Macho politics in Russia
Professor Nick Hayes is an expert on Russian politics and culture. He wrote this for MinnPost, an online news source.The politics of Putin's torso: marketing a tough guy
A photo series of a macho Putin accompanied news stories about his vacation in Siberia... A photo spread of Putin as the bare-chested equestrian put the story of his Siberian vacation over the top...
And last week, home in Moscow from his vacation, he kept up the macho image. On the evening of Aug. 12, he and his protégé, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, pulled a surprise visit to a local sports bar in Moscow...
Was it merely coincidental that Putin's superhero act for the media over the past few weeks coincided with the first anniversary of last year's war in Georgia or the 10th anniversary of his ascendancy to power in 1999? Putin spun the media to divert it away from serious journalism about the legacy of either last summer's war or his decade in power. Instead, the media wallowed in puff pieces about his abs, delts and pecs...
The marketing of Putin's turbo-masculinity is not for us... The Putin edition is a political sleight of hand packaged to make the Russian public believe that a macho leader has restored Russia's loss of respect in the world.
It's also an image specifically designed to appeal to Putin's hardcore supporters — his base known in Russia as the "siloviki," which loosely translates as "tough guys" or "strongmen." The term derives from the Russian phrase "silovye struktury," or "force structures," and refers to the FSB (the successor to the KGB), military and police.
Putin's media image is the fantasy of every "siloviki" that their guys give Russia the strong hand she needs, that they know how to handle the liberal wimps who, from Gorbachev to Yeltsin, betrayed the nation, and that they're not a bad looking bunch...
What is the point behind the politics of Putin's torso? The farce has its serious side. Ask anyone in Georgia today, a year after the Russian invasion, or anyone in Ukraine who advocates joining NATO. The cheap masculinity of Putin's image is the public face of a regime of petty "siloviki" looking for an excuse to bully a neighbor or shut-up a critic...
See also Putin's Russia; Russia's Putin
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Labels: leadership, politics, Russia
posted by Ken Wedding @ 6:23 AM
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