Paul Goble
Staunton, July 24 – Many Russians expect that when Putin’s war in Ukraine ends, they will face a crime wave, declining incomes, and an economy incapable of making the transition to peacetime needs, Andrey Malgin says; but they have not focused on an even more ugly prospect: that their country will become even more repressive, just as happened in 1945.
Because of government propaganda, the Russian commentator says, “the level of hatred” among Russians “towards the external enemy is extremely high.” But if the war ends, the government will tell its people that Russia “has achieved its goals” (moscowtimes.ru/2024/07/24/repressii-v-rossii-kak-neizbezhnoe-prodolzhenie-voini-a137559).
“But the level of hatred [among the Russian people] will not go away,” Malgin says. Instead, it will begin to focus on other and domestic targets – and the government will have its own reasons for ensuring that happens lest popular discontent be directed instead against the powers that be.
Indeed, the government has already “begun to prepare” for this reality and is “increasingly drawing the attention of the population to internal enemies,” targets that represent “an inexhaustible source of evil” because the government can portray almost anyone inside the country except itself as an enemy.
As a result, Malgin concludes, “the end of the war, no matter how it ends, will hit the country with a level of repression it has not seen for decades” because “for the authorities this will be the only way to direct hostility” away from the people in power towards others and allow those in power to remain there.
At the end of World War II, many Soviet citizens expected that after the war, the Kremlin would reward them for their efforts in fighting the Germans. Now, many Russians believe that once the war ends, things will get better at home. Malgin’s article is a useful reminder that just the reverse may happen again.
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