Political scientist Ioan Stanomir claims that Vladimir Putin has many sympathizers both in the West and in Romania, who are recruited “from both the extreme left and the extreme right.”

Ioan Stanomir took part in the Bookfest during the presentation of the book “The Black Book of Vladimir Putin”, published by Humanitas publishing house, translated by Julian Comanescu with a foreword by Thierry Walton, he argued that Russian society is different from Western societies and that, unfortunately, democracy in Russia is still not welcome

• “This book is certainly a model from a methodological and ethical point of view. It is a methodologically impeccable book, as it covers all internal and external sectors of Vladimir Putin’s rule, and ethically impeccable, as it explains the historical and anthropological roots of Russian and Soviet evil.
• This is a very broad discussion, because Vladimir Putin has many sympathizers both in the West and in Romania. And, interestingly, they are recruited both from the far left and from the far right.
• And the moment, God forbid, you refer to the fact that there is a problem in Russia older than Vladimir Putin, which is also responsible for the emergence of Vladimir Putin, you will be accused on both sides of an essentialist way of thinking and blamed. the Russian people,” said Stanomir, quoted by Agerpres.

However, he noted that, without blaming the Russian people, “the main question is to what extent the Russian state is in symbiosis with the Russian people.”

• “It is really a very delicate question, to what extent the Russian people themselves support and recognize themselves in this regime. The regime of Vladimir Putin must be taken seriously because it is a regime that not only restores the Soviet legacy, but goes much further back in time, because Vladimir Putin managed to do what the Soviet ideologues failed to do, namely to combine tsarist authoritarianism with Soviet-style centralization.
• This is one of the explanations for its attractive power. Because Putin’s ideology is obviously based on Russian radical nationalism, which took place long before 1917, and secondly, it is another component, the Soviet dimension,” the political scientist explained.

Putin is “cruel, vulgar and aggressive”

Stanomir described Putin as “a Soviet man who was formed, as this book demonstrates, in the atmosphere of violence, moral depravity, ‘security’ that was in the atmosphere of the Soviet Union after World War II.”

• “And everything that surprised some people is completely understandable by the logic of Vladimir Putin, because Vladimir Putin is cruel, he is vulgar and aggressive, because this is the world in which he grew up. Anyone who remembers Soviet times at least a little bit knows that in addition to the high culture of pianists, ballerinas, film directors, and writers, there was also an equally developed culture of thugs, murderers, and party activists.
• Vladimir Putin wanted, as this book demonstrates, to be a secret agent, he failed to be James Bond, but he finally succeeded in instilling in Russian society this sick fascination with authoritarianism, aggression and Soviet grandeur,” said the analyst.

He believes that this became possible due to the fact that Russian and Soviet societies share an elite, which “reproduced” practically with great ease after the threshold of 1990-1991.

For Ioan Stanomir, this book is “about a certain part of Russia.”

• “Russia, being such a complex society, should not be caricatured because, let’s not forget, Brezhnev’s contemporary was Andrei Sakharov, who did so much for the honor of Russia and who was one of the great democratic critics of communist authoritarianism. There were Varlam Shalamov, Ana Akhmatova, Osyp Mandelstam, Nadia Mandelstam.
• That is, to impose the image of these tyrants on Russian creativity is a gross mistake. But it is no less true that, I would say, the majority of the Russian public confuses the idea of ​​their country and the leadership with the idea of ​​Russia and the leadership of Vladimir Putin,” said Stanomir.

Russian society did not react to the aggression against Ukraine

This explains, the analyst says, almost a year and a half after the start of the war, Russian society was unable to formulate a “clear and critical” response to this aggression.

• “Some went into exile, others are in prison, but the majority of the Russian people, agree, is behind the leader. There were at least two mobilizations, tens, hundreds of thousands of victims in Russia.
• About 40,000 people died in Wagner’s group alone. And it is true, you will say, they are convicted, taken from places of deprivation of liberty, but they are citizens of the Russian Federation.
• And a society that calmly accepts that 50,000 to 200,000 people die, without any public debate, is a special society. Not necessarily an evil society, but a society different from the Western ones,” the analyst noted.

Stanomir argued that, given these aspects, “the sooner we understand this, the more we will eliminate any illusions about the possibility of exporting democracy to places where it is not wanted.”

“Unfortunately, so far democracy is not welcomed in Russia, and our hopes are not connected with democratization with the help of a magic wand, but with the reduction of Russia’s aggressive potential and its criminal potential,” said Ioan Stanomir.

According to the poet and social activist Ana Blandiana, present at the presentation, which was moderated by Sabina Fati, “conceived in the same format as the Black Book of Communism, not only with its great revelations and conclusions, but also with great debates, ” Volodymyr Putin’s Black Book’, evoked across the continent and this time bringing together the voices of the most important specialists in the field, is a welcome follow-up to the 1997 reference edition and places the figure from the Kremlin among the pernicious and inexhaustible. The aftermath of communism is still, as in the Romanian folktale, the dragon’s carcass turns out to be more dangerous than the dragon.”