Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 11 – Forty-nine percent of Russians say that Vladimir Putin is
responsible for the problems Russia faces, up by nine percent over the last
year, a Levada Center poll finds (politsovet.ru/57449-polovina-rossiyan-schitaet-putina-prichinoy-problem-v-strane.html https://www.levada.ru/2017/12/11/17232/).
Slightly
fewer – 45 percent – blame the government, and fewer still blame Prime Minister
Dmitry Medvedev, an indication that Russian attachment to the idea that they
have a good tsar but bad boyars may be slipping somewhat and that Putin’s
obvious power means that an increasing number of Russians now hold him
responsible for the bad as well as the good.
But the same polling agency reports
not only that the share of the population prepared to vote for him remains
overwhelmingly high but also that “the number of Russians who consider that
Russia needs ‘a strong hand’ at the helm is growing,” a finding that works to
Putin’s benefit (regnum.ru/news/polit/2355661.html).
The share saying Russia needs “a strong hand” now stands at
40 percent, 13 percent higher than three years ago; and, according to the same
poll, “38 percent additional respondents said that there are situations when it
is necessary to concentrate all power in the hands of one person.” Only 17 percent expressed the opposing
view.
But the
same polling agency reports not only that the share of the population prepared
to vote for him remains overwhelmingly high but also that “the number of
Russians who consider that Russia needs ‘a strong hand’ at the helm is
growing,” a finding that works to Putin’s benefit (regnum.ru/news/polit/2355661.html).
The share saying Russia needs “a strong
hand” now stands at 40 percent, 13 percent higher than three years ago; and,
according to the same poll, “38 percent additional respondents said that there
are situations when it is necessary to concentrate all power in the hands of
one person.” Only 17 percent expressed
the opposing view.
This
pattern has prompted a bitter reflection by opposition politician Gennady
Gudkov who observes that if these figures are correct, then “Russia does not
have a future” because it shows that Russians have not learned the difference
between a strongman and an effective leader (echo.msk.ru/blog/gudkov/2108542-echo/).
“We are a unique country,” he says, “one which has not
been able to learn the lessons from its own victims and sufferings and has
become accustomed to subservience and slavery as th norm of its existence. A
nation in short that finds it easy to betray the memory of its ancestors who
were killed by tyrants, executioners, and dictators.”
“’A firm hand,’” he continues, “is the main cross, the
main evil, the main CURSE of our people which has destroyed our strength and
condemned it to eternal lagging behind the advanced countries of the world.”
One has to ask, Gudkov says, have Russians “gone out of their minds?” and do
they really want to return Lenin and Stalin?
“For almost 20 years in Russia, Putin has ruled in Russia
with ‘a firm hand,’ thank God still not an entirely dictatorial one.” As a result, Russia with all its wealth is
not only falling ever further behind the rest of the world with ever lower
incomes but isolating itself from others who see it as a bandit and an outcast.
He calls on Russians to look around and consider a
country like Finland, which is now “one of the wealthiest countries of the
world” with incomes ten times that of Russia. The reason for that, Gudkov
argues, is that “already in 1881,” it turned away from “’a firm hand’” and put
its trust in a parliamentary democracy.
Russia needs to do that, but to do so, it must give up
its absurd faith that only “’a firm hand’” can save the country. In fact, as
history shows, a hand of that kind can only succeed in strangling Russia in the
name of saving it because, as Russians don’t seem yet to understand, “’a firm
hand’” is not the same thing as an effective government.
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