Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 21 – The Russian
authorities haven’t yet learned from something that happens to them again and
again, Znak commentator Yekaterina Vinokurova says. “You cannot, with one hand,
struggle against radical extremists and, with the other, use them for your very
own goals.”
Instead, they seem to think, she
continues, that because one side is useful on one occasion and another on
another, the authorities are best off if they get involved in the organization
and promotion of both. But that ignores
the very real possibility that the situation can get out of control if others
exploit the situation (znak.com/2017-09-20/ekaterina_vinokurova_o_dolgoy_druzhbe_kremlya_s_politicheskimi_radikalami).
Some not under the
direct control of the state may engage in copycat actions and crimes, and it
may even happen, Vinokurova says, that at a meeting the authorities have
approved because they think they control the organizers, some young man “who
has a pistol in his rucksack” may participate and act in more extreme ways than
the powers want.
The
Russian security agencies have been doing this for a long time as did their
Soviet predecessors, but “in recent years, the authorities have placed their
bets on radical-conservative groups because this was situationally needed for
the struggle with the dominant liberal trend in the media and cultural space.”
Obviously,
the Znak commentator says, “radical believers will be very useful in punishing
Pussy Riot … but the burning of movie theaters will continue” because even if
the authorities can control the Christian State radicals, “other groups” not
under the control of the state will get involved in doing the same thing.
(Another
recent case highlighted the same problem: the authorities couldn’t really do
much to stop the Muslim demonstrations in Moscow, Grozny, and St. Petrersburg
about the genocide of the Rohingja in Myanmar because they were too heavily
involved with those who organized them. People were detained but very quickly
released, Vinokurova points out.)
According
to the Znak commentator, “the ideal outcome from the specific case with the radical
‘believers’ and ‘Mathilda’ would be to insist that representatives of the
Russian Orthodox Church play the role of a moderator.” Given everything the
state does for the church, that doesn’t seem too much to ask.
The
authorities should ask the church to have all priests call on their
parishioners to “stop organizing protests against the showing of the film ‘Mathilda.’
To save face, for example, they could simply ask their flocks not to go to this
film … they could call the Tsar-Battlers a destructive sect,” and the state
could sent Natalya Poklonskaya on a long trip.
Perhaps,
she could make “a lengthy international tour to establish inter-parliamentary
cooperation in South America or with the penguins of Antarctica.”
Unless
the Kremlin learns that it can’t play both sides of the street, she suggests,
it will continue to organize groups that may be useful to it in the short term
but that very quickly will cease to be because some of their members or others
with similar views believe they can act even more radically because the state
has their back.
Eventually,
Vinokurova says, that will lead to disaster and not just as is so far the case
to a continuing series of embarrassments.
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