Paul Goble
Staunton,
September 8 – In what she describes as “a tectonic shift” likely to have
far-reaching consequences in the future, Novosti commentator Irina Alksnis says
that Russian laws are now even more invasive of the personal space of the
population than those in Soviet times were (vz.ru/opinions/2018/9/6/940648.html).
Alksnis’ observation has been
prompted by the case against Russian feminist Lyubov Kalugina who has been charged
with what is now a crime, promoting hatred towards men, something that could
not have happened before the adoption of Paragraph 282 by the Russian
government.
The Kalugina case has sparked much
discussion on the Internet, Alksnis says; but one important dimension of what it
shows has seldom been addressed. And that is “the principled change of the
national approach in the attitudes of Russian society when dealing with the
state and law.”
In spite of the widespread “stereotypes
about despotic Russia,” she continues, “historically in the zone of control of
the Russian state has been included an extremely limited space of social and
private life of people.” And that was
true “even in the case of the Soviet period.”
Throughout Russian history, “an enormous
part of the life of the individual always was defined by informal social regulation
and related to the sphere of his or her personal responsibility. The state did
not enter into many areas and in a yet larger number of them, its interference
bore an absolutely formal character.”
“The consequences of this state of
affairs,” she continues, “are well known, including the classic Russian view
that ‘justice is higher than the law’ and a mass of sayings of the type ‘the
strictness of Russian laws is softened by the fact that they are not
necessarily enforced.”
As a result, Russians have historically
laughed about lists of the most absurd laws or court cases abroad because “these
ratings are compiled largely on the basis of Western experience of law and its
application in areas which in the traditional Russian understanding should not
be the subject of government regulation.”
But “the state in Russia actively now gets
involved in spheres of social and personal life which in the past it was not
interested in or was interested in only formally.” That shift is destroying the stereotypes of
relationships between Russian society and the state, producing some good
changes but also raising real problems as well.
The state can point to positive
consequences of its entrance into these spheres like a reduction in the crime
rate and in the use of hateful symbols of Nazism; but “the other side of this
process is that now Russia, again on the model of the West may come up with
ratings of the most ridiculous criminal cases or judicial decisions.”
The Kalugina case is one of them. In the
past, she would not have been taken to court under the current problematic laws
but rather have been subject to social sanctions by other Russians who would
have denounced her views by posting comments on her own postings or directly
criticizing her when possible.
But here we come to “the essence of the
problem,” Alksnis says. “Everything that is occurring is a package deal which
has to be taken as a whole.” When the
state doesn’t get involved, society has to; but when the state does, society is
relieved of the responsibility to take responsibility.
“Government regulation works to the
general humanization of the country, secures a large number of positive trends
in society, but now one can hardly breathe as a result of the rules, frameworks
and restrictions” that it has imposed. And as a result, “questionable, absurd
and simply unjust stories and decisions become in the eyes of the people part
of the landscape.”
Again, Alksnis insists, “it isn’t that the
state machine is bad but that the state has gone into a field which requires flexibility
and an individual approach” and those things become almost impossible when
there is a law on the books governing such questions and consequently when the
state cannot back down.
There needs to be a search for “more
effective instruments which will allow civil society to fulfill its function as
a corrective instance” both those who violate social conventions and the state
which adopts measures lacking in flexibility, conscious “and in places simply
good sense,” the commentator concludes.
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