Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 24 – Vladimir Putin
has lost the younger generation, and ever more of them expect protests and are
ready to participate in them. But the larger stratum of workers will join them
only for targeted protests about very specific issues, and these are unlikely
to grow into a mass political action, Aleksey Levinson says.
The head of the Levada Center’s
analytic department says that Russians are more inclined to say they expect
protests and would participate in them than at any time in the last 18 months.
Putin still has his base among older, less educated, and rural Russians; but he
has lost his “immunity” to protest (reforum.io/2020/06/24/pochemu-dazhe-uspeshnyj-protest-ne-dobetsya-svoego/).
The first big question, Levinson
continues, is whether the working class will join the students as happened in
Paris in 1968. That is “possible,” he
argues, but almost exclusively when the issue is a local one rather than an
all-Russian matter. The Kremlin may view
these as political but they are less threatening to it than many assume.
“History shows that targeted protests
in 99 percent of all cases remain targeted and local;” they do not grow into a
massive country-wide action. And the sociologist says that might not be a bad
thing because the powers that be know only how to be repressive – and in
response to a mass protest, they might use force, with the nightmare of
bloodshed following.
Many Russians see the current situation
as keeping that possibility low, and that goes a long way to explain why they
will vote for rather than against the constitutional amendments which promise
to keep things as they are rather than think about going into the streets to
protest against the changes.
Russians are angry about the pandemic
and about the government’s failure to come to their aid, but right now, there
are no individuals or organizations capable of mobilizing them. “We don’t want
Putin but then whom do we want? Navalny isn’t serious;” and there is as yet no
one else.
Another reason why anger and the
willingness to protest are unlikely to lead to major demonstrations is that with
rare exceptions, such mass protests haven’t been successful – or worse, after
they take place, the government adopts even more repressive laws rather than
make the concessions the protesters wanted.
At the same time, the analyst
continues, participation in meetings changes people. Those who came to the
White House in October 1993 were ordinary people but they saw around them and,
in many cases, became heroes. Those who take part in future demonstrations will
experience many of the same things, seeing in other Russians leaders and
partners.
Levinson says he was among them and
saw “a different side of reality, one that revealed that around us are golden
people full of nobility and courage. Personalities like those we encounter in
books.” And that experience taught
something else as well: the people did not have any specific democratic
program. They simply wanted to organize themselves without outside
interference.
Since that time, many who were there
have sought to realize this “program” and display the capacity for
self-organization that Russian thinkers like Kropotkin and Bakunin were sure
were part of Russian life and that can strengthen the horizontal ties that
exist among Russians. The internet shows this is still true, the sociologist
says.
That means, he concludes, that “everything
is possible but perhaps not just as we now imagine it.”
