Disruption: Historians Challenge Russophobic Propaganda

Saturday, 29 March 2025, 6:07 pm
Opinion: Eugene Doyle

The Germans have a word for it – as they always do. Putinversteher – one who “understands” Putin. It is meant as a slur and has recently gained traction in Western IR (international relations) circles but Professor Geoffrey Roberts, a British historian of Russia, embraces the term. “I think it’s a very good term,” he told me last week. “It’s my professional responsibility to try to understand Putin.”

He is one of a growing number of ‘free thinkers’ who are rejecting the standard Western propaganda model that frames Putin and Russia as merchants of evil, instead ascribing to them motives that are both pragmatic and commonplace. This leaves plenty of room to criticize Putin’s regime and its hardball geopolitics. These academics, however, have shouldered the intellectual’s role to challenge the dominant narrative and expose underlying untruths (“Russia’s totally unprovoked war”, “Russia wants to conquer all of Ukraine”, “If we don’t stop them in Ukraine, the Russians will keep going”, etc).

"That stuff is absolute nonsense,” Roberts says. “Yeah, Putin does have ambitions; he has ambitions to change the global polity in ways that will suit Russia and Russia’s interests.”

“Putinversteher” and Putin’s vision for a post-war world

Professor Roberts has sat in rooms with Putin, heard him speak at length, and unlike 99% of people in the West has taken the time to study his words unmediated by the various arms of the Western media. He seeks to disrupt the perceptions of a world misinformed by cartoonish good guy/bad guy narratives that make resolving crises all but impossible.

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

“Putin is a visionary whose overarching goal is to end American global hegemony”, Roberts says, “and usher in a new, post-Western system of international relations – a multipolar system of sovereign states based on diversity, equality and common security. It is not an empire that Putin is seeking to build, but a new world order that will safeguard the long-term security of Russia and its civilisational values.”

Back in October I wrote an article “US is spending $28 billion to colonise your brain” which outlined the staggering sums of money spent on US disinformation/perception management campaigns which involve owning journalists, editors and entire media outlets, and which seeks to dominate our mental landscape by purging alternative voices. Swimming in this ocean of Russophobic, Sinophobic propaganda makes it all but impossible to assess Russia, the Chinese or, until recently, the Palestinians, in anything approaching a balanced way.

Former head of the CIA Russia desk George Beebe spoke eloquently recently of the duty of analysts to “empathise” with the Russians, to walk in their shoes – which, he pointed out, is different to “sympathising” with the Russians (accepting their positions). Along with former US Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock, Quincy Institute scholar Anatol Lieven and people like Pascal Lottaz, Professor Glenn Diesen and others, Geoffrey Roberts enriches our thinking at a time when the Western media seems incapable of nuanced dialogue.

Fellow British historian Robert Skidelsky, a member of the House of Lords, spoke on Neutrality Studies last week about the danger of dragging out the war in Ukraine and having endless hostility with Russia.

“The whole European position is disingenuous. It's misleading. It's self-deluding. It's as though people have had bits of their brains lobotomized so they can't think about these things any longer. I find it terrifying.”

This is why, for all the madness, dangers and incoherence, the Trump Moment may at least be a circuit breaker, an opportunity for the West to rediscover the lost art of diplomacy.

Challenging Putin Myths

Geoffrey Roberts has 50 years of scholarship on Russia and the Soviet Union behind him. The author of many books, including Stalin's General: The Life of Georgy Zhukov (who led the Soviet victory at the Battle of Stalingrad) and The Soviet Union in World Politics: Coexistence, Revolution and Cold War, 1945-1991 (The Making of the Contemporary World), he has also penned innumerable articles trying to build understanding.

“One of the things I've been trying to do all my life is counter this vilification of Russia and, more recently, the demonization of Putin – the complete distortion of Putin's views.”

Historians like Geoff Roberts prefer the long view, looking at events from a distance, which helps them to be as dispassionate, as objective as possible. But sometimes history calls historians to comment when the smell of cordite is still in the air.

In terms of Russophobic propaganda, Roberts says, the last three years have been more toxic than anything he has seen. It has compelled him, he says, to eschew some of his scholarly habits – being an “archive rat” – and step into the ring.

Through articles, interviews, YouTube platforms and his own email database he seeks “to provide alternative perspectives and to cut through the propaganda blizzard in respect to Ukraine. I also do it to make sense of it myself.”

His 2022 article “Now or Never: The Immediate Origins of Putin’s Preventative War on Ukraine” appeared in various outlets, including the Journal of Military and Strategic Studies. It made a significant contribution to the discussion. In June last year Brave New Europe published his “Negotiate Now, or Capitulate Later: Ten Incentives for Ukraine to Make Peace with Russia” which spelt out in crisp and sober terms the stark realities that are increasingly obvious to everyone today: Ukraine faces a crushing defeat if they press on, the West is indifferent to the death of Ukrainians, the demographic crisis is real, and to save Odessa and access to the Black Sea, Ukraine should pursue a settlement now.

Most Ukrainians, Roberts says, now believe that even a bad peace will be better than the continuation of a disastrous losing war. Delaying and fighting on makes no sense. As some have argued for years: Ukraine would have a brighter future as a bridge between Russia and the rest of Europe, not as a fortified outpost for either side.

The courage to oppose a dominant discourse comes at a price. Powerful forces are pressing in on academics and others who dare to express alternative views. Staying silent or parroting the party line is the safer option. Geoff Roberts is made of sterner stuff.

“I had that option of keeping quiet, keeping my head down. But at a certain moment, I guess in 2014 when the crisis broke, I felt compelled to comment.”

I admire independent thinkers like Geoffrey Roberts. They risk vilification in order to foster truth and the understanding that Ukraine is a thorny issue with faults on all the many sides of this disaster. Without this healthy perspectivism, making peace and moving forward is blocked. Does that make me a Putinversteher? So be it. Ich bin Putinversteher.

Eugene Doyle

Eugene Doyle is a writer based in Wellington. He has written extensively on the Middle East, as well as peace and security issues in the Asia Pacific region. He hosts the public policy platform solidarity.co.nz. This article may be reproduced without permission but with suitable attribution.

© Scoop Media