Lenin Meets Corleone
▻http://www.nationalreview.com/article/415027/lenin-meets-corleone-george-weigel
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Attempts to understand Vladimir Putin and the Russian revanchism that now threatens to dismantle the basic security architecture of post–Cold War Europe ought to begin not with reference to Lenin and Stalin, or by digging into one’s dog-eared copies of books by Hans Morgenthau, Samuel Huntington, or George Kennan. To be sure, there is a Leninist component in Putin’s methods, but save that for a moment. At the outset, consider the possibility that the best literary guide to Putin, Putinism, and early-21st-century Russia is Mario Puzo.
Russia is, in many respects, dying. Alcoholism is rampant. Life expectancy is sinking: Today, a 15-year-old Haitian boy has a longer life expectancy than his 15-year-old Russian counterpart. The economy is stagnant, and the ruble is cratering. Russia imports potatoes from Romania. Churches are largely empty. Yet atop this rotting body politic is an oligarchic elite that functions very much like the Mafia families depicted in Puzo’s novel The Godfather and the films spun off from it.
