Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 21 – For five
centuries, Russian leaders have been obsessed about emigres, defectors and
others who have gone abroad and broken with the Russian regime, fearful of the
ability of such people to influence Russians within Russia and even, as was the
case with Lenin and the then-miniscule Bolshevik Party, to overthrow the
existing system.
Thus, it is no
surprise that the Moscow media has devoted so much attention to a Vilnius
meeting of the Russian opposition in emigration (rufabula.com/articles/2016/03/17/forum-of-free-russia, iarex.ru/articles/52354.html,
kasparov.ru/material.php?id=56EA35B857BD0
and mustoi.ru/na-forume-svobodnoj-rossii-vstretilis-politemigranty-iz-karelii/).
Sometimes this Russian coverage
recalls the anecdote about the old Jew in the shtetl who read anti-Semitic Russian
newspapers because he liked to see “how powerful we really are.” But even if the emigration seldom has the
influence the Kremlin fears it has, Moscow’s fears about that often drive
Russian policies.
Not only has the Putin regime and
its Chechen executors killed some of those in emigration it fears, but it has
taken actions to reduce the ability of Russians to go abroad and possibly join
the ranks of the emigration against Moscow by restricting foreign travel by
many in the security services and debtors.
Now, it is preparing to take another
step which may spark another upsurge in the numbers of Russians who choose to
live abroad but which certainly presages an even more repressive Russian regime
at home than the one Russians have unfortunately had to adapt themselves to
under Vladimir Putin.
Last week, Vladimir Makarov, the
head of the Russian interior ministry’s Chief Directorate for Combatting
Extremism, said that his ministry wants to block foreign travel by those suspected
of committing extremist crimes, have not been cleared by Russian courts or have
not yet served their sentences (sova-center.ru/misuse/news/lawmaking/2016/03/d34062/).
As the SOVA Analytic Center pointed
out, the interior ministry official did not say “at what stage of consideration
this initiative is now.” But Makarov’s words are chilling: They clearly imply
that the Russian authorities may block people merely on the basis of suspicion
and not even as the result of charges and judicial action from foreign travel.
Given the expansive and flexible
definitions of extremism and the general failure of Russian courts to exonerate
anyone charged with extremism crimes, the adoption of such a law would cast a
dark shadow on almost anyone in Russia whose positions are at odds with
whatever line the Kremlin takes.
Some Russian activists have already concluded
that they have no future in that country as long as Putin and his system are in
power and have moved to the West. Others facing the prospect that they may be
stripped of the opportunity to travel abroad via this latest Moscow move seem
likely to reach a similar conclusion and leave sooner rather than later.
On the one hand, that will reduce
the ranks of the opposition in Russia itself, something Putin and company
almost certainly will welcome, although those ranks may continue to grow as
more Russians see just what the Kremlin leader and his entourage represent and
how they are taking away from Russians one of the rights many of them see as a
positive result from 1991.
And on the other, such a trend will
mean that the numbers of Russian opposition figures in places like Tallinn,
Riga, Vilnius, London and New York will grow and provide important new
information and insights for the West about the nature of the Putin system if
the West is clever enough to pay attention to them.
In the 1920s and 1930s, the first Russian
emigration attracted relatively little attention in most countries, with Poland
being a major exception. During the Cold
War, more Western countries including Britain, France and the US paid far more
attention to this important source. The
question now is whether the West will exploit this source of information in the
future.
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