Russian
dictator Vladimir Putin once famously called the collapse of the Soviet Union,
“the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
That
tells you a lot. He regrets the collapse of the evil empire that killed,
tortured and repressed millions of Russians.
And,
he is in the process of trying to reconstitute that empire by threatening
Russia’s neighbors regardless of the wishes of the people he seeks to rule
over.
Putin
is on the precipice of greatly escalating his war on Ukraine, upset that
Ukrainians increasingly seek to leave the Soviet past behind them and reclaim
their European heritage-renewing historic ties with their western neighbors
while building democracy and rule of law.
Putin
recently sent troops into Kazakhstan at the invitation of that country’s allied
dictator to repress an unexpected popular uprising.
All
this empire building rests on convincing Russians that, despite their misery
and his misrule, Putin is restoring Russia’s past glory.
That
requires a war on history.
Putin
recently gave a speech absurdly claiming Ukraine is not a real country, based
on ignoring, or rather Russia co-opting the much older history of civilization
in Ukraine.
He
has also rehabilitated the memory of the sadistic mass murderer, Joseph Stalin.
There
is a book about how Putin’s Russia views the Stalinist past. Its title says it
all, It Was a Long Time Ago, and It Never
Happened Anyway.
Stalin’s
horrific crimes against the Russian people are a big obstacle to Putin’s
narrative about the Soviet Union as part of some sort of proud Russian imperial
tradition.
So,
it comes as no surprise that Putin’s regime has forced the closure of a
respected Russian human rights organization dedicated to the truth about the
victims of Soviet communism.
The
independent human rights organization known as Memorial was co-founded by Nobel
Peace Prize winner Andrei Sakharov in the waning days of the Soviet Union.
Sakharov
was a brave dissident who risked everything to call attention to the evils of
the Soviet system.
As
some of my colleagues may recall, I led the effort to name the street in front
of the Soviet Embassy in his honor.
When
the Soviet Union collapsed, Sakharov embodied the hope for a brighter,
democratic future for Russia, built on understanding and reckoning with its
past.
The
forced closure of Memorial after decades of noble work to bring about awareness
and healing around victims of Soviet communism is emblematic of the state of
Putin’s Russia.
Moreover,
the next day, Putin shut down the separate but related Memorial Human Rights
Center, which focused on political prisoners today under Putin’s regime.
This
is a major setback for what’s left of the Russian civil society that started to
emerge out of the wreckage of communism.
A
robust civil society will be essential if Russia is ever to become a free,
prosperous modern nation. Today Putin stands in the way.
