen world,” then the thing is to carry on and win, thereby bringing the perfect good (that’s us!) to everyone.
Why bother seriously familiarizing oneself with a competing system? Clearly Brooks and Co. made no such effort. It was enough for them to know that Russia’s political ideal significantly differs from America’s: therefore it is illegitimate, Q.E.D.
As Hannah Arendt wrote in The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The curious logicality of all isms, their simple-minded trust in the salvation value of stubborn devotion without regard for specific, varying factors, already harbors the first germs of totalitarian contempt for reality.”
That America does not actually live up to its own ideals, as I have written here previously, changes nothing for the ideologue. After all, every further increase in America’s power brings closer the day when its actions (which are generally realist) and its speech (which is always democratic and idealist) can come into harmony. Then history can truly and finally come to an end.
And yet, in light of the above review of an important part of the Russian tradition, there is something we are now in a much better position to point out: Russia has also taken the trouble to have ideals.
Paul Grenier is a former Russian simultaneous interpreter and a regular writer on political-philosophical issues. After advanced study in Russian affairs, international relations and geography at Columbia University, Paul Grenier worked on contract for the Pentagon, State Department and World Bank as a Russian interpreter, and at the Council on Economic Priorities, where he was a research director. He has written for the Huffington Post, Solidarity Hall, the Baltimore Sun, Godspy, and Second Spring, among other places, and his translations of Russian philosophy have appeared in the Catholic journal Communio.
 
Putin knows the game, he's not easily snookered!
 

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The man can sing as well--and in English!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IV4IjHz2yIo

see 50 seconds into segment.
 
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