EAN: 9781399409872

PUTIN AND THE RETURN OF HISTORY - MARTIN SIXSMI...

Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine has reshaped history. In the decades after the collapse of
Soviet communism  the West convinced itself that liberal democracy would henceforth be the
dominant  ultimately unique  system of governance. An outburst of Western triumphalism
proclaimed a US-led unipolar world entitled to 'impose democracy' on countries that failed to
recognise the new order. Politicians foretold the universalisation of Western values as the
final  enduring form of human society  a hubris that shaped how the West would treat Russia for
the next two decades. But history wasn't over. Subsequent events proved it is unwise to make
predictions  especially about the future. In February 2022  Vladimir Putin took great delight
in proving it. Putin is a paradox. In the early years of his presidency  he appeared to commit
himself to friendship with the West  suggesting that Russia could join the European Union or
even NATO. He said he supported free-market democracy and civil rights. But the Putin of those
years is unrecognisable today. The Putin of the 2020s is an autocratic nationalist  dedicated
to repression at home and anti-Western militarism abroad. So  what happened? Was he lying when
he proclaimed his support for freedom  democracy and friendship with the West? Or  was he
sincere? Did he change his views at some stage between then and now? And if that is the case 
what happened to change him? Putin and the Return of History examines these questions in the
context of Russia's thousand-year past  tracing the forces and the myths that have shaped
Putin's politics of aggression: the enduring terror of encirclement by outsiders  the
subjugation of the individual to the cause of the state  the collectivist values that allow the
sacrifice of human lives in battle  the willingness to lie and deceive  the co-opting of
religion and the belief in Great Russia's mission to change the world.

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