It’s not just military-industrialists and the propaganda-soaked public who with ovine indifference follow Russia’s vozhd. Some pseudo-intellectuals, who have risen through the ranks and received rich rewards in return, are in the vanguard of support for the president.
Two of this breed, writing for the major newspaper Moskovskij Komsomolets, say Putin wants the West to know that now would be an opportune time to negotiate an end to fighting in Ukraine.
One of the “smiling cannibals” — a term privately used by some Russians to describe writers willing to attack anyone critical of Putin — is the paper’s political commentator Mikhail Rostovskii. He is so confident in his proximity to the throne that he refers to the president by his initials, VVP, an unthinkably brazen act for anyone but a close associate.
Virtually all Soviets, at least in public, referred to their long-time vozhd as “Comrade Stalin,” certainly not by his initials, as Americans did FDR. A Russian political journalist referring to the boss in this way is a surprising assertion of familiarity.
On December 19, Rostovskii wrote that VVP had sent a signal to the West: The Kremlin had limited its war goals to ensuring Ukraine would never (again) threaten Russia and seek revenge, as Germany did after World War I. If Kyiv absorbed this lesson, there could be peace. If not, Moscow would rely on relentless attrition to defeat it.
While some in the West talk about Russia moving further west, for example into the Baltic states, they are dreaming, Rostovskii wrote, because Moscow knows the meaning of NATO’s Article V, and an attack on one member state would be an attack on the whole alliance. More fundamentally, Russia has no need to expand, he said.
Rostovskii first published in Moskovskij Komsomolets as a 16-year-old in 1991. A graduate of the Moscow State University Faculty of Journalism, he now writes every two or three days on topics ranging from Tashkent to Brussels.
On December 22, Iosif Diskin, another of the “cannibals”, took a more aggressive stance in the newspaper. He argued that “the special military operation” was ending the unipolar world and building a new stage for Russian power.
The full-scale invasion had helped create a perfect storm, he wrote, when seen alongside the Middle East crisis. He believes Russia is becoming a mediator in that conflict, that an anti-Western BRICS alliance is being created, that the US is a giant drained by huge budget deficits, and that its political divides threaten a civil war fueled by drugs, crime, and uncontrolled immigration. Europe is similarly divided and growing weaker, Diskin said.
He advised the West to accept Russia’s terms now, before spring, when it may be too late. In his analysis, the trajectory of the Russian world is clear and positive. In Central Europe, by contrast, a vacuum is emerging where, without money and power, bloody chaos will reign with massive casualties, he warned.
Diskin approvingly quoted the philandering Tsarist diplomat Fyodor Tiuchev, who stated: “The more liberal they are, the more vulgar.”
Diskin was born in 1948 and obtained a doctorate in economic sciences in Moscow. He has belonged to, or led, a dozen Soviet-style organizations covering everything from public opinion to computer networks and state strategy. A frequent commentator in the press, he helps legitimize the status quo from which he benefits, as he did in the Soviet era.
While the “cannibals” are adding to the regime’s power today, they are also shoring it up by building opposition to freedom and democracy in the future.
Reforming an entire political-economic-cultural system is difficult, as Mikhail Gorbachev discovered. Those with a stake in the status quo will resist change, along with those who genuinely believe in the existing way of doing things.
If Putinism ever goes, key questions about the future will reemerge. Where to begin? Purge the old guard, as in parts of Central and Eastern Europe after 1989, or utilize their skills to make the new system function? Revise the constitution so no one party has a legal monopoly on power. Replace state ownership with private ownership and enterprise?
Meaningful reform is more difficult unless embraced by most of the public. In Russia, where people for centuries have been accustomed to autocratic rule and a life subject to authority, there are many for whom the very idea of free elections and civil protests is alien and incomprehensible.
It is an outlook that still prevails in much of the Russian Federation, sustained by the deliriums spun by the “cannibals.”
Walter C Clemens is an Associate at Harvard University Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, and Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Boston University. He wrote ‘Blood Debts: What Do Putin and Xi Owe Their Victims’ (Westphalia Press, 2023).
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
War Without End
Russia’s Shadow Warfare
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
