MBR_ISSUE 43_LOWRES

Malta Business Review
TALKING POINT
Why Vladimir
Putin is very,
very happy
The World Cup has been the
Russian president’s friend.
By TUNKU VARADARAJAN
Tunku Varadarajan and colleagues
on the 2018 World Cup through the
lenses of culture, politics, anthropology
and the love of the Beautiful Game.
I’m not sure if Vladimir Putin has read Elias
Canetti, but if he hasn’t, he would enjoy the
old Bulgarian sage’s “Crowds and Power.” As
the World Cup sails forward into the next
knockout stage, Putin has managed Canetti’s
twin themes — the crowds in his presence
and the power in his hands — so impeccably
that his performance borders on genius.
Russian President Vladimir
Putin, between Ronaldo and FIFA
President Gianni Infantino | Yuri
Kadobnov/AFP via Getty Images
Putin made a canny bet. He reckoned that
once people from all over the world streamed
into Russia to watch football, they would cease
to look at Russia. Writing about a strongman’s
use of the “arena” to divert the public gaze
away from ugliness, Canetti observed that
the strongman induces the spectators to
“turn their backs to the city. They have been
lifted out of its structure of walls and streets
and, for the duration of their time in the
arena, they do not care about anything which
happens” outside.
The city is a metaphor for the world beyond the
walls of the stadium — here, Putin’s Russia, the
Russia of gagged dissent and state repression,
of a mafia-style economy and barefaced
corruption. Putin gambled that outsiders,
beguiled by feats of great footballing skill and
fuelled with the kind of benign nationalism that
accompanies such events, would have eyes
only for the sporting and the theatrical, and
space in their imaginations only for personal
heartbreak and ecstasy.
Putin knows, too, that football fans are tribal,
and that at tournaments they stick with their
own kind both inside and outside the arena.
Everywhere, there have been solid knots of
Swiss, hordes of Danes, swarms of English,
Russia fans celebrate their team’s win after the Russia defeated Spain
in the round of 16 at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow on July 1, 2018 |
Juan Mabromata/AFP via Getty Images
cartels of Colombians, musters of Croatians,
troops of Nigerians, bevies of Egyptians. Yes,
they mingle with others — there is no more
gregarious life-form on the planet than the
football fan — but they mostly stay with their
own kind. Among their own, they paint faces
in the colours of their flag, drink beer and
vodka, eat till they burst, and radiate cheer
toward every TV cameraman they encounter,
shouting slurred greetings to mom back
home, or to a sweetheart left behind.
The football, here, has been Putin’s friend.
Interaction with ordinary Russians is confined
to those who serve them in bars or cafés,
sell them tickets on buses and trains, or
who reside in the parts of town that tourists
from abroad frequent. Visitors, chastened
in advance by scary reports of Russian ultras
and hooligans, have rarely ventured into the
scruffier, un-friendlier twilight zones of Russia’s
host cities. Pre-tournament worries of attacks
on foreigners, of racism directed toward nonwhite
fans, have proved entirely unfounded.
No one should be surprised by this. Violence
in Russia flows from a spigot that Putin
controls. The Russian state has urban thugs at
its disposal, who do its bidding. One can be
certain that every pre-emptive measure was
taken to keep troublemakers on a leash. This
is not difficult for Putin, since these groups
are his extra-judicial enforcers. It would have
been a wonder, in fact, if there had been
trouble of this kind.
So we have had two weeks in which football
fans — not always the most enlightened souls,
not always attuned to the political nuances
around them — have had the loveliest time
in Russia, where the local strongman has
ensured that there will be absolutely no
ugliness from his own citizens that might
invite reciprocal ugliness from visitors. Every
moment of significance has been confined
to the “arena” (to use Canetti’s word), and
absent from the “city.”
Where’s Putin?
The football, here, has been Putin’s friend. The
standard has been uniformly high, with goals
galore and some matches of breathtaking
tension. There’s been just one goalless draw.
Compare that with Brazil, in 2014, where we
were subjected to a flaccid tournament in
which the overrated hosts were humiliated,
and the whole affair was overshadowed by the
host nation’s hubris. Russia’s lack of football
prowess has helped: Every improbable win by
the home side has been treated like a party
by the locals, and there has been a cheerful
humility to Russian spectators that has
contributed to the tournament’s success.
Add to all of that Putin’s own low profile these
last two weeks. He was present at the opening
ceremony, and at Russia’s first game against
Saudi Arabia. He was absent at Russia’s Group
of 16 knockout game against Spain, when the
king of Spain was in the presidential box.
King Felipe VI was accompanied by Dmitry
Medvedev, the Russian prime minister, and
that cannot have been by accident. Putin isn’t
a stupid man, and must have been aware
that his presence alongside the Spanish king
would give rise to bitter comment in the West.
There was nothing to be gained by being in
the box, so he stayed away. (Will he be there
on Saturday, we wonder, when Russia plays
Croatia in the quarter-finals?)
This is precisely what those critical of Russia’s
hosting the cup had feared — an aura of
success, and the apparent softening of a
strongman’s reputation. These fears are
coming true.
People are thinking of this as the World Cup
in Russia, and not as the World Cup in Putin’s
Russia. Our minds are locked inside the
arena. No one cares about what’s happening
outside.
Tunku Varadarajan, a contributing editor at
POLITICO, is a fellow at Stanford University’s
Hoover Institution. He helms The Linesman. MBR
Courtesy: POLITICO
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