Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 29 – There is an
old saying that in a democracy, everything that isn’t prohibited is permitted;
in an authoritarian system, anything that isn’t permitted is prohibited; and
under a totalitarian one, anything that is permitted is compulsory. Using that
measure, Vladimir Putin is moving Russia today ever more in the direction of
the last.
Three developments over the past few
days – the demand that Russians express only approved views on social networks,
that the Duma adopt a law banning samizdat and dissent, and, paradoxically, moves
by the ruling party to commit itself to any particular program -- provide
evidence for that conclusion.
In a commentary on the Snob.ru
portal, Artem Rondaryev describes the first which has risen to new heights in
the wake of the Russian military plane disaster over the Black Sea. Anyone who expressed anything but approved
sadness or what is worse in terms of the future did not express exactly that
sadness online has come in for attack (snob.ru/selected/entry/118815).
What makes this
development important, he says, is that as a result, “the social networks are
becoming an instrument for the confirmation of collective loyalty,” for
ensuring that everyone adopts the same position on any issue and that no one
can escape from taking that position without being condemned.
No excuses for not joining the
chorus are acceptable to this new “loyalty police,” Rondaryev says. As a
result, “the individual doesn’t have the right to privacy of thought and
feelings.” He must become part of the masses and support by such “ritualized
action” whatever the powers that be want.
“Social networks … are completely
losing [their] recreational function: from now on, they represent a form of
political live in which every last person is required to be involved.” Such “logic”
is deeply authoritarian, and its spread in Russia has made it into “the only acceptable
one.”
What is also disturbing is that it
is not the state itself that is imposing this order but those who take it upon
themselves to do so; and the more actions they take in this direction, which
might ultimately involving imposing restrictions on “banning” one’s
interlocutors online, the greater the risk of “real totalitarianism.”
The second development involves calls
for Soviet-style laws against dissent including stripping anyone viewed as
guilty of them of Russian citizenship and subjecting them to expulsion from the
country. Several Duma deputies and various commentators have demanded that such
laws be adopted to punish anyone who fails to have the correct view on the
plane crash (rferl.org/a/russia-plane-crash-rynska-babchenko-reactions-outrage/28202296.html).
The editors of “Moskovsky
komsomolets,” for example, demanded that Russians who in its words “take joy in
blood” lose their citizenship and that non-Russians who do so lose the right to
enter Russia (mk.ru/incident/2016/12/25/zakon-glinkikhalilova-nelyudey-raduyushhikhsya-katastrofe-tu154-nado-lishit-grazhdanstva.html).
And the third development, which
some might see as pointing in the other direction, involves reports that the
ruling United Russia Party is going to drop all pretense of having a program or
an ideology (kommersant.ru/doc/3184993
and politsovet.ru/54120-edinaya-rossiya-otkazhetsya-ot-ideologicheskih-platform-radi-putina.html).
That might seem as opening the way
for more debate about things, but instead, as one Russian academician has
pointed out, organizations that lack a program or an ideology consist of
subordinates who spend all their time trying to anticipate what their superiors
want and then get behind that, thereby allowing the people at the top enormous
freedom of action by depriving those below of anything to appeal to against the
leadership (mk.ru/science/2016/12/25/akademik-yuriy-ryzhov-rossiya-stoit-na-poroge-zhutkogo-krakha.html).
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