Winter is Coming

Title: Winter is Coming – Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must be Stopped

Author: Garry Kasparov

Publisher: Atlantic Books, 2015 (First)

ISBN: 9781782397878

Pages: 290

The world we live in encountered three global wars in the twentieth century. Two of them were noisy, with militaries clashing against each other and spilling the blood of all concerned parties. The other one – the Cold War – was quiet and fought behind the scenes. The world was divided into two, the camp of democracy, freedom and capitalism led by the Americans and the other of dictatorship, oppression and communism headed by the Russians. Both sides possessed deadly nuclear weapons – enough to destroy the world many times over. There were provocation from both sides and once or twice they stared directly eye ball to eye ball on the way to the battlefield. Humanity held its collective breath anxiously on the verge of Armageddon. Then, something snapped and all tension was defused in a moment quick enough in history as the batting of an eyelid. A new leader rose in Soviet Union who wanted to give real reform to his people. But he misjudged the level of animosity the citizens had had harboured against their masters. One chain was hesitantly loosened, then another, and so on. Once it went past a critical threshold, the people erupted with such force that the Communist party and its repressive apparatus were rooted out in a deluge of people celebrating their newfound freedom. A decade of democratic reforms then took place in Russia. Unfortunately for the country, before the roots of democracy could take hold, the power was handed over to a former KGB officer named Vladimir Putin, who followed a policy of suppressing all dissent and engaging in widespread corruption, which is the theme of this book. It describes the modus operandi of the regime and hopes to raise awareness of what is going on in Putin’s Russia. The Western response to this dictatorship is criticized severely, and the book reaches the conclusion that Putin can be stopped only if credible threats to his power could create a split among his elites and advisors. This is a tall order at the moment. The author, Garry Kasparov, needs no introduction, as he was the undisputed world chess champion for two decades till his retirement in 2005. Well known for his tactical aggression in the game, Kasparov retains that element of ruthlessness in bringing out one point after another against his rival in the book. Obviously, he lives in exile in New York.

Kasparov delivers a caustic narrative of how the Soviet system failed and power was handed over to democratic forces under Boris Yeltsin. Though he doesn’t go much deep in detail about the causes of the failure of the communist experiment, which is rather well known otherwise, his correct analysis of state terror and military force as the primary tools used in building and maintaining the Soviet empire tells it all. The West patronized Mikhail Gorbachev, who let the floodgates of reform opened. Gorbachev was the human face of a party that had massacred millions of its cadres and citizens. But the author adopts a cautious stance towards him. He argues that Gorbachev had no intention at first to bring in the radical changes that eventually toppled him and the entire system. He ended up in a difficult position when the reforms attained a speed of its own, washing away the reformer along with it. Kasparov alleges Gorbachev’s tacit approval for the failed military coup in August 1991 when a group of soldiers loyal to the communist regime surrounded the Duma and threatened to roll back the democratic process which was being debated inside it. A personal anecdote of his duplicity is cited when Gorbachev sent in government troops to control ethnic violence that broke out in Azerbaijan against Armenians staying in the republic. The author lived in Azerbaijan at that time and vouched that the timing of military intervention was carefully chosen to allow the murderous gangs enough time to complete their dirty work. The book rubbishes the claims of hard-line Russian patriots that their great nation was humiliated by the West in the post-Communist era. Kasparov goes one step further, with the bold claim that the West did practically nothing to take the evildoers to account. No investigation had ever taken place in Russia to bring to book the culprits who committed wanton acts of cruelty and crimes against humanity during the Communist years. Russia was silently given the permanent seat in the UN Security Council occupied by the erstwhile USSR. Thus, the western powers wasted a crucial chance to reform the UN, which was a baby of the cold war period into one which can handle the new realities that presented itself in the last decade of the previous century. Yeltsin nominated Vladimir Putin as the prime minister in 1999, which surprised many on account of the strange choice of the person, who was a Nobody in Russian politics at that time. Putin proved his mettle in the brutal strikes against Chechen rebels and won easily in the presidential elections held in 2000. He continues in office till this day. When the constitution prevented him from running for a third time in 2008, he exchanged jobs with Dmitry Medvedev – the prime minister under him - who promptly amended the inconvenient clauses, and Putin returned as president again in 2012.

Putin devised ingenious ways to manage protest while in power. He mastered the art of controlled dissent as a safety valve for the release of pent up feelings. As the author himself notes from personal experience, permission will be granted for street protests, but the organizers are sure to be prosecuted for the slightest infractions that are bound to occur during massive rallies. Putin regularly employs electoral fraud. While the author admits that he supported Yeltsin, whose 1995 victory was also by fraud that was attributed to the need to sideline Zyuganov, who was a communist revanchist, from winning the race. Kasparov’s portrayal of the present-day Russia presents some distressing facts about the country that has the world’s biggest nuclear arsenal. Managed democracy and dictatorship of the law are two of Putin’s favourite expressions. He trades fear among Russians and his international colleagues alike. He brings up bogeymen like Chechnya, NATO encirclement or free markets, usually all of them, to frighten his native Russians. Among westerners, he assumes the role of a strong, pragmatic ruler without whom Russia would be unruly, unstable and potentially aggressive. The business sector operates with his cronies at the helm. Many state-owned enterprises were privatized in dubious deals, while the companies established by his detractors were forcefully nationalized. Kasparov remarks this to be a perverse combination of Adam Smith and Karl Marx in which profits were privatized and the expenses were nationalized. Corruption was a prominent feature of Russia in the 1990s as well, when Yeltsin supervised the dismantling of the socialist apparatus. But the media was free then, and people could read and hear about the shady deals. Ever since Putin’s botched operations that led to the Kursk submarine tragedy, he began to put brakes on media freedom. Now, an oligarchy own and control Russia’s media. Another blatant violation of democratic principles was the president’s decision to do away with elections to choose regional governors. They are now directly nominated by him. The system was made more difficult even to register a new party. Duma elections were changed from individual vote to party vote, which meant that established figures could keep their seats forever. Putin allows only those opposition candidates he approves for running the presidential elections. Kasparov’s sharp pen has effectively brought to focus the violation of all democratic decencies in Putin’s Russia.

At times, the book falls to the level of a naïve attempt to define the world afresh. Kasparov’s insistence on the moral element in diplomacy – praising Ronald Reagan’s uncompromising stand against communism as an example to be emulated – is quite untenable. It is really hard to expect nations strictly following moral principles in their deals with other states. Reagan himself had gone back on his word – just remember the Iran Contra deal! He regrets the lack of focus in American foreign policy. Saddam Hussein should’ve been removed on the first try. The U.S. unnecessarily waited for a long time in imposing tough sanctions against Serbia, thereby wasting a golden opportunity to prevent the genocide in Bosnia. Kasparov believes that strict action by the U.S. – which can be military as well – is the only effective way to helm in dictators around the world. His tirade against Putin spills into practically everything in which the Russian president is involved. His strong police action against the Nord-Ost and Beslan hostage crises is condemned as a debacle because a number of the hostages were also killed in the commando operations. This line is not acceptable to the modern world in which terrorist atrocities are raising by the day and no amount of strong action must be withheld to face those inhuman savages. Putin’s action against the hostage takers was swift and brutal, with the killing of many innocent civilians in the crossfire, but this action ensured that no such large scale violence ever erupted thereafter. Being a Jew himself, the author’s accusation that Putin was an anti-Semite lacks credibility as his only evidence in support of his claim was the sacking of one of Putin’s rivals who was a Jewish businessman, who was branded, indicted, sentenced and his enterprises sold off to Putin’s loyal followers. The book is gifted with a good index.

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 4 Star