Regionalists in Russia Find a Common Language while Russian Oppositionists Don’t and Apparently Can’t, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 17 – Many observers suggest that regionalist and nationalist groups are invariably at odds with one another and that their disagreements presage serious problems for Russia’s future. But the reality is that such groups have a shared language that allows cooperatoin while the Russian opposition does not, Vadim Shtepa says.

            The author of the Tallinn-based regionalist portal Region.Expert argues that recent events provide complete justification for that observation (epl.delfi.ee/artikkel/120322493/vadim-stepa-parast-sellist-skandaali-voib-ulevenemaalisele-opositsioonile-kriipsu-peale-tommata region.expert/imperial-opposition/ in Russian).

            At a time when non-Russian and regionalist groups are coming together to fight the common enemy of Muscovite rule, Shtepa says, Russian opposition figures, most of whom come from Moscow and want to maintain its rule over all the rest, are increasingly fighting among themselves.

            These internecine fights happen because each of these individuals and groups wants to be the leader of a unified Russia, something that simultaneously makes them the object of greater -styl attention by the Putin regime and puts them at risk of the same kind of manipulation that the Russian emigration was in the 1920s, manipulation that destroyed its political influence.

            The most notorious form of this manipulation involved what has come to be known as Operation Trust, a Cheka plot that had the effect of deepening divisions within the emigration and, on its exposure, destroying the reputation and influence of the emigration on the Western governments it sought to work with.

            Some commentators are suggesting that the recent efforts to play up conflicts among the Russian opposition involving charges against Leonid Nevzlin and charges that he was orchestrating attacks on his opponents are part and parcel of the same thing (echofm.online/opinions/mne-vse-eto-silno-napominaet-operacziyu-trest and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2022/09/emigre-anti-putin-opposition-at-risk-of.html).

            Like his Cheka forefathers, Putin sees Trust-style operations as extremely useful and has repeatedly used them against the Russian opposition, something that must be remembered. (For examples, see windowoneurasia.blogspot.com/2009/02/window-on-eurasia-moscow-using-soviet.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2014/10/window-on-eurasia-russian-provocations.html, windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/01/putins-active-measures-achieve-second.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2018/10/chekist-operation-trust-model-for.html.)

            Putin has also used this approach against non-Russian groups, although that has garnered less attention and achieved less success (e.g., windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2017/03/there-is-operation-trust-in-belarus-but.html and windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2020/07/moscow-using-operation-trust-style.html).

            But regardless of whether the Nevzlin case is a Trust-style operation by Moscow or simply the playing out of the ever-present conflicts in the Russian emigration, Shtepa’s point should be remembered. The nationalists and regionalists who are viewed as inevitably in conflict are finding a common language; while the Russian opposition apparently can’t.