Only One Russian in Five Genuinely Believes Russia is a Great Power, Solovey Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, November 12 – Not only has foreign policy become a less effective mobilizing tool for the Kremlin but now “only 20 percent of its citizens consider Russia to be a great power,” Valery Solovey says, creating a situation where ever more of them are ready to ask questions and even challenge the regime.

            In an interview with SIA Press, the MGIMO analyst says that the powers that be are trying to act as if “everything is normal.” But in fact, this shift was already on view in the September elections where the center lost not four but eight races and covered that by using the power of office to hold on in four (siapress.ru/interview/83090).

                Initially, the Kremlin was alarmed, Solovey says; but now it has managed to convince itself that the situation is not all that bad and that it doesn’t have to take any radical steps as long as it gives the appearance of doing so, an attitude that recalls the anecdote about Soviet leaders on a train in which Brezhnev suggests covering the windows and pretending things are moving.

            “In my view,” the scholar continues, “this is a mistake because the situaiton is obviously poor.” So far Russians have kept their anger within bounds but if nothing is done that could soon change, especially because class conflict has re-emerged as a result of the ill-fated pension reform which took from the poor in order to be able to give to the rich.

            Moscow has assumed that it can do whatever it wants by putting out “hurrah patriotic” propaganda, but that assumption is wrong. “Compensatory propaganda lost its force by the beginning of 2016. After that, it continued by inertia and now it is ceasing to work altogether” as ever more Russians recognize that their country is no longer a great power.

                Given this shift in attitudes, the regime should be thinking about reforms; but instead, it is simply trying to hold on, and that in turn sets the stage for crises and even a revolution, caused as so often in the past not by the population or the opposition but by the authorities’ actions and inactions, Solovey continues.

            “As soon as society is able to throw a serious, obvious and significant challenge to the powers that be, we will right then see that a significant part of the elites will hurry to shift to the side of the people,” he says. That is what happens in every case, but until the challenge occurs, the elites will stay linked to the central power.

            “Suddenly” in Russia as elsewhere members of the elite “will suddenly declare that they were always with the people and against this or that action, that in fact they were critics of the pension reform, and that they only kept quiet. Now they will extend their hand to the rising people.” Until then, they will do nothing.