Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 5 – It has become a
commonplace now to say that Vladimir Putin’s proposed constitutional amendments
represent a coup against the existing state system, but in fact, it is not
something new, the SerpomPo telegram channel says, but a continuation of
the August 1991 coup which sought to keep the population from having a voice in
governance.
The telegram channel points out that
“power in our country has never belonged to its citizens during all the years of
the new Russia. Elections have always been falsified and laws applied for the
benefit of the boss and his friends.” And he and they have drawn the country
into wars rather than improved their lives (t.me/SerpomPo/6188).
To be sure, the degree and intensiveness
of the ways in which the powers have excluded the people have varied and this
is not unimportant. When society was
able to resist, they did less; when as a result of the actions of the powers,
it could not, the powers that be did more.
“When a free press, citizens,
lawyers, and civic organization and parties were able to show their strength,
they forced those in power to take them into consideration,” SerpomPo says. “The
regime was on occasion weak; now it has become ever more harsh. At one time, it
was weak and frightened; now it is rotten and vicious.”
But in another way, the regime was
always the same because it arose “out of the despicable Soviet system: Out
country never was a state of the citizens and for the citizens where the
authorities were a reflection of their will, despite the efforts many have made
in that direction.”
“From August 1991,” SerpomPo says, “the
nomenklatura began its state coup so as not to allow citizens to have power and
to take away from them any they had gained. The composition of the ruling group
has changed but [for them] the principle hasn’t – power in Russia belongs to
us, and your task is to work for us, support us with your taxes, and we’ll give
you circuses.”
No comments:
Post a Comment