“You put out the forest fires, but I’m still on fire,” read the sentence written over the image of a young Russian woman, smiling and half-naked. Like this one, 11 other photos with provocative words made up a 2011 calendar starring Moscow University journalism students and dedicated to their idol: Russian political leader Vladimir Putin who, in the summer of 2010, had personally piloted a firefighter helicopter to fight the fires that threatened Moscow.
Erotic gifts to commemorate the birthday of Putin, who has been in power in Russia for more than two decades, are just one element of the customary public exaltation of a central feature of the Russian leader’s personality. Putin has become a model of virility and masculinity, inspiring politicians around the world, such as the American Donald Trump, the Hungarian Viktor Orban and the Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro, who arrived in Moscow on Monday (14) to meet with the Russian head of state.
In addition to the firefighter helicopter episode, Putin has already let himself be photographed in a series of manly situations. He knocked opponents down on a mat in judo matches. He examined the teeth of a polar bear in the Arctic and a tiger in Siberia, both anesthetized. He piloted a submarine and a boat and flew a kind of motorized hang glider. He posed with a rifle in hand (and shirtless) while hunting in Siberia. He emerged naked on horseback and fishing. He prepared a barbecue. He displayed himself with a pistol at a shooting range. Or just showed up in sportswear while training his chest muscles at the gym.
None of the records were fortuitous, the result of the work of paparazzi photographers. “It’s an image work designed and executed by the Kremlin. And, as the internet is still largely free in Russia, if something gets out of hand and offends or displeases, the Russian government punishes,” Valerie Sperling, a professor at the Clark University in Massachusetts and author of Sex, Politics and Putin.
With high rates of popularity, even when discounting the possible coercion on the population in an increasingly authoritarian regime, experts argue that Putin owes at least in part to his “macho” profile the admiration he inspires in Russians.
‘World male power’
Upon coming to power, in the late 1990s, Putin took over a country trying to rise from the rubble of the Soviet Union. The Soviet bloc had imploded in 1991, and the Russians were faced with deep identity questions, having to get used to capitalism, deal with the fragmentation of territory and the loss of the status of a global power.
“There was a sense of general defeat, strong economic instability, with the devaluation of the Russian currency, and defeat in the Cold War. The fragility was even more evident among Russian parents, people in their 30s, 40s and 50s who had lost his savings and jobs, that he could no longer support his family while he saw young people getting rich in new businesses, and that he was the target of open criticism, for his absence from family life, for domestic violence and for problems such as alcoholism”, says Amy Randall, professor of history at Santa Clara University in California and editor of the special issue “Soviet Masculinities” of the academic journal Russian Studies in History.
According to Randall, Russian humiliation and embarrassment towards the world in the 1990s ended up being personified by the country’s then leader, Boris Yeltsin, caught drunk and in embarrassing attitudes at international events. He even pretended to conduct an orchestra at a military ceremony and made statements about the desire for Russian nuclear disarmament after going overboard on drinking, having to be denied by his aides.
Relatively unknown to the general public, Putin appears on the Russian political scene at the hands of Yeltsin, whom he would succeed. “Putin offers Russians this sober image of a tough martial arts agent from the KGB (the Soviet secret service). says Sperling.
Of course, Putin’s trajectory was not built solely on image. Under his command, the Russian army regained control of Chechnya, invaded Georgia and annexed Crimea. Now the country is grappling with the possibility of an armed conflict with Ukraine.
Since the end of last year, Putin has kept more than 100,000 troops on the border between the two countries and has demanded that Ukraine not be admitted to NATO, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a US-Western European-led military alliance that Putin sees it as a threat to the security of his country.
“Under Putin’s leadership, Russia has established itself as a world male power, displaying its political virility, its economic independence, and its technological and military might. Putin owes his popularity -and his ability to remain in power for so long- mechanisms such as its masculinized nationalism, its ambition to make Russia great again, its use of patriarchal ideals and the notion of social role differences between genders, in addition to open homophobia”, says Randall, according to whom Trump took his slogan ( “make America great again”) of Putin’s loan.
‘Best masculine qualities’
It was from this perspective that Putin said, in November 2020, that Jair Bolsonaro had “the best masculine qualities” at the helm of Brazil. The compliment came during the Russian president’s speech at the BRICS meeting, a bloc composed of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, and made reference to the way Bolsonaro dealt with the Covid-19 pandemic.
“You were even personally infected by this disease and withstood the ordeal with great courage. I know that moment must not have been easy, but you faced it like a real man and showed the best masculine qualities, such as strength and willpower”, Putin said, according to a transcript that the Brazilian government itself posted.
In Putin’s lexicon, this is a typical compliment from someone who wants to please and who knows his interlocutor well. Bolsonaro has already repeated Putin’s performance in highly photographable situations: he swam in the open sea, commanded motorcycles, practiced target shooting, drove a barbecue, played football, gave a hobby horse in a competition car. When Covid emerged, he said that, in his case, an eventual infection would be mild “thanks to his athlete history”.
But, according to Sperling, “just showing you’re tough doesn’t exhaust the possibilities of gaining political legitimacy from masculinity.”
She says that public demonstrations of such skills are often combined with questions about the masculinity of opponents. “And this is done, for example, by suggesting that your opponent is not man enough, or gay, or by saying that his wife is ugly, not desirable,” says Sterling, who has mapped male behavior in different world leaders.
A week ago, Putin caught the world’s attention with a statement in which he censured Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a critic of the Minsk peace accords. “Like it or not, my beautiful, you have to put up with it,” Putin said, using a feminine expression to address Ukraine’s leader.
Bolsonaro, at the height of his discussions with President Emmanuel Macron about the fires in the Amazon in 2020, republished a post that compared First Lady Michelle Bolsonaro, 39, with Brigitte Macron, 68. The post said: ” Do you understand now why Macron is persecuting Bolsonaro?” And the president himself commented “Don’t humiliate, man lol”.
Another common tactic is to make “jokes” about rape and misogyny. In 2014, in a discussion with his colleague Maria do Rosário, from the PT, the then deputy Jair Bolsonaro stated that “I would never rape you, because you don’t deserve it”. Bolsonaro explained that Rosário would be too ugly for his liking.
Putin, in 2006, reportedly told an Israeli reporter, regarding the rape allegations against then Israeli President Moshé Katsav: “Say hello to your president. He turned out to be a very powerful guy. He raped ten women. We are all surprised. . We all envy him.” After the episode’s backlash, the Kremlin blamed a flaw in the translation for the content of the commentary.
In 2014, when then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton compared the invasion of Crimea to Adolf Hitler’s assault on Poland, Putin was succinct: “Better not even argue with women.” He also said that Hillary’s comment revealed “weakness”. And that “weakness is not necessarily a bad thing in women”. Bolsonaro, in 2017, said about his daughter Laura: “”I have five children. There were four men, then in the fifth I had a weakness and a woman came”.
Sperling notes that this kind of appeal to masculinity to legitimize – or delegitimize – politicians is not exclusive to the right. But that is perhaps more evident among right-wing politicians whose agenda is socially conservative, a category in which both Bolsonaro and Putin fall.
Putin sets himself up as a fierce defender of the traditional nuclear family. “As for this ‘father number 1’ and ‘father number 2’ talk, I have already spoken publicly about it and I will say it again: as long as I am president this will not happen. 1997, when he was a deputy, Bolsonaro said: “nobody likes gay people.
Unlike Brazil, however, in Russia same-sex marriage is illegal. Same-sex couples cannot adopt children together. If made, the adoption is registered in the name of one parent only.
Regarding the issue of domestic violence, in Brazil, the Maria da Penha Law completed 15 years. In Russia, the aggression of partners against women was decriminalized in 2017. From then on, only aggressions by husbands that cause serious bodily harm to their wives are subject to legal punishment. The legislative change represented a gain for the Putin government, which has become increasingly conservative over the years.
“Putin and Bolsonaro look up to each other and together reinforce this sense of pride in masculinity. Bolsonaro has clearly tried to emulate Putin in his misogynistic and homophobic stances, and in his confrontation with European and multilateral leadership. He clearly sees Putin as a strong man. And this image of the strong man has become more and more popular and prevalent in the world today,” says Randall.
