Putin

The fall of the Soviet Union was also formative in that way. Russians watched with a similar amazed horror as their own society collapsed with all the helplessness of a bad dream. First, it was the Soviet empire that was disintegrating, the nations that were never part of the Soviet Union itself, but always under Kremlin control. Those countries had only been in the Soviet dominion since the end of World War II and had never made any secret of their reluctance to be there, rebelling every twelve years—Hungary in 1956, Czechoslovakia in 1968, Poland in 1980. Later when he was criticized for giving away the farm, i.e., Eastern Europe, Gorbachev testily replied: “I gave Poland to the Poles. Who else should I give it to?” To that rhetorical question the imperialist answer is: “No one.”

But to see cracks spreading through the edifice of the Eastern Bloc was one thing; to see them spread to the Soviet Union itself was quite another. Even the loss of the three Baltic states—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania—could somehow be justified: culturally and historically they belonged to Europe and had initially been acquired as part of the dirty deal, the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, that Stalin struck with Hitler in 1939. But it was unthinkable that Kazakhstan could be lost, Kazakhstan with its enormous prairies and wheat fields, its oil, uranium, and gold, its launching platforms from which the Soviets had sent the first Sputnik, dog, and male and female cosmonauts, into space. Even more unthinkable was that Ukraine could be lost. Kazakhstan may have been conquered and settled by Russians, but, to the Russian mind, Ukraine was Russia. All Russian history flowed from Kiev. Every schoolchild learned: Kiev is the mother of Russian cities, Ukraine is Russia’s breadbasket.

And the losses weren’t only emotional and symbolic. Ukraine was rich in coal, industry, agriculture. It had the port where the Black Sea Fleet was stationed, it had the only shipyard where aircraft carriers were built. Even Kazakhstan might in the end be arguable. But Kazakhstan was lost. And so was Ukraine.

It all seemed impossible, incredible. But as Putin put it: “There’s a lot that seems impossible and incredible and then—bang! Look what happened to the Soviet Union. Who could have imagined that it would simply collapse? No one saw that coming—even in their worst nightmares.”

The loss was indeed catastrophic. The USSR’s population had been somewhat over 300,000,000. Now Russia was down to half that, with its population continuing to fall for years, 170 people dying for every 100 babies born. The country was losing the equivalent of a San Francisco a year to alcohol, heart attacks, car wrecks, suicide.

The economic losses were immense not only in and of themselves, but in their consequences. The centralized command-and-control economy dictated where certain machines or parts were to be produced; many were concentrated in places that had now broken away. That system had never worked well anyway, and now that parts had to be not only shipped but imported, things only grew worse. The military losses were also immense. Both Tsarist and Soviet Russia had been known for their huge standing armies, but now there were 150,000,000 fewer people to draw from.

And over it all hung the malodorous air of farce and fiasco, defeat and disgrace. To make matters worse, the United States and the West were not only now the victors in the Cold War; they also wanted to take credit for the collapse of the Soviet Union. In his book Heroes British historian Paul Johnson epitomizes what was for Russians the West’s unbearable preening and triumphalist self-love: “Three people won the Cold War, dismantled the Soviet empire and eliminated Communism as a malevolent world force: Pope John Paul II, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan.” As if the writings of Solzhenitsyn, the actions of Sakharov, and the decisions of Gorbachev had not played the slightest part whatsoever. The actual physical losses—territory, population, agriculture, industry, space, and military—were horrendous enough, but the incessant crowing of the West was galling beyond measure.

In an ornate tsarist palace turned high-tech gym in St. Petersburg I had a conversation with a Russian gangster who, behind his very broad back, was called simply “Tank.” But his mind was sharp and he liked to sprinkle the occasional English phrase into his conversation. He took a very Darwinian view of power and the relations between states—to the victor the spoils and to the loser bitter humiliation. Speaking of the Cold War in particular, he said: “You won, we lost. We have to bow down to you. You have the right to teach us how to live.”