Russians Don’t Yet Hate the State but are Ever More Alienated from It, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 29 – Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid, says that the Russian population is increasing alienated from the power vertical of the state. That is not yet hatred and doesn’t present an immediate threat because the population isn’t prepared to act on it.

            “Alienation is not about hatred,” he continues; “it is about indifference.” And just as Russians did not care deeply about whether Prigozhin would succeed, they won’t in the future care about the removal of senior officials, up to and including Putin, in the future (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/19714 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66A7DB09E33E1).

            According to El Murid, Russian nihilism has always had the same root, “the indifference of the powers that be to the people and the indifference of the people about the powers.” But his comments come in reaction to the results of a new poll by the Federal Protection Service about the possible blocking of YouTube in the Russian Federation.

            The FPS reported that its survey had found that “more than 50 percent of those questioned had a negative attitude toward the prohibition of YouTube in the RF, that 70 percent did not understand what the reasons for blocking it could be [but that] 80 percent said they would not actively protest against any ban.”

            “The term FPS survey is in itself incredibly amusing,” El Murid suggests. “It represents the abyss of a decline” that has Putin’s Praetorian Guard “fulfilling a purely civilian function.” But more than that it shows just how disconnected the Russian people have become from the Russian state.