Radicalization of Russian Society Unwittingly Generated by Regime Threatens the Country, Yakemenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Sept. 4 – Throughout the world, societies are being radicalized in large measure because people cannot fail to see the gap between the rules they are expected and even compelled to obey and the failure of those in power in their countries to live according to these same rules, Boris Yakemenko says.

            Many people in many countries feel that waiting for evolution to overcome this problem is to wait too long, “and all are tired of waiting, the deputy director of the Center for Historical Expertise at Moscow’s Friendship of the Peoples University. As a result, they are demanding change now even if that means violating the rules (realtribune.ru/radikalizaciya-obshhestva-menyaet-metody-dostizheniya-peremen).

            In many countries, people in the government or at least the broader elite recognize this threat and are trying to reduce the gap between what the people in their societies must obey and what they, the members of the elite, are able to get away with, recognizing that unless that divide is overcome, the situation may grow into chaos or even revolution.

            Russia has not escaped from this worldwide trend, Yakemenko says; but unfortunately, the elite and its representatives does not appear to understand the way it is contributing to this disaster rather than helping to overcome the divide. The lies, misrepresentation and corruption of the elites are increasingly obvious to the population.

            In Russia today, the scholar continues, “it is turning out that the direct cause of radicalization and the increase in the level of hatred always has been the oligarchs, the lesser members of the elites” who seem to go out of the way “to make people want to remove them … from out life in any way and at any cost.”

            If nothing is done to change this trend, Yakemenko says, that is exactly what may happen. Right now, “the powers that be either do not see what is happening of they think this is all nonsense,” even though even the briefest of reflections shows that they have been producing their own nemesis, a population no longer prepared to play by the rules the elite doesn’t.