Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 27 – The vocabulary
people use to describe a situation not only reflects but often intensifies the
way in which they and others respond to it. Thus, Ronald Reagan’s most
important ideological insight was to describe the Soviet Union as “the evil
empire,” a term that not only delegitimated it but helped power the
independence of parts of that state.
Now, Moscow journalist Arkady Dubnov
in the wake of the protest marches in
Russian cities yesterday says that Russia is “an occupied country,” on occupied
not by some foreign government but rather by its own nominally “Russian”
authorities, an “inadequate” and “cowardly” bunch (echo.msk.ru/blog/dubnov/1951386-echo/).
The Moscow mayor and his “sympathizers
from Staraya Ploshchad and the Lubyanka simply do not understand” that all
their talk about “an illegal march” is insulting at a time when officials are
making decisions about people’s lives and homes without any consultation with
them at all.
If these people “suppose that they
are discrediting Navalny by laying all the fault for mass detentions” on him, “then
I suggest [they] are cruelly mistaken. The leadership position of Navalny will
only strengthen after March 26, especially if you consider the dozens of Russian
cities where people went into the streets to protest against the authorities’
corruption.”
But strengthened even more, Dubnov
says, is the sense that “the country is occupied” and that “the occupier is the
powers that be.” And as has been the
case throughout history, no one wants to put up with an occupation: all honest
citizens will seek to end it – and in this case, that means a change at the
top.
Not surprisingly in a time when such
a definition can seem entirely plausible to the Russian people, others are
talking about yesterday as “the beginning of a revolution” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=58D8A7510452D)
and as an attempted coup d’etat (newsland.com/community/5325/content/popytka-gosudarstvennogo-perevorota-v-rossii-mart-2017-goda/5749932)
and saying things have passed “the point of no return” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=58D81956B8FE3).
There have been many thoughtful
commentaries on the March 26 events in Russian cities, but one of the most
thoughtful and comprehensive is offered by blogger Sergey Aleksashenko (newsland.com/community/4765/content/mysli-o-segodniashnem-dne/5749858)
who suggests seven take-aways from the demonstrations:
1.
Aleksey
Navalny by the successes of yesterday has become “a politician of the federal
level; if you will, the only one who could assemble at the same moment meeetings
under his slogans in a hundred cities of the country.”
2.
“The
prohibition on meetings of opposition politicians with voters … is a powerful
instrument of suppression and degradation of public opinion in Russia” and will
be used now and in the future by the powers that be.
3.
“The
OMON and the National Guard with their clubs … are the single real force which
supports the political regime which exists in the country.” The demonstrations
show the hollowness of claims that 86 percent of the population supports
Vladimir Putin.
4.
“Talk
about a political thaw … common several weeks ago” must be dismissed as so much
hot air.
5.
The
new boss in domestic policy, Sergey Kiriyenko, “either is indistinguishable from
the old ones … or simply doesn’t have any real authority” to do anything
significant.”
6.
“It
is obvious that neither the powers that be, nor the Kremlin, nor Putin has any
developed ideas which it could offer society, any answers to the challenges of the
times, any desire to think about the future of the country and so something for
the improvement of the lives of Russians.”
7.
And
thus, “in Russia a new political season has begun. The scenarios for which are
only beginning to be sketched out. But these scenarios depend on you and me and
not on the Kremlin and its political technologists.”
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