Kyiv-born writer Mikhail Bulgakov chose as the epigraph for his Master and Margarita, the most influential Russian-language novel of the 20th century, a quote from Goethe’s Faust: “I am part of that power which eternally wills evil and eternally works good.”
The novel centers on the Devil and his entourage visiting Josef Stalin-era Moscow and some critics see the Devil – who appears in the novel in the guise of remote, enigmatic Professor Woland – as a rather flattering portrait of Stalin. Stalin was unquestionably an evil man, a murderous monster responsible for countless millions of deaths and an even larger number of ruined lives both within the Soviet Union and beyond its borders. Given Russia’s reviving imperial ambitions and the attendant re-emergence of the Stalin cult from the murky shadows where it always endured, it is really hard to see what actual good has ever come of his rule.
Nevertheless, the principle that evil men striving to reach their evil ends can inadvertently be catalysts for good often holds true. Take Russian President Vladimir Putin. His evil deeds are plenty. He put an end to Russia’s nascent democracy and reversed its (fairly modest) progress toward rejoining the global community of nations that had been achieved during the 1990s. In the first 15 years of this century his regime squandered or pilfered hundreds of billions of windfall petrodollars which Russia earned from record high oil prices. He presided over the disintegration of Russia’s most important social institutions: education, science and health care. His Russia is ruled by a kleptocratic clique comprised of bureaucrats, security services, gangsters and oligarchs. The country’s best and brightest young talent have long been looking for career opportunities elsewhere.
Putin has turned Russia into a schizophrenic nation, too. While whipping up patriotism and claiming to be defending Russia from unprovoked Western aggression, Russian elites systematically steal from Russia and keep their money in offshore bank accounts, investing into properties in London, Miami, New York and French and Italian Riviera. Their children mostly are educated in the West and hold foreign passports.
The list of serious crimes which either directly or indirectly involve Putin – and for which he would most certainly face court action if he ever left office – is long and growing with every passing month. It includes murders of journalists and political opponents inside Russia, assassinations of “traitors” abroad, invasions of neighboring countries, the downing of a civilian airliner and hacking attacks against foreign governments.
However, his annexation of Crimea and invasion of eastern Ukraine have a silver lining – actually, more than one. In Ukraine, Russian aggression crystalized the sense of Ukrainian nationhood which previously had been relatively weak in many parts of the country. Resistance to evil, exemplified by Putin, has made people proud to be Ukrainians and the use of the Ukrainian language increased dramatically over the past five years.
Putin is now making moves to incorporate Belarus into his version of the neo-Soviet Union. It may prove a non-starter even with Belarusians – but Ukraine appears to be inured to the “fraternal friendship” with the Russian people for many decades. The country is more than ever determined to integrate into Europe and to leave its Soviet past behind.
Across Eastern and Central Europe, Russian aggression is being watched with growing apprehension. European Union military budgets are being beefed up and cooperation within NATO is strengthening – despite the fact that the President of the United States increasingly sounds and acts like a Russian intelligence asset.
Speaking of Donald Trump. Nothing he has done can even remotely be compared to Putin’s list of misdeeds. But that is, in part, because of the strength of American political and legal institutions, which don’t allow the president to act as a banana republic dictator. However, his impulses and his rhetoric are not only un-American but also unquestionably evil – starting with his infamous Muslim ban, the separation of refugee children from their families at the border and cruel and senseless deportations.
There may be more to Trump in the future since his base, which comprises about one-third of the country, remains large and highly motivated. History knows plenty of examples when an even smaller minority was able to take power and impose its will on the rest of the nation. But for now, even Trump’s evil rhetoric has proven, in a way, a force for good. In the midterm election last November, the wave of resistance to Trump prompted a large number of new candidates to enter politics, while widespread rage against Trump and trumpism helped them defeat old-style politicians of both parties even in many previously conservative districts.
The new Congress, which was sworn in at the start of 2019, is a visual representation of this. It is, as lots of journalists and commentators have been pointing out, the most diverse Congress ever. The House of Representatives has more than 100 women, which raised their number to one quarter of the total. There are more racial minorities than ever before – including a large number of African-American women and the first two Native American women. Two Muslim women were elected to Congress for the first time, one of whom became the first person to wear a hijab on the floor of Congress.
And then there are those typcially American moments. Ilhan Omar, a newly elected Democrat from Minnesota and the first Somali-American congresswoman, flew in to her new job to the same Washington airport where she and her family had landed 23 years before, when they arrived to America from a refugee camp in Kenya.
Meanwhile Joe Neguse, the first African-American to represent Colorado in US Congress, is literally African: both his parents were refugees from Eritrea. Xochitl Torres Small of New Mexico is a granddaughter of a Mexican emigrant and the daughter of a sharecropper – and in an extremely close election she defeated a Native American candidate, also a woman.
Men and women like this are the living embodiment of what makes America so strong, why so many people around the globe look up to it, why it is the leader of the free world and the force for good. It is a direct rebuke to Trump’s evil America First rhetoric.
The new Congress is young and diverse. The House of Representatives in particular is starting to live up to its name by being more representative of the extraordinary diversity of the nation that elects it. Contrasting with this picture are Trump’s allies in both chambers: they are overwhelmingly white, highly privileged and mostly old. Trump’s cherished Border Wall, over which he has been willing to shut down the United States government, is a metaphor too – for wanting to keep those old privileged white men protected from the large, diverse and dissonant world outside.
