Putin Regime Can’t Be Improved: It Must Be Replaced, El Myurid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 3 – Anatoly Nemian, who blogs under the screen name El Myurid, says that Russians must get over the notion that they can do anything to modify or improve the Putin regime and work to replace not only its leader but the regime as such. Otherwise, they will find themselves blocked by it and its constant and arbitrary changing of the rules.

            “Putinist democracy is a fiction and a bluff,” he says; “a dictatorship needs legitimation and the illusion of support. It is always based on deception and terror: terror toward those who don’t fall for deception and prevention terror toward those who cease” to modify reality to bring it into line with the regime’s (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5EFD5DD663AD4).

            According to Nemian, “the source of power of a dictatorship is not the people and therefore any quasi-democratic measures are an illusion and a distraction.” That is because for those in power, it is the only subject. Everyone else is “an object” because “it can change the rules and you can’t.”  That means the people can never win within the regime’s rules.

            As long as it worked for Putin, he said that “there would never be any changes in the constitution under any circumstances. But then he changed the rules by saying that without changes it has turned out that it will be impossible to live further” and rammed through the chances he wanted.

            “Putin isn’t responsible before the people” and thus qualifies as a dictator who will lie and change the rules whenever it suits him, Nemiyan says. In a democratic country, he would have to seek a mandate before making a change rather than making the change and then orchestrating a mandate for it.

            “But in a dictatorship, that is not the case: the agreement of the people is not required. What is requited is only the illusion of this agreement, the legitimation of the decision, and involvement [of the people] in the crime” of the ruler.

            When the opposition tries to calculate how to act within the rules Putin has established, the blogger says, it has already lost. Boycotting or not boycotting, voting yes or voting no doesn’t matter. It may make those who do one or the other feel better morally, but it has no effect legally and politically.

            Confronted with a situation like that, one that appears in the form of “an unresolvable problem, the only correct decision is an indirect one. And an indirect one in this case is the liquidation of the source of the problems, that is, of the mafia regime.”  No other decision is rational.

            But of course, those who take such a decision must not fall under another illusion: This regime and its dictator won’t go voluntarily. Both must be forced to do so.  Playing by their rules with an eye to improving them and the situation, the blogger concludes, simply plays into their hands.