The Longer Putin Stays in Power, the More Radical Each New Generation will Be, El Murid Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 22 – Anatoly Nesmiyan, who blogs under the screen name El Murid, says Vladimir Putin has already lost two generations of young people and that the Kremlin leader’s repressive approach means that the longer he remains in power, the more radical each new rising generation will be.

            The generation which came of age a decade ago during the protests then is now in its mid-20s, and it has been succeeded, the analyst continues, by a generation it is already “practically impossible to find backers of Putin bandit fascism.” That is because “the regime has completely lost the youth” (el-murid.livejournal.com/4653500.html).

            Young Russians “understand very well that this regime has closed off for them all paths, that they do not have a chance and won’t.” They have already decided what they don’t want to be – cogs in the Putinist machine – and they are now shifting to the second “existential” question – what do they really want to be for themselves?”

            One sign of this process is that “a fashion” has emerged among the young for whom such things are especially important, Nesmiyan continues. “They now are tearing down pictures of Putin in schools and putting in their places portraits of Navalny.” Putin has nothing to offer them that might get them to stop.

            By the way, this alienation of the youth is one of the reasons why the Putin regime has to falsify elections ever more profoundly. Young people aren’t going to vote for him and his minions, and the regime is prepared to sacrifice democratic legitimacy lest it be shown not to have any significant support.

            It is also an explanation as to why the regime is using ever more terror against the population. The Kremlin simply doesn’t know what else to do. At the same time, it does not recognize that what it is doing is dividing society into two camps, “us” and “them” and the them is gaining in size with the passing of time.

            “’We’ and ‘they’ is the only division which is possible in a state of deep conflict on the brink of war,” Nesmiyan argues. “And this dictates a picture different in principle as to how what is happening is to be understood.” Now, instead of the normal view that there are pluses and minuses on each side, people and especially the young are having to make a definitive choice.

            “Either you are for Putinist stability and against the agents of the State Department or you are against Putinist fascism and for the chance to have a future.” The die has been cast. It may not play out immediately. “But the powers (and not only the powers) are doing everything to bring to Russia a state of war of all against all.”

            “Only those who are able to understand this earlier than others are going to survive,” the blogger concludes.