How can we explain the attraction of certain French political elites to Vladimir Putin’s Russia? From anti-Americanism to Russophilia, including the defense of French national interest, Olivier Schmitt deciphers the arguments of “French Putinophile.”
How can we explain the appeal that the figure of Vladimir Putin has on citizens and certain actors in the political debate in France, such as former MP Thierry Mariani or Marine Le Pen? This is the question posed by Olivier Schmitt, a recognized specialist in international relations and a lecturer-researcher at the University of Southern Denmark, in this incisive, well-documented and easily accessible work. Based on a critical and systematic analysis of the internal structure of the discourses of certain French public actors, the author shows that the praise they give to contemporary Russia is based on false premises: “Pushkin does not justify allying with Putin” (p. 65).
In other words, neither Russia’s cultural assets, nor France’s long-standing relations with the country, nor even attempts to confer a positive image on the master of the Kremlin, should legitimize the place that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Marine Le Pen and their followers would like to give him. These zealots of the Russian president are sometimes descendants of the old aristocracy, who arrived in France in the 1920s.
The author explicitly claims to be part of the liberal tradition. It is also understandable that interest in Putin’s Russia is growing in France in certain circles, with a Jacobin tendency, which claim a form of egalitarianism and give priority to the collective over the individual. This is how we can understand, following Olivier Schmitt, that a radical part of the left, very critical of neo-liberalism, as well as the most extreme fringes of the right, seduced by political violence and the strong State, can sometimes find themselves in their inclination for the figure of Vladimir Putin. To support his demonstration, Olivier Schmitt proposes to systematically criticize these remarks.
French Putinophilia
As its subtitle indicates, the book engages in meticulous work of anatomy by deconstructing the aura that Vladimir Putin enjoys in certain circles, particularly at the two extremes of the political spectrum (France Insoumise or Front National, for example). The method followed, clear and rigorous, largely contributes to making this essay particularly persuasive. Indeed, after reading it, it is easy to enter into a reasoned discussion with any “Putinophile” who prides himself on having an opinion on international issues. To do this, simply isolate the argument, implicit or explicit, of your interlocutor. The author distinguishes 4 types: 1) Putin would be the archetype of the strong leader, driven by reasons of state, saving his country from the predation exercised by the oligarchs; 2) Russia and France would share, on a civilizational level, fundamental values; 3) an alliance with the Russian president would serve France’s national interest; 4) Russia is not a more reprehensible imperialist power than the United States.
Without invalidating or confirming the very fashionable hypothesis of a “new cold war”, Olivier Schmitt takes a critical look at each of these assertions, which he dissects point by point. The author demonstrates, with the help of specific examples, that these 4 vague ideas do not stand up to the test of facts.
First, Vladimir Putin has certainly used justice to limit the influence of the big economic tycoons (Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky), but he has allowed other wealthy people to prosper, including the current Prime Minister Dimitri Medvedev, and has taken advantage of this to get rid of his potential political adversaries, such as Magnitsky or Navalny. Then, far from highlighting a community of values, the current conservatism of the political elites in Russia, very attached to family, religion, identity, as well as the restrictions on freedom of expression and the reduction of political pluralism, highlight the divergences between Russian and French political cultures. Furthermore, the notion of French national interest does not stand up to in-depth analysis: depending on the sectors concerned (army, agri-food industry, tourism, finance) and the fluctuating priorities of the ruling majority, the interests of social groups remain competing: was it better to sell the Mistral helicopter carriers or sanction Russia when it destabilizes the international order? Finally, putting Russia and the United States on the same level is an inopportune revival of the binary schema dating from the Cold War, while the world is multipolar, and also reflects a distortion of perspective, because the actors of Russian influence (Sputnik, Russia Today, etc.) are para-governmental, while American “soft power” relies on a plurality of vectors (NGOprivate sector, etc.).
According to the author, it is precisely the articulation of the 4 aforementioned elements that outlines the general framework of French Putinophile. This admiration for the Russian head of state is described, in the subtitle, as a French “passion”. We can guess here the probable influence of the historical works steeped in political sociology by Lilly Marcou, Georges Lavau, Marc Lazar, or Sophie Cœuré, who analyzed the links between the Soviet Union and France in the XXe century. The interest that many French people have in Russia has its counterpart in the positive image that France enjoys in the Russian collective imagination. This is not the place for an in-depth analysis of this phenomenon, but one can intuitively think that the French Revolution, the novels of the XIXe century, the Commune and Gaullist-inspired foreign policy, even post-modernism, laid the foundations for a reciprocal inclination in certain strata of society.
Complexity of French and Russian societies
In this respect, one might wonder whether Russia is really the coherent whole that Olivier Schmitt sometimes describes, when he uses the singular in the face of a plural reality (see ” the vision of the Russian world in France”, p. 11, as well as his formula on “the arrival in power of an elite “I am firmly convinced that the West’s sole objective is to destroy it,” p. 116). Let’s bet that the realities covered by “worldview” and “an elite” are complex objects.
The complexity of Russian political life, combined with the multiple contrasts, even the profound contradictions, which characterize a society spread over an immense territory, indeed invites nuance. Let us recall in passing that a team of 31 specialists, led by Kathy Rousselet and Gilles Favarel-Garrigues, tried to untangle this skein in a 501-page work. Russian society is indeed crossed by multiple divisions. Some are those that are traditionally found in many countries, between cities and countryside, center and periphery, wealthy and workers, etc. Others have their roots in the particular political history of Russian society. This is particularly the case of the debate between Westernists and Slavophiles, recurrent since the 1840s in Russia, and which could in a certain sense be compared to that which opposes, in several countries of the North (United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Hungary, etc.), the respective supporters of openness and closure.
A timely and well-researched essay
On a formal level, one is struck by the density of the bibliography for such a short work (71 references). Olivier Schmitt here demonstrates a thorough knowledge of the work on Russia, often used by specialists in the post-Soviet regional area but rarely by internationalists.
From this point of view, the book provides a useful counterpoint to recent publications on groups within the French political or economic elites that represent the Kremlin’s interests in France. While Cécile Vaissié and Nicolas Hénin mainly analyze the configurations of actors and the arenas in which they operate, Olivier Schmitt’s insight is more theoretical. It also usefully complements current work on the media and digital vectors of Russian influence in Europe.
More broadly, this essay is part of the ongoing work on perceptions of Russia in the world. At the end of November 2017, an international conference will explore this subject at the University of Eastern Finland, at the call of researchers based in Scotland, Finland, Israel and Russia. Such a critical exercise, to which Olivier Schmitt invites us, is necessary to better understand the current fascination with so-called illiberal ideas: over-legitimized physical violence, extensive control of the means of communication, discrediting of critical thinking, discourse on identity purity, construction of security threats, etc. The social sciences thus have a lot to do to reinvest, at new expense and in many areas, the diptych of democracy and authoritarianism. We must therefore thank Olivier Schmitt for this salutary reminder.