"SCHLICHT UND EINFACH DIE AERMEL HOCHZUKREMPELN"

An Assessment of Putin's Policy From a European Viewpoint.

Оценка политики Путина с европейской точки зрения

Una valutazione delle politiche di Putin dal punto di vista europeo

Une évaluation des politiques de Poutine d'un point de vue européen.

Eine Bewertung von Putins Politik aus einem europaeischen Gesichtspunkt

 


The twofold candidature, of Putin and Medvedev, to the roles of President of the Russian Federation and of Prime Minister does not arrive unexpected . It had been hinted since the beginning that this would have been the case after the expiration of Mr. Medvedev's first mandate.

However, a lot of speculation had arisen on whether this would have happened, and this is one of the reasons why the political and economic forecasts of Russia in the last period have been so uncertain, notwithstanding the fact that Russia belongs in the BRICS.

Feelings in the Western press were, and are, split. From the one side, there is an ideological reflex, according to which everything which comes out of Russia, and, especially, from Putin, is always negative, and, from the other side, there is the growing consciousness that stability and prosperity worldwide are indivisible, and that, hence, the first thing to preserve is   confidence in a solid political will to effectively manage  one's country.

An economic-driven society like ours may have its own philosophical, political and geopolitical, preferences, but the problem number one is that an unexpected uncertainty must not jeopardize the  world's economy. We can see, day after day, that the slightest doubt about the stability of a Government is apt to disrupt the financial markets worldwide for months.

So, paradoxically, Obama, who, like all precedent American Presidents, had always ignored the European Union, is now urging Europe to undertake a more stringent role in governing its economy, and, at the same time, nobody thinks of destabilizing Syria in the middle of a worldwide crisis.

And, indeed, even Russia's economy is following the negative trends of worlwide economy: Both the Ruble and the MICEX, the Russian Stocks index, are at a historical minimum.

This more realistic trend due to the urgency of economic problems has to be welcome. It helps softening unnecessary ideologic prejudices.

We do not examine the merits of many westerners' critics to Russia in general and to Putin in particular. What is remarkable is that all observators have recalled in these days all the objective achievements of Putin's Presidency and premiership: stopping the disgregation of the Federation and the grabbing, by oligarchs, of Russia's resources, economic boom, the reorganisation of the State, and a renewed Russian identity.

What we are more interested in is a specific characteristic of Putin: his strong feeling to belong to Europe, which is comparable just to the one of a small group of Russia's prominents (such as Sokurov, Tretjakov or  Rogozin), but is still more marked. In fact, whilst, normally, the most "European" of the Russian leaders still think of Russia as a Nineteenth Century "nation-state", which can cooperate with Europe, but will not merge with it, Putin has expressed in several occasions a strong European sentiment.

For instance, when he has written, for the 50th anniversary of the Rome Treaties, on the newspaper "La Stampa" of Torino, that he, as a citizen of Sankt-Petersburg, considers himself unconditionally as a European, and  that he evaluates the European Union as the most precious achievement of the XXth Century. For instance, when he has said in German in front of the Association of German Management, and repeated in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, that he wishes to unify Europe in the same way as Chancelor Kohl has unified Germany.
Not only. At that occasion, he even strongly urged Germans to put themselves immediately at work ("schlicht und einfach die Aermel hochzukrempeln").

We  wonder which other politician in Europe has ever said something similar.