As Scandals Multiply, Ever Fewer Russians Accept Russian Kakocracy’s Explanations, Voloshina Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 3 – Over the last month, the number of scandals in or involving Russia has increased to the point that ever fewer Russians accept the kakocracy’s customary explanations that what obviously happened didn’t, that everyone does it and so it doesn’t matter, and that everything is the work of the special services of Western enemies.

            That Russian officials assume that their “arguments” will be accepted, Viktoriya Voloshina of Rosbalt says, shows that Russia is now governed by a kakocracy, a regime in which “at the end of state institutions are the worst of its citizens” and one which displays “a minimum of effectiveness, legitimacy and accountability” (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2018/03/02/1686265.html).

            Indeed, in the wake of the cocaine scandal involving Russian diplomats in Argentina, she continues, “it is now completely possible to joke also about a Russian ‘cocacracy.’ In any case, as some are saying on social networks, an answer to the question ‘What are they sniffing?’ now has at last a concrete answer.”

            A new development that has sent the regime’s credibility on such issues plunging is that Russian officials increasingly treat reports or criticism of Russians as more serious than any crime or scandal they may be talking about. That happened most recently in the case of the cocaine scandal.

            In the minds of the kakocracy but not of the Russian people, Voloshina says, “the post of a blogger blacked the country more than the 400 kilograms whose transport involved employees of the foreign ministry or the FSB.”  Anyone who criticizes the powers that be is in the minds of such a regime worse than the actions of the regime that justify such criticism.

                It doesn’t matter where you study or work, she continues. “The main thing is to demonstrate correct ‘pro-Russian views,’” an attitude that recalls an anecdote at the time of the Pussy Riot case. A boy asks his father if he can shoot a pistol at passersby. His father says, sure, shoot as many as you like. “The main thing is don’t dance in a church!”

            Today, Voloshina says. One can update this: “’Lie, son, sniff, curse or kill. But the main thing is don’t say that in the country lies and theft have triumphed.’  That’s ‘anti-Soviet.”