Crisis 22
4 Types of Narrative
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Throughout Crisis 22 I make use of various types of narrative — 1.🔸 those that are complex, ambiguous, and layered (like global politics), 2.🔸 those that we use to make ourselves feel better (“Everything is OK; the Crimea was Russian anyway”), 3.🔸 those that are manipulative vs. self-critical (Putin vs. Bulgakov), and 4.🔸 those that give us two or more perspectives at once (for example, how we see Russia and how Russia sees itself).
1. 🔶 Narratives that are complex, ambiguous, and layered
One way to understand complex situations like we find in Ukraine is to understand complex narratives, which are often found in long poems and serious plays and novels (as opposed to comedies and lighter fare). I’d argue that the mental exercise that’s involved in learning to appreciate a serious work of art — whether it’s a novel, a symphony, or a Chagall painting — expands our mental flexibility, our interpretative skills, and our grasp of historical conrext, cultural paradigms, etc. Since this is a mental process, not a material thing, its rigour and enjoyment can be transferred to our understanding of more serious and potentially depressing topics, such as the Ukraine War.
Political and historical analysis is of course essential, but often this leads to irreconcilable differences, which are internalized as angst and depression. If one learns to appreciate a large-scale structural analysis of a complex artistic form, some of this frustration, disappointment, and angst can be diminished. One can appreciate the complexity of the political and historical patterns, and even find fulfilment in looking for ways to interpret these patterns and offer positive directions.
My aim in Crisis 22 is to look at the complex political clusterfuck we see today in light of literary works which are complex and enjoyable. However grim their titles (Dead Souls, Slaughterhouse-Five, Shame, etc.) and however grim their subjects (fraud, war, dictatorship, etc.), these novels lift us up because they are skillful and unified works of art. They brim with insight and meaning, and they are studded with ambiguities that provoke and challenge us. Surprisingly, they also contain a great deal of laughter, which is, along with an attitude of carpe diem — seize the day for tomorrow we may die! — the best revenge against the work of dictators and tyrants.
Especially helpful in understanding today’s ruthless, slippery realm of politics (which is full of propaganda, distortion, cyber attacks, cloak and dagger diplomacy, etc.) are complex narratives that are also ambiguous and/or layered. In these narratives, actions and motives lie in shadow, as if under a veil or behind a screen. As readers, we have to interpret explicit words and gestures, and we also have to guess what’s going on behind the scenes. The writer (or playwright, screenwriter, librettist, composer, or painter) urges us to ask ourselves, Who’s pulling the strings?
This type of narrative is especially relevant to the cloaked realm of Kremlin politics and espionage, especially given that Putin comes from, and still controls, the Russian spy agency (the KGB; later the FSB). Also, the Ukrainians must be cunning if they want to penetrate the Russian system, or keep secrets of their own.
The spy world today has much in common with the world of 1965, which Koch urges his readers to think about in The Year of Living Dangerously (1978): the Russian agent Vera haunts the Australian journalist, soundless and almost invisible, like a goblin’s shadow:
Few of us consciously make contact with that sub-world of espionage which is the myth kingdom of our century. Intelligence agents from a foreign power are rather like hobgoblins in most people's minds: not consciously seen, they are irrationally thought not to exist outside the fables of the entertainment industry. I've known fellow-journalists with this attitude — even though some of their colleagues, unknown to them, were agents themselves, using the job as a cover. (Do you believe in fairies?)
Vera was a shadow, and would remain one. With the bogy mask of the Soviet Union looming behind her, she could never become a person for him.
The main off-stage actors in Koch’s 1965 drama and today’s new Cold War drama are China and the US. These two nations are also well-known for their management of secrets, deep fakes, implanted spies, and subterfuge. As Dick Cheney once said, in global politics there are “known unknowns.” And when it comes to the greatest stakes, that is, nuclear stakes, no one knows these unknowns better than the Kremlin and the Pentagon.
Often political narratives seem to float on the surface, or dance and dart like shadow-puppets on a screen. This is where Christopher Koch’s novel The Year of Living Dangerously is helpful: in it Koch makes extensive, elaborate and subtle use of the Indonesian shadow-puppet theatre, the Wayang Kulit. He invites the reader to see the narrative as it appears on the screen — or to look behind the screen, where the puppet-master plies his trade. This narrative strategy urges us to ask, How can we understand what the hidden puppet-master has in mind, deep in his office in the Pentagon or Kremlin, the Élysée Palace or 10 Downing Street, Jade Spring Hill or 7 Lok Kalyan Marg?
2. 🔶 Narratives that we use to make ourselves feel better
I’ll also use narratives to talk about two historical shifts: 1) from the 20th century Cold War to that blessed quarter century of European peace, from roughly 1989 to 2014, and 2) from this Pax Europana to the return of war in 2014 and 2024. During the brief Pax Europana we tended to believe in the possibility of a happily ever after ending to the narrative of the Cold War story. Some, like Fukiyama, even talked about the end of history, as if we were entering a Golden Age of liberal democracy.
This was of course a fiction, even an illusion. Even between 1989 and 2014, it ignored all types of global problems — in Afghanistan, Burma, Sudan, Congo, Venezuela, etc. It ignored 911 and the War on Terror, which included the attacks in Madrid, London, and Paris, as well as the ill-advised war in Iraq. The dream of happily ever after also ignored the continuing cycle of violence in Israel, from land-grabs by Israel to rocket fire from a crippled Lebanon and a nationless Gaza. And a whole series of books could be written on the Arab Spring (c.2010-12) and all the ways its promise turned into curse.
In Eastern Europe the Russians inflicted brutal damage on Chechnya and grabbed land in Georgia. There was also violence and brutality in the former Yugoslavia, especially in Bosnia and Kosovo. NATO’s attempt to intervene may have been well-intentioned, yet it led to anger in China (after its embassy was bombed), to alienation in Serbia (which might otherwise have made great efforts to join the EU and perhaps NATO), and to a simmering anger in Serbia’s main ally, Russia.
2014 and 2016 dealt two postscriptum plot twists to the end of history: in 2014 the golden European aura dimmed considerably with the Russian incursions into Crimea and the Donbass; in 2016 the world witnessed the victory of Donald Trump, who turned the bulwark of democracy into a divided state. One half of the American political system plunged into demagoguery, into isolationism (from the Paris Climate Accord, the 2015 Iran Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, free trade deals, and NATO solidarity), and into skepticism (about the validity of facts, journalism, the justice system, and the institutions of state). On January 6, 2021, it also fell into an open fight against the very core of democracy: the peaceful transition of power. That event was a very sad spectacle, yet even more sad is the fact that Trump still maintains that he never lost the 2020 election.
From 1989 to 2014 many of us in the West remained in a sweet dream state. We were awoken somewhat by nations collapsing far away, by the odd short brutal shock of terrorism from New York to Paris.We were also nudged out of complacency from 2016 to 2020 by the sad spectacle of Donald Trump. But by and large it took the 2024 invasion of Ukraine to make us realize that there was to be a sequel, rather than just a post-script, to the end of history’s narrative.
3. 🔶 Narratives that are manipulative vs. self-critical, and 4. 🔶 narratives that give us two or more perspectives at once
In trying to understand Putin’s war we might also look at two types of stories that Russians tell themselves. On the one hand we have stories about their imperial destiny, their special military operation, and their struggle against the wicked warlock of the West. These stories dominate at the moment in Russia, partly because Russians believe them and partly because they’re coerced and manipulated into believing them. Rarely do we hear that other type of story, the type told by their great 19th and 20th century novelists, such as Gogol or Bulgakov. These stories urge Russians to question themselves, their rulers, and their serf or Soviet systems. Some of these stories even urge Russians to question the chauvinistic drive behind the imperialism they’ve supported for the lasted 700 years.
These Russian stories are equally valuable to those outside Russia, looking in and trying to figure out what on earth is going on. In reading them, we hear voices from the past, whose echoes Russians still hear. We also start to understand something of the Russian character and predicament, one that started with repressive czars, yet never went beyond the Hobbesian notion that repression and fear are acceptable as long as the State offers stability, institutional structure, and protection. We see the morass the Russians have got themselves into, but we also hear the voices of freedom and change, however muffled these are at present.
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Next: 💥 Exceptional Violence