Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 21 – One of the foundations
of Vladimir Putin’s hold over officials is the code of silence – what the mafia
calls omertà – he demands. If they dissent from the Kremlin leader and
go public with it – the power vertical he has spent so much time building will
at a minimum begin to come apart. Now, there is evidence that is beginning to
happen.
At the very moment Vladimir Putin
was issuing the order for the spring draft to go ahead, the governor of Pskov
was detailing the reasons everyone understands why that would be a disaster and
spread by pandemic throughout the military and even more broadly, Aleksandr
Golts writes (ej2020.ru/?a=note&id=34905).
By so
doing, Governor Mikhail Vedernikov “violated the code of the Putin bureaucrats,”
because “one of the foundations of the present system of power is the Russian
version of omertà, the mafia law
about silence,” the independent military analyst says. And Putin has enforced this by punishing
those who expose mistakes more than he ever does those who commit crimes.
“Putin’s omertà has led
Russian society to the most profound moral decline. And now, individual
bureaucrats are suddenly refusing to take part in the universal lie,” Golts continues,
adding that he “doesn’t think that officials have suddenly in the spring found
their consciences awaken. But the thing is that the virus isn’t Putin and you
can’t deceive it.”
Meanwhile, there were six other
coronavirus stories worthy of note:
1. Rosbalt
commentator Sergey Shelin says that the Putin regime is so opposed to giving
money to the population as opposed to itself that this attitude has clouded its
ability to see what Russia’s interests in fact are (rosbalt.ru/blogs/2020/04/21/1839624.html).
2.
Unlike most populations confined
because of the pandemic, Russians are not going to have a baby boom nine months
from now. They are too pessimistic about the future even to use this
opportunity to reverse the decline in the Russian population, experts say (ng.ru/economics/2020-04-20/1_7848_demography.html).
3. The editors of
Nezavimaya gazeta argue in a lead article that as a result of their experiences
during the pandemic, Russia’s middle class is going to demand a new deal with
the state, demands that will be at the center of the country’s political life
in the coming years (ng.ru/editorial/2020-04-20/2_7848_editorial.html).
4.
To justify his unpopular decision not
to open barber shops, Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov has very publicly shaved
his head so he need not go to one anytime soon (mk.ru/politics/2020/04/21/kadyrov-pobrilsya-nalyso-v-otvet-na-prosby-otkryt-parikmakherskie.html).
5. Russians are
expressing increasing concern that rising unemployment among immigrant workers
from Central Asia and the Caucasus may lead to a rise in crime, despite
official statistics showing that is unlikely to be the case (mk.ru/social/2020/04/21/zhdet-li-rossiyu-vzryv-prestupnosti-vo-vremya-epidemii.html,
liberal.ru/migration/ojidaet-li-rossiu-rost-migrantskoi-prestupnosti, vz.ru/society/2020/4/21/1035348.html and newizv.ru/article/general/21-04-2020/vopros-dnya-naskolko-opasny-nerabotayuschie-migranty).
6.
Russians in self-isolation are saving
themselves with humor, much of it black and a large share as one might expect
recycled from various difficult periods in the past. Yevgeny Tsots assembles a
small collection (regnum.ru/news/society/2923885.html).
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