Thread by @samagreene

Putin doesn’t need to invade anyone to rebuild the Soviet Union.

https://twitter.com/VALERIEin140/status/1475778480700862467

And before anyone starts with the “Putin isn’t a socialist” argument, you’re right — he isn’t.

But neither were the Soviet leaders Putin knew best. By the time Brezhnev came to power, it was about power, not socialism.

Brezhnev presided over the creation of essentially oligarchic control of the economy (a term scholars were using in the early 80s, _not_ a retcon). See Robert Tucker, Val Bunce and others writing in the 1980s.

And see also János Kornai, who showed that state ownership of the economy was primarily a tool of elite domination, not mass empowerment.

So no, Putin isn’t a socialist. Why should he be? By the time he came of age, socialism was incidental to the structure of power in the USSR.

Socialism was a stick the state could use to coordinate followers and beat opponents, but it was also a problem — it prevented elites from enjoying the full fruits of their positions.

Putin has other sticks now — more flexible ones, ones that allow him and his elite to enjoy life more fully. But he still needs to keep people in line, and for that he increasingly turns to a repressive state apparatus, one that deploys methods honed by its Soviet predecessors.

That repressive apparatus needs to be legitimized — which means, inevitably, re-legitimizing the foundations on which it is built. That’s why Memorial had to go. That’s why existential confrontation with the West is so vital.

So no, Putin isn’t seeking to rebuild the Soviet Union by annexing Ukraine or Belarus. He’s seeking to rebuild the fundamentals of Soviet power by annexing the minds of ordinary Russian citizens, and thus binding them to his rule.

The road Russia is traveling now may be lined with McDonalds and traversed by BMWs. It may have open borders and private property. But it is still paved with repression and disenfranchisement.

Memorial existed to remind people that they’ve been down this road before.

Correction: Memorial _exists_ to remind people that they’ve been down this road before. Memory, like manuscripts, doesn’t burn.