Paul Goble
Staunton, Jan. 10 – In his latest post under the rubric “Notes of a Provincial” on the Kasparov portal, Lev Vladimirov, a Russian writer now living in Israel, argues that residents of Samara, his native city, “like all Russians are the serfs of the 21st century” and that their servility and viciousness have only “intensified” since Putin launched his expanded war in Ukraine.
He says that returning veterans are openly contemptuous of the rights of others and even insist that they “have all the rights” and that those who didn’t fight in Ukraine for Putin are “just rear-echelon scum,” an attitude that the Kremlin has encouraged by proclaiming the veterans the new elite of Russia (kasparovru.com/material.php?id=69623E89C706B).
Such attitudes, of course, didn’t begin in this decade, Vladimirov says. “Anti-Semitism, Russian nationalism (under the guise of patriotism), envy, denunciations and provocations against those who disagree with the Kremlin regime” have been “waiting for so long to flourish.” But “now they have openly blossomed.”
And as a result, he says, “these serfs of the 21st century know now shame.” Vladimirov points to an advertisement on a Samara news website for the services of massage parlors in Samara which he says is “the icing on the cake” as far as this intensification of these qualities is concerned.
The ad promises “participants of the special military operation a discount.” That prompts the question: “Is this an additional incentive, secretly funded by the government to get men to go and fight in Ukraine or are the escort girls in Samara facing a shortage of men” at least in part because of the deaths of so many in Ukraine?
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