Lost in Translation: A Short Commentary on Putin’s Interview with Tucker Carlson

by Alexey Zhavoronkov

Putin’s recent interview with Tucker Carlson, which gained much attention worldwide, was a rare occasion for Putin’s direct conversation with a foreign journalist since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine. Those viewers who already see Russia as a totalitarian state would perhaps expect Putin to give his foreign audience a first glance at his new ideology (which was a futile hope, given the obstacles that impede the formation of such ideology). A neutral audience would perhaps expect new arguments on the causes of the invasion of Ukraine. Those academic scholars who regard Russia as a conservative state would like to see a presentation of the principles of Putin’s ‘new conservatism’. Other curious viewers (myself included) would look for Tucker Carlson’s attempts at explaining the political concepts used by Putin to the English-speaking audience, ‘translating’ them in a conceptual sense of the word. Unfortunately, none of these expectations were met.

For the Russian-speaking audience familiar with the topics of Putin’s public speeches, the interview did not contain a single fresh argument not presented on previous occasions. There was no mention of conservatism, be it because Carlson was not prepared to discuss the differences between Western conservatisms and Russian self-proclaimed ‘conservatism’ or because there was no interest on the Russian side (by this, I mean the government and not the Russian propagandists who lamented the absence of such discussion). Nor was there any attempt by Carlson, who, at least on this occasion, proved to be more of a passive listener than a serious interviewer, to summarize Putin’s arguments in his own concepts. (The latter would certainly be interesting and important to analyse for a better understanding of Putin’s image among the American Right.) Still, the conversation and some media reactions to it have touched upon several topics that are worth a short commentary.

1. Putin’s rationality. One of the most characteristic reactions to the interview was a feeling of relief among some conservative commentators, who subsequently pointed out that Putin is, in fact, a rational person who can be consequent in his own decisions. First, it is obvious that ‘rational’ in this context does definitely not mean moral, especially in the sense of liberal values. It could be rationality in the broadest sense, representing the consequent character of one’s decisions within one’s perspective (which is not necessarily based only on proven facts). Or it could also be some kind of common-sense rationale, which is more in line with classical conservatism. From my point of view, Putin’s case is an example of the former option, although some conservative commentators are more inclined to accept the latter. The problem with the latter interpretation is that Putin’s supposedly realist view of international relations proves not so realistic when it comes to the assessment of Russia’s role in the big picture, especially from an economic perspective. For instance, Putin makes highly dubious statements about the “well-balanced, mutually complementary” character of Russia’s trade with China “in high-tech, energy, scientific research and development.” This statement, which can easily be disproven by statistical data and trends, sounds more like a self-soothing mantra than an even remotely adequate description of the current state of affairs.

On a side note, it is very sad that many commentators are already content with the conclusion that Putin is not a lunatic and thus (supposedly) will not use nuclear weapons on a whim. They are not as concerned with his view of European history that could easily be used to justify further wars in the future, nor do they place much weight on his remarks on biological threats to national security, which, again, can as easily provide an impulse for further drastic actions. Moreover, not a small number of the interview’s audience, even among the political and intellectual elites in Western countries, regard Putin as a positive counterexample to other, mostly liberal, politicians of the West, as the latter regularly become subjects of criticism due to the egoistical character of their international diplomatic efforts. One could use this observation as a reason for a serious analysis of the current (rather miserable) state of international politics and the degradation of diplomacy during the current epoch in which media attention and impact on a broad audience are deemed more worthy than the actual results.

2. Putin on human enhancement. This topic was, on the contrary, largely overlooked by commentators or connected exclusively to Putin’s further remark on Elon Musk’s Neuralink project. Much more interesting, however, are the previous sentences that contain specific examples of human enhancement: “Mankind is currently facing many threats. Due to genetic research, it is now possible to create a superhuman, a specialized human being – a genetically engineered athlete, scientist, military man.” The remark has an ambiguous nature. On the one hand, it stresses the potential risks and threats of contemporary biotechnologies. On the other hand, Putin’s positive assessment of Elon Musk’s project implies the necessity to accept the current biotechnological developments and, possibly, to participate in the advancement of some technologies.

It should be noted here that, as far as we know from other examples of Putin’s public speeches mentioning biotechnologies, his key source on this topic is Mikhail Kovalchuk, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Director of the Kurchatov Institute, and his trusted aide. In a speech from September 2015 during a session of the Federation Council, Kovalchuk addressed the topic of nanotechnologies in the same ambiguous way as Putin in his interview. For instance, he emphasized the dangers of modern biotechnological weapons, going so far as to argue that it is already possible to use such weapons for targeting specific ethnos, implying that Russians should be readying themselves against foreign biotechnological aggression. At the same time, he called upon his audience to jump on the bandwagon of contemporary biotechnological ‘breakthroughs’ with the aim of ultimately achieving a ‘full cycle’ of biotechnological competencies, like the already existing full cycle nuclear competencies of Rosatom. The combination of fear against biotechnological ‘deviations’  (nurtured both by real developments and conspiracy theories like the ones concerning ethnobiological weapons) and the avid desire for ‘sovereign’ biotechnological breakthroughs that should supposedly be more effective in the absence of the necessity to abide by international bioethical regulations is what defines the trajectory of many recent developments in Russian bio(geo)politics.

One might ask how exactly does the biotechnological rhetoric that makes use of Nietzsche’s notion of Übermensch, alluding to transhumanist visions of humankind’s future, get along with the rhetoric of traditional values (including the concept of ‘orthodox bioethics’) or with specific ideological concepts, such as Dugin’s idea of Russia as a state that did not (and should not) reach the postmodern era, thus successfully avoiding most of its dangers. I will go into more detail in my upcoming post on the topic of biotechnological enhancement, as understood by two opposing groups in the Russian political elite.

3. Putin on ‘spiritual unity’. Putin’s answer to the last question of the interview contained bold claims about the spiritual unity among Russians – and, in a similar way, between Ukrainians and Russians, despite the ongoing war. Some commentators were visibly baffled by Putin’s word choice, which prompted them to look for ‘supernatural’ explanations. However, the topic was not about the supernatural but about social and cultural unity – a question that has occupied Putin’s mind at least since the 2011 protests (or perhaps since the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in late 2004), which, at the time, were a major shock to the Russian government. While the notion of ‘spiritual bracers’, coined by Valery Zorkin as a means to overcome social polarization, is not as much in use among Russian officials as it was several years ago, the problem remains a hot topic. The proposed and applied solutions can be very different, ranging from punitive actions (with the goal of excluding all dissenters who openly express their views) to big ideological projects that supposedly should involve most Russians. In all cases, the goal is to maintain the image of a united Russia – and, in a broader sense, ‘Russian civilization’, in contrast to the ‘collective’ but disunited and, for the most part, spiritually shattered West.

In this context, it hardly comes as a surprise that Putin mentions the Russian Orthodox Church as an instrument of maintaining the desired unity – both among Russian citizens and between Ukrainians and Russians. Since the early 2010s, after the installation of Kirill as the new Patriarch, the Russian Orthodox Church has steadily increased its political significance, during the latest years even gaining ground in matters of biopolitics (see indication above). Since Putin likes to emphasise the idea that material well-being is absolutely not important in comparison to family, patriotism, and moral values, which is an interesting contrast to his older speeches where he mentions life, freedom, and love as the three most important values, his choice is obvious. Consequently, as the supposed bastion of traditional moral values, Russia should have its ‘spiritual’ foundations in the Orthodox religion. According to the plans of Russian officials, the difficulties posed by this view, stemming from the multinational character of the Russian state with its great variety of religious groups, should be supposedly resolved by the political concept of ‘state-civilization’, manifested in the 2023 edition of Russia’s Foreign Policy Concept (which will be the focus of another post).

Even more paradoxical is Putin’s claim to a ‘spiritual’ unity between Ukrainians and Russians that remains in place despite the ongoing war. (We can find the same claim, for instance, in Putin’s 2021 article “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”, which uses the notion of a common ‘spiritual space’.) While it is true that there existed a unique space of cultural collaboration between Ukrainians and Russians, this space was steadily shrinking during the 2010s and then was utterly destroyed after February 2022. In this regard, Putin’s claims, just like his description of the character of economic relations between Russia and China, have no real foundation. The reinstalment of the structures of the Russian Orthodox Church in the occupied Ukrainian regions, accompanied by sealing the churches of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine, will not resolve this problem for the Russian government, as the disastrous social and cultural results of the war will linger for decades to come.