Like so many who have studied Russian and Ukrainian history, who have come to have many Russian and Ukrainian friends and admire Russian and Ukrainian culture, I never thought I would live to see the day when the President of Russia, Vladimir
Putin, would launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
I thought Vladimir
Putin was
more prudent than that. I thought that he would see the risk as too high and the likely damage to his own country too great. That, of course, is not the way it has turned out. That brutal reality—and the resulting deaths, displacement of millions of lives and the economic devastation which has resulted from it—they are a source of unspeakable pain and regret. I never felt I would live to see this day.
And yet…I am also reminded that I never thought I would live to see the day when the Soviet Union would peaceably dissolve as a collective body of nations committed to Communism and to the prosecution of a Cold War with the West.
I never thought I’d live to see the day when I, then President of Procter & Gamble, along with thousands of others, played a role in creating a business and organization in Russia, not that long after I had chased Russian submarines around the North Atlantic as part of the U.S. Navy.
No matter what the future brings, I will always be incredibly proud of what our
P&G Russian men and women achieved.
What do I hope to demonstrate with this sequence of events which I never thought I would have lived to experience? What perspective, if any, might it offer for the future?
Several things, I believe.
It forcefully underscores that history is not inevitable. That it does not proceed in a straight line. That it encounters unexpected dramatic changes.
It cautions us to not give up hope. Situations that have looked borderline hopeless in the past have turned around, gotten better, more often than not in ways we did not anticipate.
Above all, for me, it highlights the importance of individual agency.
I do not believe that the peaceful demise of the Soviet Union, accomplished in the face of the great threat of it being violent, could possibly have happened if it were not for the person of Mikhail
Gorbachev. To be sure, there were underlying factors, importantly economic and the openness of communication that allowed Russians to see what was happening to the West. These were foundational realities that helped prompt dramatic change in Russia. But the evolution of this change in the peaceful way in which it occurred was by no means certain. There were other Russian leaders, who I encountered first-hand, who would have fought the dissolution of the Soviet Union tooth and nail, with great loss of life.
In much the same way, one can explain Vladimir
Putin’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine and trace it back to certain historical decisions, particularly the expansion of NATO and the failure to grasp the slim opportunity that existed at the turn of the century to bring Russia into a Pan-European security network. As I wrote in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea, there is “enough blame to go around.”
However, make no mistake. The decision on how to respond to the perceived (or actual as Russia saw it) risk that Russia’s security posed by NATO was singularly dependent on the
decision by Vladimir
Putin, as he called on his army to invade Ukraine. The decision to do this without even obtaining an even halfway accurate idea of how the Ukrainian people would react to this invasion also rests squarely on Vladimir
Putin.
So there we have two of the most unforgettable events in my entire 80+-year life that I never thought I would see the day to experience.
This view of history leads me to the hope that there will again be a shift of power and belief system in Russia which this time will offer the opportunity for Russia to take its place within a broad European security network. For decades, I firmly believed this is where Russia belongs. Yes, bringing its own unique cultural history and belief systems but still part of Europe and the West.
Having had the benefit of being close to Russia and Russian people for over 30 years and having studied its history and culture, I firmly believe that its natural place in this global spectrum we inhabit is part of a broader Europe. There are already major differences between countries in Europe: between Germany and Italy, France and the U.K., Poland and Spain. Russia, too, will have its own unique characteristics. But while it
didn’t participate fully in The Enlightenment, all you need to do is read Russian literature and experience its music and its art and know its people to see the place it occupies in Western culture.
The fact that this will not happen in my lifetime, with my now being over 80, is disappointing but it is not personally deflating. I know history is long. No set of experiences shows how it can change more than what we have experienced in Russia over my adult lifetime.
I am conscious that achieving this end will not happen on automatic pilot. It will require many things which I cannot pretend to know, but three I can:
1. People in Russia, as many are right now, standing up bravely, at risk of their lives, to argue for and commit to advance as best they can, a liberal way of life. People who do not give up hope in a better future.
2. That the people of the world at large and of the West in particular not "
blackballl" the Russian people generally as evil and as "enemies" but rather recognize that this tragic decision to invade Ukraine was very much the decision of its leadership. And recognize further that in the long run--and the short run too for that matter--that working with Russia, without expecting we will see everything alike, is in the interest of the United States, Russia and the entire world.
3.. Ultimately, the emergence of a Russian leader who can gain the confidence of the Russian people and play the positive role that Gorbachev did over 30 years ago, and Lech Walesa did in Poland, and Nelson Mandela did in South Africa, and Abraham Lincoln did in the United States and that this leader will be matched with leaders from the West who are prepared to work together to achieve common existential goals.
