Paul Goble
Staunton, July 16 – The reaction by Ukrainians to the dismissal of their country’s defense ministry is compelling evidence that Ukraine is not Russia, Igor Eidman says. Anyone who thinks otherwise needs only to ask himself or herself if one could imagine Russians reacting the dismissal of a defense minister by taking to the streets to protest.
The Russian sociologist now living in Germany says that “Ukraine has once again shown that it is a democratic state with a mature civil society,” one in which “people care what happens at the top, react keenly and immediately to events, and one in which the authorities listen to them (t.me/igoreidman/3119 reposted at echofm.online/opinions/pochemu-ukraina-ne-rossiya).
“It remains unclear how this case will end,” Eidman continues. “ Zelenskyy might yet reverse his decision under public pressure, just as happened with the attempt to strip anti-corruption bodies of their independence,” something absolutely unimaginable in the case of Russians and their leader.
If Putin “dismisses another defense minister, the vast majority of the population simply wouldn’t care,” he continues. Firing anyone without regard to what people think is “the god of that country,” and this god has the prerogative to do what he likes. The population thus “behaves not like a society of citizens but rather a mute herd.”
According to Eidman, “this herd views everything happening at the top as a natural phenomenon—something beyond its control and something it cannot influence. Any action taken by the cruel shepherd is met either with submissive lowing or, more often, with total silence.”
That settles the matter: Whatever Putin or anyone else thinks, “Ukraine is not Russia,” he says. And the war going on there is “not merely Russian aggression … It is also a struggle by a Ukrainian democratic society against a totalitarian system of enslavement, a system obsessed with extending its internal servitude to others.”
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