Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 8 – Russia has
been transformed by the war in Ukraine, with some calling this a restoration of
the past and others a new turn to “Russianness,” but Aleksey Shiropayev argues
that what is taking place is in fact the imposition of a fascist system “at a galloping
pace.’
On Rufabula.com today, the
commentator and leader of Russia’s National Democratic Alliance says that Putin’s
war in Ukraine has thrown Russian back from its moves toward democracy and
Europe and created the conditions for “an extremely dark Russian future” (rufabula.com/articles/2014/09/08/russia-in-the-war-with-ukraine).
Indeed, he says, in the course of
the conflict with Ukraine, “Russian fascism has become a FACT,” something
underscored by the Kremlin’s own behavior.
When its propagandists speak of “the Kyiv fascist junta, they are
behaving just like when an everyday thief shouts out ‘Catch the thief’” in
order to escape justice.
“Putin and his KGB clique,”
Shiropayev says, “have decided to base their actions on everything that is most
reactionary in [Russia’s] historical inheritance, on everything that during the
Yeltsin era, the country was not able to escape.” Indeed, “the chief historical
failure of Yeltsinism is that he did not create a NEW European Russian.”
The hatred toward Ukraine now in evidence “has absolutely changed Russia
for the worse,” he continues. “It has
become clear that mass Russian consciousness remains absolutely imperialist and
chauvinist” and that “Russia is prepared to consider Ukraine only as its colony
or as scorched earth.”
Indeed,
he concludes, “the current hatred to the Slav Ukrainians has eclipsed even the
hatred to the Chechens during the periods of the first and second Chechen wars.”
The
atmosphere in Russia has “terribly changed,” and the country is now afflicted
with a kind of “mass insanity” ranging from the near universal wearing of
Georgian colors to the formation of “anti-Maidan militias” which are “the
analogue of the ‘Black Hundreds’ of the beginning of the last century.”
The Russian majority has “ACCEPTED fascization
and is ready to agree to political repressions even massive ones against those
who think differently and the complete suppression of the small remaining
segments of freedom” in their country. In such a situation, “the development of
democracy and civil society becomes impossible and even more unnecessary for
SUCH a people.”
What that kind of people needs is “a
leader, terror and militarism.” It needs “hoary myths which stimulate mass
hatred and mass pride,” Shiropayev says.
What exists in Russia now is a
dictatorship with “clearly marked tendencies toward totalitarianism.” Fear has returned “as a factor of
social-political life,” putting those who disagree “with the anti-Ukrainian and
neo-imperial policy of the Kremlin” at risk of becoming victims of “moral and
political terror.”
One result of this is that “the
relationship of Russia and Ukraine will NEVER be as it was. Ukraine will never
forget” the war Russia has unleashed against it. “Ukraine is lost for Russia as
an empire FOREVER. From now on,” the two countries will be divided by the blood
that has been shed.
According to the Moscow commentator,
“the war with Ukraine represents not so much a direct continuation of the
disintegration of the USSR as the apotheosis of the agony of imperial Russia in
general, an agony which beginning in 1917 has been dragging on for an entire
century.”
But another result of this war is that “Russians
themselves will never be what they were. Each new day of the war with Ukraine
injures Russia above all,” increasing the levels of “aggression and coarseness
in society” and leaving Russia less the country of Putin alone but a nation of
Putin clones and one that supports “Putin’s fascism.”
Curing Russia from this “fascist infection
will be very difficult,” Shiropayev says, because it is “always simpler to
become infected than to be cured” and because “in order to get better, Russia
will need to LOSE this war in a shameful fashion.”
But that could itself entail “an
enormous danger,” he continues, because “the Russia of the Putins could become
transformed into the country of the Rogozins and the Barkashovs,” people who
think that Putin himself is “insufficiently consistent and decisive.”
Putin has become “a hostage of his own
policy” even as he has made Russia a hostage to it, and “already he cannot turn
back, he is simply forced to go further along the path of more escalation,
because at his back are breathing the Dugins and Strelkovs, the legion of those”
who want to drown Ukraine in blood.
Thanks to Putin’s policies and the
Russian population’s response, Russia has “thrown itself out of European
civilization, out of the circle of civilized country and from now on will move
closer to others above all China.” But China is “a stronger player” and Russia
will find itself in a dependent position as a result, one that will recall the
Mongol yoke in which it wil be “a new historical variant of the ‘Muscovite
ulus.’”
But there is an even larger consequence.
“Over the last six months, the world has sharply changed and something evil has
clearly come into it,” Shiropayev says. “The war of Russian against Ukraine is
an obvious prelude to the Third World War,” a conflict that will be “the last
war in the history of humanity” and one that Russia will have triggered.
Many will dismiss this as improbable
alarmism, he notes, but a year ago, they would have dismissed as impossible
things that have happened thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And Shiropayev says his own conclusions
deserve attention because he predicted as early as August 24, 2008 that Putin
would invade Ukraine (shiropaev.livejournal.com/19869.html).
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