A writer-publisher’s Ukrainian diary: 5

7 May 2022
People are, I know, frightened by Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons. I have suggested that even western leaders have been sufficiently frightened by these threats to be militarily unproactive. This means that Putin doesn’t need to use nuclear weapons, it’s enough to possess them and threaten to use them. However, the massive joint Finnish-British-American-Estonian-Latvian military exercises in SW Finland last week seem to have very effectively shut him up on the subject. This must prove something.

Would Putin use nuclear weapons, whether tactical or not? A spokesman for Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday that ‘Russia firmly abides by the principle that there can be no victors in a nuclear war and it must not be unleashed’. That’s clear, then. Not quite. He added: ‘Russia must be ready for any provocations whatsoever from Ukraine and the West’, which surely means ‘ready with nuclear weapons to respond to nuclear provocations’. But ‘nuclear provocations’ have so far come only from the Russian side…

9 May 
At the beginning of the war, Boris Yel’tsin’s daughter came out against it, prominent figures resigned from their state posts, hundreds of Orthodox priests signed a petition against it, thousands went on the streets to demonstrate against it, other thousands (including high-ups like economist Anatolii Chubais) simply left Russia in protest. But why didn’t Mikhail Gorbachev publicly express his opinion about it?

I have heard no explanation of this. Gorbachev is now ninety-one and quite frail, but he has always been such a great talker that my guess is he is gagged by some deal that Putin set up, with threats, years ago. In 2016 Gorbachev said he approved of Putin’s annexation of Crimea and would have done the same himself. He hasn’t come out and said this of the Russo-Ukrainian War, so perhaps he actually opposes it.

Curiously enough, Gorbachev may have made an extremely significant intervention just before the invasion was launched. His interpreter and now associate in the Gorbachev Foundation, Pavel Palazhchenko, stated, contrary to Putin’s then narrative, that western leaders in talks with Gorbachev in 1990 made no promises regarding NATO expansion into Poland, Czechoslavakia, Hungary and so forth, consequently no promises were broken when these countries eventually joined NATO, inflaming Putin’s paranoia. American officials involved in the Baker-Gorbachev negotiations have confirmed this.

But why did Palazhchenko express this outright denial of the Putin narrative, not Gorbachev? If Gorbachev had, he would presumably have been harrassed by Putin for breaking their deal, whereas Palazhchenko was protected by his boss’s stature. Palazhchenko could not have made this contribution unilaterally, I think.

10 May
A prophetic statement?

Yel’tsin explained [1991] that the Commonwealth of Independent States was the only choice on the table: ‘The main task was not to have Russia and Ukraine on the opposite sides of the barricades.’ If Ukraine had its own Army, currency, state borders, ‘there would be no peace between Russia and Ukraine.’ […] Had Russia not agreed with Ukraine, ‘tomorrow our reality could be a trade blockade, closed borders, and economic wars… The worst that could have happened would be a war using nuclear weapons.’

The quotation comes from Vladislav Zubok’s monumental but riveting Collapse: The Fall of the Soviet Union (Yale University Press, 2021), p. 409. Yel’tsin is a much maligned figure. He was not at all minded to give Ukraine its independence, but in the end was persuaded that it was the right thing — within CIS, which was intended to be as loose as the British Commonwealth. What stands out in this book is the fundamental integrity of most of the political players in perestroika and the collapse, compared with Russia today.

Click the cover to find this book on Amazon.

11 May
I was struck by the body language of those with whom Putin interacted at the Victory Day celebration in Moscow — military, veterans of World War 2, and civilians. They treated him gingerly, but not because they were frightened of him. I swear they weren’t. There was even a smiling sort of gentleness and humanity towards the deranged dictator. I couldn’t make out what it reminded me of, but have now put my finger on it: the last years of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule, when he was a walking invalid, even zombie, yet was treated with almost touching respect. (There is something elementally Russian about this, perhaps Orthodox at root.) Putin, with his livid colour and bloated face, could not possibly be described as a well man. Presumably those closest to him know the truth or otherwise about an impending cancer operation, but as I read it Russians sense he is finished,  whether clinically, morally or politically. Perhaps this collective intuition has even caused Putin’s decimated and humiliated generals in Ukraine to play for time. Putin may have committed to a protracted war in Ukraine, but will he live long enough to see it through?

Personally, I think Russians’ support for Putin’s war has declined to 50-55%. A sure sign is that more irony about him is emerging from Russia, in the form of wordplay and anecdotes. The word pobedobesie has been coined, for instance, meaning roughly ‘fiendish obsession with having won World War 2’, and the subtle ampirator. What Putin aspires to be is a Russian imperator like Alexander III, but ampirator suggests that he is not the real thing, only a piece of the Empire (ampir) Style furniture that he surrounds himself with. Meanwhile, apparently, just as Stalin was known amongst the narod (people) as Riaboi (Pock Face), so Putin is referred to as starik v bunkere (the old man in a bunker).

Mr Putin is 69.

14 May
Some of the visits by western celebrities to Ukraine begin to look like the embarrassing phenomenon of high profile people jumping on the latest band wagon. I do think it’s dangerous for Ukraine, as it trivialises what is a brutal war for independence. Always patient and polite, Zelensky did not seem comfortable during his encounters with Nancy Pelosi or Pierre Trudeau in Kiev; I am glad that, as a skilled actor, he managed to convey at all times that his mind was on far more serious things than celebrity culture. Celebrity visits like Nancy Pelosi’s and Jill Biden’s also risk the impression that Ukraine is going to be americanised. This would be a disaster for it, as it would prove Putin ‘right’ about the U.S. fighting a ‘proxy war’. The whole point about the war is that Ukraine has become a European nation state. As its Foreign Minister said recently, ‘Ukraine is the only place in Europe where people are dying for the values the EU is based on’.

Even in the midst of such life-and-death seriousness, Zelensky retains his comedic sense. Lots of people in its history have invaded Ukraine, he said recently, and Ukraine has always beaten them back. ‘Invaders can’t resist treading on the same rake.’ Brilliant!

16 May
I doubt whether I shall continue this commentary on Ukrainian events in the same form. For one thing, the delay between my writing an entry and it reaching you, the readers, can be a bit too long. But there are other reasons for pausing it, which I can’t reveal until the war is over, but which you may be able to imagine given the origins of Sam&Sam. Naturally, I will post in real time if/when there are dramatic developments.

The anger and disgust that the invasion evoked in me led me to express myself more frankly about Russia and Putinism in these ‘diaries’ than at any time in the past twenty years. I haven’t been to Russia since I was made persona non grata by the KGB in 1981, and I kept everything pretty bottled until February 2022. I don’t think you need (or want!) more from me on those subjects. I think my take on Putin’s Russia is clear.

Slava Ukraini!

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SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS 

‘This meticulous yet nimble book is bound to remain the definitive account of Calderon’s life’ Charlotte Jones, The Times Literary Supplement

‘The effort of detection, it must be said, was worth it. The biography is a delight to read.’ Emeritus Professor Laurence Brockliss, The London Magazine

‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian

‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’  Michael Pursglove, East-West Review

‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter

‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer

‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.’ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18

A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.

A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.