POLITICS | RUSSIA | CULTURE
When Will Satan Arrive In Moscow To Put On A Show?
Learn how to understand the Russian way of thinking.
The world has been horrified, watching Russia use its vast resources to deceive, corrupt and conquer.
These things don’t happen overnight but over centuries. In Russia, there is a term for it, “система” (Sistema). They have created a system that feeds greed, anger and ignorance amplified by those in power. It does not matter if it is a tsar, the head of the politburo or the president. It is a tradition of the worst kind.
Even the men in power (there seem to be no women in power) are the victims of the Sistema. They cannot wiggle out but follow the unspoken rules that make people suspicious, cynical and focused on individual survival against all odds. Oligargs are like melancholy clowns making jokes on the pile of dead bodies — and they know that they are in that pile soon too, so why not make most of the time while the Sistema allows it?
The beauty of the beast
When I was a teenager and went for the first time to visit Saint Petersburg, those days Leningrad, I was in awe of the city’s beauty and terrified by the fear I saw in the eyes of Russians who encountered foreigners.
But greed was often more potent than fear. — “You jeans have, me give you many rubles,” was often the hasty whisper in the stunningly beautiful neo-classical alleyway away from the city’s main arteries. The black market was dangerous but lucrative for those Russians who dared to bend the rules and understood the Sistema.
The doggy business was conducted in dimly lit alleyways and in the chambers of power where Western businessmen made deals with Russians. They were never sure if they were being deceived, made to look like idiots, or if they were really getting a good deal. And there was always vodka, a lot of it.
I saw Finnish businessmen so drunk a few times that it wasn’t pretty. But that’s how for example, Nokia started to sell digital switches to Russia and paper mill giants sold papermills. So, Nokia and the forest industry made some good profits at the cost of liver cirrhosis of some aspiring businessmen and government officials.
Did things change when the Soviet Union collapsed?
Stupid question. Not a bit. It was just a short period of high Western hopes, but inside Russia, the game’s name was the redistribution of power back to align with the Sistema.
Another essential Russian mindset is Maskirovka, military deception.
In the BBC’s article just after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Russian Maj Gen Alexander Vladimirov elaborates on this cynical and dangerous doctrine that Russia has been following for hundreds of years.
The article is spookily relevant today when we look at the events unfolding in Russia and how it has been conducting the war against Ukraine.
The elements of Maskirovka are, in short:
- Suprise
- Kamufliazh — camouflage
- emonstrativnye manevry — manoeuvres intended to deceive
- Skrytie — concealment
- Imitatsia — the use of decoys and military dummies
- Dezinformatsia — disinformation, a knowing attempt to deceive
But it does not stop in the military operations. The whole Sistema follows this doctrine.
As I experienced as a teenager, it was in full swing on the black market. The six-level method guided the buyers of Western jeans, bubble gum and other luxury items. And you never got an honest answer, not even when you knew nobody could hear, see or witness anything.
What were the millions of Russians thinking, and what are they thinking now?
In my previous article, I told about my encounters with three Russian ladies. Educated, well established and living in the peaceful part of the Western world. And to my surprise, all strong supporters of Putin and the current regime in Russia. The only explanation was the Sistema; they were outcomes of the Sistema.
And then, I saw and experienced also ordinary Russians’ overwhelming hospitality and kindness. Even right after the collapse of the Soviet Union and there was a shortage of everything, they made every effort to offer the best for the guest. Those dinners in Saint Petersburg in the early 1990s were magic, but potatoes were slimy, and the meat — let’s say just it was meat but not go to the origins of it. Horses for courses.
So, there is the pendulum from cruel and suppressive Sistema to individual kindness and care. Russians know when the pendulum can hit them and instinctively know how to hang to it or avoid its crushing force when needed.
The only way to understand Russia is to read between the lines.
One of the best guidebooks to the Russian way of thinking is Mikhail Bulgakov’s (1891–1940) novel ‘Master and Margarita’ (Мастер и Маргарита). It was posthumously published in 1967 as a censored version, but Finns got the translation of it based on the original script.
It was fun to read the translation and see how the italics depicted the sentences and paragraphs that the Sistema thought was too dangerous.
The parallel nature of Russian reality
The novel has three parallel plotlines set in the 1930s when Stalin made his reign of terror pretty much the way Hitler did in Germany. The three stories in the book are about Master, the disillusioned writer who has written a novel about Pontius Pilate, then the story about his lover Margarita and finally the saga of the strange retinue from another reality led by Woland.
Master considers this book his life’s work, but the Soviet literary authorities reject it. In the book, we can read the story about Jesus and Pontius Pilate alongside the sad and touching love story between Master and his love, Margarita.
The plot thickens as Russian suprarealism (yes, I made that up) swoops in, and the third tale follows the intriguing Woland’s arrival, entangling with Margaret’s valiant efforts to shield her beau. Woland is, in fact, Satan and makes the whole of Moscow go wild with the help of a set of characters that make Hollywood pale.
Woland has a valet, Koroviev, who likes peculiar dress codes, an enormous and vocal cat, Behemoth, the hitman Azazello and Hella, an alluring female vampire. With this entourage, Woland can x-ray the Sistema and show the reality of it.
The novel is everything Russia is: satirical, sad, tragic and cynical but, in some strange way, warm, gentle and hopeful.
Understanding Putin and the Sistema and its Maskirovka, Master and Margarita is the key. It goes beyond the power and abuse to the core of what it is to live in a cunningly suppressive and controlling world. It is a warning not to let any system get to the Russian Sistema stage.
And it has hope in it, too. Hope comes from creativity, truthfulness and sincerity — antidotes of greed, anger and stupidity that keep the Sistema in place and Maskirovka killing innocent lives.
Against that creativity, the Putins of any Sistema have no chance in the long run. There is always Woland ready to appear and set up a suprarealistic show to expose the nastiness of reality and what to do with it.
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