Putin has Finally Proclaimed a New National Ideology – ‘Russia Against Everyone! Else’ Some Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 27 – Many Russians have expressed concern that their country doesn’t have a national ideology; but they simply haven’t been paying attention. Putin has proclaimed one, and it is simple and clear, Russians say. Indeed, the new national ideology can be reduced to three words: “Russia against Everyone Else!”

            That is just one of the anecdotes now circulating in Russia that say more about what Russians think than many public opinion polls. It is in the latest collection of such stories assembled by Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45911/). Among the best of the reset are the following:

·       The Moscow Patriarchate wants Russian schools to introduce courses on Old Church Slavonic in place of languages like English from unfriendly countries. That is a good first step. It should soon be followed by eliminating more than three years of schooling that will allow graduates to handle a Kalashnikov.

·       Russian television says that “it is better to be left without legs than without Putin! And he is at the front next to each of our warriors.”

·       The Swiss don’t understand anything: They’ve come up with a way for a paralyzed man to walk because they don’t recognize that the real purpose of life is to lose limbs or rot in a trench so that their national leader, who hides in a bunker, can have 26 residences, six yachts and several mistresses.

·       Moscow’s nuclear research center has ordered 2.3 billion rubles (30 million US dollars) of religious books and icons. One can only pray for those who work there.

·       Beijing received the Russian prime minister in exactly the same way the Golden Horde leaders received its vassals a millennium ago.

·       Putin has been given the international Bunker Prize for having remained in one longer than any other chief of state.

·       Russian televisions should come with a warming just like cigarettes do: “Watching leads to degradation and dementia.”

·       Bakhmut stood for 500 years and now has been destroyed by a gang of criminals, rabble and thus released from prison who now take great pride in what they have done.

Magical Realism Spreading in Russia for Same Reasons as in Latin America, Nekrasova Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 25 – Yevgeniya Nekrasova, a Moscow writer whose prose increasingly is informed by magical realism, says that that literary trend is spreading in the Russian Federation for the same reasons it did earlier among Latin American writers, the absence of a civil society and the sense people have that they cannot by themselves affect outcomes.

            Magical realism arises, she says, “precisely where there is no civil society or where it is only beginning to be formed, where the state doesn’t fulfill its intended role and engages in repression instead (semnasem.org/articles/2023/05/25/magicheskij-realizm-voznikaet-tam-gde-net-grazhdanskogo-obshestva-intervyu-s-pisatelnicej-evgeniej-nekrasovoj).

            It is “common in Latin America, India, and quite obviously, Russia,” places where “simple realism doesn’t work very well.” There magical realism can not only give people hope that things can change but that they are not as powerless relative to the powers that be as they assume.

            Nekrasova gives as an example a TV episode in which a good cop is fighting with a thug who is holding someone captive. Suddenly, a flying saucer appears, the thug is distracted, the captive escapes, and the policeman can do his job as he is supposed to – “a good example” of how something good can happen when nothing good seems possible.

            For a discussion of the emergence of Nekrasova’s magic realism in the second half of the Putin era, see cyberleninka.ru/article/n/magicheskiy-realizm-v-sbornike-evgenii-nekrasovoy-sestromam-kak-sposob-osmysleniya-bytovoy-deystvitelnosti/viewer.

Far More Circassians Abroad Want to Return to their North Caucasus Homeland than have Applied to Do So, Expert Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 22 – Moscow’s increasingly restrictive approach to those its own laws declare to be compatriots but who do not speak Russian means that the share of the 3.5 million Circassians living in exile in Turkey who have applied to return is far smaller than the actual number who would like to go back, Umit Dincher says.

            The president of the Federation of Caucasian Associations of Turkey says that is highlighted by what has happened since last winter’s destructive earthquakes hit that country. Many Circassians were near ground zero of that disaster, hoped to leave but recognized that going to Russia was no longer a real option given Moscow’s policies.

            Russian law specifies that anyone who is the descendant of someone who was a subject or citizen of the Russian Empire, the USSR, or the Russian Federation has the right of return; but increasingly and with ever greater emphasis, Moscow has blocked those who don’t speak Russian.

            That has hit the Circassians, whose ancestors were expelled from their North Caucasus homeland in 1864 at the conclusion of Russia’s imperial advance into that region. Most don’t speak Russian and thus can be excluded for linguistic reasons as far as the Russian authorities are concerned.

            The real reason, however, as Aslan Beshto, head of the Coordination Council of Adyg Social Organizations, points out is that Moscow does not want any change in the ethnic balance in the North Caucasus lest that threaten its control of the region (kavkazr.com/a/nenuzhnye-sootechestvenniki-rossiya-otkazalasj-prinyatj-cherkesov-iz-turtsii-i-sirii/32422052.html).

            As a result, the Circassians, even those suffering as a result of the earthquake, have few chances to return; and that has depressed the number who apply, leaving a statistic Moscow can invoke to suggest quite duplicitously that few Circassians in the diaspora really are interested in coming back.

Even Now, Few Turkmens Becoming Migrant Workers in Russia

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 24 – Historically, four of the five countries of Central Asia – Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan – have provided hundreds of thousands or even millions of migrant workers for the Russian economy, but the remaining one – Turkmenistan – has sent only a handful.

            Indeed, the numbers from Turkmenistan have been so low that most outside analyses of Central Asian emigration to Russia have ignored that country altogether. Moscow has tried to change that by providing charter flights (turkmen.news/turkmenistan-list-ozhidaniya/), but the numbers remain small.

Indeed, officially in the first quarter of this year, they were zero; and in all of last year, only four Turkmens left their country to work for extended periods in the Russian Federation (turkmen.news/migraciya-grazhdan-turkmenistana-v-rf-vyrosla-pochti-vpyatero-no-dokovidnyj-uroven-ne-vosstanovlen/).

In part, this is because Turkmens, given the repressive nature of their country’s government, are reluctant to provide evidence of their intentions; and independent observers say that many now listing other reasons for travel are becoming migrants (turkmen.news/snyat-pogony-ujti-v-taksisty-iz-uvd-dashoguzskogo-velayata-massovo-uvolnyayutsya-sotrudniki/ and turkmen.news/list-ozhidaniya-oformleniya-zagranpasporta-v-turkmenistane-5-6-mesyatsev/).

And consequently, even if one makes allowances for that, the number of Turkmens working in Russia as migrants remains small and is likely to stay that way, perhaps now particularly because of Chinese investments in a major gas pipeline across Turkmenistan that will provide employment for many.

 

What if Mongols Start Using Golden Horde Maps and Say There is No Russia, Russians Want to Know

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 23 – Now that Putin has been shown a 17^th century map on which there was no indication of the existence of Ukraine, some Russians are asking what will happen if some Mongol ruler gets out the maps of the times of the Golden Horde, determines that there is no Russia, and demand 700 years of tribute and the right to re-occupy northern Eurasia.

            That is just one of the anecdotes Russians are telling each other as they respond in their own ways to what the Putin regime is doing. It is part of a  new collection by Moscow journalist Tatyana Pushkaryova (publizist.ru/blogs/107374/45886/-). Among the best of the rest are the following:

·       The Duma wants to add bananas to the list of socially significant Russian products, yet another step towards the country becoming a banana republic and a reminder that abroad Russia is sometimes called “a Nigeria in he snow.”

·       The Moscow competition for the scariest clown is heating up with Dmitry Medvedev now demanding that the US compensate Russia for the destruction of Bakhmut.

·       When the Ukrainian forces entered Belgorod, they didn’t use the main roads and avoided minefields. Such barbarian behavior is yet another reason why Ukraine must be occupied.

·       Russia may have occupied the territory where Bakhmut used to stand, but it couldn’t conquer Bakhmut as that city has ceased to exist.  “You can’t take what isn’t here.”

·       Russian soldiers in the Belgorod region have been given medals “for strategic retreat.”

·       Having been shown a map of the world, Putin says “let’s attack the blues; look how many there are” before his generals point out that he is focusing on the oceans.

·       When Putin bans the use of words like infogypsies, Russians immediately begin using it ever more frequently.

·       In Nizhny Novgorod oblast, agronomists have plowed a field in the shape of the letters “I am a Russian.” There was a time when they would have instead planted something.

Kremlin-Promoted Image of China Helps Fill Ideological Vacuum in Russia, Denisenko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 23 – The image of China the Kremlin has promoted as a country that is strong precisely because it is authoritarian and deals with the outside world from a position of strength helps fill the ideological vacuum the Putin regime has left unfilled and helps generate support both for its war in Ukraine and its repression at home, Alya Denisenko says.

            The sociologist who leads the PS Laboratory project on Russian attitudes since the war says that many Russians now view the future of their own country as resembling the regime’s image of China as “an isolated, independent and economically successful country that can dictate conditions from a position of strength” (posle.media/kitajskaya-mechta-dlya-rossijskoj-naczii/).

            This image of China “not only fill the ideological emptiness regarding a vision of the future but also legitimates and justified” the war in Ukraine and the increasingly repressive policies of the Kremlin at home. After all, if that is how China has behaved in its rise to power, that is what Russia needs to do as well.

            From this image of China, she says she and her colleagues have found during interviews with Russians, the population of the Russian Federation has been provided with the basis for “an optimistic picture of the future of Russia,” something important because only if people believe in that can they accept what Moscow is doing now.

            “Many experts,” the sociologist says, “note that Kremlin propaganda has not been able to offer to Russians a model of the future,” limiting itself to attacks on the West but “not giving an alternative ideology or a clear picture as to where the country is headed.” But the regime’s boosting of the image of China provides precisely such a model.

            This use of China also provides “an alternative history of the development of the USSR,” Denisenko argues. It suggests to Russians what Putin clearly believes that if the Soviet system had not disintegrated in 1991, Russia would still be a powerful economy able to withstand anything the West did.

            And in this regard, references to China’s repressive system helps justify what Putin is doing at home. After all, if such policies help Beijing and the Chinese people, they can certainly help Moscow and the Russians. What all this means is that for Russians, China is more than an ally: it is a model for emulation and a source of justification for Kremlin policies.

Putin Promoting Rudeness as Part of General Attack on Russian Culture, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 23 –Rudeness and incivility are spreading through Russian society not as a result of some natural and spontaneous process but rather as part of a conscious policy by Vladimir Putin to destroy the traditional cultural space because he views the broader culture itself as a threat to himself and his rule, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            This “promotion of rudeness,” the London-based Russian analyst continues, is seen by the Kremlin as “a kind of artillery preparation” for Putin’s offensive against the leaders of the cultural community, many of whom oppose his war in Ukraine and other policies (echofm.online/opinions/novyj-moralnyj-kodeks-stroitelya-russkogo-mira).

            “The regime’s list of approved communication standards isn’t very extensive, Pastukhov says. Insults, humiliation, boasting, envy and hatred form the new moral code of the builder of ‘the Russian world,’ a set of qualities that do more to destroy Russia and Russian culture than to build it up whatever Putin believes, Pastukhov says.

            Such rudeness by itself, he argues, “has the effect of activating the most archaic structures of the brain, releasing the most primitive instincts people have, and stimulating the most superficial and often obscene associations that civilization people have been trained to keep under ‘lock and key.’”

            And “that is why formal politeness is the most important sign of a developed society, both in the West and in the West, and why blatant rudeness shows the primitiveness of societal organization,” an end to which the government and its media have set as goals and means to an end.

            This state-promoted rudeness “clogs the synapses in the brain of the ordinary citizen and completely obstructs return signals from the conscious to the subconscious,” the analyst continues. And lays the foundation for the destruction of culture as such – or at the very least its “most fertile layer.”

            In short, Putin is carrying out the kind of “cancel culture” he is constantly complaining about and blaming others for doing. In this, there ia a fundamental difference between what the Bolsheviks did a century ago and what the National Bolsheviks of today with Putin’s assistance are trying to do now.

            According to Pastukhov, “the former brought with them a different culture, but in spite o that, they carried a spark that flared from the fires of the European enlightenment.” As such, it was “a highly perverted but modern culture.” The latter, in contrast, “lit their torch from the  primitive barbarism” of the past.

            “It will take decades of intensive effort just to restore the capacity of culture to reproduce itself,” he concludes. Tragically, although Pastukhov does not address this fact, such promotion of rudeness is not limited to Putin and Putinism but is part and parcel of the broader populist assault on culture by the radical right in all too many countries.