Putin has returned Stalinism to Russia. We must take care to avoid the totalitarian’s perversion of language.
“Putin’s gift.”
The very locution is repugnant, but that is but a mere symbol of the phrase’s intent. On its face, the phrase was uttered last week by a climate-change activist to highlight the unwise reliance on fossil fuels demonstrated by the Ukraine war. The argument was this: Europe’s dependence on Russia’s supply of oil and natural gas to Europe weakened it to such an extent that Putin believed he could easily invade and conquer Ukraine. He had already defeated Europe in the non-military area of energy dependence, so now he could invade Ukraine and get away with it. Europe was too dependent on Russia to do anything about it.
And in this was a silver lining. Putin’s calculations backfired. Europe could be so profoundly shocked and endangered by Putin’s bold move that Europe could begin to imagine a future not dependent on Russian energy, the only viable alternative being the development of non-fossil-fuel energy sources.
This stark realization, and the immediate European turn in this direction, is a wholly unexpected consequence of Putin’s invasion. Entirely beyond his long-term vision, Putin has handed Europe a long-term, vital reorientation of its energy strategy.
This was “Putin’s gift.”
Now, the implications of the Ukraine war for the future of energy sources can be argued both ways, but either way the invocation of “Putin’s gift” is profoundly dehumanizing.
Where is the “gift” in the bombing of hospitals, in the killing of children, in the relegation of women in labor to the streets, in the transformation of civilian life into refugee existence, in the end of countless people’s dreams, in the necessary Ukrainian thirst for weapons of destruction, in the destruction of beautiful non-military edifices, in the shameless recrudescence of the totalitarian lie, in the worst instance of Holocaust denial (the purported “nazification” of Ukraine) — and in increasing the threat of a nuclear confrontation?
There is no “gift” here. No long-term, short-term, intentional or unintentional gift.
This war has brought back words and phrases: encirclement, no fly zone, free passage, imposed poverty, bridges blown up, humanitarian corridors, confessions, liquidated, tsar.
There is no “gift” here.
What is here is the callous prioritization of an abstract public policy — the end of fossil fuels — over the victims required for its realization. Think: starve millions of Ukrainian peasants (1932-1933) to advance the communist collectivist utopia. Think: the “gift” in the Ukraine war to advance global fossil fuel-less energy independence.
Now, the argument on the relationship of the Ukraine war to fossil fuels cuts both ways. While some argue that the key element in the war is an obvious need to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, to preclude Putin’s energy blackmail; others see the key element as an obvious need to reverse restrictions on the development of fossil fuels, also to preclude blackmail. Some see Russia’s stranglehold over European energy as an obvious justification for an entirely new approach to energy, while others see obvious hypocrisy in the US making it harder to extract more oil while begging Middle Eastern nations and Venezuela to extract more oil. Some say climate change triumphs all; others say otherwise.
Argue these different perspectives as you like. The world is at war. The goal now must be to defeat the enemy. The focus now is the elimination of this evil war and this evil man, Vladimir Putin. The call of the hour is to support the heroic Ukrainian president, people and soldiers. The next goal, hardly far behind, is to succor the wounded and aid those in flight or unable to flee or unwilling to leave their country behind. In all this, there is no “gift.”
Indeed, this term is a mirror of Stalin — of Putin’s revival of Stalinism in Russia. The language of totalitarians is a primary weapon in their command of power. Lie about policy. Shut down media. Exile journalists. Demand total allegiance to the lie and the repression that sustains it. Putin is doing all this. He has launched a war not only against Ukraine but inside Russia. (The only lucky Russians are those wealthy enough or connected enough to flee the country.) Putin’s war, for all its barbarity, has not gone well for him, so he launches a second and parallel war, one inside Russia. A war to end the freedoms that Russia has enjoyed (more or less) since the fall of the USSR. The end to freedom requires the corruption of language.
Putin cannot replicate Stalin, whosecontrol over information was total. Unlike Stalin, Putin must contend with a populace that has known email and internet, a populace that has seen Youtube. Still, when all is said and done, Putin’s retreat to the language of lies (“Ukrainians welcomed the liberating Russian forces”) will intensify the longer the war drags on.
This makes it all more critical that the language we use about the Ukraine war remain uncorrupted, that we do not fall prey to any mirror-image of Putin. There is no “silver lining” in the war in Ukraine. Climate change remains a challenge with or without Putin. The debate over energy policy began before Putin and will outlast him. War criminals like Putin bestow no “gifts.”
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