THE HIGH COST OF iDENTITY POLITICS:

My grandparents are both gone now, so for insights into the Russian mindset, I turn not only to the news but to the country's classic literature. Full of gloom and a seeming resignation to fate, the characters cope and make sense of their impoverished, miserable lives with vodka, bitter cynicism, and dark humor. Consider this exchange between Father Ferapont and a monk from The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. It concerns whether the Holy Spirit appears as a dove and speaks to Father Ferapont:

"The Holy Spirit can appear as other birds -- sometimes as a swallow, sometimes a goldfinch and sometimes as a blue-tit."

"How do you know him from an ordinary tit?"

"He speaks."

"How does he speak, in what language?"

"Human language."

"And what does he tell you?"

"Why, today he told me that a fool would visit me and would ask me unseemly questions."

To be sure, this sort of snarky humor is not unique to Russia. Scandinavian humor is notoriously dark. Besides, much of the time, Russians' biting humor is a coping mechanism for living under an oppressive government that has casually violated human rights for centuries and habitually lies to the public. Indeed, an old Soviet joke, which has taken on renewed significance, says, "The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable" -- a reference to the government's long tradition of rewriting history to support the regime and its political ambitions. 

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The Russian mindset, therefore, is one filled with cynicism and distrust, which importantly, extends all the way to the top. While the Russian public is cynical and distrustful of its leaders, high-ranking officials in the Kremlin, including Vladimir Putin, are cynical and distrustful of the outside world. 

As a result, there is a pervasive narrative, fueled by the media and long embraced by the country's elite, that Russia is and deserves to be a glorious country, but it is being held back by the nefarious West. In her book Putin's World, Angela Stent explains that Russians simultaneously have a superiority complex and an inferiority complex regarding their role in the world. The former is rooted in the country's truly impressive history and culture, while the latter is rooted in the centuries-long belief that the West is determined to undermine Russia. Poet and diplomat Fyodor Tyutchev once wrote, "There is not a single interest, not a single trend in the West, which does not conspire against Russia." That was in 1864. In terms of worldview, little has changed since then -- and, ultimately, it is what underlies the war in Ukraine. [...]

So, what caused the second, larger invasion that began in February 2022? Unlike the ouster of Yanukovych in the Maidan Revolution eight years earlier, there wasn't any single precipitating event. Instead, Putin seems to have been reacting to Ukraine's ever-closer drift toward the West, particularly NATO. What's ironic is that Ukraine's chances of joining the EU, let alone NATO, were far smaller before the invasion began. Putin's invasion accelerated the very scenario that he long feared.

In an interview with Big Think, geopolitical analyst Ian Bremmer referred to Putin's decision as the "single biggest geopolitical mistake made by any leader on the global stage since the Wall came down in 1989." Bremmer adds, "The misjudgment was massive. The failure was immense and immediate. And the consequences for Putin and for Russia will be permanent."

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