Putin’s Self Obsessed Psychology

[Renauda]

This seems or at least attempts to parse out and make a degree of sense out of what appears to be inside the Kremlin troll’s mind:

If Vladimir Putin was just a military pensioner playing dominoes and not thepresident of Russia, his inner world would be important only to his relatives, whom he would pester with his historical insights. But he is one of the most powerful people on Earth. He single-handedly, without any checks and balances, rules a huge country, commanding armies, and even nuclear weapons. What he thinks about the world and how he sees it is the most important determinant of what is happening on the planet.

People like him do not react to reality, but to their perception of it. If you, as the Bolsheviks did after seizing power, expect to be attacked, then you begin to prepare for war. Not only a defensive war, but also an aggressive one, which will inevitably break out in the end regardless of the true level of threat. Perception becomes reality.

Whole op-ed:
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2024/04/15/the-self-obsession-at-the-heart-of-putins-wartime-psychology-a84846

[Mik]

I think the west in general tends to overlook the effect of history on the Russian psyche. Big mistake. Americans particularly have no history that even approaches Russia's, so it is completely foreign to us.

[George K]

@Mik said in Putin’s Self Obsessed Psychology:

the effect of history on the Russian psyche

Decades ago, I listened to a course on Russian history from the Teaching Company Great Courses. One point that was made was that Russians are always feeling inferior to their more sophisticated Western counterparts - and that shapes the worldview.

[Renauda]

I remember the first day of my first Soviet history course in University. The prof, a former officer in the British Army, I touched himself to the class and then said “in this course you will come away with the understanding that the Soviet Union is characterised by a national inferiority complex mindset and a people who sleep with a history book under their pillow”.