Students of Russian and Ukrainian literature could have seen Putin coming | Opinion
Monument to Feodor Mihajlovich Dostoevsky near the Russian State Library in MoscowMany people might be watching the horrific news from Ukraine and wondering: Why? Why would Putin gratuitously invade an independent country and its capital Kyiv in the face of a united world condemning his actions — actions that, even if he is militarily successful, will result in the ruin of his economy, the strengthening of the opposition within his own country, and the universal condemnation by all decent...
That fact is important when we turn to a 19th-century writer to help make sense of Putin’s seemingly irrational war: Fyodor Dostoevsky. Dostoevsky was a leading proponent, or as some called him, the prophet, of the Russian Slavophile movement.
But where is the Russian Church in this violent political appropriation of religious mission? Isn’t it calling for peace? A few days ago, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow called for peace. But readers mindful of context might see a double message. Putin’s seemingly irrational fixation on Kyiv is not only military, but ideological — an ideology of a holy Russian empire that was invented in the 19th century and now offers him a justification for catastrophic war that, in the end, could serve nothing but his own vanity.
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