There was hope in the air in August 1991 when an attempted coup d’état took place by hardliners. The “failed putsch”, as it became known, led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the independence of its 15 union republics that December.
In The Dark Side of the Earth, Mikhail Zygar deals with the events and personalities involved in the build-up to the USSR’s demise and shows definitively that some leading Russians were lionised by the West for their anti-Soviet views simply on the basis that “my enemy’s enemy is my friend” rather than dealing with them in the round.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, writer of The Gulag Archipelago is the most heavily criticised of these and is described bluntly as “the spiritual father of Putin’s Russia”. Having lived and worked in Russia for this newspaper as the Soviet Union crumbled, and in the ensuing years of chaos I witnessed Solzhenitsyn’s descent from hero to villain.
Much has been made of Aleksandr Dugin, described in tabloid reporting as “Putin’s Brain”, and touted as a strong influence on Russia’s President but there is little evidence to support this. Solzhenitsyn, on the other hand, arrived back in Moscow in the driving rain from a BBC-sponsored journey on the Trans-Siberian Express as a world-famous author, Nobel laureate and hero. His potential influence was far stronger than that of the obscure Dugin.
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The first inkling of how dramatic Solzhenitsyn’s transformation would become was at his press conference later that week when he was vitriolic in his criticism of foreigners who had bought land in Russia. Coming from a man with estates in Vermont this was a clear message that while western land was up for grabs to the highest bidder, the land of Russia was sacred.
The gradual changes that took place in three leading Russians are dealt with throughout the book. Solzhenitsyn’s strong statements against western liberalism justify Zygar’s description of him as “an icon for the American New Right”. Andrei Sakharov’s journey from pro-Soviet nuclear scientist to exile as an anti-Soviet dissident in the closed city of Gorky is shown to have been motivated not only by his own changing views but by those of his wife, the more vocally dissident Yelena Bonner. The third example is the famous cellist Mstislav Rostropovich’s journey from human-rights activist to Yeltsin supporter to Putin’s frequent Kremlin guest.
On the political side Gorbachev, Yeltsin and Putin are also examined. Zygar gives an interesting view on why Gorbachev was far more popular in the West than in Russia. “There are many explanations for this,” he writes, “including the fact that in the West Gorbachev is always heard through a translator which makes him sound like a refined intellectual. Russian audiences, however, hear his awkward speech first-hand, complete with mispronunciations and misplaced stresses.”
I found this unfair. Gorbachev’s strong south-Russian accent, with Ukrainian influences, certainly left him open to criticism based on intellectual snobbery but Zygar is right to name Gorbachev’s anti-alcohol campaign as far more damaging in a country where vodka has been of almost primordial importance.
This brings us logically to Yeltsin whose career was marred by alcoholism and who, in the end, handed power to Putin.
As for Putin, he is shown no mercy and this is not surprising since Zygar, the founder of the most successful anti-Kremlin broadcaster TV Dozhd (now closed of course) lives as an openly gay man in Germany and has been sentenced to imprisonment in his absence by the Putin regime.
Putin has often been quoted elsewhere as viewing the dissolution of the USSR as an unmitigated disaster and wanting it to be restored but Zygar disagrees; “Putin had no intention of restoring the Soviet Union” he writes “Instead he merged American Capitalism with Russian nationalism”.
These views on Putin’s Russia are extended to the West. Without mentioning Donald Trump, Zygar writes of politicians elsewhere as speaking of conservatism, traditional values and greatness “all the while knowing that the most comfortable stance is to believe in nothing at all”.
But the various journeys of Russians from villains to heroes and back give Zygar some hope and he ends his book with the words:” In history there is no final point–no happy ending, no tragic conclusion. Yesterday’s victors may become tomorrow’s losers. The bright side can one day turn dark, and then, just as suddenly, shift back again."
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