‘Nezygar’ Telegram Channel Head Offers Six Theses on Where Russia is and Where It’s Heading

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 10 – Kazan’s Business-Gazeta this week features an interview with the man behind the influential Nezygar Telegram channel (ura.news/articles/1036277207). He offers six key theses on where Russia is now and where it’s heading that have been singled out by Anna Myuving of the VOstroge group (facebook.com/groups/vostroge/permalink/475773672953003/).

            They include the following:

1.      “The Russian powers that be have a very short time horizon when it comes to planning … we do not understand the transformation of the present and do not feel the future. As a result, we do not see the risks and are incapable of assessing them.”

2.      “Both elites and society live in post-Soviet time. All of us are in a transitional era. But the transit political generation is not capable of talking about the future because for us, it simply doesn’t exist. The future of society will be born when the era of the USSR comes to its objective end.”

3.      Despite the enormous mass of information, “we have a completely empty and limited information agenda … we live in a Cloud of myths. One can say that all lie. Waiting is very Russian. All understand, both the powers and the people, that a step forward is needed but they aren’t making it.”

4.      “In Russian history, the occasion for choice and change always occurs when a leader departs. The personalization of power is the personality of the leader and loyalty to him, and consequently to the regime. When Volodin said his much-remarked upon phrase about Putin and Russia, everyone laughed. But Volodin was absolutely right. He was speaking about the occasion for change.”

5.      “On the one hand, the elites show themselves united, but at the same time, the war among them is beginning to take on an out of control character. We up to now speak about stability but have entered a phase of political turbulence. Earlier, our influence groups fought for access to resources.  But now they are in conflict over participation in the process of the construction of the post-Putin model.”

6.      “Here how the regional elites behave, whether they form informal coalitions is important. The Kremlin is simply not prepared to carry out the transfer given such social risks.  It is understandable that the supreme power will for purely psychological reasons delay all decisions until 2020.”