Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 18 – Speaking on
Vladimir Solovyev’s program this week, Mariya Zakharova, the official
representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said that supporters of Donald
Trump, angry at his departure from the Oval Office, are exploring the
possibility of acquiring Russian citizenship and even emigrating to Russia.
She said that social media are
filled with comments from American supporters of Trump about how to obtain
Russian citizenship, adding that she and others welcome this given what she
says is the increasingly repressive situation such people face in the United
States (svpressa.ru/politic/article/287410/).
In reporting this, Dmitriy Rodionov
of Svobodnaya pressa says in response: “Is this serious? Possible, there
have been a few requests in social media from American supporters of Trump but
most likely one is talking at most about a few individuals,” like Steve Siegel
or the handful of Westerners who have moved to Russia.
But even the opening of legal cases
against those who tried to seize the US capital on January 6, the commentator
continues, is hardly likely to become “a sufficient basis for emigration, all
the more to mysterious Russia, about which the majority of Americans know
nothing besides that negative information” they have gotten since Cold War
times.
Andrey Koryakovtsev, a scholar at
the Urals State Pedagogical University, agrees and points out that “you do not
see any political emigration from the US in recent times.” Some people said
they would leave when Trump came to office, but few actually did – and those
went mainly to Canada, a place Americans are far more familiar with than
Russia.
With Trump’s defeat, he continues,
Trump supporters face difficult times, less from the government than from
private companies, private media and private individuals. If they look to
Russia, Koryakovtsev says, it will be only because of what is happening within
the US rather than any attraction to Russia per se.
For that to change, the Russian
government will need to decide how it feels about such a trend and what messages
it then sends.
Gevorg Mizayan, an instructor at
Moscow’s Finance University, is even more dismissive of Zakharova’s remarks.
Her words are “hardly serious.” Americans aren’t going to apply for Russian
citizenship because it is “uninteresting” to them “period.” Moreover, they aren’t
going to suffer massive repressions.
And finally and most important, were
Trump supporters to apply for Russian citizenship, that would only weaken their
cause because most other Americans would see that as evidence that they are in
fact agents of Moscow. Trumpists are going to stay in the US and fight their
battles there. If any do take Russian citizenship, they will be dismissed as “freaks.”
But Fyodor Biryukov, a member of the
political council of the Rodina Party, says that many Trump supporters have the
right to be furious given that the 2020 US elections were “the most
anti-democratic in the entire history of the contemporary West” and even
succeeded in making Russia’s 1996 vote look free and fair.
But despite that, he doesn’t think
Americans will come to Russia in large numbers: First of all, he argues, “we
need them more there than here; and second, they wouldn’t like it here.” Radical Trumpists like to have guns, don’t
like high taxes, and spit on political correctness. They wouldn’t fit it.
“Imagine them in contemporary
Russia: disarmed, nude, and censored. The only thing they could count on perhaps
would be to become an extra on some Moscow television show.”
But this raises a bigger question: “In
order to make Russia attractive for foreign citizens, Russia must become
attractive for Russians. And here there are problems. Polls show that ever more
young people want to leave the country, and the size of emigration from Russia
is growing, Biryukov continues.
At the same time, he says that
Zakharova is a brave girl who is filling “with distinction” her role as the prima
ballerina of the foreign ministry. Her appearance, the Russian politician
continues, was foretold by American science fiction writer Norman Spinrad in
his 1991 novel, Russian Spring. (A Russian edition appeared the following
year.)
His novel has as its heroine a
beautiful Russian woman who loves to dance, as Zakharova is known to. “In the novel,
the Russians achieve great successes. I hope,” Biryukov concludes, “that this
American prediction will be fulfilled!”