What's Next for Putin

Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll begin today by trying to understand a little better what actually happened with the Wagner Group mercenary rebellion in Russia over the weekend, and where things stand now, plus implications for Ukraine, and for the United States, and the rest of the West. It was very hard at first for outsiders to decipher why Yevgeny Prigozhin and his troops captured a city in Russia, and were marching toward Moscow, then suddenly stopped, and why Prigozhin then suddenly took a deal to leave the country.

Now, just four days later, the whole thing is still quite baffling, but Prigozhin's and Putin's public statements in the last few days seem to indicate they have both been weakened by this chain of events. As The New York Times told yesterday, Prigozhin may have attacked inside his own country as an act of desperation, not an act of strength. As I said, we'll try to understand this in terms of the implications for people in Russia itself, but also in terms of the fate of Ukraine, and Putin's malevolent influence on our presidential elections, and elsewhere in the West.

We have a great guest for this, Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic, and the author of many relevant books from Gulag: A History which she published in 2003, and which won a Pulitzer Prize to Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine from 2017, and Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, which came out in 2020. Her latest Atlantic article is called Putin Is Caught in His Own Trap. Anne, we always appreciate, and we always learn things when you come on to this. Welcome back to WNYC.

Anne: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with your notion of Putin being caught in his own trap? You write that it's a trap of apathy. Can you explain that?

Anne: I was very struck on Saturday by the sight of ordinary people in Rostov flocking to have a look at the Wagner mercenaries who had just occupied the city. Prigozhin, their leader was inside the offices of the Southern Military District where he was chatting happily with the generals. Ordinary people were bringing food and water bottles to the men who were manning the tanks. Nobody seems particularly upset by the idea that a brutal mercenary leader had just come to occupy their city.

This made me think a lot about some of the stories I've been told about people who do polling in Russia, and people who look at how Russian propaganda affects ordinary Russians. A lot of Russian propaganda is really directed at the idea that people should not believe in anything. It's deliberately contradictory. They'll say one thing one day, something different the next day. They'll continually change their justifications, for example, for why they're fighting the war, what the war is about, what it's for. The ultimate goal of that is to make people feel, "Well, I don't know what's going on. I have no idea what's true, and therefore I can't do anything about anything." It keeps people out of politics.

The trap or the other side of the coin of that issue is that when somebody appeared to take the place of Putin, or to challenge Putin, or at least to challenge his generals, they weren't really bothered by that either. They were happy to see them, nice that they were saying something new and different, and they brought them pierogi or something so that they wouldn't get too hungry standing on the street.

Putin has created the society in which there's no politics. No one can do anything. He's got no successor. There are no institutions. Even if he were to disappear tomorrow, we don't even know who would choose his successor, who that would be. The effect of that, though, is that when Prigozhin's gesture just by appearing in Russia, and marching 500 miles into the country, was the first time anybody had seen any politics in a long time, and people were vaguely in favor of it. All this idea that Putin has all this deep support, it suddenly looks like that support was all very shallow because what does support mean if nobody's willing to fight for you?

Brian Lehrer: You cite, for example, a remarkable photograph published by The New York Times showing Prigozhin's men walking at a leisurely pace across the street, and videos posted by Prigozhin himself chatting with local Russian commanders in the city, and nobody seemed to mind his being there. Can you give our listeners a little context on Rostov, the city, itself? Many Americans never heard of it until this weekend. What kind of place is it, and why did Prigozhin attack there?

Anne: I'm sorry to say that I have not been to Rostov, so I can't give you a firsthand description or memorable anecdotes. Large city. I forget, it's something, the 10th or 11th largest city in Russia. It's very important for this war because it's the city where the Southern Military District has run out of. Essentially, the Ukraine war is directed from Rostov. It's very close to the Ukrainian border. It's right on the coast. If you looked at the map, you would see Mariupol, which is the city that Russia destroyed in the first part of the war, not too far down the coast of the Sea of Azov from Rostov. It's not far. Maybe it's a two-hour drive from the Ukrainian border. Maybe it's even closer than that.

It's a militarily important city. A lot of troops have been based there. It's a big city. Think, I don't know, Miami, Cleveland. It's not a small place. The idea that a bunch of guys in camouflage with tanks roll into the city, nobody stops them. They roll up to the military headquarters, nobody stops them. They walk in, they sit down, they chat with people, nobody stops them. That means, either, as I said, that people just didn't care enough to stop them, or, and maybe you want to talk about this further, it means that Prigozhin had told people in advance that he was coming, and he expected some kind of support because he certainly wasn't blocked on the road the couple of hours drive or whatever it was from Ukraine to Rostov.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, help us report this story. Anybody from Rostov listening right now, anybody who's ever been in Rostov listening right now, or more broadly, anybody from Russia or with ties to Russia who has an observation on this from your own life experience, from someone you know back there still, anyone listening in Russia right now can call in from there, 212-433-WNYC.

Even more generally than that, of course, our phones are open for anyone's take on or your questions about the events of the last four days in Russia, and their implications for the Russian people, for the Ukrainian people, and yes for Western democracy with Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books including The Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism, which we will also talk about, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. You can also text us at that number if you want to send a comment or question that way or tweet @BrianLehrer.

Anne, in your article that came out on Saturday, the headline was Russia Slides into Civil War. In your piece on Sunday, the framing was a little less than that. You called Saturday's events an aborted coup. Since then Prigozhin has said that it was never intended to be even that. He was never aiming for regime change or to rule Russia himself. It was only a protest over the treatment of his men fighting for Russia in Ukraine. How much do you believe that?

Anne: First of all, the language about civil war comes from Putin. It was Putin who, on Saturday morning, described this as a civil war. He evoked 1917. Actually, very unusually for him, he didn't blame this on the West or say, "It's the CIA doing this." He was clear that it was Russians fighting Russians. He evoked 1917. It was interesting. You could hear that one of his fears is that-- of course, the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917 started partly because disgruntled soldiers were coming back from the front in World War I where there'd been a lot of failures, and the commanders had managed it disastrously and so on. You can see that he has that parallel in his head.

He used that language, and then he used it again, actually, in the wake of the events to compliment his troops for having resisted the civil war. That struck me at that point as him creating an elaborate post-hoc narrative to try and make people sound heroic. It's pretty clear that Prigozhin had broader goals. It's true that he was probably angry that his Wagner Group was maybe about to be disbanded, that they weren't getting the ammunition they wanted. He'd been saying that for several months. These are kind of mafia guys, so maybe he was being dissed. He wasn't being given enough respect.

It's also pretty clear that he tapped into a real strain of discontent, mostly in the military, but also in military-adjacent people and families, which probably there were a lot of in Rostov of people who really do feel the war has not gone the way it was supposed to go. Kiev was supposed to be captured in three days. The rest of the country was supposed to be taken in six weeks in Ukraine. Instead, it's been a year and a half. Tens of thousands, maybe a couple of hundred thousand soldiers have died. Some in horrible conditions. Their bodies have been left on battlefields and Prigozhin is able to articulate this discontent and also to blame it.

He's used it to focus blame on the military leaders who he says are corrupt, they live luxurious lives. They're unbalanced. They're doing a bad job. He's successfully done that and he seems to have had a lot of support for that. Today, there are various leaks and swirling rumors about who might have been supporting him or who might have hoped that he could help them change the leadership of the army.

I think the important point to remember is that this is a very comforting narrative for a lot of Russians. The idea that, "Okay, we didn't fail because we're bad or because-- we failed because of these actions of these specific people." That had a deep well of possibly popular support, certainly, in the military. It may be that now Putin feels he has to push back against that and Prigozhin has to be sent out of the country. If, by the way, as we're speaking right now, I don't know where Prigozhin is. People who are known not to tell the truth have said he's in Belarus.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, we don't really know.

Anne: Until we see pictures, it's not real. It's one of those situations.

Brian Lehrer: The New York Times telling of the story as of yesterday seemed to suggest that Prigozhin was acting out of weakness, not so much as an aspiring strong man seeing an opportunity to run the empire or something. For example, this quote, "Prigozhin's mutiny was ultimately a desperate act of someone who was cornered. His options were narrowing as his bitter dispute intensified." That was from Michael Kofman, director of Russia Studies at the Virginia-based research group CNA. Do you see anything like that at this point?

Anne: I think several things can be true. I think that's true. He saw that his group was going to be disbanded, but it's equally true that he-- Clearly, Putin believes this or he wouldn't have reacted the way he did on Saturday that that act of desperation or anger, or whatever it was could have picked up some more support. Clearly, Prigozhin expected some more support, as we saw in Rostov, there was some support. Active desperation that he thought would end in a better way and he may have had reason to think that. I would put it like I would add one more layer of nuance.

Brian Lehrer: Although the Times article also suggested to my eye that Prigozhin may have gotten himself in over his head on Saturday. Yes, he took Rostov with little or no resistance but then concluded if he really marched on Moscow, which he seemed like he was starting to do, Putin would crush the rebellion and I guess probably kill him. Does that ring true to you?

Anne: It does ring true. Although, it also could be that he expected someone in Moscow to let him in.

Brian Lehrer: That's a strain of reporting we've been starting to see too, that he had some reason to believe that somebody or some number of people in Putin's chain of command may have participated with him in maybe even a coup.

Anne: Right. This is my point is that, yes, it was an act of desperation, but it seems unlikely to me that he would've gotten 200 miles short of Moscow without some belief that there was a reason to go there. He didn't just send those guys up the highway to enjoy the ride. He must have expected something would happen that then did not materialize. We are all guessing. To be clear, one of the things that you have to understand about Russia is when people, normally, when you analyze a country like, I don't know, France, or even Spain, or even Mexico, you're talking about their institutions. There are people who have predictable forms of behavior, there are things that--

Here, we're talking about relationships between very brutal, very volatile people. The relationship between Putin and Prigozhin, and Shoigu, who's the Minister of Defense. These are personal relationships. One of them deciding to switch sides from one day to the next isn't something that you can predict based on your knowledge of, I don't know, Russian history or institutional behavior. Russia is a country where almost everything now is personalized at the very top. These are individual decisions.

Brian Lehrer: I think we have a call on more or less what we were just talking about. Anna in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Anna.

Anna: Yes, thank you. Actually, after I asked my question, I heard Ms. Applebaum saying exactly the same thing, that there was probably, that Prigozhin was counting on somebody in the Kremlin close to Putin that was going to help. Of course, this did not materialize so he had to turn right back. I'm very surprised that not very much coverage is given to this issue. I know it's speculation but it sounds quite likely.

Brian Lehrer: Anna, thank you. Any take, Anne, on how much dissent there is within Putin's inner circle as a result of genuine concern about the war or what you were just saying that everything is about personal relationships and he's losing some of his top people?

Anne: I don't think dissent is the right word because dissent implies some alternative philosophy or different set of beliefs. You could say that there is clearly competition between groups, mafia warfare between the various different teams. Some of that competition is about power and money, and some of it may already begin to be competition over who comes next after Putin. It may not be directed at Putin himself or not yet, he may suit everyone to leave him there now.

What happens if he falls out of a window or is hit by a bus or whatever, I'm not speculating that that will happen, I'm just saying if he were to disappear tomorrow, somebody would have to be in charge. One of the things that's really important to understand about the Russian political system is not only do we not know who would succeed Putin, he has named a successor. We don't know who would choose that person so there isn't an institution to choose the next leader. There's no politburo.

Brian Lehrer: Which there was in the Soviet Union, right? Yes, there was the politburo.

Anne: There was in the Soviet Union. Yes. In that sense, the Soviet Union was more stable. There was a politburo. We knew who its members were and we know that they would choose the next leader. in this system, we don't know who it would be. Competition between people could be beginning now, even for something that might not happen for 20 years, but for influence-- Prigozhin was striving for some popular appeal as well. He was, as I said, appealing particularly to soldiers but maybe to others about his version of the army being corrupt and run by people for corrupt reasons.

The war, he said, had been started for corrupt reasons. It was because people wanted to loot Ukraine. He's the first person actually really since-- Alexei Navalny tried it a few years ago before he went to prison. He's the first person to try to appeal more broadly to Russians and to offer some kind of alternative explanation for what's going on.

Brian Lehrer: Here's Anne in Colts Neck in Jersey, who wants to give a little historical background. I think that relates to some of her own family background on the city of Rostov. Anne, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Ann: Yes. Hi, good morning. My father was born in Russia and my grandparents were born in the 1880s in Rostov. Rostov del Don means Rostov by the water. Del don means by the water. To the best of my knowledge, they were highly educated, and Rostov, at that time, around the Enlightenment when Europe was seeped in education and reformation and science, Rostov was a beautiful city and a beautiful European-looking city. As I understand it today, it's highly industrial, it's highly commercial, and it really went downhill.

[crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Militarized because of its proximity to Ukraine, I gather. Did your grandparents describe this to you personally ever?

Ann: My uncle did. He was the oldest in the family. My grandfather worked for the czar in Russia as a metallurgist. My grandmother was a nurse. This is around 1880s, 1890s, turn of the century, so it seemed like Rostov was a cosmopolitan area at one time.

Brian Lehrer: Anne, thank you. Anne Applebaum, any reaction to that?

Anne: The only slight correction I would make is that Rostov-on-Don refers to the Don River, which flows through Rostov. Rostov is on the Don River Delta. That would be the only thing I would say. Yes, it's a big trading city, it's got theaters, it has museums, it would have some Tzarist-era buildings. Actually, you could see some of them in the photographs from Saturday, and it would be in a different kind of country. Yes, it would be a big cosmopolitan place. As it is, it's fairly cut off, as are quite a lot of Russian cities. It's one of the real tragedies of Russia is that the potential of the country has been so undermined and so destroyed by this particular kind of government

Brian Lehrer: Listener text. Other possibilities on why Prigozhin stopped reported by some outlets is that the FSB had his family in custody and threatened to harm them unless he stopped. I don't know if that's confirmed. It sounds like it isn't, but it does go to some of my thinking, Anne, that I'd like to get your take on. To my completely untrained eye, and I've never been in Russia, and this is not my expertise by any means, but it's starting to look like Putin won.

He's perhaps not that much weaker than before as many people first said he was. Prigozhin was vanquished and had to flee, apparently, to a country run by a Putin puppet. I know you said we don't believe he's in Belarus until we see it. Fair enough. Putin is in charge in Russia, and further retribution may be on the way, including, who knows, Prigozhin accidentally falling down an elevator shaft or something. How much do you think Putin is weaker than he was five days ago?

Anne: Putin is weaker. He's won in the sense that Moscow was not toppled. Whether that was ever Prigozhin's aim, probably it wasn't. Nobody is going to ever be able to unsee the moment when Prigozhin's men were driving up the highway unstopped, when they shot down several Russian helicopters and a plane, when soldiers were beginning to say, "We'll take his side." There were a few videos like that. Nobody will ever unsee that moment of weakness. Suddenly it became clear that Putin is not all-powerful. He doesn't control everything. There are some weaknesses in the system.

In the way that sometimes failed insurrections or failed revolutions can have an impact later on, this one could as well. We'll see. I really don't want to predict the future at this point, but in Russian history, there have been several moments when that was the case. For example, the [unintelligible 00:22:59] in 1991, if you remember the old Communist Party and the old security state tried to unseat Gorbachev and they failed. It was a ridiculous effort, and it almost immediately fell apart and it was chaotic, and so on. It did suddenly make Gorbachev look weak, and it was one of the reasons why the various Soviet Republics began declaring independence soon afterwards and why the Soviet Union eventually fell apart.

Something like that doesn't have to succeed in order for it to have some political significance. From everyone that I've talked to in and around this subject, most people think that it has done that. Remember another thing that happened on Saturday was that everybody in the city of Moscow was told to stay home. They were given the day off on Monday. People started digging trenches around the city. There was a mobilization, there were tanks on the streets in Moscow. Sorry, there were no tanks, but there were armed personnel carriers and military vehicles.

There were efforts to dig up the roads on the outskirts of the city to prevent Prigozhin's men from coming in. There was this moment when the capital city panicked, maybe unnecessarily, maybe wrongly, but they panicked. I didn't think that will be immediately forgotten.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we'll continue in a minute on the events of the last four days in Russia. We'll get more into their implications for Ukraine and yes, for Western democracy with Anne Applebaum from The Atlantic and the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of books, including The Twilight of Democracy: the Seductive Lore of Authoritarianism, and more of your calls and texts and tweets. Stay with us. [theme music] Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue on the events of the last four days in Russia, and their implications with Anne Applebaum from the Atlantic and author of Twilight of Democracy. Anne, how much overall is your take that this matters to the war in Ukraine?

Anne: That I do find hard to be definitive about yet. Clearly had there been fighting inside Russia between different parts of the Russian security establishment that would've been good for Ukraine in the sense that it would've required people to come home from the frontline. There was a brief moment on Saturday when some people hoped that that was what was going to happen. Ukrainians themselves have not said very much at all about what happened on Saturday. Also, not too many people and not too many NATO leaders have either. So far the only potential effects would be in the area of psychology and morale.

Will Russian troops be less enthusiastic about fighting if they know that their leaders are squabbling at home? We haven't seen anything definite on the ground. I would say one other effect that it has, is it actually shows us something about Putin, which is that when you push him he does move back. Prigozhin did this thing, he went 500 miles and Putin didn't kill him, and instead, he gave him this exit strategy in Belarus or maybe. The idea that Putin when his back is against the wall, he'll strike back didn't prove to be true. That may shape some thinking about Russia.

Brian Lehrer: About Ukraine?

Anne: Then I'd say the third thing is-- Well, about how there's been an idea that Ukraine has to be restrained, that we can't push Russia too far. That if Putin is pushed into a corner, he'll strike back or he'll do something. He'll use nuclear weapons. That looks a little bit less true actually now. Actually, Putin when strength is shown, he takes a step backward. I would say it has that kind of significance as well, but I don't think it so far has any significance on the battlefield.

Brian Lehrer: Although I've heard the opposite of what you just argued as well that Putin is so committed to remaining in power that if his back regarding Ukraine is further and further against the wall, he's more likely to use nuclear weapons.

Anne: No, but what we just saw was-- that's been the normal argument. That's what people have been saying since February 2022. What we just saw was not that. When pushed-- He actually got in a plane and flew away from Moscow. We don't know exactly where he went, but he left the city, he made a panicky speech and the next day he's-- in that evening, he said, "All right, you're forgiven." He's, "All the Wagner guys can sign up to join the army." In fact, we may have misunderstood him or the common idea of how he would behave may have not been correct. That's maybe an over-theoretical idea.

Brian Lehrer: I guess it depends on what he thinks the consequences for him will be one way or another. The national apathy you write about that Putin has cultivated in Russia, do you think it extends to the troops in Ukraine? I saw that President Zelensky seems to be using Saturday's events to try to demoralize Russian troops in Ukraine saying, "Putin doesn't have your back and Prigozhin exposed the lie of Putin's claim that the enemy is Nazis in Ukraine. What are you really fighting for?" Does any of that ring true?

Anne: Some of it might. We don't really know what Russian soldiers in the field can hear or see or what they know about events. The Ukrainians have been making arguments like that since the beginning of the war. That may account for in part some of the morale issues that the Russians have had and some of the failure to fight very hard that we saw, especially in the beginning but then later on. Yes, of course, the Ukrainians hope that these events will drive that home. "Do you really want to die so that a bunch of warlords can make more money? Do you really want to die for people who don't care what happens to you?"

One of the other important points about Prigozhin is some of the language that he used was very appealing, particularly on those grounds. There are a lot of people who are waiting to hear. I've repeated myself now but the people are waiting to hear an explanation for why the war is lost. He's been saying, "Well, you know, it's lost because we were fighting it for the wrong reasons. The guys who are running the war are crooks." That's an explanation that people can understand and that. Over the long term, if that's what people think is happening, yes, it could affect morale.

Brian Lehrer: Richard in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Richard.

Richard: Thank you. Good morning. My comment is that I think so much of the reporting focuses on Prigozhin and whether Putin has been weakened. I think it's critically important that in addition to discussing the characters and what was Lukashenka's role in Belarus, that reporting and discussions about Prigozhin and Wagner provide historical context about the war that the mercenary group is waging, has been waging in Syria, Mali, the Central African Republic, countries where the reports of mass rape. What's really behind these wars, including the invasion Ukraine, which is pillaging these countries have been natural resources on behalf of an oligarch elite in Russia. I'd like to hear what Ms. Applebaum has to say about that.

Brian: Thank you, Richard.

Richard: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Anne.

Anne: No, that's an excellent point. I have seen some reporting about that in the last few days and heard it as well. Yes, the Wagner Group is an international organization. In fact, it was in a lot of other countries before it was in Ukraine. It's been involved in Libya and Sudan, Central African Republic, Syria, most notably. It's a mercenary group that does both fighting on behalf of dictators in some of those countries. Also exploitation of natural resources. It owns some gold mines in various places.

It's clearly seeking to extract minerals from Africa and get them back to Russia. It's also been run for a long time as a-- There was a plausible deniability, it's not really the Russian state. It's an independent organization. Actually, Putin in the last 24 hours said we've been funding it. It was one of the first times he's admitted that Wagner is in fact a part of the Russian state. It created this false idea that it was something different from Russia but of course it was Russia. Russia's foreign policy in Africa has been unbelievably brutal and unbelievably cynical. There's no pretense of creation or any building of structures. It's all about, as I say, extracting raw materials and supporting dictatorships.

Of course, another thing, project that Prigozhin has been involved in is disinformation. He ran the Internet Research Institute, which was the name of the organization that ran disinformation campaigns in the 2016 election in the United States. They've also used similar kinds of tactics, trolls, and the creation of divisions in other countries around the world, especially in Africa but not only. This is an institution that is responsible for some of the worst crimes that Russia has committed in the last decade, both military, political, and social. Nobody was making a hero out of Prigozhin in the last several days. Some people have misinterpreted the coverage as doing that.

There's no one who thinks this is a nice person or that he would be a better leader. The coverage was about how he was weakening Putin and what that might mean. There were some people, including the Ukrainians who hoped that would happen, you could have got that impression but Prigozhin is a uniquely horrific example of a mercenary thug in every possible sense of the word.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, I was going to raise this too in a slightly different way that people in this country mostly never heard of Prigozhin before. I think Americans following the news on Saturday were for that brief moment rooting for Prigozhin because anything bad for Putin must be good for the world. Now, I've seen multiple people in the West call Prigozhin a monster, like the EUs foreign policy chief calling Prigozhin the monster acting against his creator. There's what you just described. If he actually did take over Russia, would he be any better for democracy than Putin has been? I guess not.

Anne: He would not be better for democracy. I think we can agree on that. He would be weaker and he would immediately, or he or anybody actually would immediately be weaker and would immediately be the focus of all kinds of attempts to unseat him. One of the things we learned from Saturday, not that we didn't know it already, is that whoever comes after Putin, whatever comes next, there will be a crisis around it. As I said, there's no succession process. There are no institutions. That means that however power changes hands, there will be some emergency around it because all kinds of people will have to restructure their connections and rethink their roles.

Any replacement of Putin will create that dynamic. It will weaken Moscow. That doesn't mean that whoever comes next is necessarily going to be nice.

Brian Lehrer: Well, let me ask you to take a big step back and put this in the context of your book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. The book came out in 2020 so that was before the January 6th insurrection, and of course before a Prigozhin insurrection. If you were writing a new edition today, would the basic premise be any different or your outlook for democracy any better or worse?

Anne: I don't know that the outlook for democracy has changed. January 6th this is not an analogy and I'm not making a comparison and don't misunderstand what I'm about to say. January the 6th was also a blow that weakened American democracy. The Constitution won and Mike Pence saved the day, and Joe Biden was elected president. In the end, the electoral college functions the way it's more or less supposed to. It turned out that Trump's assault on the system had an ongoing tail, and the ongoing tail is in the large percentage of Americans who still believe the election was stolen and the large number of Republicans who are still willing to support him, leave aside the various indictments, despite the actions he took on January the 6th.

He's convinced a lot of Americans that democracy doesn't function or it shouldn't function. He certainly weakened the system just by doing that. I don't want to say as Prigozhin weakened Russia because I said I don't want to make that exact comparison.

Brian: Analogy.

Anne: You can weaken the system without destroying it. As I said, the long tail of January the 6th, the impact it had on people's perceptions of the country inside the US and also around the world I think is still there and we're still coping with it.

Brian Lehrer: I wonder then how you see the decisions that I see you've tweeted at least the reference to that we've seen from the US Supreme Court in the last week. If you think they're important to the preservation of democracy in this country earlier this month, for people who forget, they affirmed the part of the Voting Rights Act that allows the federal government to review state election law changes that may be racially disenfranchising.

Yesterday, as you've tweeted a reaction to, they wiped away the legal basis that Trump claimed for his coup attempt, the so-called independent state legislature theory, that partisan legislatures could ignore the popular vote in a presidential election and their own state constitutions could be ignored too and declare their preferred candidate the winner of their state. Important?

Anne: Very important. Really, really important, particularly that last decision, which would've had-- I'm not a legal scholar but I have colleagues who were working on that. The potential for state legislatures to override their own state Supreme Courts to override the electoral college to use gerrymandering and other forms of voter suppression to keep one party in power. That could have unleashed a nightmare that might have really profoundly undermine democracy even more than Hitler II. Fortunately, there still seems to be a majority of the Supreme Court in favor of maintaining the Constitution and maintaining the right to vote, which I'm sorry that I even have to say that but there is.

Brian Lehrer: Just one thought, and this would've been question one that I probably asked you when you were on for your book interview in 2020 but I don't remember. The subtitle of the book, The Lure of Authoritarianism is I think to many regular listeners a contradiction. They might think of authoritarianism as being the rule of a dictator who seizes power and the popular will be damned. In reality, we see the lure of authoritarianism and that's the idea.

Anne: To some people, the idea that there's a supreme leader or a single party with one message that everybody has to obey is an appealing idea. It has always been an appealing idea. When the founding fathers were writing the US Constitution, that was one of the things they had in their head. They were remembering, they all knew the story of the fall of the Roman Republic and how it had been taken over by Julius Caesar, who was a demagogue and that's what they were thinking about. The idea that people could be seduced by autocratic demagogue is hundreds of years old.

It's nothing new. For us, it seems new because we've lived in a very unique era, starting with World War II, this idea that democracy was dominant around the world, that there were more and more countries becoming democracies. It seemed a obvious end goal. For many people, democracy is divisive. It's confusing. Particularly now when it can be so ugly and partisan. The leaders seem so weak and petty. That's true not just in our country but in many others. People are looking for alternatives. I think we would be very naive to assume that nobody wants them.

Brian Lehrer: Those people in the country or some other country who think things are slipping away want stability. That further tempts them toward that in brief, right?

Anne: There are different reasons for it, but if you're someone who feels that things are getting worse and catastrophically worse and the country is being led astray. The Republican party talks about Cultural Marxism or the left or the Democrats, that they use different terms for it led astray by unloyal groups. Then you might want to reassert power and make sure that this moral slippage ends. That is an appealing idea to a lot of people.

Brian Lehrer: Anne Applebaum, staff writer for The Atlantic, and author of books, including Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of Authoritarianism. Thank you for coming on and explaining so much and trying to work through so much of what's happened just in the last four days in Russia and put it into historical and global context. Thank you.

Anne: Thank you.

 

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