the meaning of the speech of the zar- Corriere.it

FROM OUR REPORTER
MOSCOW — In the worldview of Vladimir Putin, the source of danger had always been a constantly moving target. It could have been Chechen terrorism, pedophilia, it could have been gays, orUkraine, plus of course the US maneuvering behind the scenes against the good of Russia. But there always had to be a threat. In the recent past that was the way to generate a sense of belonging in citizens without certainties, perhaps anxious about the drop in their purchasing power, about the deterioration of daily life. I can’t make you richer, but I can make you feel like you’re part of a bigger picture. And I’m the only person who guarantees that.

With Tuesday’s speech, one of the most awaited in recent years, also broadcast on the screens of university classrooms for those who could not watch television, this bond became even closer, giving the idea of ​​being inseparable by now. Even before hearing a single word, the overview of Gostiny Dvor, the Courtyard of Guests, an exhibition building converted into an assembly hall not far from St. Basil’s Cathedral, already said a lot. Almost all the people who have been talked about so much in this tragic year were there. Politicians, hawks, doves, oligarchs, intellectuals, artists. This unprecedented line-up ready to applaud on command, to listen without batting an eye to highly questionable statements such as the one on the construction of nuclear and chemical laboratories in Ukraine by the US and NATO, is already the sign of an implicit surrender. There are no possible alternatives, not now, not here.

Now there is only to gather around the figure who in the last twenty years has been able to pass from the role of a calm force, which guaranteed stability, to that of a Man of Destiny. There aren’t many enemies anymore, there’s only one, big and well-defined one. “They”, the word that Putin has repeated several times, occasionally waving his hand outwards, as if unconsciously pointing outwards. “They” are the past. He never talks about it in the present, the former world no longer exists, the collective West is a hostile entity plotting to annihilate Mother Russia. With the “unscrupulous lies and lies of the elites”, who would also make pacts with the Nazis, terrorists or with the “bald devil”, a Russian expression that expresses the concept of supreme evil, to harm his country. But also with the corruption of morals.

Yesterday, as usual, the passage on the lifestyle of the enemies “who celebrate gay marriages and are about to legalize pedophilia” aroused a stir mixed with indignation. But he really believes it, as evidenced by the expression and tone of disgust with which he pronounced these sentences. Starting in 2013, after the great protests of the previous year, which united the main leaders of the opposition, it was the battle against the “different and perverse” that allowed him to reunite his electorate, to give it an objective, to create a new internal enemy, another collective obsession.

Angela Merkel was right, Putin thinks what he says, and vice versa. There were no great surprises in the speech to the United Chambers, if anything the crystallization of a status quo, the confirmation of a method and a direction on a road of no return. Every bridge behind you has been burned, there will be no second thoughts. The victimization of the Russian people, oppressed by the West, is a lever that is paying handsome dividends with the older population, its strongest ally. In a discourse addressed above all to internal staff, the invitation to unity was declined with verbs in the future, we will do, we will build, we will provide, listing promises and projects «for which I have already consulted with the government» all in progress, under the banner of the most absolute autarky. The usual references to multilateralism were also missing, just a brief mention, no mention of major allies like India or China. As if Russia is wrapping itself around itself and its own beliefs. We’ll do it ourselves and we’ll make it, is the message. Even the decision to suspend one’s participation in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreement has a symbolic value of this desire to cut all bridges and to redefine a New World Order. It was the last arms control treaty still in effect between the US and Russia.

But to maintain this balance, another element is needed, the decisive one. In calm tones, without any proclamation, between one announcement and another of economic support to the company, the president slipped into his speech the concept of existential war, on which the fate of the whole of Russia depends. Master of speaking in innuendo, has hinted that the Special Military Operation will last a long time, renewing its implicit pact with the people, partial welfare in exchange for support focused only on his person. Every formality was thus attended to. Putin is free to follow the idea that seems rooted in his head: against “Them”, peace can only be a fragile anomaly. And so war also becomes an inescapable destiny.