Paul
Goble
Staunton, July 1 – Russians voted
for the Putin amendments less because of any fear that not doing so would have
negative consequences for them than because of a sense that voting no would not
have any consequences in a situation in which the public space is not something
they control but must simply live within, Dmitry Dubrovsky says.
The Higher School of Economics
anthropologist says this is the latest example of the phenomenon of the banality
of evil that Hannah Arendt described in her book about the trial of Nazi war
criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem more than half a century ago (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2020/07/01/86100-banalnost-zla).
Russia is not a totalitarian state
and does not control people entirely by fear, Dubrovsky says. Instead, it is a certain
kind of “’hybrid non-democracy,’” a place where some people truly support the
regime, others oppose it, but most go along out of a sense that it is useless
to resist the state’s demands, because they are the new norm and violating it
can have real costs.
People will take risks when they believe
it is required by their profession or when they believe that doing so will
achieve something. Thus, doctors treat those who are dangerously infectious
because that is required by their job; and that is what citizens do when they have
a sense that their actions can achieve something.
When citizens become convinced that
there is no chance to achieve that, they not only go along with the demands of the
state but more or less fully integrate what the state wants as the basis for
their public behavior, the anthropologist says. As a result, for example, they
may not steal in their private lives, but they come to tolerate theft in the
public sphere.
Over time, especially if there is targeted
repression, people will be ever less inclined to take risks without hope of
change and will go along. That is what Putin is counting on and so far with
enormous success. And those who do accept his norms are surprised when anyone
suggests that what they are doing is wrong, just as Eichmann was in Arendt’s
telling.
A major reason that this pattern is
not widely understood is that most people expect their fellow citizens to be
more rational and consistent than they in fact are. “An individual is a complex
thing and he is not required to be consistent in everything.” Most can live in
at least two worlds, a private one where two times two is four and in public
one where it is five.
That so many Russians today find
themselves in this position, Dubrovsky argues, reflects not just the efforts of
Putin but the continuing influence of the Soviet past. Many Russians continue to live according to
the paradigm that was imposed on them in the past, and as a result, they are
quite prepared to accept its more recent return.
What the country needs, the
anthropologist says, is “decommunization, not in the sense of a struggle with
red flags, although that too wouldn’t be a bad thing but rather in the sense of
a long conversation” about what happened to people under that system. But even
if that conversation occurred, one should not “demand too much from people.”
“The individual with his small life
in general is not required to be a hero, a fighter, or a revolutionary.” There
are simply too few such people, and those who would like to see their numbers
grow so far have not understood the situation well or developed messages that
will cause others to join them, Dubrovsky says.
That is clear from the behavior of
Russians during this laughable constitutional referendum, the anthropologist
concludes. “This is in fact an absolutely ritualistic action,” one individuals can’t
affect however much they may be affected by results decided upon in advance by
those in positions of power.
