Putin’s War Spawns a New Generation of Kremlinologists
H-Diplo, Apr 20, 2022: As the Russian attack on Ukraine unfolded, the world focused on the revolution of this social media age, on videos of carnage, resistance, and troop movement shared in real time, and the pronouncements of a new kind of “World War Wired.”[1] Yet as with war, the fog of authoritarian crackdown obscures. Our ability to assess President Vladimir Putin’s totalitarianizing court is constricting to a degree not seen since the Stalin years.
Most articles on Putin’s War have offered prescriptive suggestions for proposed policies, forecasts for how the conflict will play out, or retrospective analyses of how ‘we got here’ since the collapse of the Soviet Union. This article looks instead at how little we in fact know as a second Cold War threatens to break out, drawing an epistemological parallel between the early years of that great-power standoff and the crisis of today.
Unlike the daily “off-the-record” churn of sources in Washington that provide grist for analysis on the workings of the American state, Putin’s associates rarely leak. Those closest to Putin do not speak to reporters on background. They do not fill journalists’ notebooks with off-the-record infighting. As the Atlantic’s Paul Starobin noted, their code of omerta reflects an old Russian village saying, “Iz izby soru ne vynesi,” literally, that is, “Do not carry rubbish out of the hut”…