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What Putin Gets Wrong About Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and the Russian Soul

Nadine Bjursten
ILLUMINATION
Published in
6 min readMar 20, 2022

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To understand how Vladimir Putin could so dramatically miscalculate the reaction to his invasion of Ukraine, one must turn to a well-known character of Russian literature: Rodion Raskolnikov. He isolates himself. He gets lost in thoughts of himself as a Napoleon figure, a superman, who isn’t required to follow the rules that govern the rest of the population. He misjudges people; he misinterprets signals and situations.

When you see Putin through the eyes of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s protagonist in Crime and Punishment, it suddenly seems clear how the Russian president, widely thought a strategic genius, could not only misjudge the United States and Europe but underestimate the resolve and character of Ukrainians, the people he says have always been Russian.

Most strikingly, it explains how Putin could be so out of sync with Russian citizens. More than once he declared that the role of government is to take care of the “rights of the individual and care for society as a whole.” He must believe then that Russians aren’t bothered that the ruble has collapsed, that they are now cut off from the rest of the world. He must believe that Russians won’t be devastated when they learn of the displacement and deaths of their family, friends, and colleagues.

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ILLUMINATION
ILLUMINATION

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