Current Moscow Obsession with Creating Myths Echoes Brezhnevite Stagnation, Vitukhnovskaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 8 – Brezhnev’s rule and Putin’s are very different on many measures, but they share a common commitment to the idea that Russians should focus on myths rather than on practical matters and for the same reason – to keep Russians from demanding change in the ways that they live, Alina Vitukhnovskaya says.

            “The post-Soviet man,” the Russian commentator says, “thinks in slogans and uses aging concepts. The powers again want to impose ‘a myth for which it is worth dying.’ An offensive idea [because] the motive of political struggle is not a myth but the desire for political change. That is, power and not myth” (newizv.ru/comment/alina-vituhnovskaya-2/08-08-2022/haos-kak-sredstvo-protiv-traditsionalizma).

            It is understandable if people living in a society of excess decide out of boredom to come up with a myth, Vitukhnovskaya says. But in an impoverish society like Russia’s, “a myth is nothing more than a massive case of delirium promoted for the manipulation” of the population by the powers that be.

            In that respect, a new myth in Russia like the old myth in Brezhnev’s time is “vulgar or even vile.” And myths explain nothing: they don’t explain what happened in 1991 or the failure of the protest movement a decade ago. Those things had objective causes, and talking about myths only gets in the way of understanding.

            According to the analyst, “mythological consciousness and spirituality are two concepts that act as parasites on Russians.” They are anti-rational and about eternal stasis rather than about progress. As a result, for those who promote them and those who accept them, “Russia isn’t moving anywhere.” It didn’t under Brezhnev and it isn’t under Putin.

            What the obsession with myths is doing is opening the way for the kind of chaos which gives “a chance to dismantle the old system of relations and put a better one in its place.” And those who really want to engage in politics need to recognize that if the current system isn’t satisfactory, “it can and should be changed.”

            Talking about myths only leads to more dead ends, Vitukhnovskaya says.