Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 13 – Moscow’s
decision to avoid taking a hard line on the protests in Khabarovsk has brought
it a short-term benefit, El Murid says, leading to a decline in the number of
participants in the protests and in the coverage of these demonstrations and the
issues they raise.
But Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs
under the screen name El Murid, says that Moscow adopted that approach not because
of its understanding of the situation but because it doesn’t have enough forces
to “defend Putin fascism everywhere” and so must pick and choose when to employ
violence (el-murid.livejournal.com/4545992.html).
Moscow is certainly pleased that
Khabarovsk has been reduced to “background noise,” the blogger continues; but
it fails to see that ignoring problems even in this vegetarian way only
guarantees that they will re-emerge later in more severe and threatening
ways. That is what is certain to happen
in the wake of Khabarovsk.
On the one hand, some people, seeing
what the residents of Khabarovsk were able to do without having violence
visited upon them, may decide to take similar actions only to discover that the
authorities in that case will use force, radicalizing participants and
observers rather than intimidating anyone into quiescence.
And on the other, those inclined to
protest in Khabarovsk or elsewhere will soon forget how the authorities treated
them in all ways except one: in this case as is virtually all others, Moscow
has failed to take the protests of the population seriously and change its
policies in response.
That the Putin regime is incapable of
doing otherwise has long been obvious, El Murid says. Were the situation
otherwise, Russia would not be in the straits that it is. Russians are
gradually recognizing this reality, and the way in which the Kremlin responded
to Khabarovsk may look clever to the Putin team – but not to the Russian
people.
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