Russian Attitudes toward Any Use of Force by Opposition Give Regime Advantages, Berg Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 3 – International law for the last two centuries has recognized that populations have the legitimate right to use force to resist governments that use of force against them to deny them their rights; but in the Russian Federation, even the opposition is opposed to responding to force with any force of its own, Mikhail Berg says.

            There are several reasons for this, the Russian commentator says. Many fear that the imbalance of force between the people and the powers is so great that any use of force to resist force will only lead to even more repression, and others think that the use of force by the population will open the way to a new regime even more reliant on violence.

            But such attitudes not only set Russia apart from most modern countries where the right of the population to use force to resist force used against it is recognized at least in principle but also give incumbent regimes advantages they do not automatically deserve, Berg continues (newizv.ru/comment/mihail-berg/03-01-2020/v-rossii-tak-i-ne-zavershena-antifeodalnaya-revolyutsiya).

            And it means that when positive change does occur, it may quickly be reversed by those in power who are confident that they will be deferred to rather than resisted when they use force against the population to deprive it of the rights that the people have only in part been able to institutionalize.

            “In a certain sense,” Berg argues, “the anti-feudal revolution which has taken place in all without exception European countries has not been completed in Russia: that which was begun by the February Revolution was in large measure disavowed by the conservative and autocratic consequences of the October Revolution” in 1917.

            And in a similar way, the achievements of the first part of perestroika were undermined “by the conservative counterrevolution in the second half of perestroika,” he continues. In both the first and second cases, the unwillingness of the opposition to use force to resist such developments made both of them more possible.

            “Velvet revolutions are fine in a velvet climate” when the unwillingness of the opposition to use force is matched by the unwillingness or inability of the powers that be to employ it; but positive changes may not be possible at all if the population remains unwilling to use force while those in power are prepared to continue to exploit it against the people.

            “In Russia” far more than in other countries, Berg suggests, “the right to use force is traditionally reserved to the strong; the weak are not allowed even the chance of appealing to it.” That is shown not only in politics but in the resistance to efforts to defend those who use force to resist force inside of patriarchal Russian families.

            Berg’s essay is not a call to arms against the regime but rather a reminder that attitudes against the use of force by any except those already in power help to explain why authoritarianism not only survives but thrives in Russia, despite occasional efforts by some in the population to change the country’s course.