Two-Thirds of Online Anecdotes in Russia Today are Political and Anti-Regime, Sociologists Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 5 – Because Russians are confined to their homes and have time, they are circulating ever more anecdotes online, Aleksey Levinson and Lyubov Borusyak say. And two-thirds of these are both political and anti-regime, a pattern that makes it likely the regime will choose police communism rather than a new NEP after the pandemic passes.

            They give two examples: According to the first, in the West, the authorities tell people to stay and home and give them money to survive; in Russia, on the other hand, the powers tell them to stay at home and promise to fine them if they don’t obey (forbes.ru/obshchestvo/399557-nep-ili-policeyskiy-kommunizm-kak-vlasti-sderzhat-rost-nedovolstva-rossiyan).

            And according to the second, Putin says at the end of his latest speech, “the main thing is not to panic. We will beyond question survive!” To which the Russian people respond by asking rhetorically “But will we?” What is clear is that for Russians, the longer home confinement continues, the less it will seem like a defense and the more a return to Stalinism.

            During the crisis, Levinson and Borusyak say, the state acts as if everyone accepts its version of reality; but most people don’t especially middle-class Russians who have a car and feel they are confined for political rather than medical reasons. And such feelings are only likely to intensify when the pandemic ends and people venture out again.

            Some small initial investigations suggest that dissatisfaction at a minimum will not quickly dissipate and may even grow.

            On venturing out, the two say, the Russia will face “a half-destroyed economy,” with fewer services available and at higher prices and with less income to pay them.  Most of those who have risen into the middle class will fall back into the poor. And there won’t be a large enough group of optimists to counter the pessimism of this impoverished majority.

            Confronted with such anger, the powers will have two ways out: One would be to impose a kind of war communism, something that they could do and sustain for some time.  The other would be a NEP, involving the recruitment of people who know what they are doing so that the country might recover.

            But for the Putin elite, the latter carries with it greater risks, Levinson and Borusyak say; and that makes the former a far more likely choice.