Compulsory Vaccination Risks Having Same Political Consequences as Pension Reform Did, Starikov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 27 – For years, Vladimir Putin promised that he would never raise the pension age. Then, he raised it, snapping many of the ties that had bound the Russian people to him. More recently and for months, the Kremlin leader has promised that he opposed making vaccinations against the coronavirus mandatory; but now, he appears ready to approve that.

            There is thus the very real possibility that he will face the same result, Nikolay Starikov says, something all the more likely because Russians already have in their minds the image of Putin as someone who doesn’t keep his word and potentially more serious because this is happening just before an election (newizv.ru/article/general/28-06-2021/nikolay-starikov-prinuditelnaya-vaktsinatsiya-eto-vtoraya-pensionnaya-reforma).

            But such a violation of trust this time around will also matter even more for three additional reasons, the Moscow commentator says. First, despite Putin’s insistence that under his rule, Russia is going its own way, caving on this issue suggests that in this as in so many other areas, he is following the hated West.

            Second, it shows an enormous lack of respect on his part for the Russian people who have shown by their actions that they aren’t rushing to get the vaccine. Only 10 percent have chosen to get the shots, and that means that 90 percent and not a mere majority have decided for various reasons that they don’t want them.

            And third, past Kremlin efforts to force Russians to do things they don’t want to do work only for so long, and then there is the very real risk that there will be an explosion. In the 20^th century, this led to two revolutions which arose when the Russian people and the Russian state stood on two sides of the barricades because the people did not want what the state did.

            No one who cares about Russia can want a third such occasion to occur now. Indeed, Starikov speculates, one almost has to believe that those pushing for forced vaccination are acting not as patriots but as “a fifth column” – and that such people are getting their way even with the current Russian president.