Paul Goble
Staunton, Dec. 14 – For many years, analysts have suggested that protests in the population will lead to splits within the elite; but now there is evidence that splits within the elite may have the effect of sparking protests as well as costing the government popular support, Igor Yakovenko says.
“People see an obvious contradiction between what Putin is saying and what the bosses are doing,” the Moscow commentator says. “Putin says that vaccinations aren’t obligatory but the bosses say that QR codes [which identify those who have been vaccinated and those who haven’t] are” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=61B8C2699A8F4).
Moreover, they are quite prepared for protests about it, Yakovenko continues. “Forty-three percent of Russians suppose that mass actions against the introduction of electronic passes are completely possible, and every fourth citizen of the Russian Federation (25 percent) is prepared to take part in them.”
And even though the majority of Russians are opposed to vaccinations, they are still angry enough about the fact that Putin has done nothing to rein in his regime on this issue that polls show his rating among the population at large has fallen to the lowest level ever, 32 percent, a decline of eight percent since the spring.
This trend suggests several possibilities. Putin could seek to recover his standing by attacking the pro-vaxxers within his own power vertical but at the cost of seeing losses in Russia from the pandemic continue to climb, or the split between him and some of his officials could provoke mass protests among groups that have been his greatest supporters in the past.
In either case, Yakovenko’s analysis suggests, divisions in the elite may produce even deeper divisions in the population and between it and the government; and those divisions in turn may come back to deepen splits between Putin and the bureaucracy, weakening both but triggering more conflicts between them.
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