“The biggest catastrophe of the twentieth century”

“The biggest catastrophe of the twentieth century” is Vladimir Putin’s description of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and in the book it becomes more than a statement about political loss. The phrase condenses a defense of Soviet memory: the insistence that a history of crimes cannot erase the meaning, heroism, and childhood attachments people found within that world. It also exposes an affinity between Putin and Eduard Limonov that becomes politically consequential precisely because only one of them holds power.

The phrase and its historical meaning

Putin regarded the fall of the empire as the greatest catastrophe of the century and, the narrator observes, continued to express that view without qualification. His formulation belongs to a larger argument about how the Soviet past should be remembered. The narrator presents Putin as insisting that atrocities committed under communism must be acknowledged without treating communism as simply equivalent to Nazism. In this account, the Soviet project could still be remembered as grand, heroic, and beautiful, and as something that gave people confidence.

That defense draws its force not only from political doctrine but from private memory. People associate the vanished system with their childhood and with the emotional force of childhood recollection. The phrase therefore registers both the loss of an empire and the injury, as Putin frames it, of dismissing an entire population’s beliefs, sacrifices, and lived experience as worthless. The book presents this appeal as one reason for Putin’s popularity, not merely as a product of media control or public ignorance.

Putin and Limonov

The phrase also marks a point of resemblance between Putin and Limonov. Both are associated with the Soviet world and with the sense of defeat that followed its collapse. The narrator suggests that Limonov, if he occupied Putin’s position, would say and do what Putin says and does, or go further. Their likeness makes Putin appear to Limonov’s double: a figure who shares some of his instincts but has achieved the authority Limonov lacks.

That resemblance sharpens the contrast between their political situations. Limonov writes pamphlets denouncing Putin as a tyrant, and as bland and mediocre; the narrator considers that judgment badly mistaken. Limonov is left in the incongruous role of virtuous opposition figure, defending democracy and human rights alongside honest people whose values he has long despised. The phrase thus illuminates not only what Putin believes about the past, but the uncomfortable position in which that belief leaves Limonov.

Sincerity and political force

The narrator treats Putin’s attachment to this account as sincere, rather than merely a tactic. That sincerity helps explain why the phrase can speak directly to people who feel that the collapse of their world has been reduced to a verdict of shame. The book does not present this recognition as an endorsement of Putin: it places the emotional appeal beside his exercise of power and the narrator’s disagreement with Limonov’s estimate of him.

The expression consequently holds together memory, political persuasion, and irony. Putin gives public authority to a feeling Limonov shares, while Limonov is excluded from the position from which that feeling could become policy. The ending is not a simple contest between them: the narrator describes Limonov’s situation as short of checkmate, but one in which it is difficult to know where he stands.