#3
The Globe and Mail (Canada)
November 14, 2002
Putin's seamy side
By Amy Knight
Amy Knight is an adjunct research professor at Carleton University's Institute
of European and Russian Studies. Her most recent book is Who Killed Kirov? The
Kremlin's Greatest Mystery.
Poor Lyudmila Putin. If her husband, Russian President Vladimir Putin, talks
as crudely in public as he did on Monday in Brussels, imagine what sort of
things he says at home. Does he call her a whore when she burns the blinis?
Well, she probably doesn't make blinis herself any more, but whoever does
better be careful. Vladimir Putin is really on edge these days; for the sake of
his household helpers, I hope none of them comes from the Caucasus region.
Judging from what he says, the Russian President hates people from the
Caucasus, especially those from Chechnya. This is apparently the reason for
Monday's outburst in response to a Le Monde reporter's question about Russia's
use of land mines and fragmentation bombs in the Chechen war. Mr. Putin launched
into a virulent diatribe against Chechens and ended by inviting the reporter to
come and get circumcised in Moscow, where "he who does the surgery does it
so you'll have nothing growing back."
Mr. Putin's aides attributed his vulgar tirade, which stunned other
participants at the EU-Russia summit, to the fact that he is "sick and
tired of Chechnya." That is putting it mildly. Mr. Putin is so frustrated
over the war in Chechnya, now in its fourth year with no end in sight, the mere
mention of the subject sets him off.
This is hardly the first time Mr. Putin has used such language in reference
to Chechens. Remember his vow to mow them down in their outhouses? But there is
more to his crude remarks than just the Chechnya problem. His comments reflect a
general intolerance for non-Russian ethnic minorities, for journalists who
criticize the Kremlin, for environmental whistle blowers and all sorts of other
people Mr. Putin finds irritating.
In fact, there is an element of contempt for individual humans in this kind
of talk that is frighteningly reminiscent of Stalin, who had a similarly black
sense of humour. Stalin was famous for saying things like "net cheloveka,
net problemy," which meant roughly "solve the problem by getting rid
of the person involved." His remarks may have elicited nervous chuckles
from his Communist Party colleagues, but most of them ended up being executed on
Stalin's orders.
Joseph Stalin, who had a heavy chip on his shoulder about being short,
pock-marked and from a poor peasant family in Georgia, resented his
better-educated Bolshevik colleagues from the Russian intelligentsia. He
probably enjoyed shocking them and probably didn't know any better. Vladimir
Putin, the son of a factory worker who learned his manners among bullies on the
streets of Leningrad and in judo classes, may not know any better either. But,
like Stalin, he also means what he says. In contrast to his more immediate
Kremlin predecessors, who made their careers in the party apparatus, Mr. Putin
spent most of his working life in the KGB. As an institution whose main domestic
function was to suppress dissent and struggle against non-Russian ethnic
nationalism, the KGB taught its employees intolerance toward any expression of
individualism and an almost neo-fascist devotion to the Russian state.
The kind of remarks we heard from Mr. Putin on Monday might have seemed funny
in the canteen of the Leningrad KGB back in the 1970s and 1980s. They also might
appeal to those members of the Russian population who share Mr. Putin's intense
Russian nationalism. But nobody was laughing in Brussels. As a politician who
strives for acceptance as an equal by Western leaders, Mr. Putin should try to
control such outbursts. When the President of a country like Russia, with all
those nuclear weapons, talks like this, it is not only unpleasant. It is scary.
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