Saturday, Aug. 23, 2008

Mr. Putin’s mistake

I might be biased. My husband was one of the first American soldiers deployed to train the Georgian troops in 2006. We pray for our friends stuck in that tiny country — both Georgians and Americans. I am Bulgarian by birth, an Eastern European — a member of a group of countries and societies known as very sensible when it comes to the Russia of the past of the Soviet bloc.

Reading the news about the violence in Caucasus, the average Westerner might be surprised and confused about how the situation could escalate so far. The news media in the last couple of years indicated Russia was modernizing, a bit rocky, but still going ahead. And it looked like Russia was becoming Westernized, manifested by the rich Russians overflowing London, Paris, Cannes and Manhattan. Daria Zhukova, model and bubbly lover of the oil tsar Roman Abramovich, is just one of the many “new Russians” preferring London over Moscow for shopping. Abramovich himself went shopping a couple of years ago for a soccer club and came back with the iconic British Chelsea.

Then the stories about Poland, Czech Republic and Georgia feeling suppressed by the Kremlin came out like sounds and pictures from the distant past. And Vladimir Putin’s “managed democracy” — well, enigmatic, if not ridiculous, but seriously — dangerous for the world order?

The puzzle for every Western reader is why there are such huge tensions between the countries of the former Soviet bloc. They share a common history, speak a common language — from Germany to Turkmenistan everybody who is 30 or older has some knowledge of Russian — were socialized by the same values, have similar memories, and if nothing else unites them, they all were enthusiastic fans of the cartoon “Nu pogodi!” when they were 10 years old. If these guys know each other so well, why do they need Washington to sit at the table so the talk can even get started?

There is of course much more story behind the story. Let me try to explain it.

• Two views of the past

As an avid amateur scholar of Eastern Europe, my husband was thrilled when he found he had the Russian song “Kalinka-Malinka” as ring tone on his cell phone. He installed it right away and played it again and again, I guess to show me he is proud of my Eastern European roots. “Kalinka-Malinka” is a sweet and sickly song that became world famous because the Soviet troops were playing it while they were fighting the Nazis. When you watch old film footage with Soviet troops, “Kalinka-Malinka” always plays in the background.

For my husband, that song is a part of me, part of my personal history growing up during socialism. And it is, but the problem is how I see it, how the Russians see it, and how the West, willingly or not, does not pay attention to the details. With respect for the fallen 20 million Soviet citizens in World War II, this song for me is also the song of the troops that occupied Bulgaria in 1944, followed by 50 years of socialism and the loss of the lives and talents of so many people.

I didn’t tell my husband that this song is for me more offensive than full of bitter-sweet memories; it’s not a big deal, he meant well, I didn’t want to spoil the moment. And the problem lies elsewhere: The Russians never gave up the idea that Eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics belong to them, that the Russian political and economical interests must have a special role in those regions. The Eastern Europeans feel the pressure, and until now the West didn’t see the magnitude of the problem. “We are the same, right?” asked a Russian student I met in Berlin.

No, we are not the same anymore. We see our history differently — Russians still noting their troops’ sacrifice in WWII and that they saved Eastern Europe from Hitler, overlooking what came after that. And more important, we don’t see the present the same way — the Russian domination in Eastern Europe never was legitimate, even less so now after 50 years of socialism.

• Two views of the present

Czechs, Baltics, Polish, Bulgarian (and now the Georgians) made their choice: They want democracy and a free market. We all have paid the price for that: painful economic reforms, deep social transformations, negative self-image and so many uneasy compromises just to be part of the European Union, NATO and the Western world. It’s an everyday struggle still going on, 18 years after the Berlin Wall was torn down.

The majority of Russians after the enthusiasm of Gorbachev’s years and then Elzin’s exhortation to hold out, just gave up the rocky road to Western democracy. The worldwide rise of oil prices made it much easier to abandon the hard political and social reforms.

And Mr. Putin of course promised to restore the most painful loss for Russians — the loss of influence and importance. Even in its darkest moments, Putin’s ideology never included isolationism; it’s about Russia being one of the world’s leading nations, but by its own terms.

U.S. troops in Czech Republic, in Bulgaria, Rumania and Georgia are offending facts for the Russian generals, but is the loss of importance really significant to the common people? Oh yes, it is. I’ve seen busses with Russian tourists (people who finally managed to have decent wages, proud of it and eager to use it) waiting for hours on the Austrian border just to be checked one by one for another hour after that. It’s not a nice picture at all.

I can recall an interview with the great director Nikita Mikhalkov when he was casting for his movie “The Siberian Barber” and the interviewer asked him if this is his first movie. What an insult for the movie master who had won an Oscar award in 1994. Mikhalkow never said it, but you could feel it: “Just because I was coming from Russia!”

And then for example Bulgaria, being now a part of the European Union, implemented visas for Russian citizens. The tiny, unimportant Bulgaria and the Bulgarian Black Sea resorts for Russians in the summer are like Myrtle Beach for American college students in the spring. Horrible! Unheard of! Painful!

• New view of the future

After the bloody Caucasus week, Russia is again somebody in world policy. But the truth? The world is horrified by this new Russia. And whatever the Kremlin and its supporters are thinking, it is not good at all. The European Union won’t stop buying oil and natural gas, so the political elites are very conscious of their public positions. But the EU is going to be much more suspicious. And when a suspicious EU uses hidden but very effective, never-bold-facing-the-issues maneuvering (a.k.a. endless prolonging — the very European method) when it comes to easing the visa policy for Russian citizens, that means more obstacles for Russian business, fewer economic and political initiatives with the Kremlin — all important things for the middle-class citizens.

And the United States? It finally is rethinking its half-naïve, half-too-busy-with-other-issues policy that was one of the reasons for Russian growth. Washington won’t send troops to fight in Georgia, but the times of “my friend Vlad” are over. Wait for a real Eastern Europe policy, and it won’t be in Russia’s favor. World business, despite huge wins, doesn’t feel good at all with this blatant autocracy in the Kremlin. The British company BP already left the country; how many others will be discouraged now from new investments?

For me, the last few days illustrate that the Kremlin never learned the lesson about the end of the Soviet Union. It is not military power that makes a country great but the investment in education, society, its people’s freedom, civil rights and wealth (as in West Germany after the WWII). If a political regime built on naked power is very brutal, it can survive more than 70 years. But at the end it will fall, because it is hollow inside.

People applaud military victories, but when they are sober on the next morning they value much more a normal life, wealth, foreign investors in their towns and the amenities of globalization such as free travel and free trade. That is the good news in these dark days.

Mr. Putin’s strong move to restore Russia’s role in the world stage might in the long term be his biggest mistake.

Mrs. Bellinger is columnist for the Bulgarian newspaper Capital. Before moving to Columbia in June, she was correspondent from Germany and reported from major political events such as the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Munich security conference and multiple EU Prime Minister summits.