Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 31 – The war
Vladimir Putin is conducting in Ukraine is leading not just to the economic
destruction of Russia but to its moral destruction as well, and that in turn is
opening the way for the rise of fascism, Lev Slosberg says. In fact, he argues,
Russia today is becoming “ideally ready” for that horrific system.
In an article in the current issue
of “Pskovskaya Guberniya,” Slosberg, who represents the Yabloko Party in the
regional legislature, argues that the course of war “chosen in essence by one
man” is costing everyone enormously and that “many have already paid with their
lives” (gubernia.pskovregion.org/number_725/01.php).
Despite these costs, the deputy
continues, “Putin has chosen for himself and his country ‘precisely this path
of ‘consolidation of Russian society,” one based on the notion that “’the besieged
fortress of Russia’ is ready to fight with the entire rest of the world. War
for it is life; peace for it is death.”
The longer this war goes
on, the more serious its consequences will be, he continues. “One year of war
has been sufficient for the destruction of the economic successes of the past
ten years,” has already “thrown Russia back two decades,” and is continuing to
do so.
“Russia has neither the
forces nor the means to continue this war for another year,” Slosberg says, but
“everything is being thrown into this pyre of war.” And Putin is not stopping because he believes
he can gain strength by using military force to suppress Ukraine.
But what
the Kremlin leader is doing has nothing to do with seizing land. It is all
about taking revenge against Ukraine for everything its people have decided on –
“for the European choice of the majority of society” and for the ouster of the
Kremlin’s man on the scene, Viktor Yanukovich.
And for
Putin, taking that revenge on Ukraine is absolutely necessary now before a
generation arises in Russia which will make the same choices and thus put an
end to his own rule, Slosberg says. To prevent that from happening, he
continues, Putin will pay “any price” in Ukraine.
He will do
so, the Pskov deputy says, because he is “certain that Russian society supports
him in his desire to take revenge on Ukraine. He is certain that his people are
ready to pay any price, including with their lives, for his policy,” a
conviction that arises from his having raised in Russia “a people of war.”
Putin
believes as well that if he wins militarily, no one will judge him. Only losers
are judged in his understanding. And tragically, he has managed to convince
many Russians who today are the people of war to share that view. “The people
of war greets the president of war.”
As horrific as the economic consequences
of Putin’s war have been, the moral consequences of this kind are still worse: “since
the end of the USSR, Russian society was never in such a horrific moral state
as it is now. Russia today is a country ideally ready for fascism.”
Fascism, Slosberg
continues, “is when millions of people are happy as a result of hatred, when
antagonism shapes the attitudes of the people and when those who think
differently become state criminals.”
“Fascism is
when the state raises a people of war,” when there is a ministry of propaganda
which is what “in essence the entire Russian state power” has become, and when
people become convinced that they must never question the leader’s policies or
his wars, when as now “the people of war” predominate “over the people of
peace.”
Most
Russians think that the Nuremberg trials were only about the military crimes of
the Nazi regime, “but in the framework of [that process] was studied how the fascist
state was created and how an entire people” at the center of Europe fell under
its spell.
At
Nuremberg, it was shown that “even a great people of science and culture does
not have immunity against fascism. Fascism burned up public morality in Germany
with the speed of fire,” and the result was horrific. Its “centuries’ old
culture did not save it from fascism.”
“The people
of war do not need culture” because “the fuel in this conflagration became the
lie, the all-embracing state lie,” with the burning of books symbolizing that
reality.
Putin has
raised up a people of war because in reality “it is very easy to become a
people of war. One need only hate more than love, wish one’s neighbor not good
things but destruction, think that the greatness of the Motherland requires the
denigration of other peoples, and be gladded by participation in their
denigration.”
“A people of war is capable of
destroying its own Motherland because hatred and lies destroy any state and any
society,” Slosberg says, and “the Russian state is rapidly moving toward its
own Nuremberg process, through war,” a movement that is “taking place each day
and each hour.”
“It is very difficult to stop,” he
continues, as difficult as stopping a train coming out of the mountains out of
control. And at present “there are very few people in Russia who are trying to
stop this insanity.” Is there any chance
that they will be able to do so?
“This is the question for the people
of peace,” who in Russia today are far less numerous than “the people of war.” But they should take courage from the following
fact: “a soldier at war always listens to the voice of peace because he wants
to live.” Because that is so, “it is wrong to be silent.”
