Limonov vs. Putin

by Edward Limonov

  It is of course scandalously accidentally that Putin received the leadership of the State. Without Yeltsin’s last act of stupid willfulness Putin, as he is, distinct, alien, would never have been elected. His fate has just played in his favor here. First the unlucky retired foreign intelligence officer was picked up by the westernizer Sobchak. Sobchak took him with him to the city hall. And here Putin showed the talent of a paper-weight-man, a folder-man. The fact that he loves office work showed up later, when in the first months of his mandate as premier he became daily available to us through the TV. It showed by the gentleness with which he pressed his little folder to his hip or even his chest. Then the little folder disappeared, but we already got it.

  Putin’s main value consists of his bureaucratic efficiency. In Russia – a country of rather undisciplined, emotional, irresponsible people – a bureaucrat is simply a treasure. Therefore after the failure of Sobchak’s career Putin was immediately picked up by Pavel Pavlovich Borodin, since people with little folders like him are hard to find. Besides, not a drunker and not a smoker, not going to the sauna in company of drunken guys. Putin was certainly looking like a superman in a crowd of bosses full of vices. Through Borodin, Putin started to work with Yeltsin and in the end the old Yeltsin chose the paper-weight-man as his successor to the throne. He chose his direct opposite, for the qualities that were totally absent in the petty tyrant Yeltsin. And in result we are governed by a folder-man, a kind of a pale secretary.

  There is something womanly sad in Russia’s new president. Rather, a lack of a male basis. If Yeltsin was clearly an old stallion, who scared women away only because of vodka, then V.V. Putin is a totally asexual type, i.e. not sexual. Whatever threatening statements about doing the terrorists in the shithouse he might do, one gets the impression that he is shy like a girl. Besides his fragile physic, this girly impression he makes is also contributed by his voice. We do not hear from Putin any Yeltsin or Lebedev’s macho roar or the velvet slime of Julio Iglesias. He pronounces everything in an equal, distanced, high voice devoid of emotions. Only rhetoric repetitions (like Kirienko) and pressures are slightly enlivening his speech. Putin does not show any interest in women on TV screens. He is passionless and sterile. It is clear that he is the head of State and we do not have to expect that he will chase women in front of the TV camera. However he should have showed interest a long time ago, with some special smile, or a look. Of course, not for Valentina Matvienko, but for some pretty extras on a reception or on a ski trip. Something must have showed up. Even the frightened Clinton is still visibly animated in the presence of each skirt; one can see this by his shining nose, eyes, and his movements. Nothing of the sort with Putin. Even skiing enthusiast him more than women. In the town of Ivanovo, on March 8th, being present there among the one-hundred-kilo bulks of honorable ladies, Putin looked liked a boy, humanly touched by the attention of these ladies; he even talked about his waddling. But again there was not a gram of sex in this scene, although there were quite sexy ladies in the background.

  The soft-spoken, special, passionless and unemotional (even if sometimes he wants to appear emotional) fragile little blond Putin cannot, obviously, serve as a model for the Russian society (like Mussolini, Stalin and Churchill were for their time). Our workers have their own model, the intelligentsia has Yavlinsky, the functionaries have their own fashion; this is over hundred kilos of weight, a gray monolith of a suit, the belly forward, the face larger than the shoulders. The functionaries cannot change to fragile, little refined blonds. I am sure; many of them sadly look at Putin, thinking something similar to the lyrics of a today’s hit: “My boss doesn’t drink or smoke, / It would have been better if he did…” Really, it would have been better. The thing is that if the population saw some male vice in Putin, let’s say he would have been a womanizer, then they would see his humanity. But as it is Putin is strikingly alien. By voting for him, tens of millions of voters overcame their natural repulsion of everything “alien”. In this, we, of course, see the monstrous power of our television; it is hundreds times more powerful than the Orthodox Church and all of Christianity, actually.

  Putin did not bring with him any special shirts, pipes, boots, hairdo or special grimaces. The new leader has no attributes at all. The Kremlin’s interior, all these little chairs with legs, sofas and little divans were inherited by Yeltsin, Pavel Borodin and the Albanian Bazhet Pakolli, who rebuilt the Kremlin. Putin does not show any preference for special ties or cotton or wool jackets. His appearance, his “look” is also totally sterile.

  However he has some advancement in the area of rhetoric and demagogy. Already Yeltsin started to use nationalist phraseology along the democratic one. Baby-face Kirienko and his “young Turks” have made another step in this direction by calling themselves “Union of Right Forces” and emphasizing the interests of the State. Putin continued the movement in this direction. His pro-governmental party is called “United Russia” and himself he recently almost repeated Goebel’s call “One country, one people”, although the third element was not “one fuehrer”, but one feels that during his stay in Germany officer Putin has read some fundamental books in German. Putin’s style of government: news coverage of his every step – copied from the West. But Putin does not become more familiar from the fact that we see him daily on all sorts of ceremonies, openings, conferences and troops parades. The inauguration ceremony, rather conceited and funny, as it was produced by the monarchist Mikhalkov (maybe it was?) of course, looked strange and alien. But the inauguration is also the confirmation of the same paradoxical process: while staying “reformist” and pretending to be called “democratic”, each new RF regime increases the dose of national demagogy and nationally tainted gestures in the power’s ideology.

  In the impassionate voice of a city boy from a quiet family (the kind that are made to wear dresses until the age of ten) Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin daily tells us political banalities that even the Zavtra newspaper is ashamed to publish nowadays. He is too much everywhere. It looks like the masses are not yet regretting that they elected a person totally foreign to them as president. Meanwhile the affairs of the Russian State are not so bright. Soon the country will “celebrate” the sad anniversary of the beginning of the second Chechen war and it is clear that Russia got in this bloody mess for long. In general the situation of the country does not differ from what it was under Yeltsin and the state of our economy depends on the oil prices and Western tips and indulgences to repay our debts to them.

  Putin was compared to a black box. As if he was a mystery. No, V. V. Putin is the most non-mysterious man in Russia. Putin is the absence of presence. A sad, lonely, sterile bureaucrat. A conscientious secretary with a notepad. What he lacks is a talented boss.

  “My boss doesn’t drink or smoke…

  It would have been better if he did…”

  THE PRESIDENT’S APPEARANCE

  These were impressions from 2000. And here are my impressions of 2005:

  He is very short. He can be called a short person. Of a white, northern-Russian Finnish shade. Obviously thin hair, a bold crown. No shin. Rough physionomistics affirm that the absence of a shin shows lack of character. I think it is not always like that. Obviously, because of the absence of shin Vladimir Vladimirovich does not have the best sideview; nose forward, while the front and the shin are drawn back. His mouth is large, the nose is elongated and the nose tip is running into a trefoil. In the last years, apparently from fatigue, there are rings visible under his eyes.

  Putin’s entire small figure is unconvincing and insignificant. Made famous by his sportive character, despite his judo and alpine skiing the president still has a visible belly. His legs are short. His shoulders are not large. The president wears too thoroughly sewed suits with a carefully laid out chest. (Nicolas I wore a corset that pressed his stomach. When marquis de Custin wrote about the corset, it offended the imperator more than all the accusations of despotism.)

  When talking about unpleasant
subjects, Putin tightens his jaws. Muscles show on his cheekbones. The content of the president’s speeches is banal. His voice sounds equal; emotions in his voice are rare. His voice is clearly monotonous.

  The president’s wife is overweight, thanks to that she looks older and more matriarchal. Like a duck and the president with her is more of a duckling. It is impossible to adore or to dislike Mrs. Putin actively, like it happens in some countries with a presidential executive or like it was with Raisa Gorbachev. She is clearly not Jaclyn Kennedy and not even Laura Bush. A simple Soviet woman with zero charm.

  After thinking about it, I have to admit that the president still has the charm of the youngest son in the family. Although, of course, he is not a popular type. Yeltsin, doubtlessly, was a popular type, even though a disgusting one.

  A WICKED FATHER

  I have spent a lot of time looking at the TV screen, studying the face of the man who rules Russia. This is an evasive face and an evasive look that does not want to meet any other, that does not want to meet our popular looks. If he has the possibility, he hides his look. Watch it yourself. Possibly he is not confident about himself, or he does not want to look at us. Not at you and me concretely, but the TV camera is us.

  I also carefully listen to his talks, how he is speaking, if he stumbles or speaks smoothly. He speaks evenly, mainly without an intonation. Only sometimes Putin allows himself to puts himself out in a sucessfuly-repressed access of agitation. This is when he is angry. Then his muscles show on his cheekbones.

  By all the enumerated signs, he gives the impression of a bad person who carefully hides his bad character under an indifferent business-like mumbling and turning his eyes away from us. Since the president is short, possibly he has always problems with appearing significant and for this goal he developed a sum of tricks. A business-like, rapid and cold speech creates the effect of distancing from others, isolates him. Not closing his eyes also serves the same goal. By isolating himself he elevates himself. From him we do not have to expect drunken scandals humiliating for Russia, which characterized his predecessor Yeltsin; we do not have to expect open hot anger in public. Maybe it is not bad that he does not behave like Ivan the Terrible in front of the TV cameras, but on the other hand it is worse if he has a revengeful character and he settles his scores with people behind the scenes. Not by himself. But with the help of efficient faithful servants. For example the Prosecutor General, for example the Federal Security Service, for example, with the help of the justice ministry, the Prisons Department, for example with the help of the central electoral commission…

  Sometimes president Putin’s impassivity and inhumanity work against him, like in the case with the Kursk submarine. Then, you remember, he stayed in the hot Sochi, on the shore of the south sea, while only by his duty as president he must have urgently left to the shores of the Barents Sea. And there lead the rescue of the sailors, at least a bold attempt of rescue. He must have immediately go into the water on the shore, in boots and hasten the rescuers. In rubber boots. He must have used all proposals that came from foreign States, to use any help. And when, a few days later, nothing could be done anymore, he, exhausted, with the trace of sleepless nights, must have stood on the background of this cold sea that became the grave of one hundred eighteen Russian sailors and told to the camera: “Country citizens, Russian people, I did all I could, I couldn’t do anything else!” However he did not do this and we saw him tanned and calm on the shore of the south sea, in a polo shirt. He proved to be inhuman for the first time then. He proved to be indifferent. And then followed his historical cold answer to Larry King’s question: “What happened with your Kursk submarine? “It sunk”, simply informed the president, with a meek and calm expression on his face. He did not even have the idea to declare a national mourning. Already then it became clear to what level he is indifferent to his compatriots. The president’s face is brightened with sincere smiles, cordiality and sympathy only when we see him meeting big western leaders, his friends: Bush, Berlusconi, and Schroeder. Here his charm is lightening up. A question: why isn’t he the same with us, with the Russian citizens? He thinks that we need to be treated with severity or at least impassionately?

  We mostly see him on television on the background of the old fashioned, “a la tsar” Kremlin furniture. He is sitting on small couches embroidered with brocade with carved and curved legs and on similar chairs. The wallpaper and the curtains, on the background of which we see him have necessarily the drawing of two-headed eagles. With a hint or an eloquent statement: here are the tsarist attributes of the president’s power. But we have a republic since the times of the February revolution of 1917! Or do I misunderstand the two-headed eagles? Since I have lived in France for a long time I remember that Francois Mitterand has sat on similar furniture, on couches with curved legs for two presidential terms. But I still did not see royal lilies and crowns there, in the Elysee Palace, on television. Pavel Pavlovich Borodin, the restaurateur of the president’s Kremlin palace apparently followed the models of the French presidents’ Elysee Palace because the furniture in the American president’s White House is less curved, the couches there are more linear and simple. My opinion is that the president of Russia, a country where from one third to half of the population are poor should not appear surrounded by such bad furniture of old fashioned wealth. My opinion is that Putin’s daily-televised meetings with the ministers around the same small table showed to the entire country is only an akward performance. That this little table was initially intended by its creators to play cards almost. There is no evidence that this table serves the president for work: there are no spread papers, no folders or files, no computer. Why cheat the population in such a vulgar manner? Imitate work. Here he is, Putin, in the business-like monotonous voice of a firm president (hiding his eyes) asks questions to a minister: “Why didn’t you do so and so?” The minister, holding a folder and coughing, affirms: “so and so is already done and this and that will be done in a week.” The citizen must be happy. The president is sober, the work is advancing. The minister is caughing; the affairs are in the folder. Or maybe these are old newspapers?

  I am very interested to know what is our president’s ideal leader image? It is clear that it is not a worker in a darned jacket with folders occupying the entire table and that have migrated to the little sofas and broken them. Or whose personal computer is straining itself with all its megabytes and cannot hold all the presidential documentation. It is clear that Putin’s ideal is not Lenin who burned his brain with work, dictating to three typists at once in the puffs of smoke emitted by the workers and soldier deputies. Many important KPSS members renounced Lenin in 1990-91, entire battalions and regiments of party functionaries slammed their party cards against the table! From 1990 the retired KGB lieutenant colonel worked with his former Leningrad State University teacher Sobchak, sharing his views, so it is not Lenin, Sobchak would not have admitted a man with such ideals. One can understand the president’s political ideal with the help of his personal esthetic tastes that have particularly showed during his two inaugurations. I have already described the inaugurations in detail in the chapter “You seem to think you are a tsar”. He imitates Russian autocracy, our country’s ideology until 1917. Mister president of the Russian Federation has turned to autocracy as a model. Both consciously and unconsciously. More unconsciously, so to speak, the call of the blood, the traditions, since in our country every policeman racketeering stalls near the metro behaves like an autocrat… I will return to autocracy later; I only ask to understand and to accept my observations over Russia’s leader. This is important.

  I will cite the New York Times. The newspaper tells its readers about the press conference of Russia’s president. “Even when Putin was speaking calmly and even softly his declarations were visibly harsh… When he was talking with someone his body behaved like during a duel. When he was asked questions he often leaned back against the chair, moving his shoulders or stretching his back like an at
hlete between approaches… When the question was asked he leaned forward, transferring his weight to his forearms and giving detailed answers… His declarations recalled the style of an active micromanager.” This is how the Washington Post characterized the same press conference: “The Russian leader spoke for three hours, bursting in anger outbreaks and attacking the critics of Russian politics with a grimacing face.”

  “ Irritated, angry, with grimaces.” Nobody from the foreign journalists saw the president kind. I have never seen him kind. Either he cannot be kind by his nature, or he thinks that his functions – Russia’s president – obligate him to stay wicked. Most probably he is unkind by his nature and thinks that a tsar must be harsh and wicked. In Russian history the people ingratiatingly called their tsar “little father”. The word “tsar – little father” supposes some touch of kindness; the people hoped for the tsar’s kindness. And they also said “tsar-sovereign”; mostly this address is seen in popular prints about Peter the Great. Peter the Great was clearly not a little father for the people; he was a bad, mustached, bearded cruel father. President Putin is also behaving like our father, wicked, demanding, grimaces, hiding his eyes. He beats up his family, don’t expect a smile from him, does not give gifts. And he did not built Saint Petersburg, gives up lands. And demands that we readily go to the war he has invented and sacrifice ourselves for the terrorists in our cities. The Chechens do not want to live in his family but he is keeping them by force, by beatings. Vladimir Vladimirovich, mister President, do you firmly believe that you can force your family to live together with you with beatings? Without love, with beatings? No, you don’t, I suppose. Then why are you forcing the entire country to suffer you?

  Russia’s president considers us his subjects, like a tsar, confounding concepts – there are too many two-headed eagles around him. But we are not his subjects and we are not in the XIX century. We are the citizens of a non-free country, yes, but we are not the subjects of this wicked tsar-father. And he tries to rule us like a wicked tsar.