Paul Goble
Staunton,
April 1 – The overwhelming support Russians currently give to Vladimir Putin
has less to do with approval of his policies than with their need to find a way
to cope with the unpredictability and sense of powerlessness his regime and the
world around them have produced, according to Marina Arutyunyan, a Moscow
psychologist.
Just as was
the case under Stalin but was not in Brezhnev’s times, Russians today feel their
world lacks predictability and that in turn leads them, on the one hand, to a
depressed state of powerlessness and, on the other, to identification with the
aggressor who has created that situation, she says (meduza.io/feature/2015/03/23/ya-chuvstvuyu-sebya-rossiey).
“When
aggression is equated with force and you have no choice or so it seems,” she
says, “then this identification with aggression is a mechanism very much in
evidence. By identifying with hatred and anger, you as it were [feel that you
have become] stronger.” Of course, she adds, “this is an absolute fiction, but
psychologically, it makes life easier.”
That is
what is going on among the overwhelming majority of Russians today, she
continues, noting, however, that there are some Russians who are not doing
so. But to the extent that they do not,
they find themselves in increasing psychological difficulties because they want
to negotiate with the authorities, but the authorities have no interest in
doing.
One
response of the sense of powerlessness and depression is emigration. Another is
the displacement of aggression onto those one can attack with relative
impunity, a trend that explains the rise in the level of aggressiveness in
interpersonal relationships in Russia of all kinds. But internal emigration of
the kind that existed in late Soviet times isn’t possible, she says.
The reasons
for that conclusion are two-fold, Arutyunyan continues. On the one hand, those who want to separate
themselves from the rest of society have to find a consensus among themselves,
something they were able to do in Brezhnev’s time because people in this
category agreed about what they were opposing.
And on the
other, the hostile surrounding world needs to be relatively predictable. That
was the case under Brezhnev, but it is not under Putin; and that makes it extremely
difficult for groups to form and survive because they are under constant threat
of being pulled apart by changes in the surrounding society.
Autyunyan
insists that she “does not want to say that convictions do not have
significance,” but the psychological state that Putin has created and in which
Russians today live “is also very important.”
When people feel suppressed and powerless, it is “very easy” for them to
become angry, and they need a target for that anger.
As Theodor Adorno
showed after World War II in his studies of authoritarian societies, the Moscow
psychologist points out, that is something authoritarian rulers have always
understood and been ready to provide because, by providing an explanation for
their populations that eases the latter’s psychological state, it generates
support for themselves.
For
extended periods, such a strategy can be effective, but ultimately it is doomed
to fail because it does not address the underlying problems people face or
allow them to re-acquire the sense of efficacy and a feeling of predictability
which allow them individually and collectively to act in a mature and
self-confident manner.
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