Paul Goble
Staunton, Oct. 5 – A civil war is going on among Russians but it is the wrong one as it involves conflicts among those who oppose Vladimir Putin rather than between themselves as a group and the Kremlin leader who is the cause of their and their country’s common misfortunes, Leonid Gozman says.
A very large share of political emigres, the Russian politician who now lives abroad as well, “hates not so much those who have plunged them [into their misfortunes] but instead others just like themselves,” something that distracts them from fighting their real enemy, the Putin regime (novayagazeta.eu/articles/2024/10/05/idet-voina-grazhdanskaia).
Many of these people like to hate others like themselves because it justifies their inaction and makes them feel important, Gozman says, and thus they fail to recognize how this hatred, often over entirely invented things, works against what they say they are for and for what they say they are against.
But this pattern has profound consequences for the future, he continues. “If you consider only those who stood next to you on the picket line, were in prison or helped the Ukrainian army as you own and the rest as enemies, then you will ultimately have to establish an occupation regime – and its result will be no better than what we have now.”
Civil wars, Gozman points out, “end not with the military victory of one of the sides but with national reconciliation.” And Russia’s ongoing civil war shows no signs of ending either for its immediate participants or the country as a whole. As a result, disasters will pile on disasters with all involved assuming that it is someone else’s fault.
What is needed, he continues, is a recognition that all Russians are in this together and that except for those who have committed real crimes like Putin, they are not enemies but allies. If the Russian opposition in emigration can’t do that, it should “forget Russia” and join some other nation.
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