Andrei Makine: “To stop this war [in Ukraine], we must understand the background that made it possible”
Q.: As a writer of Russian origin, what does this war inspire in you?
Andrei MAKINE. For me, it has been a matter of the unthinkable. I think of the faces of my Ukrainian friends in Moscow, whom I saw above all as friends, not as Ukrainians. The faces of their children and grandchildren, who are in this caldron of war. I pity the Ukrainians who are dying under the bombs, as well as the young Russian soldiers engaged in this fratricidal war. The fate of the suffering people matters more to me than that of the elites. As Paul Valéry said, “war is waged by men who do not know each other and who massacre each other for the sake of men who know each other and do not massacre each other.”
Q: Part of the press calls you a pro-Putin writer. Are you?
It was an AFP journalist who first glued this label to me about twenty years ago. It was just after Boris Yeltsin’s departure, whose record was catastrophic for Russia. I explained to him that Yeltsin, in a state of permanent intoxication, with responsibility for the atomic button, represented a real danger. And that I hoped that Russia could become a little more rational and pragmatic in the future. But she produced the headline: “Makine defends Putin's pragmatism.” As it was an AFP dispatch, it was repeated everywhere. And when I entered the Académie française, a prominent weekly newspaper, whose name out of charity I will keep silent, published, in turn, a report entitled: “Makine, a Putinist at the Academy”... This says a lot about the world of lies in which we live.
Q: You condemn the Russian intervention...
My opposition to this war, to all wars, must not become a kind of mantra, a certificate of good citizenship for intellectuals in need of publicity, who all seek the anointing of the moralising doxa. In repeating common places, we contribute absolutely nothing and, on the contrary, entrench a Manichean vision that prevents any debate and understanding of this tragedy. We can denounce Vladimir Putin’s decision, spit on Russia, but it will not solve anything, it will not help Ukrainians.
To be able to put a stop to this war, we must understand the background that has made it possible. The war in Donbass has been going on for eight years and has left 13,000 dead, and has left as many injured, including children. I regret the political and media silence that surrounds it, the indifference to the dead when they are Russian-speaking. To say that does not mean justifying Vladimir Putin’s policy. Just as questioning the warmongering role of the United States, present at all levels of Ukrainian governance both before and during the “Maidan Revolution,” does not amount to clearing Putin of his share of responsibility. Finally, we must keep in mind the precedent set by the bombing of Belgrade and the destruction of Serbia by NATO in 1999 without obtaining the approval of the United Nations Security Council. For Russia, this has been experienced as a humiliation and an example to remember. The Kosovo war marked the Russian national memory and its leaders.
When Vladimir Putin says that Russia is threatened, it is not a “pretext”: rightly or wrongly, the Russians really feel besieged, and this stems from this history, as well as military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya. A conversation reported between Putin and the President of Kazakhstan summarizes everything. The latter was trying to convince Putin that the installation of American bases on his territory would not pose a threat to Russia, which could find an accommodation with the United States. With a smile of regret, Putin replied: “That's exactly what Saddam Hussein said!”
Again, I do not legitimize this war in any way, but the important thing is not what I think, nor what we think. In Europe, we are all against this war. But we must understand what Putin thinks, and especially what the Russians, or at least a large part of them, think.
Q: You present Putin's war as a consequence of Western politics. But hasn’t the Russian president always harboured revenge against the West?
I saw Vladimir Putin in 2001, shortly after his first election. He was another man then with an almost shy voice. He sought an understanding with democratic countries. I do not believe at all that he already had an imperialist project in mind, as is claimed today. I see him more as someone who reacts rather than as an ideologue. At that time, the Russian government’s goal was to integrate with the Western world. It is stupid to believe that the Russians have a disproportionate nostalgia for the gulag and the Politburo. They may well have nostalgia for economic security, and the absence of unemployment. Understanding between peoples too: at Moscow University, no one made any difference between Russian, Ukrainian and other Soviet students ... There was a honeymoon between Russia and Europe, between Putin and Europe, before the Russian president took the position of the betrayed lover. In 2001, Putin was the first head of state to offer his aid to George W. Bush after the attacks of September 11. Through its bases in Central Asia, Russia then facilitated American operations in this region. But in 2002, the United States left the ABM Treaty, which limited the installation of missile shields. Russia protested against this decision, which it believed could only revive the arms race. In 2003, the Americans announced a reorganisation of their forces towards Eastern Europe.
Putin became noticeably tougher starting from 2004, when former socialist countries joined NATO even before joining the European Union, as if it were necessary to become anti-Russian to be European. He understood that Europe had been vassalised by the United States. Then there was a real turning point in 2007 when he gave a speech in Munich accusing the Americans of preserving NATO structures that were no longer needed and wanting a unipolar world. However, in 2021, when he came to power, Joe Biden said exactly this when he declared “America will run the world again.”
Q: It seems that you would make the West and Russia equivalent in responsibility. But in this war, Russia is the aggressor...
I’m not making them equivalent. But I regret that European propaganda has become the mere reverse face of Russian propaganda. On the contrary, it is time for Europe to show its difference, to impose pluralistic journalism that opens the debate. When I was a child in Soviet Russia and there was only Pravda, I dreamed of France for freedom of _expression_, freedom of the press, the ability to read different opinions in different newspapers. War is a terrible blow to freedom of _expression_: in Russia, which is not surprising, but also in the West. It is said that “the first victim of war is always the truth.” That's right, but I wish it hadn't been the case in Europe, in France.
In my view, the closure of RT France by Ursula von der Leyen, unelected president of the European Commission, is a mistake that will inevitably be perceived by public opinion as censorship. How can we not be revolted by the deprogramming of the Bolshoi at the Royal Opera in London, the cancellation of a course dedicated to Dostoyevsky in Milan? How can we claim to defend democracy by censoring television channels, artists, books? This is the best way for Europeans to fuel Russian nationalism, to achieve a result opposite from the one expected. On the contrary, we should open up to Russia, especially through the Russians who live in Europe and who are obviously pro-European. As Dostoyevsky rightly said: “every stone in this Europe is dear to us.”
Q: Russian propaganda still seems delirious when Putin speaks of “denazification”...
The Azov battalion, which took over the city of Mariupol from the separatists in 2014, and has since been incorporated into the regular army, claims its neo-Nazi ideology and wears helmets and badges bearing the emblem of the SS symbol and the swastika. It is obvious that this presence remains marginal and that the Ukrainian state is not Nazi, and does not devote unconditional veneration to Stepan Bandera. But Western journalists should have seriously investigated this influence and Europe should have condemned the presence of Nazi emblems on Ukraine’s territory. It must be understood that this revives among the Russians the memory of the Second World War and of the Ukrainian commandoes who rallied to Hitler, and that it gives credit, in their eyes, to the Kremlin's propaganda.
Q: Beyond the debate on the causes and responsibilities of everyone in the war, what do you think of the European response?
Bruno Le Maire has been criticized for talking about total war, but he has had the merit of telling the truth and nailing his colours to the mast, instead of the hypocrisy of those who send weapons and mercenaries and intend to ruin the Russian economy, but claim that they do not wage war. In truth, it is indeed a question of causing the collapse of Russia, the impoverishment of its people. It must be said clearly: the West is at war with Russia.
However, if there is a positive aspect for the possible democratization of Russia, it is that we will destroy the oligarchic structure, which has been a real tumour since the 1990s. I invite European leaders to expropriate predatory oligarchs, to confiscate these billion rubles stolen and invested in London and, rather than blocking them as we do today, to give them to the poor in Europe and Russia.
Q: What else can be done?
To stop hostilities, to give Ukraine a future, we always think that we must move forward; sometimes we must, on the contrary, go back. It must be said: “we were wrong.” In 1992, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, we had come to a fork in the road. We took the wrong way. I really thought then that there would be no more obstacles, that NATO would be dissolved because America no longer had an enemy, that we would form a great peaceful continent. But I also sensed that it was going to explode because there were already tensions: in the Caucasus, in Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh... At the time, I wrote a letter to François Mitterrand.
Q: What was the content of this letter?
I don't know if he received it, but I was talking about building a Europe that had nothing to do with the bureaucratic monster represented today by Mrs. von der Leyen. I dreamed of a Europe that respects identities, like the Mitteleuropa of Zweig and Rilke. A Europe that is ultimately more powerful because it is more flexible, to which Ukraine, the Baltic States and why not Belarus could have been added. But a Europe without weapons, without military blocs, a Europe composed of sanctuaries of peace. The two guarantors of this architecture would have been France and Russia, two nuclear powers located at both ends of Europe, legally mandated by the UN to protect this whole.
Q: Is that realistic?
Mitteleuropa is not a utopia, it existed. I want to believe in it, and I will continue to stress the importance of this idea. A few years ago, I met Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, who shared this vision of a Europe from Paris to Saint Petersburg. But the Americans decided otherwise. This would have meant the end of NATO, the end of the militarization of Europe. A Europe supported by Russia and its wealth would have become too powerful and independent. Nevertheless, I hope that a new president will take over this idea. Europe is a sinking Titanic and from one crisis to another, we are fighting for survival.
This situation is so tragic, so chaotic, that we should propose a radical solution, that is to say, return to the 1992 bifurcation and recognize that we should not restart the arms race and instead resume a democratic and peaceful direction that could very well include Russia. This would stop in their tracks extremist tendencies in Russia. This would allow us to avoid the political and economic collapse that is affecting the entire planet. It would lead to an honourable outcome for everyone, and it would make it possible to build a Europe of peace, a Europe of intellectuals and of culture. Our continent is a living treasure, it must be protected. Unfortunately, we prefer to pursue the opposite of this proposal: to ban Dostoevsky and to wage war. This means guaranteed destruction, because there will be no winner.