I keep watching the news about the continuing ordeal of Ukraine and then changing channels, and I know I am not alone in doing this: there is only so much the general viewer of TV can take. People who understand more about international affairs than I do tell me that the Ukrainian/Russian matter is complex, but to me the matter seems simple enough, involving the obsessions of a powerful man, and the suffering of an innocent population. As usual, it is the women and the children who are bearing the brunt of the conflict, while President Putin remains supremely indifferent to their fate. And, as so often, I wonder what makes him tick.
Figures who were prominent in the past have given their opinions about powerful men. I’ve lived a long time, and I’ve always been interested in history, as well as in scholarly opinions about the subject. Scottish historian, philosopher, and general polymath Thomas Carlyle believed that ‘the history of the world is but the biography of great men,’ while Lord Acton, a Catholic historian writing in the generation after Carlyle, remains famous for expressing the idea that power tends to corrupt; he also believed that great men are nearly always bad men. Semantics are important: we are fairly clear as to the meaning of ‘powerful men,’ but the word ‘great’ is rather more layered.
Acton went on to opine that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and he also disapproved very strongly of the sanctification of ‘success,’ another nuanced concept. Acton had Oliver Cromwell in mind when he expressed this idea, but of course every generation produces similar men. I have learned about a long list: the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Milosevic are just some examples.
Of course millions of people have troubled early years, and very few of them become tyrants or dictators, but the Kaiser, Hitler, Stalin and Milosevic all endured great unhappiness as children. So did Putin. All had to bear what is often referred to as ACE: Adverse Childhood Experience. And I think it is true to say that childhood never goes away.
'It is often said that people get the government they deserve, and even in democracies, many individuals act only out of self interest, and are quite content to have a so-called strong man at the helm.'
The Kaiser wielded immense power, but was erratic, highly strung and impulsive, and at the end of the First World War was often labelled a megalomaniac. His birth had been horrendous, and it was thought at first that he had died. His mother had been heavily drugged with the then new chloroform, which meant he was, too, so that he was quite possibly brain damaged, while one arm had been severely injured during delivery, and was always markedly shorter than the other. Throughout his childhood he endured painful treatments designed to correct this problem, but they never worked. His relationship with his parents was complicated, to say the least, and he seems to have spent much of his life trying to compensate for his deficits.
Hitler and Stalin both had extremely violent fathers, inevitably long-suffering mothers, and both experienced periods of poverty during childhood. Milosevic’s father committed suicide while Milosevic was still only a schoolboy, and later his mother, too, took her own life. He was eventually deemed a ‘crisis maker.’
And now the world is contending with Putin, whose childhood explains, I think, a great deal. He was born in 1952, in Leningrad, now St Petersburg, the city that had endured a Nazi siege lasting almost 900 days. Putin’s mother nearly starved to death, and his father returned from the war badly wounded. At the time of Putin’s birth, the couple had already lost two children. Putin was thus born to parents traumatised by grief, privation and loss, and the hardship continued for years in the shape of primitive, cramped living conditions and unremitting, low-paid work. Putin was bullied at school, and became a fighter in reaction, earning a black belt in judo along the way.
It is in childhood that the capacities for attachment and empathy develop, but trauma, abuse and deprivation inhibit such desirable progress, and the child learns to defend itself against feeling. (Milosevic could apparently be charming, but was more noted for his coldness, and Putin is reputed to be much the same.) As they grow, such children also develop a heightened sensitivity to the likelihood of threat, often thinking that threat exists when it does not. Aggression and ruthlessness serve as protection. They fight rather than take flight. Thus damaged people do more damage.
When leaders of dubious quality come to power, the question of the general population’s responsibility should be asked: it is often said that people get the government they deserve, and even in democracies, many individuals act only out of self interest, and are quite content to have a so-called strong man at the helm. But it was unnerving to see Putin’s huge rally of a few days ago. I wonder how many people in that apparently enthusiastic crowd saw the bizarre irony of the President quoting from St John: Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.
I wonder what Lord Acton would have said.
Gillian Bouras is an expatriate Australian writer who has written several books, stories and articles, many of them dealing with her experiences as an Australian woman in Greece.
Main image: Chris Johnson illustration