In the antechamber of Vladimir Putin’s presidential office in the Kremlin hangs a large portrait of Nicholas I, who ruled the Russian empire from 1825 to 1855. As Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the west’s retaliatory economic sanctions summon the spectres of hot and cold wars past, policy makers in Washington and Europe would do well to consider why Mr Putin chose the tsar as the historical figure at whose image visitors must gaze before they enter the president’s room. Then they will be on the right road to answering the question: “How do we deal with Putin?”
The story behind the portrait is not that Nicholas I was some all-conquering military commander or an emperor who transformed Russian society. Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great and Catherine the Great have stronger claims to these roles. It is that post-Napoleonic Europe, whatever it thought of Nicholas I’s autocratic system of government, granted Russia respect as a great military and diplomatic power. As he made abundantly clear on Tuesday when he announced Crimea’s absorption into Russia, Mr Putin seethes with resentment at what he sees as the west’s disregard, ever since the Soviet Union’s demise in 1991, for Moscow’s status and interests as a leading power.
Mr Putin’s choice of portrait also reflects his belief that Russia under Nicholas I stood for a rock-solid domestic political order, founded on patriotism, the Orthodox religion, a strong central government and a secret police force that cracked down on dissent. Since Mr Putin first assumed the presidency in 2000, this is the kind of state he has sought to construct out of the political disorder, economic weakness and misguided openness to western values that, in his opinion, marked Boris Yeltsin’s Russia in the 1990s.