Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 29 – Russian polls,
admittedly not the most reliable source, suggest that the more aggressive
Vladimir Putin is, the more Russians love and support him regardless of the
immediate impact of his policies on their lives, a vicious circle that history
suggests could lead to a disaster especially given Moscow’s possession of a
large army and nuclear weapons.
In a commentary in Kyiv’s “Den’,” Sergey
Grabovsky points out that Russian polls show that Putin’s rating among Russians
has dramatically increased since the annexation of Crimea and Moscow’s intervention
in the Donbas and that Russians feeling about their own situation have also
become more positive (day.kiev.ua/ru/blog/politika/strana-rabov-strana-gospod).
And he cites the words of Valery
Fedorov, the head of the VTsIOM polling agency, for an explanation: “The
economic crisis is not as deep as many feared it would be; expectations were
much worse. In addition, in the last year, the self-evaluation and self-respect
of Russians grew.”
That trend, the Kremlin-linked
pollster says, “is directly connected with Crimea, with the conflict in
Ukraine, with the fact that we now are not simply competing with the US but in
conflict with that country, and this, in the opinion of the majority of
Russians means that we are comparable in greatness.”
Such feelings, Fedorov suggests, are
“a very important element of the self-assessment” of Russians.” Given their
improved feelings about themselves on this basis, he adds, Russians have been “anesthetized”
against the impact of any economic problems they may face in their day-to-day
lives.
Grabovsky argues that this shows
that for “the absolute majority of Russians,” the three factors that explain
their positive feelings about themselves and about Putin are “foreign aggression,
conflicts with world leaders, and wars on Ukrainian territory. Everything else
for ‘the devoted people’ is not so important,” and their expectations for
themselves remain low.
All of this
might not matter much, he continues, “if Russia were not an enormous state with
nuclear weapons and a large land army.”
But it is, and
that means that “the despotic, neo-totalitarian power (one of the main
characteristics of totalitarianism is the impossibility of the rotation of
ruling groups) has at its command tens of millions of ‘slaves’ who do not
recognize the real danger for themselves and are ready to support the acts of ‘the
national leader’ and his people right up to ‘the red line.’
That is, Putin
has “tens of millions” of supporters “who are intoxicated not only from alcohol
but from global conflicts and local wars [and] who are prepared to suffer
serious problems in the name not of freedom, humanism, or national flourishing
but in order that someone else as a result of Russian actions will live badly.”
That in turn
has led within Russia to the flourishing of an autocratic state, xenophobia,
and a personality cult, Grabovsky says. And
as various cases from the history of the last century show, that can lead to
disaster. Russia’s possession of nuclear weapons compound that problem and mean
the disaster ahead could be far worse.
According to
the Ukrainian commentator, there is only one way out of this vicious circle: “Russia
with the help of the efforts of the international communist must be stripped of
its weapons of mass destruction. Once and for all so that the planet will be
protected against the rise to the head of this state of the latest ‘titan.’
Otherwise,
Putin or some future leader will be driven in that direction “not for the
defense of freedom or the increase of the well-being of the population” but
gain support for “aggressive attacks on its neighbors” and the use of “a threat
of nuclear attacks on all who do not agree” with him.
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