Putin Acting against Russian Protests like Nicholas II in 1904 Forgetting What Followed, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 6 – Down to the use of Cossacks, Vladimir Putin yesterday copied the kind of methods Nicholas II used against demonstrators in 1904, successfully dispersing the thousands who came out against his regime but entirely forgetting what came next, the collapse of the tsarist system in the revolutions of 1917, Igor Eidman says.

            On Facebook, the Russian analyst for Deutsche Welle argues that once again a Russian regime is using “Cossacks with whips and black hundreds activists … to beat students. The regime’s guardians with the help of new Azefs are creating imaginary ‘revolutionary’ organizations and then unmasking them” to boost their reputations with the powers that be (facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1851598108236493&id=100001589654713).

            Priests “pray for the tsar and call for wiping out sedition,” he continues just as they did more than a century ago.  Journalists in the pay of the powers are again writing whatever the Kremlin wants.  Meanwhile, those near the throne are seizing property in pursuit of their personal enrichment with no thought of what is happening to the country.

            And “the country is being drawn into a senseless and dangerous colonial war, this time not in the Far but in the Near East.”  Thus,  Eidman says, “the Russian authorities in large measure have returned the system to what it was in 1904, forgetting that 1905 and then 1917 followed. They have revived the worst traditions” of defending those in power.

            The question now is: will the Russian opposition today “revive the revolutionary traditions of the Russian liberation movement” of the times of the last tsar given that that Russia now is forced to live under another one?