Paul Goble
Staunton,
December 11 – Russian society is developing in ways that ever more frequently
bring it into conflict with the degradation of the Russian state, sociologist
Ella Paneyakh says. Up to now, the state has had the advantage but that is
beginning to change with society more often able to win out against state
interference.
The
St. Petersburg Higher School of Economics scholar says that these trends “may
lead to an escalation of repression and the further tightening of the screws,”
but they may also lead to “’a thaw,’” depending on which side wins out more
often during the coming months (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/174514).
And that highlights something few
have been willing to acknowledge the full implications of, Paneyakh says: “The
enemy of the authorities now does not consist of dissidents and human rights
defenders but rather the very milieu in which easy coordination and mobilization
of people who do not know one another has become possible.”
Defeating that development, she
continues, would require actions that would destroy far more than the regime
wants to destroy. And the situation from the state’s perspective is only going
to get worse given that ever more people are being swept up into this new
communications revolution that the regime has promoted even though it fears the
results.
“Those who were apolitical yesterday
massively go to the polls, having discovered the chance to oppose the outsiders
the Kremlin has imposed in the second round: the public in the Internet, which yesterday
hardly engaged in charity, in the course of a few days collects millions to
cover the fine against The New Times,
and the arrest of a well-known rapper” mobilizes millions more.
According to Paneyakh, “tension is
growing from two sides. “On the one hand, the government is increasing its
pressure on society.” But on the other,
while the regime is focusing on the conventional political opposition, parents
of school children and other groups outside of politics in the past are
becoming political.
“People living in Russia have become
less ready to tolerate injustice and arrogance deployed against their interests”
and are using social media to mobilize and take action. That and not some group
of opposition figures is the real threat to the powers that be in Putin’s Russia
at present, the sociologist continues.
“The post-Crimea mobilization ‘around
the flag’ has exhausted its potential,” and ever more people are displaying the
attitudes which powered the protests of 2011-2012. “While the regime struggles with Navalny and the
network of his supporters,” the internet in all its forms has changed the
population and its ability to respond.
The problem for the powers that be,
Paneyakh says, is that this infrastructure “is not the infrastructure of
specific protest but the infrastructure of contemporary society and its economy
as well.” Going after that to kill off protests will damage more than just the
protester and that leaves the regime with few good choices.
Nearly ever second Russian now has
an account in social networks. Two out of three go to YouTube at least once a
week; and any attack on their possibilities will redound against those who
attack them because it will harm “the economy directly and the quality of life
of all, both loyal and disloyal, as well as the future development of the country.”
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