Sheila Fitzpatrick looks at three new books examining the motives behind Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
Sergei Medvedev; trans., Stephen DalzielAt the end of the Second World War, according to Sergei Medvedev, a Russian scholar now working outside Russia, the victorious West failed to do its job properly. “Of the two bloody dictatorships that were throwing out a challenge to the liberal world order, only one was defeated.” Now Russia, the undefeated challenger, is “once again threatening humanity and throwing down a challenge to the free world. It is time for the West to finish the work of 1945.
Edele sees this as whitewashing on Russia’s behalf, but his counter-argument is unexpected: he denies that Russia is a great power in the first place, meaning it has no claim on the great-power licence for concern about what happens on its borders.Russia is a regional power in Edele’s book , albeit with nuclear weapons.
Medvedev’s title makes it clear where he stands. For him, Putin is undoubtedly a bad actor, but he is acting on behalf of a society that Medvedev describes as extremely violent and militarised, with the Second World War as a foundation myth and the idea of war “normalised”.
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