Putin’s World: Why Russia’s Showdown With The West Will Worsen

My father, Naum Katsenelson, painted this watercolor, “Dolls Become Humans,” two years after we came to the United States in 1993. This is the only “thematic” picture my father ever painted.

If you look at the picture carefully you’ll see the silhouette of Lenin in the clouds (representing the past). On the far left there is a Stalin doll and a line of people going to prison. Across from Stalin on the right there is a doll of Brezhnev (you’ll recognize him by his large, distinct eyebrows). On the building on the right there is an image of Gorbachev. Look carefully at the faces in the foreground (representing the present and the future): as they get closer to you they become more humanized – transforming from dolls into humans. The man in front of the woman draped in the American flag is my father; the boy with the Star of David on his chest is me.

This was an aspirational picture. In 1993 the Soviet Union fell apart. Russia’s future looked bright – although it was in chaos, it was a democracy. The dolls here are an analogy for robots, suggesting uniformity of thought. As I was composing this I called my father and asked him if he’d paint the same picture today. He said, “No. Today’s picture would look very different.”

I spent three months aggravating over the following article. It was one of the most emotionally taxing things I ever wrote. A few days ago my wife looked at me and said, “When are you going to be done with it; this article is bringing you down.” She was right. Today I want to share with you Chopin’s Prelude No. 4 Op. 28 in E minor. It perfectly describes of how I felt when I wrote this article. Here are performances by:

• Grigory Sokolov 
• Evgeny Kissin: 
• Sviatoslav Richter

Putin’s World: Why Russia’s Showdown with the West Will Worsen

I grew up hating America. I lived in the Soviet Union and was a child of the cold war. That hate went away in 1989, though, when the Berlin Wall fell and the cold war ended. By the time I left Russia in 1991, the year the Soviet Union collapsed, America was a country that Russians looked up to and wanted to emulate.

Twenty-three years later, a new version of cold war is back, though we Americans haven’t realized it yet. But I am getting ahead of myself.

After Russia invaded Crimea and staged its referendum, I thought Vladimir Putin’s foreign excursions were over. Taking back Crimea violated plenty of international laws, but let’s be honest. Though major powers like the U.S. and Russia write the international laws, they are not really expected to abide by those laws if they find them not to be in their best interests. Those laws are for everyone else. I am not condoning such behavior, but I can clearly see how Russians could justify taking Crimea back – after all, it used to belong to Russia.

I was perplexed by how the Russian people could possibly support and not be outraged by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But I live in Denver, and I read mostly U.S. and European newspapers. I wanted to see what was going on in Russia and Ukraine from the Russian perspective, so I went on a seven-day news diet: I watched only Russian TV – Channel One Russia, the state-owned broadcaster, which I hadn’t seen in more than 20 years – and read Pravda, the Russian newspaper whose name means “Truth.” Here is what I learned:

• If Russia did not reclaim Crimea, once the new, illegitimate government came to power in Ukraine, the Russian navy would have been kicked out and the U.S. navy would have started using Crimean ports as navy bases.
• There are no Russian troops in Ukraine, nor were there ever any there. If any Russian soldiers were found there (and there were), those soldiers were on leave. They went to Ukraine to support their Russian brothers and sisters who are being abused by Ukrainian nationalists. (They may have borrowed a tank or two, or a highly specialized Russian-made missile system that is capable of shooting down planes, but for some reason those details are not mentioned much in the Russian media.) On November 12, NATO reported that Russian tanks had entered Ukraine. The Russian government vehemently denied it, blaming NATO for being anti-Russian.
• Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was not downed by Russia or separatists. It was shot down by an air-to-air missile fired by Ukraine or a NATO plane engaged in military exercises in Ukraine at the time. The U.S. has the satellite imagery but is afraid of the truth and chooses not to share it with the world.
• Ukraine was destabilized by the U.S., which spent $5 billion on this project. As proof, TV news showed a video of Senator John McCain giving a speech to antigovernment protesters in Kiev’s Maidan Square. It was followed by a video of Vice President Joe Biden visiting Ukraine during the tumult. I wasn’t sure what his role was, but it was implied that he had something to do with the unrest.
• Speaking of Joe Biden, I learned that his son just joined the board of Ukraine’s largest natural gas company, which will benefit significantly from a destabilized Ukraine.
• Ukraine is a zoo of a country, deeply corrupt and overrun by Russian-haters and neo-Nazis (Banderovtsi – Ukrainian nationalists who were responsible for killing Russians and Jews during World War II).
• Candidates for the recent parliamentary election in Ukraine included Darth Vader (not kidding), as well as a gay ex-prostitute who claims to be a working man’s man but lives in a multimillion-dollar mansion.

I have to confess, it is hard not to develop a lot of self-doubt about your previously held views when you watch Russian TV for a week. But then you have to remind yourself that Putin’s Russia doesn’t have a free press. The free press that briefly existed after the Soviet Union collapsed is gone – Putin killed it. The government controls most TV channels, radio and newspapers. What Russians see on TV, read in print and listen to on the radio is direct propaganda from the Kremlin.

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