Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 15 – The Putin
regime’s attempt to mobilize and direct civil society by unleashing “the genie
of intolerance” has had the horrific consequence of leading to the spread of
pogroms and pogrom-like activities by groups whose members feel they have the blessing
of the authorities to act against others, according to Nikolay Gulbinsky.
In today’s “Nezavisimaya gazeta,”
the Moscow commentator says that “the situation in Russia ever more recalls the
theater of the absurd” in which politicians call for banning plays, books, and
films they have never seen or read,
something that even Soviet leaders did only rarely (ng.ru/ng_politics/2016-11-15/15_6859_jinn.html).
It would be bad enough if such
proposals were being made by individual political figures like Natalya
Poklonskaya, Gulbinsky says; but unfortunately, standing behind her is “a
certain movement with the name ‘The Tsar’s Cross’ and several other even less
well-known social organizations.”
“In other words,” he continues, “the
inquisition-like fervor of the former Crimean procurator and currently deputy
from ‘the party of power,’ arose not by itself: she was fulfilling ‘the demand
of her voters.’” And such involvement of
“’the popular masses’ in repressive policy is … sad from the point of view of the
country’s prospects.”
In recent months, there has been “a
wave of pogroms” against art exhibits and people that groups encouraged by the
regime to view as alien to Russian culture or the Orthodox Church have taken
things into their own hands. Government
organs are at least ostensibly not involved with these actions, even though
they have encouraged them in various ways, Gulbinsky says.
But what is especially worrisome is
that these groups have forced society and the state to bow to their will,
something that raises many questions including “How and why does the
authoritarian state being built in Russia now tolerate this?” and “why is [the
state] so intolerant to completely peaceful protest actions at the same time?”
“To answer these questions,” the
commentator says, one must look at recent history. When the USSR was falling
apart, people talked about how civil society would arise and become a force for
good. That was because most forgot Leo Tolstoy’s warning that “bad people
willingly come together to achieve their goals while good ones somehow are
unwilling to do so.”
Russia is hardly the only country
where that is true, but because of its history, it has suffered more from this
tendency than many others. And now,
Russian civil society groups “having gained a certain strength and influence are
beginning literally to tyrannize over citizens,” forcing them to hate what they
hate and to back what they back.
The general view was that the
Russian state should not be involved in creating and structuring Russian civil
society, that the latter should have “the chance to develop without any
interference from the state.” Such an arrangement was as absurd as expecting a
garden to grow without a gardener. But that is what the Russian state did at
first. Then it changed and made things even worse. The fruits of first neglect
and then intervention are now clear to see.
Yeltsin did little to structure
civil society, but when Vladimir Putin came to power, he sought to exploit what
people called civil society to promote himself and his policies. He organized a
series of youth organizations, the chief task of which was to support him and
to “compromise liberal parties and nationalist movements.”
These groups achieved a great deal
for him and because they were “entirely dependent” on the Presidential
Administration,” they ceased their activities exactly when the Kremlin stopped
financing them and called for them to disband.
But then in response to the liberal demonstrations of 2011-2012, the situation
changed and changed fundamentally.
In order to show his power, Putin
needed groups that could stand up against the liberal demonstrators, and he
used various means to call them forth, Gulbinsky says. He needed something more
powerful than the Nashis of the past and so he turned to something much more
potentially destabilizing and frightening.
The new groups of “civil society”
consisted of “a varied conglomerate of nationalist, monarchist, ‘Orthodox,’
Stalinist and other movements and organizations which were united by only one
thing – hostility to the ideas of liberal democracy,” the “Nezavisimaya gazeta”
writer suggests.
They assembled on Poklonnaya Hill on
February 4, 2012, under the nominal leadership of Sergey Kurginyan; but as a
result of this meeting, “the signal was given” as to what the authorities
wanted and would permit, “and society received the message.” New groups arose opposed to minorities,
Ukraine and the West more generally.
Then, Gulbinsky says, the government
“gave the radical nationalist groups a truly tsarist present having adopted in
June 2013 a law about countering any denigration of the religious convictions
and feelings of citizens,” a law which showed that for the state, “believers
are a more valuable category of citizens than non-believers” and should be
treated as such.
(For the ways in which radical Russian
Orthodox groups in particular have accepted that notion, see among others the
articles this week at kommersant.ru/doc/3136006, http://echo.msk.ru/blog/lev_ponomarev/1873914-echo/
and ixtc.org/2016/11/pravoslavnyy-terror-v-moskve-politsiya-i-sk-protiv-zaschitnikov-parka-torfyanka/.)
The
sanctions regime against Russia and the failures
of the Novorossiya project are forcing Vladimir Putin “to soften his
anti-Western rhetoric and to look for opportunities for renewing dialogue with
the West,” something many believe will now be more possible as a result of the election
of Donald Trump as US president.
In
such a situation, Putin has a vested interest in suppressing these radical
civil society groups that he created and supported in various ways, not only
because he has never been comfortable as the populist some view him as being
but also because an authoritarian state can’t function well if such groups exist.
Today,
Putin’s force structures are strong enough to suppress these groups, but doing
so won’t be easy, Gulbinsky suggests, because putting the genie of intolerance
back into the bottle is inevitably going to be more difficult and require more
force than those who were happy to let it out in the first place now suppose.
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