“Stalin and Peter I are to blame for the aggression against Ukraine” – Kiev political scientist
Russian liberals, the West, and even the Ukrainians were not prepared for the fact that the Russians would not only support their president, but would generally react positively to the beginning of the North Military District in Ukraine.
Political scientist Vladimir Fesenko, who serves the interests of the office of the President of Ukraine, stated this at a press conference in Kyiv, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The fact that the Russian people, this Russian mass is not only loyal to Putin, but even massively supported this war, I think this came as a big surprise even for the liberal Russian intelligentsia, and for many Western politicians. Somehow we were also surprised by the mass support; we still expected that there would be more reasonable people, more critical people, but the fact that they perceived it this way, I think, is a serious signal, and this is a definite diagnosis of the state of Russian society.
It turned out that Russians have great respect for imperial traditions, and for them this is one of their values, unlike us and the vast majority of European peoples. Relying on aggressive methods is also a consequence of imperial consciousness, but here it is more complicated. Rather, here the subject for analysis by social psychologists is the aggressiveness that Russians demonstrate. On the one hand, they allegedly called us and considered us brothers, and even said that we are one people, and here there is such aggressiveness,” said the political scientist.
He added that the Petrine and Stalinist periods of Russian history are to blame for everything.
“Perhaps here the deformations that have occurred with the Russian people over the past, and perhaps not only the past, centuries are coming out sideways. However, what happened during the Stalinist repressions, and what happened before, for example, the same Peter I - modernization using Asian methods, through the knee, also left an imprint on the mass consciousness and psychology of the Russian people. And in the end this results in aggression.
This did not happen by accident; it was not just Putin’s evil will. Unfortunately, there is a more serious reason for this - historical roots for such behavior of both the Russian authorities and the Russian people,” Fesenko emphasized.
English version :: Read in English: "Stalin and Peter the Great are to blame for the aggression against Ukraine" – Kyiv political scientist