The czar's new clothes

TomToles, The Week

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This insightful cartoon relating Putin's current standing in world news to Hans Christian Anderson's tale, "The Emporer's New Clothes," suggested to me an opportunity to delve into a number of topics related to Putin and his ambitions, the ambitions of the Russian People, and how children's tales, aka fairy tales, can give us insight into real-world matters.

First, the children's tale. A comment on Maria Tatar's writings in Wikipedia notes:

...that "The Emperor's New Clothes" is one of Andersen's best known tales and one that has acquired an iconic status globally as it migrates across various cultures reshaping itself with each retelling in the manner of oral folktales. Scholars have noted that the phrase 'Emperor's new clothes' has become a standard metaphor for anything that smacks of pretentiousness, pomposity, social hypocrisy, collective denial, or hollow ostentatiousness. Historically, the tale established Andersen's reputation as a children's author whose stories actually imparted lessons of value for his juvenile audience, and "romanticized" children by "investing them with the courage to challenge authority and to speak truth to power." With each successive description of the swindlers' wonderful cloth, it becomes more substantial, more palpable, and a thing of imaginative beauty for the reader even though it has no material existence. Its beauty however is obscured at the end of the tale with the obligatory moral message for children. Tatar is left wondering if the real value of the tale is the creation of the wonderful fabric in the reader's imagination or the tale's closing message of speaking truth no matter how humiliating to the recipient.

Condensing Russian history to the major transfers of power within its borders, the Russian people went from being serfs under the czars, to fodder under Stalin, to being spied-on and imprisoned under the Communist regime, then to suddenly being free but nearly destitute when the Berlin Wall fell. Note: this is my simplistic view of Russian History; here's a more detailed timeline.

Skip to the present. Stepping in after Yeltsin's failed attempts at democracy, Putin has progressively edged toward the policies of the totalitarian Soviet Union but offers the Russian people as sense of the pride once felt for Mother Russia and momentary prosperity. Joshua Kucera, a freelance reporter specializing in the former Soviet Union, writes in his article "Decoding Vladimir Putin's Plan:"

Putin for years has advocated for a “multipolar” world order in which the current dominance of the U.S. is replaced by a more equitable balance of power. And many of Russia’s dramatic moves over the past year – the annexation of Crimea and support for rebels in eastern Ukraine, an enthusiastic embrace of China and increasingly anti-Western rhetoric from Putin – could be interpreted as moving toward a multipolar world.

However, with the Russian economy imploding the question for the Russian people becomes world power or survival. And world power becomes the Czar's new clothes.

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The Emperor’s New Clothes, illustration by Cyril Bouda (1956), Smeddum

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-- Marge