Putin’s Technocrats Don’t Understand a Picture is More Powerful than a Thousand Words, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 4 – Personalist regimes like Vladimir Putin’s have a serious problem, one that they seldom recognize until too late to save themselves, Abbas Gallyamov says. They are staffed by people who show “political unprofessionalism” at every step because to appear to be political is to put oneself at risk of being expelled from the elite or worse.

            As a result, the leader is surrounded by people who are “political virgins,” who simply don’t know how to do politics, because that is the only way they can survive and prospect – and because it is what the supreme leader expects. “They proudly call themselves ‘technocrats’” (echo.msk.ru/blog/gallyamov_a/2636741-echo/).

            Such people commit serious errors without being aware of it, errors that are all the more obvious during a crisis when they may be filmed and their appearances transmitted via televisions, Gallyamov says. A recent and horrific example was when one senior aide to Putin appeared in a hospital room with a protective mask even as the patient and the patient’s family didn’t have them.

            This was “a visible and clear example of the thesis that the powers provide themselves with better than they do for ordinary people and are concerned only about themselves. People have suspected this but the photograph makes it clear,” far more than any written news story or commentary.

            Any professional politician would have known that and avoided being photographed in this way. Unlike words to which people treat with skepticism, they believe what they see in a photograph.” But the funny, sad and even tragic fact of the matter is that the Putin aide caught on film would not understand the issue even if it were explained to him.

            And that is why the regime in Russia may be in trouble, Abbasov says. In the US, despite all its problems, those close to the president understand these optics and don’t do things that are so self-destructive and destructive of the regime. In the Russian Federation in contrast, this is an increasingly frequent occurrence.

            The Russian people are noticing and drawing the kind of conclusions that make the future of the current powers that be far less certain than the powers and their leader believe to be the case, the commentator concludes.