Someone who habitually invokes Metternich has claimed that Putin is cut from the same cloth as the grandiose-but-underdelivering Mussolini. Anyone who has actually organized and led a team of more than ten people in real life — and kept it running well — would never say such a thing.
Cherry-picking fragmentary historical records and using analogy to imply inevitable causal relationships is a way of showing off cleverness, not a method for analyzing problems and making decisions. Eastern modes of thinking tend to favor association and analogy over logical argumentation and rational debate, using them to suggest that two things must have some singular, necessary correlation.
People love aphorisms that seem universally applicable, but have no interest in how those aphorisms are derived or proven, and don’t care how such conclusions play out in reality. And so in everyday life — in how people assess both people and events — those who prefer jumping to conclusions without reasoning things through, satisfied with knowing what without understanding why, are everywhere.
Putin likes to project strength to the outside world — that’s because his nation’s culture reveres the strong. If you pay attention to the details, you’ll notice in state broadcast footage that the upper-right corner of the hall where Putin receives foreign dignitaries always features a marble statue of Catherine the Great. Catherine was German; she conspired with her lover to stage a coup, overthrow, and kill her husband — the legitimate Tsar of Russia. And yet this foreign woman’s act of usurpation somehow escaped universal condemnation. Not only did Russia’s generals and nobles of the time willingly serve her, but later generations of Russians placed her alongside Peter the Great — not merely admiring her, but venerating her as a national hero. Catherine the Great had a famous saying: “If I could live to be 200, all of Europe would grovel at Russia’s feet!”
Mass communication must use the methods that mass audiences are accustomed to. A Russian sage once said: “If Russia is not a world power, it is nothing at all.” This statement has a basis in reality. Russia has always existed on the margins of European civilization, originating from Slavic tribes on the East European Plain. Under centuries of Mongol rule, they endured in silence — even voluntarily serving as Mongol tax collectors, wringing tribute from their own kinsmen. Through generations of purposeful endurance, they gradually hollowed out the power of the Golden Horde’s Mongol rulers. Finally, under Ivan the Terrible, they rose in rebellion, threw off the Golden Horde’s yoke, and established their own Russian state. This small principality stood at a crossroads of conflict: the powerful Swedes to the northwest would periodically come to ravage them, and the nations to the west were not to be trifled with. And so Russia resolutely expanded eastward, conquering and absorbing ever more primitive and barbaric peoples. Russian history has always been inseparable from conquest, expansion, and slaughter — it is a tradition embedded deep in their bones. In this harsh environment, only the strong survive; as they pushed outward, they were not only conquering the tribes they encountered, but conquering the brutal conditions of existence itself. The latter only reinforced the former.
The Renaissance had nothing to do with Russia. The Age of Exploration had nothing to do with Russia. The Reformation had nothing to do with Russia either. Although Russia is geographically closer to the Aegean coast — the cradle of European civilization — and is counted as a European nation within European civilization, it missed nearly every major transformation that shaped the course of European history. In the early and mid-19th century, Europe twice experienced sweeping social revolutions, and both times it was Russia that served as Europe’s gendarmerie. The reason Russia could play that role unaffected was precisely that its social structure was so primitive and backward that it was immune to the currents of social revolution.
Anyone who has visited Russia can see it immediately: St. Petersburg and Moscow are two completely different cities — and the difference goes far beyond architectural style; it permeates every detail of daily life. St. Petersburg feels more like a European city, while Moscow looks unmistakably Russian. St. Petersburg and everything built upon it represents the European DNA that Peter the Great forcibly grafted on; Moscow and everything it represents is that society’s true underlying character. This is like China twenty years ago, when a small number of people who had memorized a few Western concepts and slogans from the media thought they had grasped the truth for transforming society. Yet the hundreds of millions who said nothing and watched the state evening news were the real baseline of that society. So in that period, the correct behavior for a rational ruler was to address the fundamental needs of that silent majority. Every dazzling and pleasing-sounding proposal must ultimately land as food, clothing, shelter, and transportation for tens of millions of people. The survival instinct of living organisms is always the most fundamental drive; wise and rational people never lose sight of first principles — you cannot lift yourself up by grabbing your own hair.
Grasping the Essence#
Putin was once a mayor’s assistant. When his mentor failed to win reelection, Putin, as his aide, found himself out of work.
He went through a period of uncertainty and was even prepared to drive a taxi to make ends meet. He attended a banquet with high-level figures from Moscow — his mentor had arranged it in the countryside — when suddenly a brown bear crashed the outdoor event. Everyone panicked. Putin happened to have arrived late; when he saw the bear, rather than diving under the table like the others, he quickly drew his weapon and fired. For him it was nothing remarkable — he was KGB-trained. But among people of that rank, very few could have done the same. The decisive action, courage, and initiative he instinctively displayed left a deep impression on Moscow’s senior officials.
This was the period of Russia’s most weakened nadir following the Soviet collapse. People were exhausted by powerless chaos, and so Putin, by a stroke of circumstance, was selected. Of course, being “selected” meant being given a chance to prove himself. Putin’s subsequent work capability and his swift, decisive handling of thorny problems were simply a natural expression of the instinctive qualities he had already demonstrated.
Putin is not a vain man — quite the opposite; he is skilled at biding his time without revealing his intentions. An intelligence operative cannot be emotional. A skilled operative is not only extremely self-disciplined but also adept at disguise — disguising himself so thoroughly that you dismiss his true intentions without a second thought. The very first major decision Putin made upon taking office was to send troops into Chechnya at any cost. At the time Russia was already very weak, especially after the first failed Chechen war had exposed its hollow strength to the entire world. Russia is a scaled-down version of the Soviet Union, organized as a federation. Many of its provincial units are autonomous republics. In the context of the Soviet collapse, Yeltsin — in order to win support — had massively devolved power not only to the Soviet Union’s constituent republics but even to the autonomous republics within the Russian Federation itself. While he achieved Russia’s independence from the Soviet Union, the powers he had ceded could not be reclaimed — especially with a weak center. Under these circumstances, Putin forcefully advocated a military campaign to subdue Chechnya, which had agreed to terms and then rebelled. At the same time, he used flexible tactics, co-opting the sons of local warlords after the military conquest. Victory in the Second Chechen War showed every restless separatist force Putin’s resolve and methods, and from that point on, the trend of Russia’s continued fragmentation was halted.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, some naïve individuals even went to the American Embassy to voluntarily reveal where they had installed listening devices. The American ambassador expressed great gratitude — but after expressing it, was also quite candid: “Thank you, but we won’t be doing the same in return.” A supreme irony. At the time, driven by hatred of the Soviet Union, Russia wholesale adopted Western advice and converted all state-owned enterprises controlling the national economic lifelines into private property. This created a class of oligarchs who held command over the national economy. Even the television networks that influenced elections were in private hands. Yeltsin had to cut deals with these oligarchs to secure their support, then use their media empires to shape public opinion.
Once oligarchs gained control of industries affecting the daily lives of tens of millions of people, they possessed not just wealth that rivaled nations, but the ability to control entire swaths of social power. Look at South Korea — the president is just a puppet. Dismantling the oligarchs and retaking control of economic lifelines became Putin’s most important objective after establishing himself through Chechnya. Though Putin’s methods were too KGB in character, the results were tangible. He had his close ally Medvedev establish a state energy corporation, then used various pretexts to pressure oil oligarchs into transferring their shares to Medvedev’s company. Of course, when you start looking — tax evasion, or any number of other violations — problems always surface. For the truly intractable, KGB methods would simply eliminate them physically. Regardless, none of these actions followed proper legal procedure, nor did they align with official rhetoric. But all ruling machines recite their slogans for the benefit of outsiders. The real world has its own operating rules, with survival as the sole criterion.
No matter how much criticism Putin faced at home and abroad, he swept up the oligarchs using overwhelming force. The largest media networks returned to official hands; the state oil company under Medvedev began re-monopolizing the country’s most profitable industries for official control. There must be rewards alongside punishment — and thus the federal government finally had the capital to do both. Controlling the media meant seizing the high ground for shaping the public’s sense of right and wrong.
Institutional Design#
A vain man would certainly have reveled in this self-satisfaction. Yet Putin used this momentum to do something of far-reaching consequence — institutional design. During the Yeltsin era, Russia’s autonomous republics and autonomous oblasts within the federation were nominally provincial-level administrative units, but had in practice become independent fiefdoms. The federal government was too poor to offer them anything, and they had already obtained whatever powers they sought. Some autonomous republic leaders even styled themselves “president” in foreign dealings. The Russian Federation was no longer the Soviet Union — it had lost the leverage to reach deep into its constituent parts.
Russia is a federal state composed of 22 autonomous republics, 46 oblasts, 9 krais, 4 autonomous okrugs, 1 autonomous oblast, and 3 federal cities. Against the backdrop of the Soviet collapse in the 1980s–90s, local entities seized the chaos to assert themselves, and centrifugal tendencies grew increasingly pronounced. Some ethnic minority regions exploited the Soviet collapse and Russia’s restructuring to radically alter the administrative status of their units, and some even prepared for separatist independence — the situation was extremely chaotic. The 10 most developed federal subjects accounted for half of GDP, while the 20 least developed regions combined for less than 4%. On May 13, 2000, Putin issued a presidential decree dividing all 85 federal subjects into seven federal districts and dispatching presidential plenipotentiary representatives to manage them, inaugurating the federal district as an administrative tier. After several adjustments, eight federal districts were eventually established: the Central, Northwestern, Southern, Volga, Ural, Siberian, Far Eastern, and North Caucasus Federal Districts — each overseeing several oblast-level administrative units.
The chief executive of a federal district is the presidential plenipotentiary representative, whose main responsibilities are ensuring the implementation of state policy by federal subjects within the district, guaranteeing central government personnel appointments, and coordinating cross-regional cooperation — answering directly to the president. There are also federal inspectors, officials dispatched by the plenipotentiary representative to each federal subject, responsible for supervising the implementation of orders issued by the plenipotentiary representative and monitoring local leaders. These inspectors report to the plenipotentiary representative and serve as a sword hanging over local leaders’ heads. The principal officials of federal districts are appointed by the president and hold power to reward and punish; the federal government’s finances now provided the capital for those rewards and punishments. In the management of state affairs, federal districts began playing the role of provinces, while the original oblast-level units were effectively demoted to prefecture-level administrative standing. This is exactly like the cishi (刺史, imperial inspectors) of the Han Dynasty — the basic units of governance were originally the commanderies and counties, while the cishi were merely the emperor’s representatives sent to inspect and oversee local areas. But given they could reward and punish on the emperor’s behalf and coordinate resources across several commanderies, what had been nominal authority gradually became real.
From Point to Surface#
You may have missed this detail while watching the news: whenever Europe confronts Russia, Germany — the EU’s most powerful player — always takes an ambiguous stance toward Russia. That’s because Germany is Europe’s most powerful industrial nation, and its robust economic foundation is not built entirely on predatory finance, but on a high-quality, comprehensive industrial system. This kind of society has enormous energy demands, and Germany, like China, is an oil-poor country. During World War II, what Germany lacked most was oil. And who has abundant oil and gas? Russia. In recent years, Russia has been steadily building gas and oil pipelines into European countries. Anyone who watched the news will recall that when Ukraine and Russia clashed, Russia threatened to shut the valves on its gas pipeline through Ukraine.
Russia’s economic structure is indeed overly concentrated. But this is how all social activity works: when you have a resource in great abundance, even when you do invest, you will inevitably channel everything into developing the supporting infrastructure around that resource — that’s where the return on investment is best. People don’t easily change course unless backed into a corner with no way out. This inertia applies equally to individual lives and to entire societies. Moreover, once a resource becomes widely utilized, a deep industrial cluster forms around it, attracting large numbers of people. The supporting infrastructure built around it, and the populations that depend on it for their livelihoods, form a community — and simultaneously become a force within the social power structure. I recall discussing in the Awakening Community (觉悟社) when elaborating on Structural Theory: things that can consume large amounts of existing stock or create large amounts of new increments become the key fulcrum in a structure.
Faced with this objective reality — like confronting a thick layer of ice accumulated over many years — any idea of instantaneously transforming the economic and social landscape is the fantasy of a dreamer, or the armchair theorizing of someone who has never solved a real-world problem. In such circumstances, the rational approach is to first make good use of what you have an advantage in, to first establish a foothold in the competition for survival, and only then create other opportunities and drive structural adjustment.
Putin’s strategy is pragmatic. Even when Erdoğan shot down a Russian aircraft, he maintained restraint and swallowed his pride — the entire point was to ensure the pipeline running from the Black Sea to Turkey, and from there through the Dardanelles to southern Europe, could be completed smoothly. And so at that moment, the formidable Putin endured before the entire world like an aggrieved party seeking international mediation. When a coup against Erdoğan broke out in Turkey, it was Putin who proactively called Erdoğan to warn him, helping him escape and quickly consolidate his position. After Erdoğan’s situation reversed, he voluntarily paid 200 million yuan in compensation for shooting down the plane — and Putin immediately sidled up to him like an old friend, smiling. Because he knew the pipeline was now secured. Once built, with pipelines running both north and south into Europe, Russia would hold a far stronger position vis-à-vis Europe going forward. Beyond this, Putin has enthusiastically promoted running oil and gas pipelines from the Far Eastern federal district into China’s northeast, with plans to extend them to the Korean peninsula and Japan.
For Russia to supply oil and gas to Europe and achieve strategic advantage, it must control the pipelines along the route. Syria sits astride a critical pipeline corridor — such a position cannot be yielded; it must be held at any cost. Of course, it is also a key node on a certain responsible great power’s overland trade corridor from Chang’an to Europe. So when Russia exerts itself there, it doesn’t worry about having no one to foot the bill. In the Middle East, during America’s period of retrenchment, the U.S. focuses primarily on disruption. Those terrorists who seem to materialize out of thin air and then vanish are, in all likelihood, strategic chess pieces. The next chess piece is inciting the Kurds to seek independence. The Kurds span four countries, and the mountain ranges along their borders can shelter tens of thousands of fighters year-round; keep them supplied, and they can strike in all directions, keeping the surrounding countries bleeding indefinitely.
While America retrenchments and aims to cause disruption, China and Russia by contrast must protect the openness of those corridors — it is best if the countries along the way remain peaceful, build together, and live well. Yet the tree may long for calm while the wind does not relent. Even if Russia retreated, it would get nothing good in return; active offense, on the other hand, makes Russia more valuable — and the same is true for other nations, because only when you’re “worth it” will others invest heavily in you. Putin has taken an offensive posture in the Middle East for defensive purposes, building a Russia-Iran-Syria alliance, projecting influence into a core Middle Eastern zone stretching from the Strait of Hormuz in the south to the Mediterranean in the west and the Caspian Sea in the north, while leveraging his influence over Houthi forces to reach a tacit understanding with Saudi Arabia on oil, gas, and regional positioning. Putin’s strategy has succeeded — he continues to lead the charge, now replicating this model in South America and elsewhere. He knows he is not alone; he reads the big picture clearly, cooperates through division of labor, and acts with the current.
Putin has drawn China into investing in Russia by opening up the Arctic shipping route, while linking the Eurasian Economic Union with China’s Belt and Road. He is now actively working to bring China, India, Iran, and Europe together to establish a pan-Eurasian continental financial settlement system, independent of the dollar settlement system. Putin possesses the decisiveness, acuity, and restraint of an intelligence operative. He understands his own culture and social realities; his early experiences made him intensely pragmatic, adept at seizing what matters, and at times willing to use any means necessary to achieve his objectives. But he is absolutely not a man who avoids addressing real social problems in favor of personal vanity. Seeing only the surface, then lazily applying association and analogy, is not only inadequate for solving real-world problems — it also makes accurate judgment of complex matters impossible. A scholar’s view that seeks to solve no real problems is fit only for dinner-table conversation. Do not take it seriously.