Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 1 – One of the most
powerful ideological memes of Soviet times was the notion that capitalism
divided the population of any country into “two nations,” a small one
possessing all the wealth and a huge one whose production was confiscated by
the first for its benefit and not that of the people.
The term was lifted by Marxists from
Benjamin Disraeli’s 1845 novel, “Sybil or the Two Nations,” a book that
appeared in the same year as Friedrich Engels’ “The Condition of the Working
Class in England in 1844,” a work that has had significant influence not only
on Marxists but on others as well.
Now, some commentators in Russia are
suggesting that their country as it has developed under the rule of Vladimir
Putin has become one in which there are two peoples rather than one, a
situation that is not only morally indefensible but dangerous as far as the
future of their land is concerned.
Earlier this year, Moscow writer
Mikhail Berg wrote in his blog that “we live in one country but we have two
peoples,” a small number of “thinking people” who need “greater freedom and
honest elections” and “an enormous mass” of those who have been intimidated
into silent acquiescence or support of the current regime (mberg.net/dva_naroda).
That idea has more recently been
developed by film director Andrey Konchalovsky who has issued a cry of despair
from someone who wants to be proud of his country and his people but finds that
increasingly difficult as Russia slides into an unprecedented “demographic and
moral” disaster (xexe.club/101015-kuda-my-katimsya.html).
Many are debating whether Russia is
part of Europe or Asia, but in fact, he writes, “by the level of corruption, by
life expectancy, and by the level of investment in science and the like,”
Russia today has become as if “we are in Africa” and without the colonial
experiences that long held that continent back.
To make his point, Konchalovsky
provides a collection of devastating statistics that Russians seem all too
ready to ignore. Among them are the
following:
·
Mortality in
Russia.
“Over the last 20 years, more than seven million Russians have died off … Every
year, Russia loses as many people as the population of a whole oblast the size
of Pskov ... The number of suicides, murders and accidents in Russia is
comparable with the level of mortality in Angola and Burundi … Life expectancy of Russian men is
approximately 160th among the countries of the world, just ahead of
Bangladesh.”
·
A Crisis in the
Russian Family.
“Eight of ten older Russians who live in homes for the elderly have relatives
capable of supporting them … The country has from two to five million
unsupervised children,” 100 times as many as China. “80 percent of the 370,000 children in
orphanages having living parents … and we are first in the world in terms of
the number of children abandoned by their parents.”
Crimes against Children. In 2010, 1700 of every 100,000 children were raped or killed, a figure that is higher than “even in South Africa” and one that means that “every day in Russia four or five children are murdered. In the same year, there were 9500 sex crimes against minors, a figure exceeded only in South Africa.
Crimes against Children. In 2010, 1700 of every 100,000 children were raped or killed, a figure that is higher than “even in South Africa” and one that means that “every day in Russia four or five children are murdered. In the same year, there were 9500 sex crimes against minors, a figure exceeded only in South Africa.
·
Drug Abuse and
Alcoholism.
30,000 Russians die each year from overdoses of narcotics, and 70,000 from
alcoholism directly. These figures compare with the loss of 14,000 Soviet
soldiers in all the years of the Afghan war. Russians now consume 15 liters of
pure alcohol annually, even though the WHO says that consuming 8 liters a year
threatens the survival of the nation.
·
Corruption. Corruption is so massive and so widespread
that it surpasses this plague in any other country. The misuse of the courts has become tragic:
now Russian courts are even prepared to try the dead, something that happened
in Europe the last time in the 17th century when Oliver Cromwell was
dug up and tried.
·
Hollowing Out of the
Country.
“Over the last ten years, 11,000 villages and 290 cities in Siberia have
disappeared,” opening the way for China and Japan whose population densities
far exceed those of Russia east of the Urals. “For whom did we conquer and
develop Siberia and the Kuriles? It turns out, it was for the Chinese or the
Japanese,” Konchalovsky says.
·
Rising Poverty. Despite its
enormous natural wealth, “it is shamefully the case” that half of the Russian
population consists of poor people.
These are horrific figures, the writer
says, and he is “certain that Putin knows all these facts,” which prompts the questions:
What does he think about them? And what is he prepared to do? Especially at a
time when Russia is “approaching a demographic and moral catastrophe which it
has never experienced before.”
There are many explanations for
Russia’s sad state and current division into two nations, Konchalovsky
continues. “The chief among them is the irresponsible economic policy of the 1990s”
when “people with a feudal consciousness who never knew private property in
land or capitalism’ and who had lost the spirit of entrepreneurialism under 70
years of communist rule.
But perhaps the most horrific
explanation for what is wrong in Russia today, is that Russia’s oppressors have
come not from abroad as was the case in Africa but “out of the ranks” of Russia’s own citizens,
something that ultimately makes what has happened even sadder and more
unforgiveable.
If only a third of Russians were to
recognize this and stand up behind it, he suggests, “RUSSIA WOULD BE A
DIFFERENT COUNTRY.” But unfortunately that has not happened. For it to occur,
Konchalovsky says, “Russia needs a leader who would have the courage of Peter
the Great to tell people words which they have not heard for a long time.”
Those words would convey “a bitter
truth,” one that Russians must hear if they are to have any hope of moving
forward because at present, the vast majority of Russians “do not want to
understand how far they lag behind Europe in their civilizational development.”
“I understand,” Konchalovsky
continues, “that the leader of the nation … cannot speak freely.” But now
Russia faces a crisis that can be addressed only if he speaks the truth. And he adds that he “doesn’t know whether
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is capable of such a suicidal act.”
“I am a Russian,” the film director
says. “I pine for my Motherland, but I ‘don’t see’ her! I do not see a country
in which I can take pride. I see only crowds of dissatisfied and angry people
so alienated from one another that they fear each other” rather than being
willing to work together.
“I want to be proud of my Motherland,”
he concludes, “but I am ashamed of what it has become.” He adds that he can’t
remember the last time he felt pride in it but can assure everyone that it wasn’t
when the Russian hockey team won at the Sochi Olympiad.
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