You Say Yevgeny, I say Eugene. Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off.
I once knew a guy named Yevgeny. We used to work together. He was the nicest guy in the world. A little guy, with the slightest trace of a Russian accent. You didn’t hear the accent most of the time, but occasionally it would show itself when he pronounced words that began with “H”. It started with a something like a “K” sound with a tight hiss behind it. There isn’t really any sound like it in English, so it was very noticeable when it happened.
I knew him as Eugene, but when he explained that he was born in Russia, and that his name was actually Yevgeny, I found that fascinating. Again, this guy, this Yevgeny was just the nicest guy. He was friendly, humorous, intelligent, and gregarious. He’s definitely the type of person you would like to meet. He’s the first person I ever met with the name Yevgeny, so I developed a fondness for the name. It almost means nice guy to me.
Lately, another Yevgeny is in the news. By all accounts, this other Yevgeny is a very different type of guy. This Yevgeny, Yevgeny Prigozhin is the evil, sadistic mercenary former leader of the Wagner Group, which recently attempted an armed insurrection against the Russian military, and Vladimir Putin. Yevgeny Prigozhin led the Wagner Group with an iron first, or maybe, more aptly, an iron sledgehammer. Descriptions of Prigozhin’s behavior are distasteful to even mention, but I offer one to explain my use of the terms sadist, and sledgehammer.
Prigozhin reportedly would punish members of his Wagner Group who had attempted to dessert with being beaten with a sledgehammer. He would crush their hands and feet. This Yevgeny was as evil and brutal as his namesake friend of mine was kind and pleasant. And as evil and Prigozhin was, I found myself rooting for him in the last two days.
Prigozhin was on a “March for justice” as he put it, toward Moscow with his band of mercenaries, ostensibly to topple Vladimir Putin. Putin is every bit as evil as Prigozhin. Prigozhin had been working for Putin, in order for Putin to achieve several unjust aims, most especially the invasion of Ukraine. For some reason that is not entirely clear to me, I saw it as a positive that Prigozhin had decided to topple Putin. Prigozhin is no better, but it seemed that taking away from Putin’s power was a good thing, however it might be achieved.
Everyone now knows that this did not come to pass. Prigozhin stopped 2 hours outside of Moscow, before his forces met with Putin’s defenses. The leader of Belarus negotiated a deal where Prigozhin would leave Russia, and end his coup attempt, in exchange for the dropping of an investigation into his activities. Most are of the opinion that Prigozhin’s prospects are not very good. Putin has a history of murdering dissidents, no matter where they are located in the world, and Putin has no compunction about going back on agreements. One power mad sadist came in conflict with another power mad sadist, and it appears that the power mad sadist has won.
I caution myself against feeling sorry for Prigozhin. I think it would be unwise for the United States or our allies to do anything to save Prigozhin. I even feel badly about having rooted for Prigozhin while it appeared that he had a future. There was no actual rational gains to be had.
That said, those who do or would oppose Putin have realized two very significant gains. First, Putin’s veneer of invincibility has been destroyed. Putin is much weaker than he appeared approximately 3 days ago. And the second thing, quite possibly the most significant, Putin has shown himself to be rational. That is a very, very good thing for the world. Until this app attempt by Prigozhin, Putin had to his advantage the notion that he may be a madman willing to start a nuclear war if he is sufficiently aggravated. And while Putin still has every nuclear weapon that he had 3 days ago, the nuclear saber rattler prospect has been eliminated.
Putin executed a complex, rational, careful negotiation to remove Prigozhin, and carefully avoided exchanging shots until the last minute. Putin did not handle this threat in a way that would be consistent with the Putin that he wants the world to fear. That is a very good thing for everyone. Of course, that does not mean that Putin could not change tactics and become the person that we thought he might have been previously, but that is unlikely now.
Going forward, I don’t know what the future holds for Putin. He is considerably weaker domestically, and abroad. Impatience with him is growing. The fear that holds the Russian Federation together is not what it once was. Putin may be toppled, and the Federation stays together, or countries could begin leaving. Putin and his military apparently can not do much to stop that. They are already stretched too thin.
In my mind, I rooted for one evil, crazy bastard to get rid of another evil crazy bastard. And while the evil bastard remains, we may have eliminated the crazy. That’s a good thing.
06/25/2023 @ 11:53 am
I’d be willing to bet that this isn’t the last thing about all this. It was too fast, too easy, too weird. We will see I guess. I hear about you rooting a little bit for the Prog.
I too have a Russian colleague with an accent. He’s been here about a dozen years, and between covid, then war, has not been allowed to return to visit his family. He tells stories, and I sense there are also stories he won’t tell.
Russian culture treasures and cultivates their arts: music, ballet, visual arts. They pick out their talented youth to be educated in an exclusive arts education system. A was entered into the system in fifth grade. At what would be our high school level, the student herd was thinned, then again before what would be our college level. Only about a third of the herd advanced each time–where the thinned ones went, I don’t know. Once the chosen entered the college level, they were thinned yearly, with only a handful selected to advance to the next year. My colleague made it through with honors, and on graduation was given a studio in an artist building and a monthly stipend, substantial by US artist standards.
The state paid for everything. The only requirement was that he make two traditional portraits per month, of Lenin or Putin, or some other Russian dignitary, mostly Lenin though. These were hung in state buildings, apparently every office is required to have a painting of Lenin. After he completed his quota, which took him about a week, he was free to make his own art, although this work was monitored for content. Routinely, he’d be walking down the street, and suddenly there’d be a man walking on either side of him who steered him into a car. They’d warn him if his art was getting iffy, also grill him for dirt on his neighbors, friends, and fellow artists. Because he was an artist and his mother was a school teacher, both risky professions in Russia, they’d pick her up occasionally for one of these rides as well.
Something happened, he would not say what, and he came to the US. His friend who had been in Solidarity in Poland and had done jail time for it came with. This friend was also on our faculty. He brought on another Solidarity friend. They had another buddy who went to Harvard. All were amazing artists, with superior technical skills and highly intelligent political content. They had an encyclopedic knowledge of art history and were often brutal in student critiques. All this was from their state sponsored arts education.
During the early Trump years, when we were just becoming acclimated to his criminality, grift, and lies as our new normal, I asked A about Trump’s Russian connections. He just laughed. Neither yes or no, his response was “you will get used to it”.
I’ve thought about this lots since. He was right. We understand something now that Russians also understand. Although we see a bloodless 24 hour Russian coup as crazy, we are moving towards a place where crazy is also our reality. Many fellow Americans went online to relish and delight in this coupertainment. I am frightened of them. They’d take you and me for a ride and a chat and perhaps a bit of the sledge hammer in a heartbeat.
06/25/2023 @ 1:39 pm
My wife and I have had several Russian colleagues since Yevgeny. We have enjoyed all of them. Well, the husband of one is a bit supercilious…(maybe more than a bit). At least 5 of the Russians we know are from Crimea or Donbas, so it is interesting trying to talk to them.
Usually, talking to one of our Russians, you get a 5000 pound opinion. They come fast and they come unvarnished. But when the Ukraine war started, those opinions slowed to a gentle, delicate trickle. I completely understand that too, so we haven’t been able to ask about the “special military operation.”
Back in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea, I attended a symphony concert with two of them, and their daughter. My wife sang in the symphony chorus, so she had extra tickets and they sat with me. I recall asking them then about the invasion then, and you’d have thought that I asked about imaginary, blindfolded finger painting on the dark side of the Moon. They looked as if they weren’t even sure it was a real topic. That puzzled me until Putin started imprisoning people for saying War…years later.
One of our new Russians is my wife’s colleague in DC. She has invited us for dinner with her English husband. This Russian has about 97 degrees, and fairly infinite 5000 pound opinions. Now, I need to find out how to create an event in our new place, for this couple, to reciprocate. I find this rather daunting because to compliment her old west gunslinger bravado, her English husband…is English, and almost certainly is not. I haven’t met them yet, and I am sure he is already ‘sorry’ for something, and she is already unimpressed.
I agree about this incident re: Putin. I don’t believe it is over. There is a good chance that he will Andropov…the scene.
06/25/2023 @ 2:39 pm
Not asking about certain topics is true with my colleagues as well. Initially I was nosy, about Solidarity, the car rides, painting propaganda, and politics, but quickly felt the don’t talk curtain you noted descend.
Although in the first weeks of the invasion, I asked my friend who’d been in Solidarity and the Polish underground, if they knew of opportunities to donate to programs in Poland that helped people fleeing from Ukraine, esp mothers and kids. They gave me a handwritten list of places. One was the Krakow art college that accepted and gave scholarships to a hundred Ukrainian art students so they could continue their education, another was a school program for kids that my colleague’s sister organized. I got to hear a little bit of information about what the kids were going through and the sister sent photos.
Re: the 5000 pound opinions. Europeans get a better education than we do, education is more valued, and they all have 97 degrees! They have good reasons to hold 5000 pound opinions. People also talk about politics like it’s a noble high art, even old grizzled guys smoking and drinking coffee in the parks. When my colleagues would sit around in someone’s office speaking Russian or Polish, they were often talking politics, but felt safer I guess if not understood. All are multi-lingual: Russian, Polish, French, plus English. They tend to view Americans as crass, disrespectful, entitled, naive, and given the state of things today, they’re not wrong. Yet in Russia and Poland where they got great competitive deep multilingual state sponsored higher educations, they still got Putin and Duda , and we got Trump, so maybe education doesn’t matter as much as we think.
P.S. I suspect you are going to love DC. Please report once you’re there!!
06/25/2023 @ 2:25 pm
What a week in the news, eh?
Histrionics about a boat designed to sink, rented by a gazillioniare who murdered his son on Father’s Day and a rebellion allegedly to rid the world of a murderous dictator led by a guy who quit.
It’s enough to make me do normal things.
06/25/2023 @ 2:29 pm
That’s hilarious, Art. That should be on a t-shirt. I guess it will need to have really small font, and come with a magnifying glass.
We do live in interesting times.
06/25/2023 @ 2:45 pm
Thing is, it’s feeling like all the weeks are as crazy and bizarre as the past one!
When the many Trump trials start, I’m going to need to begin each day with two extra strength Tylenol.
06/28/2023 @ 3:11 pm
If someone like Putin-ally, Lukashenko, arrives to ‘save the day,’ it’s not looking so good for Prigozhin.
“Come with me, I’ll give you sanctuary in exile. Here, have a nice cup of tea…”
No matter the world news these days, “teetering” is the word that keeps coming to mind.
06/28/2023 @ 3:37 pm
Speculation about the meaning of this ranges widely. The theories are so broad that they could not be put into a movie script. The one that appears most likely is the one that you implied; Lukashenko functioning as a puppet of Putin. There is another that says that Lukashenko wants to be, and wants Belarus to remain independent of Russia, and offering a quick end to the crisis by buying Prigozhin off, and keeping him as a guarantee against incursions by Russia into Belarus. Along with that is speculation about exactly how stable Putin’s position is in power. Prigozhin’s connections may want to work Putin out, and someone else in. There is even speculation that because of Prigozhin’s popularity in Russia, Putin can’t afford for him to fall out of a window or have some spiked tea.
I had thought that the federation might break up, but now I hope that doesn’t happen anytime soon. There are too many nuclear weapons spread all over the federation.
06/28/2023 @ 5:09 pm
Didn’t really feel comfortable with more than implying. Your reply gives a lot more to consider. Thank you.