John Sipher writes:

In a recent discussion with New Yorker editor David Remnick, Princeton historian Stephen Kotkin put the recent invasion in historical context. According to Kotkin, “What we have today in Russia is not some kind of surprise. It’s not some kind of deviation from a historical pattern. Way before NATO existed—in the nineteenth century—Russia looked like this: it had an autocrat. It had repression. It had militarism. It had suspicion of foreigners and the West. This is a Russia that we know, and it’s not a Russia that arrived yesterday or in the nineteen-nineties. It’s not a response to the actions of the West. There are internal processes in Russia that account for where we are today.”

And what are those 19th century parallels? To those who study Russia, the 19th century French aristocrat and writer Marquis Astolphe de Custine, is one of the best-known chroniclers of Russian political culture. A travel writer in the style of Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote Democracy in America, de Custine traveled to Russia in 1839, and penned his travelogue Empire of the Czar. De Custine visited Russia in expectation of finding material to support his criticism of France’s representative government, but instead became an advocate for constitutional government and a vocal critic of Russian despotism. He identified a number of 19th century Tsarist traits that can equally describe the Russia of Vladimir Putin, to include domestic repression, institutional incompetence and a culture of lies.

In the lead-up to the war in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin ramped up repression at home, poisoning his opponents and jailing anyone who criticized the government. In 1839, de Custine described Tsarist Russia as a prison, in which the emperor holds the key. As he commented, “under a despotism, all the laws are calculated to assist oppression; …every indiscretion of speech is equivalent to a crime of high treason [and] the only criminal is the man who goes unpunished.” De Custine concluded that, “other nations have supported oppression, the Russian nation has loved it: it loves it still.” In Russia, “despotic tyranny is permanent.” [Continue reading…]