Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 24 – For almost two decades,
Igor Eidman says, Moscow has promoted three interrelated “cults” as Russia’s “civic
religion, “the cult of Stalin, the cult of Victory and the cult of Putin.” But
if earlier they were reinforcing, now there is evidence that they are coming
apart with ever more Russians expressing support for Stalin and ever fewer for
Putin.
The reason for this trend, the Russian
sociologist and commentator argues, resides in the social structure of the overwhelming
majority of Russians who are not part of the richest one percent or the 12
percent who want to be part of the Western world and reject both Stalin and
Putin (openmedia.io/exclusive/pochemu-stalina-lyubyat-vse-bolshe-a-putina-vse-menshe).
These people, which Eidman called “Russia-3,”
are the “unprivileged and un-Europeanized ‘deep people’ and ‘the Crimean
majority’ (86 percent supported the annexation of Crimea).” They still live in
the main by traditional values which divide the world into “us” and “them” and
have a particular view of what those in charge should be like.
For them, “a good correct master –
the husband in a family, the landowner, the officer in the army, or the tsar in
the state must be strict to the point of cruelty,” Eidman says. “His task is
not only to defend against ‘the others’ but to punish his ‘own,’ including his
immediate entourage, to keep them in line.”
This “deep people,” he suggests,
view as their “main enemy not the liberals and opposition figures but the
overreaching bosses” who oppress them by their arbitrariness, cruelty and
corruption. For them, Stalin is “the model” of such a leader. But Putin “obvious
is not inclined to ‘beat his own’” and thus maintain order.
Polls show that significant majorities
of Russians believe that harsh punishment of all corrupt figures is the most
important means of “strengthening legality.”
They are pleased by the arrest of some of these but do not believe that
what has happened so far marks “the beginning of a serious struggle with corruption.”
For most of his rule, Putin has been
able to distract ordinary Russians from his failure to impose order in this way
by his attacks on Chechens, Georgians, Ukrainians and Islamists. But now that
tactic, which worked well, is becoming ever less effective. Russians want him
to go after the corrupt figures around him.
The one percent, which Eidman calls
Russia-1, want the system to remain stable. Russia-2 wants a transition to
European political and legal standards. “But Russia-3 above all is concerned with
the problem of social justice” which in their minds means coming down hard on
the corrupt elite.
“Seeing that the current president
cannot or does not want to bring to heel the thieving bosses, ‘the deep people’
is turning its affections toward the most evil figure of Stalin.” That is underlying reason why Stalin’s
approval rating is going up, and Putin’s is going down, the sociologist says.
Eidman says that it is worth
recalling that “on the eve of Gorbachev’s perestroika, when the need for change
was already obvious, in ‘the deep Russia’ also arose a renaissance of the cult
of Stalin … [reflecting] the demand of simple people angry at the privileges of
the nomenklatura for justice.”
The exposure of Stalin’s crimes
during perestroika, he continues, undermined that cult but clearly “only
for a time.” And the reason “the deep people”
looked to Stalin 30 years ago is behind his recovery. History “now is repeating
itself,” Eidman concludes.
According to the commentator, “European and ‘deep’
Russia are natural allies in opposition to ‘the country of the bosses.’ They in
equal degree are not interested in the continuation of what is in essence its
colonial rule” over them. For that
reason if no other, Aleksey Navalny is on to something.
The leader who will prove successful
in the future, Eidman concludes, will be “one who while retaining the support
of the Russian Europeans is able to convince ‘the deep Russia’ that he will
become a severe judge of the thieving oligarchy now in power.”
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