Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 6 – Many have blamed
Moscow’s state-controlled television for whipping up anti-Ukrainian attitudes
among Russians, but Aleksey Levinson, a Levada Center sociologist, argues that
what the broadcasts have done is not to create something out of whole cloth but
rather to shape and exacerbate it.
In an interview with Andrey Lipsky
of “Novaya gazeta,” Levinson suggests that much deeper forces are at work and
that the response of Russians to Ukraine reflects “an echo” of the problems
they faced at the end of the Soviet period and in the years since that time (novayagazeta.ru/politics/63879.html).
“Of course,” he acknowledges, “much
would be different” if Russians had access to a television channel that
presented an alternative vision to that on offer on state television. “But we
have what we have” and that is a massconsciousness which reflects “the mental
and moral pit” into which Russians have fallen and out of which “it will be
very difficult to escape.”
In recent months, Levinson says,
Russians at all levels have”allowed themselves to think and actin ways that
they would earlier have considered impossible, indecent and impermissible.” The
body politic is suffering from a high fever, and to recover, it will need the
appearance of someone like Academician Sakharov to speak honestly about what is
going on.
When asked about Moscow’s annexation
of Crimea, the sociologist continues, Russians respond that Russia in this case
is acting “’like a great power.’” Only
secondarily do they say that Crimea had always been Russian in the past, that
Khrushchev “made a mistake,” or that it is part of their world because they had
travelled there.
Two years ago, few if any talked about
these things, but the events of the last months in Ukraine presented not only a
challenge to how Russians see themselves but an opportunity for Moscow to act
as it has, and those two factors are inter-related and to a large extent
mutually reinforcing.
That explains Putin’s rating which,
Levinson says is not so much “an attribute of Putin but a characteristic of
society.” It isn’t a measure of his temperature but of society’s. Of course,
Russians are reacting to what he has done, but they are doing so because they
are reacting to a much deeper condition in their own lives.
Levinson suggests that the events in
Georgia and Ukraine are very similar in this sense: In each case, Russians
viewed someone else who had been “’ours’ or formerly ‘ours’” as having betrayed
Russia by turning to the West, and they concluded that these countries must be “punished”
for what they had done.
In short, Russians convinced
themselves that what Moscow is doing is a form of justice, not perhaps in the
legal court sense but in the deeper moral and political ones. With a different
leadership, they might have gone in a different direction, but Russians wanted
justice in both cases.
According to Levinson, what is going
on reflects “the consequences of long ago events,” events that are hurting the
current generation but for which its members are not directly responsible. In this, he says, the political situation is “a
close analogy to what is happening in demography.”
Russia is in “a democratic pit,” but
it is in one not because of those who are giving or not giving birth now but
because of what their parents or even grandparents did. Correcting something like that is far more
difficult because changing the behavior of the current generation doesn’t
necessarily solve the problem.
Politically, the Levada Center expert
says, Russians now are caught in “an echo of the events of 1985-1993,” when
Russians saw the collapse of one system and the failure of another to deliver
what they expected. That “double failure”
has led to widespread distrust among the population.
To be sure, a few communists believe
the Soviet system could work again, and the few democrats believe that democracy
could work in Russia. But among the vast
majority, there is no faith in either.
There is “a dark shadow” as on an x-ray plate: “What it is is unclear,
but it is always very bad.”
There are many unanswered questions
all centered around why did this happen and why was what was promised not
delivered, Levinson says. And “then
appeared the idea of Russia’s special path,” an idea that involves
isolationism, xenophobia, and antagonism to the rest of the world.
Levinson notes that when he asks
members of focus groups to draw Russia, “they do not draw a small Russia
surrounded by a large antagonist world.” Instead, “they draw an enormous Russia
but around it is a petty antagonistic periphery ... a cordon.” And the more
antagonistic it is, the greater Russians feel themselves to be.
When the Georgian war took place in
August 2008, Levinson says, many Russians believed that “at last the third
world war had begun and we will win it” because winning was not about what we
would conquer. Instead, “the main thing was that we showed THEM,” “them” being
everyone else.
Such attitudes sent Putin’s ratings
through the roof then, and they are doing the same thing now. Russians once
again feel that “the main thing” is that “we showed THEM!”
But in the Ukrainian case, such
attitudes are exacerbated by something else that most Russians are unwilling to
face, Levinson says. Russians look at
what the Ukrainians have been able to do first in 2004 and again now, how they have
challenged authoritarian rulers and overturned dishonest elections. And they are asking why can’t Russians do the
same?
The anti-Ukrainian attitudes many
Russians have now reflect an envy Russians cannot directly acknowledge. “Of
course, there are those who believe that there are Nazis, fascists and
Banderites” in Ukraine. “But those who do not believe this see that the
Ukrainians have done what we have not.”
And the bitterness of that reflection explains a great deal.
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