Putin’s Much Ballyhooed ‘Time of Heroes’ Program to Make Veterans New Elite Being Quietly Shut Down, ‘Agents Media’ Reports

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 1 – In February 2024, Putin announced the “Time of Heroes” program to train veterans of his war in Ukraine so that they could form the new political elite of the country. All federal subjects save Moscow city set up courses. But without fanfare, all but a handful have shut down; and the others are likely to soon, Agents Media reports.

            This is the latest example of a Putin program that was promoted by Kremlin media as a major policy effort that did not live up to expectations – few graduates entered elites even in the regions – and then was quietly shut down (agents.media/novoj-elity-bolshe-ne-nado-zapushhennye-putinym-karernye-lifty-dlya-voennyh-prekratili-nabor-pochti-v-90-regionov/).

            After Putin’s announcement, the governments of all federal subjects of the Russian Federation and four occupied and annexed territories of Ukraine set up these training schools and launched programs via the internet to recruit veterans to sign up so that they could become members of a new Russian elite.

            Almost immediately, however, current officials showed their unwillingness to accept even these privileged selectees as their colleagues; and both that resistance and the failure of the Kremlin to press the existing regimes to promote these new “heroes” to positions of responsibility suggested that the program was in trouble.

            By the end of last month, most of these programs were dying, with 77 of the federal subjects having taken in only one class in these programs, four taking in two, and only one -- St. Petersburg – having admitted the expected three rounds of veterans as students in this supposedly key Putin program. And few of them still had up accessible websites.

            Some 50,600 veterans reportedly applied to these courses, but only 3145 were admitted. Some veterans complained as recently as June, but the officials who oversaw the program have gone silent, an indication along with the cutback in access to their internet sites suggests the program is headed for the scrapheap.

Central Asians and All Others Must View Russian and Soviet History as ‘a History of Colonialism,’ Kazakh Historian Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – Moscow continue to promote the myth that Russia was never an empire but a liberator and provider of assistance and that, if it had some aspects of an imperial state, these reflected authoritarianism rather than imperialism and were minor compared to the aid it gave to the people it absorbed, Botakoz Kasymbekova says.

            The Kazakh historian who is now at the University of Zurich says the facts of the case show that the Russian Empire and the USSR were imperial states who behaved like other colonial empires and that this must be recognized (azattyqasia.org/a/rossiya-i-tsentralnaya-aziya-ot-tsarizma-i-bolshevikov-do-nashih-dney/33842464.html).

            Russia to this day has “a state-forming myth that Russia has not advanced into countries but that they have voluntarily wanted to become part of Russia,” despite all the evidence of the ways Russia used military force to impose its discriminatory rule and then run the lives of the people in its colonies, Kasymbekova says.

            Not only do Russians not talk about these facts honestly, the Kazakh historian says; but they become angry when Central Asians or others who are members of the communities the Russian state has conquered and suppressed and seek to maintain a classical “post-colonial” situation in which the colonized do not recognize the truth.

            As she points out, “the great Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov wrote about this with his story of the myth about the mankurt, an individual who loses his memory and comes to love the colonizers.” Such people exist in Central Asia and many other places, and much must be done to disabuse them of these falsehoods.

            “The most successful colonial project,” Kasymbekova continues, “is one in which the dirty work of colonialism is carried out by the colonized who have in fact taken over the colonial narrative” of the imperial regime. That is a clear sign of “the semi-colonial imperial consciousness in which they find themselves.”

            The roots of Russian colonialism today are less in the tsarist past than in the Soviet one, she suggests. “The Bolsheviks believed that if they established communism anywhere, they are “resolved all problems” and were not prepared to accept that their actions directed from Moscow were depriving others of the right to choose for themselves.

            As result, despite all the communist verbiage, the Soviet Union was “a colonial empire.” Today, the leaders of the Russian Federation are pursuing the same goal and justify themselves by the same denials. Sadly, many others have bought into the idea that the USSR was not so much a brutal empire as one that sought to promote a better life for all its subject peoples.

            This commitment to providing assistance, she continues, has given rise among Russians a certain “imperial innocence,” the sense that because they were on occasion promoting social development, they were not and thus could not be held accountable for the imperial nature of their state.

As she puts it, Russians and their followers continue to insist that “Russia was not and is not an empire; and if it is in some ways, it was and is a positive empire, something that brough civilization and developmemtn rather than force, inequality, repression, and the suppression of cultures and nations.”

That has unfortunately been accepted by many in the region and beyond as has its corollary that Russia’s problem is “authoritarianism but not colonialism.” The empire’s subjects can criticism actions as authoritarianism but any suggestion they flow from imperialism is something Russians consider highly offensive, she concludes.

After Russia Disintegrates, Three Russian Oblasts -- Samara, Saratov and Ulyanovsk -- Should Form a Volga Republic, Mulyukin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – After Russia disintegrates, Aleksandr Mulyukin says, three Russian oblasts – Samara, Saratov and Ulyanovsk – should come together and form a new Volga Republic so as to be in a position to repel any challenges from a revived Muscovite state and the danger that local elites will take over and suppress democracy.

            The democracy activist, who fled Samara in 2019 to avoid persecution, argues that these regions like others need to avoid both of those threats and lays out his idea for a Volga Republic in a 6400-word article in Wschody, a Russian émigré journal published in Poland (wschody.net/povolzhskaya-respublika-shansy-na-uspeh-i-glavnye-lovushki-postimperskogo-perehoda/).

            What makes Mulyukin’s article so important is that it is a rare example of how predominantly ethnic Russian regions may cooperate to escape from Moscow’s rule and a proposal that seeks to address both threats from a surviving Muscovite state and from local elites who may seize power in the name of the people but rule for themselves.

            He begins with a proposition that is all too often ignored. “Independence,” Mulyukin argues, “is the beginning and not the end of history.” Past post-imperial transitions show that “the disappearance of the former political power center does not mean the disappearance of the former ways of organizing power.”

            Consequently, those who succeed in breaking away must “simultaneously protect their new statehood from the possible restoration of external domination and from a situation in which those who take power will not turn it into their own property in the early years of transition.”

            Creating an entirely new republic with new borders and a new capital city is a way to do both, Mulyukin argues, and indeed, its lack of a history is an advantage rather than the disadvantage many assume.  It can create a new world for itself and its people and thus will be more likely to survive and survive as a democracy.

            He continues: “If the Volga Parliamentary Republic is composed mainly of the Russian and Russian-speaking population, it may well define itself as a Russian national republic, a definition isn’t necessarily anti-democratic or imperial, since a nation state can be based on the cultural identity of the majority, without invoking that to rule other peoples.”

            Mulyukin makes and develops a variety of other points about such a Volga Republic and its potential analogues on the current territory of the Russian Federation. Among the most important of these are the following:

·       The greatest danger to such a new state is not military aggression by Muscovy but the privatization of state power into the hands of existing elites.

·       That means that institutions must be the focus of development because they are “more important thana strong leader” and are necessary to “change the culture of power itself.”

·       International cooperation is essential but they “cannot be a substitute for statehood.”

·       Security must be guaranteed both by cooperation and by the development of the new country’s military.

·       And finally “historical memory should not be allowed to become a new state religion.

But perhaps the most significant of Mulyukin’s arguments is that Russian identity isn’t “an obstacle to such a project because a Russian and Russian-speaking population may well create a Russian national republic for itself if self-determination is understood as the right to organize its own political life rather than a license to decide the fate of others.”

Like ‘Soviet’ in USSR Times, ‘Russian’ Today is a Constructed and Imposed Identity rather than an Innate One, Shamolin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 2 – “’Russian’ like ‘Soviet’ is not an innate quality” in people, Roman Shamolin says. Rather, it is “nothing but a learned way of describing life” that the leaders of the country impose on the vast majority of people who don’t form it on their own but are prepared to accept what the authorities tell them.

            Putin often suggests that Russian identity is something that has always existed and in the form as it exists now, the anthropologist from Novosibirsk says. But that simply isn’t the case. Instead, it has changed as leaders have selected on or another possible model to impose (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2026/09/02/chto-znachit-byt-russkim).

            What it meant to be a Russian in tsarist times, in Soviet times and now, Shamolin points out, has varied enormously, not so much because those bearing that national self-identification have changed as because the state, dealing with a relatively passive population, has imposed its evolving understanding of what kind of Russianness works best for the regimes.

            A collective identity like “Russianness” is “formed in a very different way than individual identities are, not through personal experiences and experimentation but rather through the assimilation and repetition of ideas that are promoted by the authorities and that most people are inclined to accept.

            In tsarist times, to be Russian was to be Orthodox and loyal to the tsar rather than a member of a nation, Shamolin argues; In Soviet times, “with its focus on internationalism, specifically Russian things did not go beyond an interest in the distant past and folklore.” Now, of course, it means something much more significant.

            But what it does mean at present, the anthropologist says, is something that is the result of the decision of the authorities to stress only one of the two aspects of Russianness talked about in the 19^th century, the way such Russianness makes Russians relatives of Europeanness or the way it makes them separate.

            Consequently, Shamolin concludes, it is a fundamental mistake to accept the idea that Russianness is innate rather than the product of state policy or that it does not have the chance to change. Indeed, that is the most likely fate of any proclaimed identity, however ancient and unchanging its advocates claim. 

Half of Russians Now Depressed, Helping Kremlin Now but Undermining Russia over Longer Term, Academy of Sciences Study Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 2 – Forty-nine percent of Russians are now depressed, with more than two-thirds of these suffering severe forms of that feeling, according to a new study by the Russian Academy of Sciences, a finding that is leaving society incapable of resisting the state now but also incapable of development in a positive way later.

            Each quarter, the Academy’s Institute of National Economic Forecasting releases a report on the state of Russian society. The latest one contains these depressing statistics (ecfor.ru/publication/kvartalnyj-prognoz-vvp-vypusk-71/); and a commentary on its findings highlights why they are so worrisome (krizis-kopilka.ru/archives/106073).

            According to the report, most Russians are depressed because of the current state of the Russian economy and their own future economic prospects rather than any other issue such as the war in Ukraine. Economic concerns naturally hit better off people much less than others and young people just starting out especially hard.

            Drawing on data from the Institute’s report, the Krizis-Kopilka portal says that this level of depression is having a variety of serious consequences. Among the most important are the breakdown of ties, a focus on immediate needs rather than long-term goals, an unwillingness to have children, rising petty crime, and a retreat into silence or faith in cults.

            In this situation, the portal continues, “the state will begin to interact not with society, but with a crowd of individuals who require only one thing, the solution of their immediate problems. The authorities will thus be forced to solve an endless chain of small problems rather than be in a position to develop a strategy for the whole.”

            In the short term, this state of affairs may help the powers that be by precluding open protests about larger issues; but in the longer term, the portal says, it will make it impossible for the country to achieve any major breakthroughs or even develop in a normal way in the coming years, putting it further behind other countries and at risk of exploitation by them.

Immigration Only Temporary Solution to Russia’s Population Decline and One that Won’t Last, Sinelnikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 2 – Immigration, which the Kremlin views as a major part of the solution to Russia’s demographic decline, can only be a temporary palliative given that now the overwhelming majority of countries now have fertility rates below replacement levels and soon won’t have anyone to export to Russia, Aleksandr Sinelnikov says.

            Last year, the sociology professor at Moscow State University points out, “the global birthrate dropped for the first time ever below the level needed for simple reproduction.” That has been true of Russia for some time, but it means that Russia soon won’t be able to count on massive immigration (readovka.news/news/248151/).

            Some people will continue to migrate for economic reasons going from poorer countries to wealthier ones, of course, Sinelnikov acknowledges; but as fertility rates fall further below the 2.2 children per woman per lifetime needed to maintain current population rates, the number choosing to do so will ultimately decline.

            That means that Russia cannot count on immigration to reverse its current and rapid population decline and instead will have to rely on its own efforts, efforts that will be expensive and take a very long time to show the kind of results that Moscow would like, the sociologist concludes.

Khasavyurt, ‘A Unique Event in Post-Soviet Russian History’ Deserves to Be Remembered, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Aug. 31 – Thirty years ago, on Aug. 31, 1996, Russian general Aleksandr Lebed and Chechen general Aslan Maskhadov concluded an agreement ending the first post-Soviet Chechen war and laid out the principles on which the independence of Chechnya could have been finally achieved.

            That was “a unique event in post-Soviet Russian history,” Vadim Shtepa, editor of the Tallinn-based regionalist portal, Region.Expert, for three reasons: how it was achieved, why it failed to live up to its promise, and how it could be a model for the end of Putin’s war in Ukraine but probably won’t (region.expert/khasavyurt30/).

            The agreement happened not because Russian President Boris Yeltsin negotiated an end to the Chechen war but because Aleksandr Lebed, a Russian general who had become a politician, was able to find common language with a Chechen general and for a time at least stopped the war and gave hope of peace.

            The Yeltsin regime had many weaknesses but one of its often unrecognized strengths was that it provided space for people like Lebed, a kind of Russian de Gaulle, to operate, something few regimes would have allowed but that meant peace could be achieved without Yeltsin personally having to take public actions that could have sparked a negative reaction.

            The 1996 agreement could have succeeded save for two things. On the one hand, it was not supported by the Western powers, something that forced the Chechens to seek cooperation with Islamist groups even though that meant there was no chance of support from that sector. And on the other, Putin launched the second Chechen war and drowned that republic in blood.

            There are lessons to be learned from all this, Shtepa says; but the most important question now is “can there be found in the Russian army any new generals capable of stopping” Putin’s war in Ukraine?  The answer is likely no; but the possibility shouldn’t be excluded as Russian moves deeper into a succession crisis.