Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 17 – A few days ago,
Mikhail Khodorkovsky said that he was completely certain that those Russian
opposition figures who are promising to return Crimea to Ukraine if they come
to power will “not receive a mandate” to do so from Russian society, a
declaration that has angered many Ukrainians and other Russian opposition
figures as well.
Their reaction is understandable but
potentially dangerous, Kseniya Kirillova says, because in her view, “Khodorkovsky
to a large degree is right regarding the present-day mentality of the Russian
people” and a failure to take that into account would be “a serious error
similar to Putin’s mistake in Ukraine” (ru.krymr.com/content/article/27080634.html).
Putin thought he
could intimidate the Ukrainians and the West by force having failed to take
into account the transformation of the Ukrainians in the course of the Maidan
and of the West as a result of his Anschluss of Ukraine’s Crimea, a violation
of the international order that few in the West are not horrified by, the
Seattle-based blogger says.
“Ignoring these
processes has led to a situation in which the entire strategy chosen by the
aggressor has turned out to be useless and a losing proposition,” Kirillova
continues. “Neither Ukraine nor the entire rest of the world will be able to
relate to Russia and to Putin as they did before, and no ‘trades’” however much
faith Putin puts in them “will be able to change that.”
Consequently, as
Khodorkovsky suggests, it is critically important that the Russian opposition
should it come to power should “not repeat the mistakes of its predecessors”
but rather pay attention to the attitudes of society – even if those attitudes
are “the result of shameful and false propaganda” involving the distortion of
facts.
Even more
important, Kirillova suggests, is that Ukrainians and their friends and
supporters do not continue to ignore “the very fact of this mentality” in
making their own plans for the future.
We may not like
the attitudes of the Russian majority, she continues; but we are compelled to
start with the facts as they are rather than thinking that the situation will
miraculously transform itself to fit our desires. “If we do not accept [reality],” she says, “we
become no better than the Kremlin which has created in its fantasies a world of
illusion.”
“The present-day
realities of Russia are such,” Kirillova says, that it would be “a miracle” if
any democratic leader came to power. “Liberal and democratic views have been
discredited” in Russia and marginalized.
“More than that, it is obvious that no adequate leader will be able in
the current situation to come to power without Western support.”
“’Adequate’” in
this case does not mean an agent of the West, as Russian propagandists like to
suggest. Rather, such an individual would be “prepared to observe the law and
international agreements” and also be “ready to secure the normal development
of the country without aggressive manifestations.”
Putin clearly
understands this, she continues, and that may be “one of the reasons behind the
current hysterical anti-American propaganda” in Russia. Besides generating
among Russians the sense of being under threat, such notions contribute to the
idea that anyone who wants normal relations with the West “will be viewed by
the population as an enemy.”
Should it happen
that a democratic leader all the same come to power, that would not be the end
of the story, Kirillova says. Such a president would have to hold on to power,
and that may not be easy: In 1917, the democratic February revolution was
followed by “the bloody October which condemned Russia and the countries
neighboring it to decades of communist dictatorship.”
Under current
conditions, “the path ‘from February to October’ could with a high degree of
probability be repeated.” Consequently, a democratic president would certainly have
to take decisions at odds with his convictions lest he be overthrown, and that
risk lies behind what Khodorkovsky has said about Crimea.
But to say that
is not to say one agrees with Khodorkovsky that the issue of the return of
Crimea to Ukraine will necessarily have to go on for decades, Kirillova
says. “If we really admit that the
current state of Russian society has been produced artificially by means of
lies and manipulations, this means that the new regime if it is adequate must
dispel this lie.”
That won’t happen
by opposing Putin’s propaganda with an alternative propaganda but rather to
changing the discourse about reality, the blogger says. A post-Putin regime simply must “explain to
the people that the death of soldiers, the break with the entire world,
including fraternal peoples and the crisis situation of the country are direct
consequences of both the war in the Donbas and the annexation of Crimea.”
Moreover, she says, Khodorkovsky is wrong to speak about “’the
return of Crimea.’” Why couldn’t a “hypothetical” future Russian president
simply explain via television that “’Crimea is ours’ is a grandious deception
and that as a result of Putin’s actions, Crimea in fact did not become ‘ours’?”
According to
international law, “Crimea has belonged and continues to belong to Ukraine.”
Consequently, there is nothing to return because “no one can return something that
which doesn’t belong to him.” That
should not be hard to explain to the Russian people especially as the initial “euphoria”
has worn off and the real problems become obvious.
“Yes,” Kirillova
concludes, “the consciousness of Russian society is sick, but this doesn’t mean
that one shouldn’t or cannot work with it.”
And if conditions such as the passing of Putin from the scene obtain, it
is entirely possible that “this work will take much less time than it now appears
likely will prove to be the case.”
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