By Jonathan Power
LUND, Sweden | 8 July 2026 (IDN) — Observers say that what drives President Vladimir Putin is to make Russia respected. But perhaps Putin underestimates how much power Russia already has. He has overlooked which trumpets to blow. It is not his “hang tough” policies in military affairs. It is Russia’s culture.
These thoughts were first prompted a few years ago when watching the opening of the new extension of the Mariinsky theatre in St Petersburg on Mezzo television, the French cable station for classical music. (You can see it on U-Tube.) I can’t help but return to these thoughts after coming to realize during some down time this summer that Putin with his everlasting war against Ukraine has moved from democrat to dictator to tyrant, a man who if left in power will take down everything beautiful and profound in his wonderful country.
The Mariinsky is run by Valery Gergiev and he arranged a show (and conducted it) so rich and of such supreme achievement that it overshadowed in my memory all the great performances I’ve seen, whether in London, New York, Paris or Moscow. Each segment lasted a bare 4 minutes and it alternated between opera, ballet and two solo violinists and one pianist. It went on for two hours or more with the greatest stars of the Russian firmament, plus three Western performers.
Putin was in the audience, not in the official box but down in the middle of the stalls. Was he aware of the political power of an event like this? I doubt it. Nor of the power of the rest of Russia’s great inheritance. He thinks that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. In part it does, but the greater part is a society’s culture.
The Strength of Russian Culture
In St Petersburg there is also a second great ballet company, the Mikhailovsky. There is the Hermitage museum which along with its peer, the Louvre in Paris, takes two days to do justice to. Besides its superb collection of Western art, it also has some of the best of Russian art. Often ignored by connoisseurs, Russian artists are very good. There is the mouth-dropping architecture of the city including the Winter Palace which knocks every other northern European city out of the ring.
In Moscow there is the Bolshoi ballet and opera. Russia is home to the two leading ballet companies of the world.
Moscow has also been home to the important publishing houses that published the world’s greatest novelist, Tolstoy. And Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak and the poets, Pushkin and Akhmatova.
Moscow also published and usually held the first performances of the music of Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Rachmaninov, Prokofiev, Glinka, Gogol, Mussorgsky and the modern composers, Shostakovich and Stravinsky and recently Khachaturian.
Italy may be, in its long life, better in painting and sculpture, Holland in painting, Britain and France as good in literature and Germany and Austria in music. (I’m afraid the US doesn’t get a mention in my list.) But no country but Russia has such distinction in so many of the arts.
Beyond Military Might
Mr Putin, isn’t that enough? No, I hear you. You will say Russia has to build up the economy and military might.
He has had some success with the former, although the war is now beginning to take its toll. It is true (and not often reported) that Russia’s unemployment is the lowest among the G8 countries. Incomes have doubled under Putin, and the pensioners are getting real support. Russia produces some of the world’s best scientists. But it is still on the oil needle, and its economy is riddled by corruption and maladministration. The University of Moscow is not one of the top ranked in world league tables.
Its military was decimated at the end of the Cold War. Putin is trying to fight a war while working to restore it. It will be a long job and Russia can’t project as much military power as it needs to if it is to triumph in Ukraine. Of course, a country that has 5,500 nuclear warheads has power of a sorts, but even Putin as tyrant can’t use these. His military commanders, like their American counterparts, in all likelihood would refuse an order to do so.
Russia’s European Identity
Putin is more than fortunate to preside over a country with the most eclectic culture on the face of the earth. Indeed, because this culture’s roots and manner are European, Russia should be regarded as a part of the West. If he stops the war and steps down and calls free elections membership of the European Union could be given within the next decade. This is where Russia’s real, long-term, strength, lies.
Mr Putin: Real power does not grow out of the barrel of a gun.
I wrote this column for the Moscow News, an English language paper read by Moscow-based diplomats, journalists, academics, and foreign ministry officials. To illustrate my article it printed a wonderful cartoon of Putin sitting like a cellist, stroking a bomb with his bow. I think it drove my point home! [IDN-InDepthNews]
Copyright: Jonathan Power