Dmitry Medvedev’s wild roundup of 2022
Just before Putin appointed him first deputy chairman of Russia’s Military-Industrial Commission, Dimon penned his take on the year
In the day since this 4,470-word essay was published, Dmitry Medvedev has already tweeted an even crazier list of “futuristic hypotheses” for 2023. And Putin also appointed him to serve as first deputy chairman of Russia's Military-Industrial Commission (giving him another job besides Security Council deputy chairman). Anyway, here’s what Dimon says in his roundup of 2022 for Rossiyskaya Gazeta, the Russian government’s paper of record.
Medvedev’s six conclusions on the year:
Fascism is next-door but won’t prevail;
It’s now clear that more divides Russia and the West than unites them;
"Strong means" are needed to treat an "epidemic of Russophobia";
The West is the one who’s isolated;
There will be no Apocalypse, for now; and
Russia is maturing and winning.
The essay is full of hate speech that no American newspaper would even print. My favorite is probably “the cannabis-smoking cannibals from Kyiv” but most of his invectives mention fascism. At one point, he says “the disgusting, almost fascist regime of Ukraine” (отвратительного, почти фашистского режима Украины), which seems like an odd slip, given that he surely believes Kyiv is more than “almost fascist.”
Medvedev links Russia’s invasion (something he says Moscow couldn’t delay any longer, given NATO’s refusal to forswear Ukrainian membership and Kyiv’s supposed plans to acquire nukes) to the Kremlin’s never-ending struggle against Nazis, trying to build a continuum with WWII, the lessons of which he says the West has forgotten.
Medvedev also hits the “Anglo-Saxon world” trope repeatedly, apparently encouraged by Putin’s recent embrace of the term. Russia’s very existence is at stake in Ukraine, he insists, while simultaneously arguing that the West (which is attacking Russia through Ukrainian proxies) is too weak and divided to rule the world any longer. The “lustful hands of the Anglo-Saxons” (who are “sworn to darkness”!) are as much a threat to Europeans as Russia, and a growing protest movement by ordinary people in Europe (against rising utility bills and being forced to surrender their jobs to Ukrainian refugees, lol) means that this is slowly becoming apparent to the masses. Medvedev later says something similar about Ukrainians: Russia isn’t at war with the people, just the corrupt/fascist leadership. (He says the “narrow-mindedness” of political elites in Poland and the Baltic states specifically will lead to “social explosions” and changes in leadership there in the near future.)
In a nutshell, he says today’s “epidemic of Russophobia” is the Western elite’s attempt to deflect blame for its own failings (though he notes that the trend began with the annexation of Crimea, which suggests a rather different reason for the phobia). Medvedev even argues that Europe and the U.S. have erected their own “Iron Curtain” and betrayed market economics by “illegally sanctioning” Russia and seizing its assets. This, he says, is grounds for Russia to steal all the intellectual property it can from the West (though he doesn’t pause here to explain why Russia should need to copy such losers).
Most of the essay is overtly anti-American. U.S. neocolonialism today, he says, would make even Rudyard Kipling blush! For example, American companies bought Ukrainian farmlands and profited big from the grain deal negotiated through Turkey, explains Medvedev, noting that all Russia ever wanted here was to prevent famine in poor countries (this has been the Kremlin’s talking point for months, though the deal itself doesn’t say anything about export destinations, as far as I understand). Also, Washington and London are using the Ukraine war to drive China and Europe apart, preventing a “long-term and lucrative partnership” — which again highlights how Western states’ interests don’t really align at all, he says.
When writing about the Apocalypse, Medvedev says Russia’s use of nuclear weapons could be either “retaliatory or preventive” (he seems to enjoy that this ambiguity even in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange frightens the West). So long as Russia doesn’t get its “maximum security guarantees” from the West, there should be no new disarmament agreements. Earlier in the essay, he says even more broadly that Moscow can’t hope to negotiate in good faith with the West again until the current generation of political elites is gone from power (which is ironically how most Westerners talk now about engagement with Moscow).
In the last section of the essay, immediately after praising Russians’ “resilience and solidarity,” Medvedev launches into a condemnation of internal enemies, expressing relief that the “alien toxic foam” that formed on Russian society is “gradually disappearing.” Any Russians who wish defeat on their own country and army are outright “traitors,” he says, though he leaves open a gray area for expats aboard “philosophers' ships” (an allusion to intellectuals expelled from Soviet Russia in 1922). “God will judge them,” concludes Medvedev, before finishing with more praise for the Russian economy and the state’s handling of weapons manufacturing.