Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 25 – The mass consciousness
of Russians has been undergoing serious changes, economist Mikhail Dmitriyev
and psychologist Anastasiya Nikolskaya say, with the pandemic accelerating two
trends: increased hostility among Russians toward the powers that be and a
decreased desire for a strong hand to rule over them.
They base their conclusions on focus
groups, but their words are attracting attention because they were among the
first to predict the mass protests in 2011-2012 (znak.com/2020-05-25/eksperty_sprognozirovavshie_protesty_na_bolotnoy_kakim_rossiyskoe_obchestvo_vyhodit_iz_karantina).
By the middle of
2019, they say, participants in their focus groups made clear that they wanted
a legal state, the defense of personal rights and freedoms, respect for
political procedures, greater participation in political life, and more justice
in the Russian Federation. Interest in these things has only increased over the
last year.
And “at the very same time, Russians
have “become more critical about foreign policy,” breaking with what had been
called “’the Crimean consensus’” and calling for better relations with all
countries and avoiding getting involved in conflicts with them. Those attitudes too have increased over the
past year.
What has been taking place, they
suggest, is a growing divide between the values of the population and the values
of the powers that be, a divide that has deepened since the onset of the pandemic
and especially in response to the measures the government has ordered to try to
flatten the curve.
“If at the beginning of the period of
self-isolation concerns predominated,” Nikolskaya says, “the overwhelming emotion
now is not concern and not fear but irritation and even anger.” And that anger, she continues, is not
diffuse. It is directed more at the federal authorities than the regional ones
and most of all at President Putin.
Dmitriyev adds that there is growing
evidence that the population wants to act on its anger, at the very least by
considering issues that only months ago would have been taboo. Russians are now
discussing quite openly the comparative advantages of parliamentary systems
rather than presidentialist ones.
At the end of 2019, there was a
brief period of sympathy for opposition leaders, he continues, “but this period
was short and with the beginning of the crisis, all this disappeared.” Nikolskaya adds that people don’t trust the opposition
just as they do not trust existing political institutions.
She offers an intriguing story about
an interview she did with an 88-year-old St. Petersburg woman about her
life. Her life had been relatively good,
and “therefore, she is for Putin. But at the end of our conversation she suddenly
said … ‘But on the other hand, I understand that we are people from the last century.
And the president is too.”
“You need another president,” the
woman told the psychologist.
Dmitriyev says that another striking
development in recent months has been talk about independence for the regions.
Earlier, no one spoke of that. But “now it is encountered in particular in a
focus group we conducted in Yekaterinburg; and there were similar attitudes in
a few Far Eastern focus groups as well.”
These shifts, the two say, not only
mean that the referendum on constitutional amendments won’t pass if there are
no falsifications but also that at least some Russians will be thinking about
engaging in protest actions of one kind or another once the pandemic
restrictions end.
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