Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 9 – The probability
that the Russian Federation will disintegrate is “increasing with each passing
day,” Ilya Ponomaryev tells the Seventh Free Russia Forum in Vilnius; but this
possibility may have the effect of “rallying” the regime and leading it to take
steps in defense of its existence rather than of promoting more popular
protest.
The Russian opposition figure, now
living in exile in Kyiv, drew those conclusions during a discussion of the
state of Russia and of the Russian opposition today, with participants warning
against underestimating either the power of the state to learn and become even
more repressive or the possibilities of the opposition to change things (ehorussia.com/new/node/19645).
Human rights activist Lev Ponomaryev
argues that Russia is still not a full-blown dictatorship but rather an
authoritarian regime in which different elements within the government are
often fighting with each other. In this situation, he says, he is “against a revolution
by force in Russia. With the Putin machine one must struggle via peaceful
means.”
“We live in conditions of the
transformation of Russian society, the activist continues. “On the map of
Russia, there are thousands of protest actions, something which was never the
case before. There is the myth that it is impossible to defeat the Putin system.
But citizens have been winning in Yekaterinburg” and elsewhere.
But Marat Gelman, a curator and
opposition figure, observes that “the powers that be have learned to lose and
then how to win.” They may retreat only to come back with renewed force. And
that is especially likely if they do not have the support of the West, which
many speakers in Vilnius say fails to understand how Russia works.
Gary Kasparov says that the current
situation is very different from what it was in Soviet times. Then, the West actively
supported the dissidents; but now many in Russia and even more abroad say that
there is no reason to sanction Putin despite his repressive policies. And that sanctions alone won’t work.
In that, Kasparov continues, they are
right: sanctions aren’t going to transform the Russian system unless and until
it suffers “a geopolitical defeat. And this won’t occur as long as we do not act
as a united front. It is necessary to show the West that the Putin regime
represents a danger” to it as well as to Russia.
“The strength of Putin lies in the
weakness of the West,” the opposition leader concludes.
A major focus of the first day of
the Vilnius conference was on the relationship between economics and political
change, an especially important topic because the West assumes that if its sanctions
make the situation in Russia worse, that by itself will lead to positive
political developments there.
But Russian participants are
skeptical of that idea. Anastasiya Nikolskaya of the Russian Academy of
Economics and State Service says that “there is no direct connection between
the well-being of citizens and protest attitudes” and that “stable poverty
often becomes a guarantee of conservatism and of a lack of desire to change
something.”
There is interest in change among
Russians, she says; but political commentator Andrey Illarionov argues that this
interest may not be in favor of democracy and the opposition. Many instead want
a return of Stalin. Nikolskaya responds that what they want is a
Stalinist-style revenge on corrupt officials.
To that extent, she says, “’Stalinism’
exists as a response to the absence of democracy.”
Finally, commentator Igor Yakovenko
says that the supposed outcome of the conflict between the television and the
refrigerator, between the propaganda spread by the regime in the former and the
realities of increasing impoverishment in the latter, is a myth. It isn’t the
poorest who demonstrate. Otherwise, it would be the homeless dominating the
demonstrations.
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