Paul Goble
Staunton, December 19 – While attending the Sixth Free
Russia Forum in Vilnius, Russian commentator Igor Yakovenko said that there are
several possible paths by which Russia would have the chance to be a free
country, all of which presuppose “the liquidation of the Putin regime” (sobkorr.org/infopovod/5C1944435E361.html).
That
will eventually happen as Vladimir Putin will not be in power forever, Yakovenko
says; but his departure will not by itself allow Russia to be free. According
to him, “Russia will be free if it ceases to exist in its current borders.”
That too is “inevitable because the preservation of Russia in these borders sooner
or later will lead to the rebirth of the empire.”
What
is most important, he says, is that “Russia must cease to exist as a single
state. In that case there is a chance that freedom will exist in one part of
Russia or another.” Once that happens, Yakovenko says, others will be drawn to
that “because freedom is a good thing.”
Yakovenko’s
observation about Russia now is especially important to this author because it
echoes an observation he made in 1987 about the Soviet Union when I wrote that
a liberalized Russia “might be possible” but that “a significantly liberalized
Soviet Union” with its imperial possessions was almost certainly “a
contradiction in terms.”
(See, Paul A. Goble, “Gorbachev
and the Soviet Nationality Problem,” in Maurice Friedberg and Heyward Isham,
eds., Soviet Society Under Gorbachev
(Armonk: M.E. Sharpe, 1987), pp. 76-100 at p. 99.)
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