Who
Tried to Kill Putin – Five Times?
Putin-Stone
conversations reveal:
28
June, 2017
Oliver
Stone’s series of interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin –
conducted between July 2015 and February 2017 – has garnered a lot
of attention, albeit in most cases not for the right reasons.
In
a much-noted appearance of
Stephen Colbert’s comedy show, the liberal host attacked Stone for
not confronting the Russian leader for his alleged crimes – which
simply shows that Colbert didn’t bother seeing the interviews,
because Stone most certainly did question Putin about this and other
related matters.
A review in
Salon follows a similar pattern: the reviewer apparently did view at
least some parts of the interviews, but predictably focused on the
most superficial material: Putin loves Judo, he’s not a feminist,
and won’t be marching in any Gay Pride events. Shocking!
In
the present atmosphere of Russophobic hysteria, no honest account of
what is happening in Russia or what Putin is really all about is
likely to be taken at face value. What’s astonishing, however, is
that this four-part documentary was even made at all– and shown on
Showtime, where it is currently playing. Less surprising is the fact
that the interviews contain several news-making revelations that the
“mainstream” media has so far largely ignored.
It
gets interesting right from the beginning when Stone delves into
Putin’s early career. As a KGB officer stationed in East Germany,
then the German Democratic Republic, he describes the GDR as entirely
lacking the “spirit of innovation,” a “society [that] was
frozen in the 1950s.” Hardly what one would expect from the
caricature of a Soviet apparatchik Western profiles of Putin
routinely portray. And
also right from the beginning there is a tension between Stone, with
his often archetypal liberal-left views, and Putin, whose perspective
– if it has any American equivalent – might be called
paleoconservative.
When
Stone tries to identify Putin with Mikhail Gobachev, the Soviet
liberal-reformist leader – “he has a resemblance to you in that
he came up through that system. Very humble beginnings” – Putin
rejects this outright with laconic disdain: “We all have something
in common because we’re human beings.” Gorby, a favorite of
American liberals, is seen by Putin as someone who “didn’t know
what [he] wanted or know how to achieve what was required.”
Putin
is routinely described by Western journalists as someone who wants to
restore the old Soviet system, or at least restore the empire that
extended over the countries of the Warsaw Pact, but what isn’t
recognized is that he opposed the failed coup that sought a Soviet
restoration: he resigned from his KGB office when the coup plotters
briefly took over.
And
so Stone asks him, “But in your mind, did you still believe in
communism? Did you believe in the system?” Putin answers: “No,
certainly not. But at the beginning I believed it … and I wanted to
implement it.” So when did he change? “You know, regrettably, my
views are not changed when I’m exposed to new ideas, but only when
I’m exposed to new circumstances.”
Here
is Putin the pragmatist, the man of action, who wants results and not
theories: “The political system was stagnating,” he says, “it
was frozen, it was not capable of any development.” Just like East
Germany, which he had recently come from. And therefore he concluded
that “the monopoly of one political force, of one party, is
pernicious to the country.”
Still,
Stone insists that “these are Gorbachev’s ideas, so you were
influenced by Gorbachev.” Yet Putin contradicts him: “These are
not ideas of Gorbachev,” who was merely trying to reform a system
that was rotten at its very core:
“The
problem is this, this system was not efficient at its roots. And how
can you radically change the system while preserving the country?
That’s something no one back then knew—including Gorbachev. And
they pushed the country towards collapse.”
It
was the country versus the system – the latter was destroying the
former. So how to preserve the Russian nation in the midst of so much
turmoil? That was the problem that Russia faced as the Communist
colossus was falling, and it is still the conundrum at the heart of
Putin’s concerns. Putin greatly resents Gorbachev because the
would-be Soviet reformer was pushing the system toward its ultimate
demolition without regard for the consequences.
And
why was this a disastrous course in Putin’s view? Not because the
old Communist dream was exposed as a nightmare, but due to the fact
that the nation – as opposed to the system – was dismembered. “To
start with,” says Putin, “the most important thing is that after
the disintegration of the Soviet Union, 25 million Russians – in
the blink of an eye – found themselves abroad. In another country.”
Imagine
waking up one morning and finding that you’re not a citizen of the
United States, but instead come under the control of some foreign
entity that never existed in your lifetime. That’s what happened in
the old Soviet Union. And the consequences of that historic implosion
are still reverberating some thirty years later.
A
key part of the mythology surrounding Putin is that he’s a
power-mad dictator, the reincarnation of Stalin, and yet the facts –
little known, of course, and not reported in the Western media –
give us quite a different perspective. For example, I’ve never
heard a single news story about Putin’s career report the fact that
he initially refused President Boris Yeltsin’s first offer to
appoint him Prime Minister. He didn’t trust Yeltsin, with good
reason, and to underscore the dangers inherent in the office at that
point he says: “And there was only one thing I was thinking about
back then: Where to hide my children?”
This
is not someone who wants power for its own sake. Indeed, Putin comes
across as a modest man, driven by a sense of patriotic duty rather
than lust for power, prestige, or pelf. He looks askance at praise,
such as when Stone says: “You’re credited with doing many fine
things in your first term. Privatization was stopped. You built up
industries … a real son of Russia – you should be proud. You
raised the GDP,” etc. etc. A Stalin type would simply have accepted
this adulation, and yet Putin disputed Stone’s key point:
“Well,
it’s not exactly like that. I didn’t stop privatization. I just
wanted to make it more equitable, more fair. We put an end to some
schemes – manipulation schemes – which led to the creation of
oligarchs. These schemes that allowed some people to become
billionaires in the blink of an eye.”
Here,
again, we see the tension between Stone’s left-wing economic views,
and Putin’s perspective, a theme played out in the entire course of
these interviews:Putin
continually insists that he is for private property, and that the
“privatization” schemes he denounces were all due to the
oligarchs’ connections to the state apparatus, which handed them
control of entire industries for pennies on the dollar. The oligarchs
were made possible by government control of industry and a rigged
system, the exact opposite of a market economy. Putin clearly
understands this when, later in the interview, he says:
“Do
you know who was not happy with the new laws [which opened up the
bidding process for state-owned industries]? Those who were not true
businessmen. Those who earned their millions or billions not thanks
to their entrepreneurial talents, but thanks to their ability to
force good relationships with the government – those people were
not happy.”
I
said there was some real news buried in these interviews, which has
gone unreported for the most part in Western media, and toward the
end of the first interview there’s a real shocker when Stone says:
“Five
assassination attempts, I’m told. Not as much as Castro whom I
interviewed – I think he must have had 50 – but there’s a
legitimate five that I’ve heard about.”
Putin
doesn’t deny it. Instead, he talks about his discussion with Fidel
Castro on the subject, who told him “Do you know why I’m still
alive? Because I was always the one to deal with my security
personally.” However, Putin doesn’t follow Castro’s example.
Apparently he trusts his security people: “I do my job and the
security people do theirs.”
What’s
interesting is that the conversation continues along these lines, in
the context of attempts on Castro’s life. Stone is surprised that
Putin didn’t take Castro’s advice on the security question,
saying “Because always the first mode of assassination, from when
the United States went after Castro, you try to get inside the
security of the president to perform assassination.” “Yes,”
replies Putin, “I know that. Do you know what they say among the
Russian people? They say that those who are destined to be hanged are
not going to drown.”
While
I’m not prepared to interpret this Russian proverb, or its
relevance to what is an astounding revelation – five assassination
attempts! – Putin’s willingness to contradict or correct Stone,
and the absence of any objection to this line of questioning on his
part, looks very much like an endorsement of Stone’s contention. To
my knowledge, CBS – which owns Showtime — is the only major media
outlet in this country (aside from a brief mention
in Newsweek )
that reported
it,
and then only perfunctorily.
So
who tried to kill Putin? From the context of this interview, the
clear implication is that it was the US, or its agents, but we don’t
know that for a fact. Indeed, the whole subject is something Putin
– while
he doesn’t deny it – doesn’t want to pursue to the end. This
is, I think, in large part because –
and
this will astonish you – he’s very pro-American. This comes out
in the beginning of the second interview,
the next day [July 3, 2015], when, in the midst of a discussion about
US intervention in Iraq in 1991, and Gorbachev’s withdrawal of
Soviet troops from Eastern Europe, a clearly frustrated Stone – who
is not getting the expected answers from Putin – explodes:
“Let’s
lay it on the line here. I mean, I was in the Vietnam War,. We sent
500,000 troops to Vietnam. That was outrageous and condemned by the
whole world. After the détente with Gorbachev, Reagan and the United
States put 500,000 troops into Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.”
To
this, Putin raises his eyebrows — ever so slightly – and says:
“I
know that you are very critical of the American government in many
dimensions. I do not always share your point of view. Despite the
fact that, with regards to the American leadership, we do not always
have the relationship we would like to have with them. Sometimes
decisions have to be taken which are not entirely approved of in some
parts of society.”
After
some confusion about what they’re talking about – Putin is
referring to the 1991 invasion of Iraq by George Herbert Walker Bush,
not the invasion and subsequent occupation by his son – Putin says
“President Bush was quite right to do what he did, he was cautious.
He responded to aggression and then stopped when the time was right.”
The
point here is not that Stone is wrong, but that the caricature of
Putin as reflexively opposed to everything the United States does is
inaccurate.
Another
indication of where Putin is really coming from is his habit –
throughout the entire series of interviews – of referring to the US
government as “our partners.” This really sticks in Stone’s
craw, until he finally says:
“So
stop referring to them as partners – ‘our partners’ – you’ve
said that too much. They’re being euphemistic. They’re no longer
partners.
“Putin:
But dialogue has to be pursued further.”
The
Russian President maintains this tone throughout. It’s almost
wistful: speaking of “our partner,” Putin exudes the air of a
disappointed lover, one baffled by the constant rebuffs, the
refusals, the outright disdain coming from the object of his
affections. He constantly refers to the mutuality of interests that
exists, the common goal of fighting Islamic terrorism, and he simply
cannot believe that Washington continues to deny this. He just cannot
understand it: why, we could be so happy together!
Indeed,
Putin chides Stone more than once for his “anti-Americanism” –
a charge Stone comes back to late in the interviews, and heatedly
denies – and this underscores my point: here is someone who is not
the enemy he is portrayed as being.
Despite
the coordinated campaign demonizing him in Western circles, despite
the relentless eastward advance of NATO, despite the new cold war
being waged at home and abroad by American politicians, Putin
is stubbornly pro-American. And
that is the most surprising aspect of these interviews, one I’ll
get into in more depth later as I continue this series.
The
Putin Interviews: Oliver Stone Interviews Vladimir Putin
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