Tragedy

The tragedy of Putin is not what he has done or is doing, the Russkies have survived far worse than this sorry façade, but of what he failed to do. He landed fresh and anonymous when everything was broken and everybody was tired of chaos. And he landed just at the moment the torrent of oil dollars started flowing. There were good brains around in the top level too, and a chance to attract many more from other spheres, not to mention attracting people back from abroad with something better than GazProm salaries.

This was the guy who arrived with hardly any baggage and was handed the task of guiding Russia away from its autocratic absurdist past with no conditions attached, apart from not putting Yelstin in prison. This could be the man who opened the country up to its own people, who started it on a path of becoming a vast and happy Scandinavia type place with better poetry and more money, or for that matter anything else it desired to be, irrespective of what tired old pontificators like me might wish for.

“Here you are Vladimir Vladimirovitch: a vast resource rich country with a highly literate population and half a world full of cheap, Russian speaking labour all around its borders. Take it away: glory is yours for the taking.”

 And he fucked it up. He wasn’t good enough, or brave enough or clever enough to do what needed doing. For a spell, a year maybe, it looked like he just might be, and it felt good. The managed democracy blather was even forgivable for a while, because stability is something the western critics take for granted. When teachers and doctors are not getting paid the nuances of an open society can be postponed, for a spell. What we got was not the savior of Russia, but instead a weak man in a tough job, far more concerned with looking strong that taking any decisions that needed strength. So we end up with rampant corruption, kleptocracy and this half assed nationalist gruel sweetened with orthodox incense, vodka and back-handers.

“Really Vladimir?

“Flags and crosses, persecution of gays, fear of enemies within and changes to the constitutional limits on presidential terms: that’s all you got?”

“Back to all that 20^th century nation state twattery.”

“We’re gonna do all that again”

“Really?”

 So most people just do what they always did, they pay no attention to the feeble minded proclamations from Kremlin hypocrites and instead get on with living and loving and drinking.

And the westerners get all excited and pontificate about pussy riot and public meetings, forgetting that even the tea party and Ukip can drag people onto the street to shout about democracy, while corporations eat everybody’s dinner. And the Kremlin crypt crew spin it into the shapes they need, secure in the knowledge that nobody over there is paying the least attention to what really happens in mother Russia. They’re far too busy worrying about papers calling them appeasers of something or other to wonder if they are really helping.

The real change, if it comes, and the odds are against it, lies in the thousands of small acts involving dash cams and posting corrupt idiocies on YouTube, and if that means ordinary people have given up waiting for the Tsar to fix their toilet then that’s no bad thing.

But Vladimir, he could have been up there with Napoleon, instead he’s the poor man’s Brezhnev, a less likeable John Major, a Tammany hall huckster, a twat.

Really, that’s it finally he’s just a twat, and at this point anything else is really just over thinking things.