Most Russians Know What Needs to Be Done but No One is Sure Who Other than the State Should Do It, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Feb. 6 – Russians have always faced two questions: who is responsible for their countries problems and what is to be done, Vladimir Pastukhov says. That hasn’t changed; but one thing has: there is little or no agreement on who should do what the overwhelming majority agree needs to be done. As a result, they remain incapable of effective action.

            There is only one force which believes it is capable of such action and to which others defer, the London-based Russian analyst says; and that is the state with its enormous powers. Consequently, the state however much it is at odds with what Russians almost always want set the weather (polit.ru/articles/posle/vladimir-pastukhov-o-dvizhushchey-sile-vozmozhnykh-izmeneniy-v-rossii/).

            There are exceptions. When the state leads the country into disaster, the people led by sectarians of one kind or another can rise in revolution. But then those who have become the new state and once again, Russians defer to it as the only conceivable actor for change – until the situation develops in the same direction and a revolution occurs.

            Putin’s success in mobilizing Russians around militarism today unintentionally highlights the existence of dark energies in the population that others might draw on to change the country; but the question remains open, Pastukhov says, whether new sects capable of doing so will emerge or whether Russia is close to the exhaustion of this resource.

            If the latter, then Russia is entering its final period; if the former, then at some point new sects will arise and the historical cycle Russia has long been in will be repeated, the Russian analyst says.