The bully has been reduced to size

After WW1 the Germans felt humiliated by the Treaty of Versailles - a feeling that Hitler successfully exploited. The Germans after all were a great nation, now disgracefully disrespected by the international community. If the rest of the world refused to acknowledge the undoubted fact of German greatness, then the Germans would be forced to reclaim their rightful place themselves.

A similar dynamic seems to have developed in post-Soviet Russia - now with alarmingly similar effects. Sergey Radchenko in the Spectator:

Russia’s humiliation in Ukraine has untold benefits, not least for Russia itself. We have heard it said for years that Russia must be indulged and humoured because, if not, it will resent having lost its great power status. The Soviet collapse, we were told, was a terrible catastrophe from which aggrieved, embittered Russians never recovered. So they need to be respected. They need to stand tall and proud. God forbid if they are humiliated because who knows what they will do.

I witnessed the Soviet collapse first-hand. It was, without doubt, a traumatic experience. There was poverty and misery and chaos and a far-right backlash. Rabid nationalists rallied under their revanchist banners. And then Russia invaded Chechnya in a brutal attempt to recover its tainted pride by bringing defiant separatists in the region to heel. And we watched and commiserated because, you see, the Russians had a good reason to be resentful: they lost the Cold War!

For many Russians the collapse of the Soviet Union was not so much because of its internal faults  - its internal contradictions, even - but because of malign anti-Russian forces at work.

Too many refused to accept that the Soviet collapse was the outcome of years of economic mismanagement and imperial hubris – and so they looked for traitors instead. Mikhail Gorbachev, in particular, was singled out for his naïveté, if not malice. In the blame-shifting game of the 1990s, someone had to be assigned responsibility for Russia’s woes: the traitor Gorbachev, the drunkard Yeltsin, the rapacious oligarchs, and of course the devious western advisers who had always sought Russia’s demise.

Out of the chaos and weakness of the 1990s arose Vladimir Putin who promised to deliver order and strength. Putin’s abuse of power, corruption, violation of human rights and erosion of democratic institutions were all tolerated in the name of that promise of strength. Russia may have been poor, corrupt, and authoritarian, but Putin was seen as investing in the military and restoring Russia’s ‘greatness’. And some Russians have always been suckers for greatness. They would sell their last shirt for its elusive promise.

But it couldn't last. The siren call of Russian greatness was always at odds with the reality of its declining power and strength.

Now Ukraine has punctured a big, gaping hole in the narrative of Russia’s ‘greatness’. Russia is poor, corrupt and authoritarian, and now we also know that it is weak and pathetic. Russia’s ‘greatness’ has crumbled in an orgy of murder and rape inflicted by brutal occupiers in Ukraine. Tainted by the blood of the innocents, and beaten in honest combat, the bully has been reduced to size. It’s about time. Thank you, Ukraine, for serving this bitter medicine. Russia needed it badly.

Russia needs proper humiliation. It needs a humble recognition of its diminished status, an acceptance of guilt, and a slow, painstaking effort to rebuild the trust of those it has wronged. Russia did not learn this lesson in the 1990s. It must learn it now.

True greatness lies not in hideous military parades, nor in promises to unleash a nuclear Armageddon. True greatness lies in acceptance of the past, and a willingness to make amends. It lies in the commitment to build a better future, in a country that could become known for its schools and hospitals rather than its tanks and missiles.

The real source of Russia’s humiliation has always been Russia itself: its arrogant, autocratic rulers and the chauvinistic populace that slavishly worship them. Russia’s defeat in this unjust, criminal war against Ukraine may help shift the domestic narrative in Russia towards accepting the country for what it really is, rather than what it has vainly pretended to be. It is only then that Russia can, finally, be at peace with itself and with its neighbours.

All true, no doubt: but I'm not holding my breath. It took the bloodiest war in history, and the almost total destruction of Germany itself, to end the Nazi dream. Will a humiliating defeat  in Ukraine be enough to end Putin's nationalist fascism and set Russia on the path to a mature political future, as happened with Germany after WW2? At the moment it seems very much like wishful thinking.

Comments

[Graham]

Unless Russia is forced out of Ukraine entirely - including Donbass and Crimea - Putin will be able to claim at least a fig-leaf of victory and justification, and if he can do that the tipping point for change in Russia won't be reached. Putin has already established his own 'stab in the back' narrative.

[John the Drunkard]

Fostering the 'self esteem' of defeated tyrants has a terrible history. Here in my country, our failure to enforce the defeat of the Confederates has poisoned the country ever since.

Acknowledging defeat was the 'humiliation' that the German establishment could never accept. The reparations went almost entirely unpaid. Billions of foreign capital pouring into the intact German industrial economy were squandered by the German elite.