Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 10 – Talk the supposedly
“hybrid” nature of the Russian state now with its insistence that everyone
avoid comparing it with any other regime intentionally or not obscures how
Putin “reproduced precisely the Stalinist mechanism of power” and put in place “a
neo-Stalinist authoritarian regime,” Irina Pavlova says.
Those who dissent from the
supporters of the “hybrid” conception, as the US-based Russian historian has
for some time, are usually challenged by assertions that “Putin is not Stalin
and that today there aren’t and cannot be mass repressions comparable in scope
to the repressions of Stalin’s times” (ivpavlova.blogspot.com/2017/01/blog-post_9.html#more).
“Of course, Pavlova says, “Putin isn’t
Stalin for no two people are exactly alike. But the issue is not in
personalities but in the phenomena which they embody. Today, mass repressions
aren’t necessary – Stalin made them unnecessary” by his transformation of the people
into “a space for manipulation by the powers that be.” Now only “targeted”
repression is needed.
As many fail to recognize, “the very
essence of Stalinism is not mass repressions … but conspiratorial power with
secret mechanisms for the taking of decisions,” a model which traces its
origins back to the Russian state of Ivan the Terrible and one that “beautifully
serves the goals and interests of President Putin and the members of his
corporation.”
This system, the historian points out,
“guarantees the preservation both of their power and of their property. More
than that, it satisfies their great power ambitions on the world political
stage.”
One can argue, Pavlova says, that “Putin
has solved the problem of the consolidation of power even more effectively than
Stalin did because in present-day information society, it is possible to
achieve those goals not via mass repressions but rather via the effective
manipulation of public consciousness.”
The necessary conditions for this development
“have existed from the times immediately after August 1991 “when the mechanism
of communist rule with its infrastructure and secret way of doing business
remained untouched.” The personification of power took place under Yeltsin when
“the authority of the president turned out to be no less than” that of CPSU
leaders.
Putin simply completed this process
with his power vertical and the appointment of governors, Pavlova continues, “the
last step [being] the consolidation of power and the transformation of the
Russian Federation from a formally federal state into a unitary one like it was
under Stalin.”
“The chief
principle of the Stalinist and now the Putinist mechanism of power is the
absolute secrecy of decision making.”
And despite what some think, this is “not a weakness but a strength of
this regime.” It hides “the real center
of power, its main players, and their motives” and only those decisions the
authorities want to be public are made so.
But Putin has not simply restored
the Stalinist mechanism of power, Pavlova argues. “He has legitimated it” in
the minds of many who are prepared to label it and accept it as “’sovereign
democracy’” or “’imitation democracy’”
or even now, a “’hybrid’ regime” by having institutions that are just as
fraudulent as was “’socialist democracy’ under Stalin.
According to the Russian historian, “Putin
in this regard has gone even further than stalin did.” He has adapted “the
Stalinist mechanism of power to the information era, having permitted the
existence not only of the so-called systemic opposition but also the
extra-systemic which can even harshly criticize him.”
But these appearances are deceiving
to those who want to be deceived because all opposition “operates on the
Kremlin’s conditions” and its existence is used to legitimize the illegitimate,
Pavlova suggests.
In addition to restoring the Stalinist
method of rule, she continues, “the Putin regime has successfully consolidated
the population of the country around the supreme power,” by playing on memories
of the Great Fatherland War and promoting the notion that Russia today is a besieged
fortress surrounded by enemies.
As a result of these Putin “achievements,”
“Russians even in the 21st century remain an archaic and
paternalistic people, completely depending and relying on the central powers”
and retaining their “traditional anti-democratic and anti-Western Russian and
Soviet values, which have come to form a great power ideology or Russian
fundamentalism.”
That system of values includes the
notion shared by the powers and the population that “the Russian people is the bearer
of a special morality and a special feeling of justice, that the West can never
be “a model for societal development,” that Russia must be an empire, and that
they and their country have “a special historical mission.”
Despite what some think or perhaps
hope, this regime is “stable as never before,” Pavlova says. It is one like
Stalin’s in which “the life of the Russian population will continue to get
worse and morality degrade, but the components of this regime, that is, the
siloviki, the power elite, the military and the national corporations will
flourish as before.”
Such a state is “not a hybrid
regime.” Those who think so are focusing only on “superficial phenomena.” Instead
it is, as it has been since 2007, Pavlova says, quite obviously a dictatorship
and should be called that rather than dressed up as something else.
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