Putin Regime Keeps Itself in Place Not Just by Carrots and Sticks but by Using Those to Define Social Relations among People, Rudkovsky Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 6 – Many assume that Putin keeps himself in power by a combination of carrots and sticks, Stanislav Rudkovsky says; but it is not by those alone. Rather, it is the way he uses such incentives and disincentives to regulate the way Russians interact with reality, a factor that by inertia keeps the situation under his control

            In Wschody, the émigré Russian libertarian politician and commentator argues that Putin remains in power “not only by fear and material dependence but also by daily life itself” that is so structured to preclude challenges (wschody.net/sem-stolpov-putinskoj-soczialnosti-kak-rezhim-stal-universalnym-posrednikom-mezhdu-rossiyanami-i-realnostyu/).

            According to Rudkovsky, “the key resource of this order is not only money, administrative vertical, security forces or control over information. Instead, it involves  manipulation of emotions, and control over identity, memory and language. He says that this involves seven “key pillars:”

            The first of these is “the vertical of mistrust,” the libertarian says. Russians “do not “trust anyone beyond a narrow circle of family and friends. All other are potential threats.” Of course, Putin didn’t invent this distrust but he has “instrumentalized it for his own purposes.”

            The second of these “pillars” is “loyalty in exchange for stability.” According to Rudkovsky, “Putin’s regime offers the population a very simple social contract: you do not get into politics,” show loyalty or at least don’t dissent, and “in exchange you are guaranteed ‘stability.’”

            The third such “pillar” is “an imperial identity and the colonial logic of mobilization: You are not a resident of a particular city or region; you are ‘part of a great country.’ Local identity is suppressed, and in its place stands an extremely generalized ‘pride in the country.”

            The fourth is “a culture of fear and cynicism. People don’t believe that it is possible to change anything at the global level and that collective action is suspicious” and inevitably fails. This attitude has its roots in Soviet times and is not despite what some thing an inherent quality of Russians.

            The fifth is the control of language. The regime “seeks not only to restrict access to information but also to determine what words people in Russia can use to describe the most transgressive states,” one that refers but does not name what is going on and thus euphemizes reality.

            The sixth pillar is the state’s monopolization of the past: “it assigns itself the right to interpret history alone, and primarily the highly traumatic experience of World War II.” As a result, the historical past of the country ceases to be a common space of discussion and becomes state property, issued to citizens in a dosed and consistent fashion.”

            And the seventh pillar of Putin’s organization of social interaction involves the cultivation of “a specific temporality: life is now because the future is unpredictable and does not belong to you: it belongs to a state that can rewrite it at any moment.”

            Taken together, Rudkovsky observes, there is “a common denominator: each pill has the effect of destroying some horizontal connection and replacing it with a vertical dependence on the state as the only source of meaning, stability and legitimate discourse.” Consequently, “Putin’s sociality involves the total monopolization of connectivity.”

            That in turn means, he concludes, that “Putin’s Russia is not just a bad form of rule. Rather it is a special and specific way of organizing social ties” so as to ensure that those in power cannot be effectively challenged and thus remain there.