Putin Excluding Individuals and Groups from Common Legal Sphere Much as Nazis Did, Shumanov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 18 – “Max Weber described the state as a structure possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of force” but Putin’s Russia like in Nazi Germany, “the authorities have gone further: they are constructing a monopoly on the power to exclude individuals and groups from public life” and its legal protections, Ilya Shumanov says.

            The founder of the Arktida project, which defends the numerically small peoples of the Russian north, says Moscow has “established an extensive nomenclature of labels” – such as “undesirable organization” or “foreign agent” – stripping those assigned to these categories of access to the rights of others (sapere.online/ot-monopolii-na-nasilie-k-monopolii-na-isklyuchenie/).

            According to Shumanov, “the goal of these designations is not merely to punish, but to create a system of exclusion: once a person steps onto this ladder, they are gradually stripped of their rights until their continued presence in society becomes impossible.” And “each step up this ladder of escalation and exclusion strips away specific rights.”

            “A "foreign agent" is barred from teaching, running for office, monitoring elections, placing advertisements, writing books, or posting on social media without a mandatory disclaimer,” he says. Moreover, “for every status, there are protocols, corresponding registries, and rules governing both the maintenance of these lists and removal from them.

Shumanov continues: “Everything is strictly formalized to create an appearance of legality, even though there is very little actual legality in the actions of the Russian authorities. The law is inverted: instead of protecting human rights, it becomes a switch that turns off human or civil rights.”

A similar system existed in Nazi Germany. It was promoted by Carl Schmitt who argued that “the sovereign is the one who decided on ‘the state of exception’ – that is, the one with the power to create exceptions to the rules. The same logic is now evident in the Russian context where the state established this set of exceptions.”

This is very much the case with the ways in which Moscow deals with ethnic minorities, the activist says. “The state encourages their cultural diversity, viewing them as a kind of ethnographic subject; but when anyone talks about genuine political rights -- such as rights to land, self-determination, or environmental protection – these are denied.

In short, Shumanov says, “culture is permitted but political agency is not.”

According to him, “approximately 100 indigenous initiatives in Russia have been designated as terrorist or extremist” by the Russian state; and the state is increasingly “delegating the functions of state-sanctioned violence to proto-state or non-state actors,” like the Wagner PMC and the Russian Community.

“these groups serve as a buffer for the Russian state, ensuring that the fallout from acts of violence does not attach to the state itself or further undermine trust in institutions of power that are already compromised,” Shumanov suggests, as “the state can easily label a grassroots initiative ‘radical and disavow it as necessary.”

When hundreds of thousands of veterans return from Putin’s war in Ukraine, this trend will almost certainly increase and even lead to the possible creation of a veterans party that will aid the Kremlin in putting even more individuals and groups beyond the protection of the law.