Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 7 – In yet another
example of Vladimir Putin’s restoration of some of the ugliest features of the
Soviet past, his government has “politicized any public criticism and
marginalized any who disagree,” thus ensuring that opponents of the Kremlin
have no possibility of winning elections and transforming them into
Soviet-era-style dissidents.
That is the judgment of the editors
of “Nezavisimaya gazeta” in a lead article today, who begin by quoting Boris
Nemtsov’s observation that the Kremlin has made normal political opposition
impossible and Vaclav Havel who in “The Power of the Powerless” outlined the
three meanings of opposition in a post-totalitarian system (ng.ru/editorial/2014-05-27/2_red.html).
According to the late Czech leader,
these include people within the regime who disagree behind the scenes, those
whom the authorities call “the opposition” because they view it as including
anyone who disagrees, and “non-conformist groups who openly declare their
position” but don’t advance a specifically political program designed to bring
them to power.
“These are dissident groups,” the
Moscow paper says. “Real opposition figures, that is, politicians with
alternative programs, can become part of the dissident groups.”
“To what extent ought one to
consider the current Russian state and society post-totalitarian?” the editors
ask rhetorically, noting that “on the one hand, formal democracy, a multi-party
parliament, and elections exist in Russia,” but “on the other, “the Soviet
discourse of the 1960s to 1980s has not been overcome” and affects how these
institutions actually function.
“Formally, anyone can create and
register a party and struggle for power,” “Nezavisimaya gazeta” says, but “in
reality, any opposition figure by one means or another is forced into a
compromise with the system” or, failing that, is put “out of politics and
cannot legally achieve his desire for power.”
Until very recently, such compromises
were possible in Russia and thus there was room for opposition. However, “now,
compromise has ceased to be important because the tasks of normalizing the system
and of bringing it into correspondence with democratic standards” are not goals
the powers that be are interested in.
Instead, the paper says, the regime “simply
attempts to defeat, to destroy and to marginalize those whom it views as an
opponent.”
The current Russian powers impose
the same “marker” on those it views in this way: “Any criticism of the system, the
ruling elite, and its actions is considered to be political” and intended to
realize the “goal of overthrowing the authorities” and thus part of “the
strategy of certain anti-Russian forces.”
Such a designation, “Nezavisimaya
gazeta” continues, which involves defining those involved as “’a fifth column’”
or “’aliens’” can be applied now as in Soviet times “not only to politicians
but to journalists, publicists, publishers, and musicians, in general, to all
who allow themselves to engage in public criticism.”
As the paper notes, “the very term ‘dissident’
means ‘appostate,’” a word “negative in principle” that is “exploited by the authorities
in order to underscore that their critics and opponents, who speak in the name
of society are far from its interests and even stand in opposition to it.”
The Russian regime and its media “in
fact assert the marginal quality of liberal politicians and the liberal press
and by so doing make dissident discourse more important,” the editors say,
especially since the regime reflects the views of “the ideologues of
isolationism, anti-Westernism and even neo-Stalinism” found in the Aleksandr
Prokhanov’’s Izborsky Club.
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