Domestic dynamics behind Russia's foreign policy

Rodney Dangerfield's quip "I went to a fight and a hockey game broke out" may be amended by some screening "Red Army," the terrific documentary about the Soviet Union's powerhouse hockey teams.

"I went to a hockey film and geopolitics broke out," some might now say, since it shows how hockey stars both reflected and rejected the Soviet system.

Totalitarianism erected walls around players' lives, just like the rest of Soviet society. But on ice, a fluid — even artistic — style belied the nation's political deep freeze, and in the process netted world championships and gold medals (save for 1980's "Miracle on Ice").

Like so many of his countrymen, "Slava" Fetisov, the star of the Red Army team and "Red Army" movie, rebelled against the system. Fighting coaches and apparatchiks, he eventually bolted for the NHL. But after retiring, Fetisov returned to post-Soviet Russia, partly at the behest of Russian President Vladimir Putin, to become minister of sport.

"It's almost stranger than fiction," said Gabe Polsky, who wrote, produced and directed "Red Army." "He was fighting the system and he becomes the system."

This system is challenging, and challenged by, the West, in what has become the most tense face-off of the post-Cold War era. Relations between Russia and the near abroad — this month's Minnesota International Center's Great Decisions dialogue — are fraught, which increases strains with Western Europe and the United States.

The flash point is Ukraine, where a new cease-fire is set for Sunday after marathon diplomacy between Ukraine's beleaguered leader, President Petro Poroshenko, Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande. "We are still a very long way from peace," Poroshenko said of a conflict that has killed over 5,400 and displaced over 1 million Ukrainians.

This is possible in part because of Putin's popularity. "If you're Putin, the polls give you more leeway," said Ivo H. Daalder, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. "Russia's an autocracy, but it's an elected autocracy, so public opinion matters."

Her Majesty's Consul General Stephen Bridges, who heads the British Consulate General in Chicago, concurs. His government, along with the rest of the European Union and the United States, imposed strict sanctions on Russia because of Ukraine. But he acknowledged the domestic dynamics when he said, "This is not [Putin] bringing along a reluctant mass. His popularity numbers are something my prime minister and your president would give their left arm for. We have to operate in the real knowledge that the Russian people like what he is doing."

To a point, to be sure. But polls can cut both ways, and may ultimately work to curb Putin's revanchist impulses.

"One of the reasons Putin has consistently denied what we know to be true, which is that Russians are directly engaged in the conflict, I think is that he believes the public wouldn't support him if there was direct engagement. So there's leeway on one hand, and a limit on the other," said Daalder, who added that polls show a shift in Ukraine, too. "If anything could consolidate a Ukrainian sense of national identity this is it," he said. "If the idea is intervention would lead to the unraveling of the state, the opposite has happened."

John E. Herbst, director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council and former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, sees similar dynamics. Speaking from Paris, he said, "In part because of [Putin's] control of the media, which he has turned into a propaganda mechanism, his popularity remains high." (Russia ranked 152 out of 180 countries on Reporters Without Borders' World Press Freedom Index, released this week.) But Herbst adds that "the war he's conducting in Ukraine's east is a problem for him at home. … The people of Russia have indicated through numerous polls that they don't want to see the Russian Army fighting in Ukraine."

That glory was on a global stage one year ago at the Sochi Olympics. The opening ceremony, entitled "Dreams About Russia," included nods to Russian writers, composers, dancers, scientists and even czars. Glossed over was the Soviet era, save for homages to industrialism, sculpture and architecture.

Yet in an acknowledgment of the "Red Army" hockey era, goalie Vladislav Tretiak (along with figure skater Irina Rodnina) lit the Olympic torch.

Just weeks after "Dreams About Russia," the world awoke to the reality of the Crimean crisis, and concerns over Russia and the near abroad have only increased since.

John Rash is a Star Tribune editorial writer and columnist. The Rash Report can be heard at 8:20 a.m. Fridays on WCCO Radio, 830-AM. On Twitter: @rashreport.