Putin Backers Not Homogeneous or Fully Convinced Putin is Handling the Situation Well, Kirillova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, April 6 – The focus on the declines in the percentage of Russians who support Vladimir Putin and his policies has obscured the important reality that there are two major groups and several smaller ones who form his backers, whatever the percentages Russian pollsters report, Kseniya Kirillova says.

            The US-based Russian journalist says the two most important of these subgroups are “ordinary Russians” and “active consumers of propaganda.” Those in the first group are disposed to believe Putin because they want to maintain the illusion of a calm life not because they approve his aggressive foreign policy” (svoboda.org/a/29842598.html).

            Were they to declare that they did not support the Kremlin leader, such people would view their world as falling apart because that would “destroy the myth about eternal peace and stability.” That means that they are supporting him not because they agree with him but because their own view of life requires them to believe that he must be doing the right thing.

            The second large group, Kirillova continues, consists of those who accept the regime’s propaganda and believe it “’with all their souls.’” Such acceptance gives them a ssense of hteir own importance; and they are thus the target audience for the Kremlin’s “militaristic hysteria’ and the supposed plots of numerous foreign and domestic enemies.

             In addition, there are other groups of Putin supporters; but they are much smaller including the committed imperialists who really dream of restoring the USSR and see Putin’s views as favoring that outcome. To be sure, these people are “relatively small in number” and they are the kind of people who will “change their position if the powers that be change.”

            The two major groups of Putin supporters thus support him for different reasons: “militaristic rhetoric impresses the second, but the first are forced to live with it, fearing that otherwise things may become still worse.” And it is to this group that the Kremlin is directing its propaganda about the supremacy of Russian weapons which will keep enemies from attacking.

            At least some who want to be reassured are not by the militarist rhetoric that works with those who don’t need to be. Several Moscow commentators have correctly noted, Kirillov continues, that “the majority of Russians are tired of the unending flow of virtual aggression and are disappointed in the policies of the authorities.”

            But at the same time, “’the active consumers of propaganda’ also are not completely satisfied with the Kremlin: even the most horrific virtual images seem pale in comparison with the wretched everyday life around them. They want more an ideal they can rally around in order to be ready to fight the enemies in the West.

            As a result, Russian propaganda is focusing ever more often on “an idealized image of the Soviet Union,” something that works for both of the two largest groups of Putin supporters although it contains within it a threat to the support that they have been giving him up to the present.

             

            That is because the Soviet image has another side, one that “is firmly connected int eh consciousness of Russians with the idea of social justice and the rejection of oligarchy and corruption. Consequently, the more nostalgic for the USSR people become, the more they will begin to demand ‘real socialism,’” with real social guarantees.

            A large part of the support Russians give to Putin is simply because they are afraid not to say they support him, but there are many who even now “consider the actions of the authorities on the whole to be correct from the point of view of the tasks the regime has set,” the US-based Russian journalist says.

            But “in both the one and the other groups are appearing ever more people who consider that Vladimir Putin personally at the present moment is not dealing well with this task.” The first group is upset with the declining standard of living and the growth of militarism, an indication for them that “the powers cannot effective protect the country from ‘foreign aggression.’”

            At the same time, “the more aggressive consumers of propaganda” can see that “even if it is successfully standing up to the hated West, Russia today is quit far from the Soviet ideal. And therefore, while still formally approving the actions of the powers that be, ever more Russians are beginning to openly express distrust in them.”