Trump's purge in Washington
On our minds: The rule of law. And a Russian movie. |
 | | Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman preparing to testify in November during the House impeachment inquiry.Erin Schaff/The New York Times |
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“Burnt by the Sun,” Nikita Mikhalkov’s Oscar-winning 1994 film about Stalin’s purges in the 1930s, pulls off an impressive trick: Most of the movie seems like a happy, cozy domestic story, but after the last few minutes it suddenly becomes clear that it is not a happy movie about a happy family, but rather a tragedy about the last moments of happiness a family ever had. |
(Note: if you don’t want to see spoilers, even though the movie is older than a high-school freshman, stop reading now. But if you’ve seen it or don’t mind being spoiled, we think it offers a worthwhile lens on recent events in Washington.) |
Most of the film is taken up with what seem like minor difficulties, easily resolved. Sergei Petrovich Kotov, a Soviet army officer, is summering in the country with his beautiful young wife, Maroussia, and their beloved little girl, Nadia. Maroussia’s old boyfriend, Mitya, turns up for a visit and is warmly welcomed, but his presence makes her uncomfortable. When local peasants fear that an army training exercise will destroy their crops, Kotov brokers a solution. Throughout those challenges the camera dotes on all of them, drawing the viewer in so deeply that you can almost smell the sun-baked grass, giving the impression that nothing could ever go too wrong. |
Then it all falls apart. Mitya reveals that he is an intelligence officer and has arrived to arrest Kotov, settling the score from when Kotov separated him from Maroussia many years before. As his agents bundle the outraged Kotov into a car, Kotov insists that there has been a mistake and demands that they contact Josef Stalin, whom he knows personally, to clear the matter up. But it doesn’t work. Text across the bottom of the screen, superimposed on the shot of Kotov being driven away, reveals the characters’ bleak futures: Kotov was forced to make a false confession and shot. Maroussia and Nadia were sent to a gulag, where Maroussia died a few years later. |
The symbolism of the film is obvious in retrospect. The “sun,” Mr. Mikhalkov has said, referred to Stalin. The film shows the way that no one is safe in a totalitarian system: Those close enough to feel the sun’s warmth can end up getting burnt. |
Totalitarian systems “take on a life of their own, destroying not only those whom they were originally intended to destroy but their creators as well,” Rustam Ibrahimbeyov, who wrote the film with Mr. Mikhalkov, said in a 1995 interview with the magazine Azerbaijan International. |
Which brings us to the reason we decided to devote this week’s newsletter to a 15-year-old Russian movie. |
In recent days, President Trump has purged federal officials who testified against him in the recently concluded impeachment trial. He ordered Gordon Sondland recalled from his post as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, and had Lt. Col. Alexander S. Vindman, a Ukraine expert on the National Security Council, fired and marched off the White House grounds by security. He also fired Lt. Col. Yevgeny Vindman, Colonel Vindman’s twin brother, who had also held a position on the National Security Council. |
“Lt. Col. Vindman was asked to leave for telling the truth. His honor, his commitment to right, frightened the powerful,” his lawyer, David Pressman, said in a statement. “And for that, the most powerful man in the world — buoyed by the silent, the pliable and the complicit — has decided to exact revenge,” Mr. Pressman added, noting that his client had testified under subpoena. |
Obviously, Trump-era Washington is not the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Mr. Sondland and the Vindmans are not facing a gulag. |
And Mr. Trump’s purge seems minor in comparison to those that President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China have recently carried out. |
However, “these are not warning shots,” Anjali Dayal, a political scientist at Fordham University, wrote on Twitter of the president’s retaliation. “These *are* the blows that take democracies down.” |
Retaliatory purges send a clear message that anyone who crosses the leader — and perhaps their families too — will face retribution. Over time, that erodes the rule of law, norms and institutions that once checked executive power. |
Usually we focus on the dangers that authoritarianism poses to the weakest members of society. And of course they are the ones who need the protections of the rule of law the most, because resorting to pure force or power is not an option for them. But Mr. Mikhalkov’s film is an eloquent reminder that even the powerful stand to lose if the rule of law disappears — and that failing to protect it can ultimately be a blow to their own self interest in the long term, even if it seems like an easy path to victory. |
During his testimony, Colonel Vindman said he was confident that he would not suffer retaliation for giving truthful testimony: “This is America,” he said, “and here, right matters.” |
It now appears his confidence was misplaced. |
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