Paul Goble
Staunton, Aug. 18 – In 1989, Karoly Grosz, the leader of communist Hungary, thought about imposing martial law to keep his regime in power; but when he spoke with Polish leader Woyciech Jaruzelski, a man who had imposed martial law in his country, the Hungarian got an unexpected answer, one that has lessons for today’s Russia, Abbas Gallyamov says.
Jaruzelski told Grosz that by introducing martial law, in the short term, we solved our political problems and “won the battle but we ended up by losing the war” (t.me/abbasgallyamovpolitics/5777 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/nenuzhnost-putina-stanovitsya-vse-bolee-ochevidnoj).
While the Russian leader hasn’t declared martial law, he has used “mass violence .. to destroy the opposition structures” only to find that “this victory is Pyrrhic” because “it has only accelerated the process of his delegitimization because the idea of power based on fear alone is not something anyone, including representatives of the regime, is sympathetic to.”
According to the former Putin speechwriter and Russian commentator, the feeling that Putin “doesn’t hold power by right” but only by force “has already begun to poison the consciousness of the ruling class.” Putin has defended himself by promoting his successes and a general sense of patriotism.
That worked more or less well until recently, Gallyamov argues, because “the elites have sought to convince themselves that the current course is justified because it is aimed at ‘defending the interests of the Motherland.” But now with Kursk, it is obvious that Putin can’t do that and as a result of the Ukrainian army, trust in Putin even among loyalists is “rusting away.”
And what that means is this, the commentator says. “It is becoming ever more clear that neither the democratic nor even the patriotic portion of Russia needs Putin anymore” and both ar increasingly aware of that fact, just as Poles were four decades ago after the declaration of martial law.
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