Paul Goble
Staunton,
November 17 – Most Russians still believe that the state has an existence
independent of its officials and capable of magically transforming the
situation if at the top there is “a good tsar” who can be counted on despite
everything to put things in order as those expressing this faith want, according
to commentator Dmitry Milin.
Some
on the left want that leader to be “’a new Stalin’” who will “correct everything”
while others on the right want a new Lee Kuan Yew or “even a Pinochet” who will
“correct everything” but in a different direction, he continues (newizv.ru/article/general/16-11-2018/dmitriy-milin-vera-v-gosudarstvo-podryvaet-glavnoe-veru-v-sebya).
“Many
believe,” Milin argues, “that the state has some kind of independent subjecthood,
separate from the interests of those who work for it,” many of whom are thieves
or worse, and that this state as manifested in its leader who is viewed as “a
good tsar” has the ability to “foresee the future” and “the ability to achieve
transformations.”
But that isn’t so, he says. “The state is only the collection of
officials and who
make it up and whose qualities are well known to all who encounter them in
their daily life.” Unfortunately, believing the state capable of transforming
everything “undercuts what is most important – faith in oneself and one’s
ability to change one’s own life and those around him.”
Despite
what many Russians believe, Milin continues, there simply aren’t any “brilliant
politicians” capable of promoting change “without mass social support and the
main thing, the active and constructive participation of a significant part of
society to change something.”
One
would like to ask the believers in the all-powerful and good state the
following: “’Do you believe that all these selfish officials and siloviki will suddenly be transformed and
begin to work not for their own ‘pockets’ but for your good?’” And do you think that it would be possible to
replace all of the officials so the good tsar could do that?
Milin
says he anticipates that those asked that question would respond with one of
their own: “’Won’t a couple or three million honest people be found who can
replace all these bureaucrats and siloviki?’”
The answer is that such people exist but if they are all moved into the
government, the rest of the country will suffer.
Given that, he continues, the only way forward is to
reduce the size of the government by reducing its role in the economy and society
so that others can do the right thing independently of the government. That would allow taxes to be cut and
entrepreneurs and others to achieve more and receive more for their efforts.
But
for that transformation to happen, Milin says, Russians must stop waiting for
the state to solve all their problems and realize that the only people who can
are those who they see each morning in the mirror. Those people “can change the world for the
better. The state in the form of its bureaucrats and siloviki can’t.”
In
such a Russia, workers, engineers and scholars capable of doing something will
be paid more than siloviki and
bureaucrats who can’t. And that will
mean that “Russia will return but not as a state dangerous to the entire world
but a peaceful one with ‘soft power’ and a powerful economy, like the EU or
China.”
The
best graduates of the best schools will become engineers or doctors or
scholars; they won’t pursue jobs in the government because those jobs won’t continue
to pay more than those in other sectors.
But of course, that will be in the future. As for now, the situation is
not promising at all, Milin concludes.
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