As hybrid attacks and Russian interference continue to escalate, persistent questions remain regarding what Vladimir Putin truly wants and if he will attack. To examine the underlying framework driving Moscow’s foreign policy, we questioned Mikhail Epstein, a 76-year-old Moscow-born philosopher and professor emeritus at Emory University in Atlanta, who has spent roughly four decades residing in the United States. Epstein addressed these dynamics extensively in his 2023 volume, L’antimonde russe, which examines the “Russian soul.”
Historical Opposition to the West and the Legacy of Peter the Great
According to Epstein, Russian state identity has historically formed in direct negation of the West rather than through independent civilizational creation. Throughout centuries of political evolution, Russia has struggled between a lack of sufficient internal autonomy and creativity to build its own civilization and an immense pride that rejects a subsidiary role. Historical attempts to emerge—ranging from the concept of “Third Rome” as a pillar of the Orthodox faith against a Catholic and Protestant West to the Soviet Union’s ideological struggle of socialism against capitalism—ultimately ended in failure.
Epstein points out that Russia’s great men—writers, musicians, and scientists—historically trained in Europe, creating a lasting dynamic of rivalry and jealousy. Referencing the observations of German philosopher Oswald Spengler, Epstein notes that Tsar Peter the Great’s late 17th and early 18th-century decisions to open the country to Europe forced European technologies, sciences, arts, and education onto the country. This Europeanization generated deep-seated cultural resentment that persists.
The Underground Man Archetype and Modern Political Culture
Expanding on literary parallels, Epstein compares Vladimir Putin to the narrator of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground—a figure possessing acute self-awareness yet lacking artistic talent, choosing instead to disparage others. Rather than constructing a true civilization that other peoples would join of their own free will, current leadership relies on challenges to the world and humiliation.
This political culture, Epstein argues, retains deep structural influences from the historical nomadic heritage of the Golden Horde, where state survival and legitimacy centered primarily on the conquest of new lands. This nomadic mindset translates into a social and psychological “chaotization” that prevents people from attaching to places or establishing durable links, fostering an internal environment where many Russians struggle to invest in the improvement of their daily lives because they feel everything could collapse tomorrow.
The Institutionalization of Mortality in the Russian Social Contract
Addressing domestic support for the conflict in Ukraine, Epstein characterizes the modern Russian political model as a “necrocracy,” where state power systematically channels existential void and inertia toward “death for the fatherland.” Rather than purely material incentives, many soldiers enter military service driven by the absurdity of a life devoid of social and creative prospects.
This pervasive focus on mortality manifests across public life, from early childhood—where babies are dressed in military uniforms and strollers are made in the shape of tanks—to popular culture and political ideology. In March 2019, Senator Viktor Bondarev, president of the defense commission of the Federation Council, pressed Education Minister Olga Vassilieva to restore military preparation in schools. Figures such as Aleksandr Dugin have even associated death with “Russian” eroticism, reflecting a political ecosystem where death has defeated Eros.
The Virus Analogy and Future Security Implications
Analyzing the durability of the regime, Epstein emphasizes that the state apparatus has destroyed the foundations of civilization—laws, political institutions, treaties, diplomacy, civil society, and the business world—while simultaneously reinforcing its own power and public cohesion. Drawing a sharp biological comparison, Epstein warns that the Russian state functions akin to a virus: inactive in a neutral state, but activating upon penetrating a foreign body.
Epstein cautions that if Ukraine falls, Vladimir Putin will not stop there and will likely attack the West, starting with Eastern Europe, expanding in the manner of a virus.
Worth a look
