The world of Putin's eyes: as a fan of Ilyin and Gumilev became a dictator

Some call him crazy and blackmailing, while others call him an experienced political grossmaster. However, on October 7, the Russian leader celebrates the 70th anniversary, and this anniversary was noticed not by the triumph, but by the failure in the war with Ukraine. Many people think about why the current owner of the Kremlin is war, because it is not only a victim, but also a possible fall of ratings. And specific logical explanations are really difficult.

But if you try to look at the world, and especially the story, the eyes of Vladimir Putin, much becomes clear. In October 2021, Putin spoke at a meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club. Answering the questions that the authors read, he called the name of the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, and then said, "He thought about Russia and her future.

" In fact, Ilyin has long been present in Putin's life - his quotes over the last 15 years are most commonly found in public speaking of Russian President. "From the mid-2000s, Putin has been interested in white emigration, he has quoted the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Ivan Ilyin and Leva Gumilev. His advisers were looking for materials capable of substantiating political course-right liberalism," says Alexander Morozov, Russian journalist and political scientist, and political studies.

Russian studies of Boris Nemtsov at Karlovo University in Prague. Putin is a smart person, and everything he says cannot be perceived one -dimensional. He plays chess: he masks plans, creates a smoke curtain. He is a Chekist. This profession Ilyin was born in tsarist Russia, after the arrival of the Bolsheviks he was corrected from the country, lived in Germany and Switzerland, was fond of fascism and considered it possible to combine "national dictatorship" with religion.

It is on the approach of Ilyin that Putin's view of Ukraine is based, experts say. "Ukraine is recognized as the most threatening part of Russia in the sense of separation and conquest. Ukrainian separatism is an artificial phenomenon, devoid They are together with faith, tribal, historical fate, geographical situation, economy, culture and politics, "Ilyin wrote about Ukraine in 1938, so it is represented by Putin today.

There are no Ukraine for both of them, and the word "Ukrainians" can be allowed to write in quotes. Putin was so inspired by the words of the philosopher that he decided to bring their author into a cult - the powder is buried in Moscow, and books to redeem. One of the most famous - "Our Tasks" - on the eve of shootings on the Maidan and occupation of Crimea as a gift from the Kremlin will be received by all governors and high -ranking officials of the Prosecutaneous Party "One Russia".

The mentioned Lion Gumilev is another favorite philosopher Putin. It is believed that his quotes, like Ilyin, in the speeches of the President of the Russian Federation emerged from the submission of ex-deputy head of the administration Boris Yeltsin and the ideological inspirer of Putin-Vladislav Surkov. It was Gumilev who wrote about the importance of the Eurasian space, where Putin wanted to delay Viktor Yanukovych and Ukraine in 2013.

Gumilev's friend, and the philosopher died in 1992, was publicist Yuri Borodai. The son of the latter Alexander, now the State Duma deputy, played his role in 2014 during the invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine-first participated in the occupation of Crimea, and then proclaimed himself as Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic.

"After 2014, Putin's repertoire began to change: the Orthodox holiness and elements of the royal period of Nicholas I or Alexander III came to the sidel . He convinced himself that he had fallen wrong and it was necessary to collect it, " - continues Alexander Morozov. Putin gradually began to assign Russia to the grandeur of the Soviet Union.

Yes, he reluctantly recognizes that after 1991, Ukrainian statehood has taken place, but at the same time tries to substantiate its historical misappropriation. And further-worse, in the Kremlin talk about "Yalta-2", then about a new Helsinki act, then about the fight against American hegemony. "But really nothing. Putin is in the bubble of the imaginary Soviet Union.

Whatever he fantasizes, using the victory in the Great Patriotic War as a key or Andropovsky model of the persecution Moreover, split, schizophrenia occur at the level of real foreign policy, in one block it speaks of the Eurasian economic space, and in the other unfolds fantasies: Russia, together with Belarus, fights with Poland, fights against the mystical restoration of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, attacks Ukraine. " .

The article of Vladimir Putin "On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians", written in the summer of 2021 (published by the official website of the Kremlin - Russian and Ukrainian), according to experts, completes his ideological searches in relations with Ukraine and the West, arranges all points over "and". She clearly shows that Putin returns to the Soviet textbook of history, seeking to use each episode ideologically, unfolding it into the Soviet concept of international unity.

Morozov recalls how the monument to Soviet Marshal Ivan Konev was worn in Prague: "Moscow was very offended, they say, the Czechs were ungrateful - they were rescued, and they forgot. And tried to impose a discussion around the Soviet concept of history, but Czech intellectual They will participate in such a discussion, for them it is a recycled past. " Ukraine is not the Czech Republic, Soviet myths are still finding a response, and this is a weak place.

Russia tries to give a foreign history: it celebrates the Day of Baptism, claiming that the Moscow state is the only successor of Ancient Russia, it calls the daughter of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, Anna, the Russian Prince of Kiev. Or tries to distort the story, saying that the Pereyaslav agreements of 1654 - an act of "connection" with Moscow, Crimea is originally Russian land, and Ukraine is only a "child of the Soviet era".

Historians say that Moscow's desire to privatize past, writing, Orthodoxy and culture is an attempt to retain the illusion of grandeur that does not exist. Without this "restoration" of the status of the superpower is impossible. The ex-deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Ilya Ponomarev, the only of 450 deputies who voted in 2014 against the annexation of Crimea, says that the problem is that Russian identity does not exist without Ukrainian.

If they do not steal and distort, there will be an unattractive truth: Russia is only the late heir to the Golden Horde. This is impossible in Ilyin, Gumilev and Putin. However, as in the understanding of most Russians. After all, among the Russians is a common myth of a single people. Many refer to family and linguistic ties with Ukrainians, are ready to recognize the ideas of Ukraine's inability.