Paul
Goble
Staunton, February 29 – Stalin
infamously observed that the worst wreckers were those who worked the hardest
because hey wanted to be promoted so that they would be in a position to do
even more wrecking, an attitude that played a major role in the spread of
terror throughout even that part of the population that was supportive of the
regime.
Now, something similar is the case
under Vladimir Putin, Kseniya Kirillova suggests, because recent cases show
even those who don’t participate in opposition activities or show any objections
to the Kremlin can nonetheless run afoul of his regime (mnews.world/ru/strah-i-razobshhyonnost-kreml-lishaet-konformistov-privychnyh-strategij-vyzhivaniya/).
As with most things Putin, the
US-based Russian journalist says, the creation of a situation in which even
conformists can’t count on the regime to defend them has gone through a series
of stages. She identifies five. The
first occurred in 2011-2012 when people discovered that loyalty in exchange for
stability was no guarantee they would be left to themselves.
Instead, and especially after the
Russian invasion of Ukraine, participation in protests or even criticism of the
regime, something that the Kremlin generally overlooked up to that time became
the occasion for real charges and real sentences and not just suspended ones,
Kirillova continues.
The second stage emerged shortly
after that when individuals in business discovered that they could be targeted
by the FSB in order that the organs would get their cut or even take over what
others had created. Working hard for the
economy and avoiding criticism of the regime was no guarantee they would be
left alone.
The third stage or level involved
those ordinary Russians who were not doing anything on their own but somehow
got caught up in internecine fights within the regime. Those conflicts now
spilled over to other groups, none of whom realty had any business to be
involved but who became chips in the game of the siloviki.
The fourth level can be said to have
emerged when the regime began to attack those who were too loyal to it. Thus,
Russians who had worked hard in things like the ultra-conservative Russkaya
narodnaya liniya, “the Russian world” in the Baltics or the Donbass
operation were attacked if they were judged a liability or gaining more
independent support than the Kremlin preferred.
They could get in trouble for the
most innocent of reasons. A Russian activist in Latvia who posted pictures of
her wedding online inadvertently showed a Russian FSB agent. That was enough
for Riga to act against him, and for Moscow to act against her, accusing her of
being a foreign agent.
And fifth, this end to any basis for
certainty about inviolability has spread to the organs themselves, with some
FSB officers attacking others even those who by all indications were simply
doing their jobs.
“On the one hand,” Kirillova says,
“the chaotic quality of repressions or, in the case of the siloviki, the
selectiveness of investigations of their real actions and corrupt crimes shakes
the moral spirit of the system and seriously undermines the loyalty of its
individual cogs.”
“On the other,” she continues, “this
high degree of turbulence creates a feeling of mass indefensibility, a
collective neurosis and a constant feeling of uncertainty about tomorrow. This
feeling is still insufficient for the launch of mass protests. On the contrary,
at present, it is in a certain sense preventing them by spreading fear and a
sense of division.”
But even now, this sense “does
interfere with any new mobilization of the population” intended to rally
Russians “around ‘the national leader’ as the Kremlin dreams. That is because alongside food, water and a
roof over one’s head, a sense of personal security is at the foundation of
Maslow’s pyramid of human needs.
And this means in turn, Kirillova
concludes, that “as long as people do not feel that they are defended, the
rating of the powers that be will continue to fall despite any populist
declarations” by its leaders.
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