Valerii Zaluzhnyi: Dictatorships can fight, but they always lose in the end

Valerii Zaluzhnyi, former Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and current Ambassador to the UK

Source: Ukrainska Pravda

Today marks exactly 80 years since the liberation of one of the largest Nazi death camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oświęcim. The camp was created by the authoritarian regime of a brutal dictator who wanted to rule the world but ultimately failed. But time was to show that dictators are reborn, and humanity can never be complacent.

The German-American political theorist and historian Hannah Arendt, one of the most important thinkers of the 20th century, wrote in an exploration of the origins of totalitarianism that the governmental structures created by Stalin and Hitler represented “an entirely new form of government” that was likely to reappear in various other forms in the future. She also warned that “all ideologies contain totalitarian elements”.

Her words were prophetic. Exactly 67 years after Hitler became Chancellor of Germany, Putin became President of Russia on 7 May 2000.

I’m not going to describe the two very similar Olympic Games, nor will I comment on Time magazine naming both dictators as its Person of the Year 70 years apart. Without going into an in-depth analysis of the historical and social reasons that brought these murderers to power, it is undeniable that it was made possible by the fact that both German and Russian society formally consented to it.

Dr Larysa Yakubova, a corresponding member of Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, reasonably posits that the dictators essentially needed a population that feared even its own shadow. The inability to stand up to a totalitarian dictatorship that is taking rights and freedoms away from society leads to catastrophic consequences. 

So what commonalities can we see today, in the 21st century, when the hotbed of war in the heart of Europe is taking on ever more catastrophic consequences?

In this context it’s worth mentioning that 2008 was probably too late for researchers to start drawing analogies between the two dictators in connection with the events in Georgia. That was when the Russian leadership began to cold-bloodedly carry out a plan that had long been outlined in various official documents.

It was after the war started in Georgia in 2008 that we learned that Russia has special rights in privileged zones in the post-Soviet space. The first war in Georgia was a demand for the system of international relations to be revised. If analogies are to be used, the war resembled Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938.

European and American leaders, plunged into a whole host of other global and domestic problems, overlooked this aggression, hoping that that would be the end of it. And this, of course, gave Putin, the “gatherer of Russian lands” and “restorer of the USSR”, an incentive for further annexations.

A new Russian military doctrine was proclaimed in February 2010, and a new foreign policy concept in February 2013. It clearly states that Russia reserves the right to defend the Russian population outside its territory.

The dictators, being entirely dependent on their own mental disorders, desperately needed to create a system of people dependent on and loyal to them. So, as Hannah Arendt said, loyalty to the leader then becomes the main criterion for promotion. Ambitious party members vie with each other to express their loyalty, and a cult of personality develops around the leader.

Isn’t this exactly what is happening in Russia today? Are we not seeing an almighty leader today? Even if he is not particularly competent and members of his inner circle are aware of his shortcomings, they remain loyal to him out of fear that the entire power structure will collapse without him.

Arendt suggests that when totalitarian regimes come to power, they face a serious dilemma in fulfilling their promises. They solve this problem by engaging in a constant struggle with external and internal enemies – real or imagined – so that they can say that in some sense, they have not yet acquired the power to do what they promised. 

In other words, totalitarian governments need to be constantly fighting enemies in order to survive. Both Hitler and Putin made use of manufactured external and internal threats for internal use and to maintain their unlimited power.