Putin Era Like End of USSR but from the Right rather than the Left, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Nov. 13 – The Putin era, Vladimir Pastukhov says, resembles the last years of the USSR in terms of its repression but it lacks the cultural elite that within strict bounds created some remarkable things and even more important constituted the group that helped power a cultural flourishing after the Soviet Union passed from the scene.
    This difference, the London-based Russian commentator says, recalls what the heroine of the musical Chicago said: “to the right … it’s the same as to the left but without dinner.” That is, Putinism now is “the same as the USSR albeit without the cultural dinner” because Putinism is like the end of Soviet times but without that “cultural dinner” (t.me/v_pastukhov/1300 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=673448E0BB339).
In contrast with the last decades of the Soviet Union, Putin’s Russia is currently “without ‘An Ordinary Miracle,’ without ‘Garage,’ without ‘Crew’ and even without ‘Moscow Doesn’t Believe in Tears’ – and that is perhaps the most important thing to know and understand about the Putin era” given what it suggests about the future.
Without such a cultural background, he says, there is little reason to think that Russia will give birth to any flourishing after Putin passes from the scene. If the country shines at all, it will be “only with the reflected light of that old Soviet culture … and when that ghostly light goes out, everything will go out along with it.”