Putin Controls Russian Society by Manipulating Its Collective Unconscious, Making Conscious Resistance Unlikely, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Jan. 13 – Vladimir Putin rules Russian society “almost exclusively” by means of his “manipulation of its ‘collective unconscious,’ an arrangement that makes it very unlikely that Russian society will mount any resistance to the regime even if war losses multiply “many times over,” Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            That is because, the London-based Russian analyst says, “an appeal to conscience doesn’t work where the subconscious is in control,”omething that is even more so when the subconscious mind is under the control of the individual who might be the target of resistance otherwise (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=63C302CE2690B).

            Only if the regime collapsed for some external reason would Russian society “have a modest chance for emancipation and then only on condition that the basic architecture of civilization will be restored.” That won’t happen quickly, and so society is likely to remain “hostilely silent” about fights within the elite and then “as always dutifully support the winner.”

            All this is the case, Pastukhov argues, because “the Putin regime is neither communist nor fascist by its genesis although it has the intention of developing in both directions” as it “was and remains a mafia state, the chief political instrument of which is raiding” first of all property but also the minds of its population.

            Putin’s system developed in three stages, the London analyst continues. First, it seized property that had been stolen by others after the collapse of the Soviet system. Then, it seized the state. And finally, exploiting “Crimea is Ours,” it seized the tribal instincts of the population, “thus acquiring unlimited opportunities to manipulate” the people.

            “This privatization by the regime of the tribal instinct became possible as a result of the length policy of de-civilization of society which the Kremlin consistently conducted from the middle of the first decade of this century,” Pastukhov says. It eliminated the institutional brakes on this instinct and turned them to its own use.

            As a result, by the end of the second decade of Putin’s rule, “Russian began to appear as a primitive society as far as its socio-cultural dimensions were concerned lightly decorated with the external attributes of present-day civilization. In that form, society was an easy catch;” and Putin is well-equipped to play to it and with it.