Putin's not crazy — he's messianic
Had I been at that Shabbos table, I wouldn’t have been shocked. Six years ago, after Putin’s conquest of Crimea in southeast Ukraine had settled in, I heard Dr. Geifman lecture on Russian-style messianism at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University, where she is a senior researcher in the political studies department. (We reported on this in “Putin’s Messianic Ambitions,” Issue #599.)
Dr. Geifman, a Shabbos-observant professor, knows both the turf and the Russian mentality. She grew up in Russia’s second city, St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad), and moved to Boston in the mid-1970s as a teenager. She keeps close contact with many Russian and Ukrainian friends. In a follow-up interview last week, she rejected theories in the mainstream media that Russian president Vladimir Putin is deranged.
“He’s not crazy — he’s messianic,” Dr. Geifman says. “What Putin says is logical, and consistent with his entire policy since 2008.”
That’s when the global financial system collapsed, followed three years later by massive election fraud in Russia. At the time, Dr. Geifman contended that while Putin did not aim to sell his people a well-formulated ideology or messianic mission, it became difficult to sustain public support without a coherent message.
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