Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 18 – Many analysts
have long accepted Natalya Zubarevich’s argument that there is not one Russia
but four – the big cities, the smaller industrial centers, the villages and
small towns, and the republics of the North Caucasus and Siberia. (http://windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2013/09/window-on-eurasia-four-very-different.html
But Russian commentator Igor
Yakovenko suggests that another factor dividing the country is acquiring ever
greater importance. People in Russia, he says, are not only living in different
places spatially but often exist in entirely different decades or even
centuries (afterempire.info/2017/09/18/break/).
Moreover,
“the localization of various ‘Russias’ in time does not correspond with
localization in space,” he continues. In
some cases, even in “a single city, people who come from completely different
historical periods are living next door to one another.” And he defines six different Russias in terms
of that.
The first Russia is the Russia of
Soviet times, Yakovenko argues. “It forms the majority of the population in
almost all subjects of the Russian Federation, except for the republics of the
North Caucasus” and is the basis of Putin’s Russia. Its members are most often people who work
one way or another for the government or are on pensions.
In some places, such as the company
towns, people of this Russia form “almost 100 percent” of the population. In
others, like Moscow and St. Petersburg, he suggests, this Russia forms only “a
little more than half” of the residents.
In Soviet times, they knew what the
country was moving towards but now they don’t. And they viewed the trajectory
of “school-university-work-pension” as an inviolable norm. But now that has
been challenged by changes in the society and the economy. And the residents of
“Russia No. 1” don’t know what to do. As a result, they are sullenly silent.
Most of them “watch television and
on the whole either believe or consider that the TV is lying and that it is
right to do so because with us it cannot be otherwise. They vote for Putin and
for United Russia and the KPRF.” And while they may curse the government for
this or that policy, they are not ready to challenge it.
Indeed, according to Yakovenko, “the
protest potential of the denizens of Russia No. 1 is equal to zero; but a
significant part of them would with satisfaction identify with the victory
[should there be any change] and with still greater satisfaction take part in the
denigration of anyone who lost.”
Russia No. 2, the Russian
commentator continues, consists of people who remain Soviet but are part of the
lumpen rather than the ordinary citizenry.
These are people who ran afoul of the Soviet system and served time.
They often turn their backs on the regime. Nearly a quarter of all Russian
adults have been in prison, and they are “the nucleus” of this Russia.
“As a rule,” members of Russia No. 2
don’t vote, “but the subculture which they reproduce in large measure forms the
electoral base of [Zhirinovsky’s] LDPR.” That is shown by the fact that that party
receives the most votes in regions where the share of former prisoners in the
population is the highest.
“In the last 10 to 15 years” – that is,
under Vladimir Putin – “Russia No. 2 has received a new impulse for its
development” with the rise of new criminal groups” and with the chance to
participate in Russian aggression against Ukraine. The Kremlin asked them to
and they responded positively.
According to Yakovenko, “today it is
precisely Russia No. 2 which has become the main source of that mass force and
vandalism which are spreading through the cities of the country.” But this
Russia too, doesn’t have any protest potential although its members will be the
first to take part in pogroms.
Russia No. 3 consists of those whose
lives remain defined by the village even if they have in some cases moved into
the cities. Many of them are unemployed
and have no prospects for the future. In fact, for them “time has stopped:
there is no future or way out, and apathy and indifference reign.” In the best
case, they try to survive; in the worst, they fall to the bottom of
society. They form, Yakovenko says,
about 20 to 22 percent of Putin’s Russia.
Russia No. 4 is “the internal
Islamic state” in the North Caucasus. It
is an enclave which “in fact is living according to shariat law.” Putin was forced to accept this as the price
of bringing a certain stability to that region, but now this area has taken on
a life of its own, although the regime can and does make use of its denizens to
attack its enemies.
Russia No. 5, Yakovenko says, lives
in the Middle Ages as a Christian State.
For this Russia, time has also “stopped.” Indeed, “it simply doesn’t
exist.” It has been created by Kremlin’s
promotion of tradition and its “radical rejection of the modern world.” Many of its ideas are typical of fascist
regimes, of which Putin’s “undoubtedly” is one.
This Russia is now fighting against
the film “Mathilda,” but “its main goal and the reason for existence of Russia
No. 5 is for a struggle with the single part of Russia which lives in the 21st
century. And that is Russia No. 6 which consists of Russians “who want to
become Europeans.”
Russia No. 6 forms from 15 to 23
percent of all Russians. “About 30 percent of Russia No. 6 are in Moscow, another 10 percent in St.
Petersburg, and the rest in a quite thin stratum are located throughout the
rest of the country,” Yakovenko continues.
But it is important not to confuse it with the 14 percent who don’t
support Putin.
According to the commentator, Russia
No. 6 is divided into two groups: “those who “know that the Earth turns but
they have a family’ and those who despite having a family all the same continue
to publicly reject the Ptolemaic system.”
“The Putin regime in fact has
declared war on Russia No. 6, a war to its destruction,” Yakovenko says. But the reality is that the only one of the
six Russias that has any real potential for development in this century is
Russia No. 6. Nonetheless, it can’t be
discounted that the Putin regime will succeed in destroying or at least
suppressing it.
That is because it is entirely “possible,”
the Russian observer says, that Putin by intuition understands that “the
amputation of the brain [of the country which is what Russia No. 6 represents] is
the only means he has to preserve both Russia’s imperial character and his own power
over it.”
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