Demise of Communist System Left Russians Living without a Public Future, Levinson Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – Because the communist system so monopolized the public future, Aleksey Levinson says, its collapse 30 years ago left Russians without a significant public future to believe in and act upon. Instead, they act as if their country’s future will be just like the present or talk about trivialities.

            What was important about the Soviet system, the Levada Center sociologist says, is not that it was communist but that it was about the collective future. “And with the demise of the state and its ideological platform, this future disappeared,” depriving Russians of “the future as a category of time” (polit.ru/article/2022/12/29/levinson/).

            What remains and did so “almost untouched,” Levinson continues, are private futures, those of the individual, the family, friends, coworkers and so on. “In these structures, everything is very much in order with regard to the category of the future.” Were things otherwise, the country would have descended into complete chaos.

            But the lack of a common public future is a serious matter, especially as it affects not only the population but as far as one can tell the elites as well. In the focus groups he conducts, the sociologist continues, Russians simply can’t describe the future when asked that question directly.

            When they are asked what would be the worst that could happen, they do have opinions, he says. Some talk about the disintegration of Rusisa, “the end of the world after which there is nothing and cannot be.” Others, talk about nuclear war.” And still a third talk of a civil war which would lead to either the first or the second.

            But when asked about what would be the best, they talk about trivial things such as a stable ruble or oil at 90 US dollars a barrel. And they can’t imagine a future, even a distant one, any different than the present at least as far as their ruler is concerned. In short, they have no vision of the future and so are increasingly lacking one of the present as well.

Belarusian is ‘Language of the Opposition’ and Lukashenka Wants to Destroy It, Maytak-Annaorazov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – When Alyaksandr Lukashenka came to power in 1994, he restored Soviet efforts to make Russian the language of Belarusians hoping that would help him to become president in Moscow; but now, he is taking even harsher steps against Belarusian because it has become “the language of the opposition,” Marat Maytak-Annaozarov says.

            But it has acquired that status because it corresponds to the desires of the population, the Belarusian opposition commentator says. Many who speak it now choose to go underground or even emigrate, further enraging the Minsk dictator and leading him to take ever more extreme actions against the language as such (theins.ru/obshestvo/257070).

            He has removed Belarusian from state television, insisted that government actions down to the level of traffic police are only in Russian, and most seriously for the future closed Belarusian schools not only in the cities as the Soviets did but in the villages. UNESCO has already declared Belarusian a language at risk.

            And if nothing is done to stop Lukashenka, Maytak-Annaozarov says, the national language faces extinction. Indeed, at the present, he continues, the language can only be saved by the efforts of Belarusians and their supporters abroad.

Pro-War Russian Nationalists have Failed to Get the Political Breakthrough They’d Hoped for, SOVA Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – Putin’s war in Ukraine has divided Russian nationalists just as it has split all other groups in Russian society, Vera Alperovich says, with those who oppose the war becoming increasingly silent while those who back it have become ever more active but increasingly unhappy that their support has not won the entry to power they had hoped for.

            Some of the latter have continued to work to recruit volunteers to fight in Ukraine or even gone there themselves, the SOVA analyst says. That allowed them to gain an expanded media audience in Russia, but this by itself has not improved their access to the halls of power or in elections (sova-center.ru/racism-xenophobia/publications/2022/12/d47447/).

            There are at least two reasons for this, Alperovich says. On the one hand, the nationalists have failed to set themselves apart from the powers and thus haven’t gotten support as being independent of them. And on the other, the powers don’t want any demonstrations even of support that the authorities themselves do not entirely control.

Once Non-Russians Gain Independence, Russia Should Be Reconfigured into 17 Russian Republics, Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – A new and genuinely ethnic Russian Russian Federation should consist of 17 republics, according to a commentator writing anonymously for the telegram channel of the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia, one based on the belief that the non-Russian republics now within the current Russian Federation will all leave.

            That idea will be opposed by three different groups: those who don’t want the borders of the Russian Federation to contract at all but don’t want any radical changes, those who don’t believe that all the non-Russian republics will want to leave, and those who believe that some Russian regions may also seek independence as second, third or more Russian countries.

            Given this combination of opponents, it is almost certainly utopian in conception and impossible to achieve. But the proposal itself, available at t.me/freenationsrussia/2229, is important because it highlights two important realities that are often lost sight of by those discussing Russia and its possible futures.

            On the one hand, given that the non-Russian republics form only about 20 percent of the population of the Russian Federation now as compared to nearly 50 percent of the population of the Soviet Union, whatever happens or should be considered now must be fundamentally different than what happened in 1991.

            And on the other hand, it calls attention to the fact, often lost sight of, that Moscow engaged in ethnic engineering with regard to Russian areas just as often as it did with regard to non-Russian ones, drawing borders so as to include or exclude various resources, including population, to limit the ability of these areas to challenge Moscow.

            Consequently, the new list of 17 “Russian” Russian republics that might constitute a Russian Federation after the independence of the non-Russian republics now within it is worth attending to as an indication of how borders should be withdrawn to create a genuine Russian federation.

According to the commentator from the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia, these are:

·       Lapland (the former Murmansk oblast)

·       Ingria (the former Leningrad oblast and St. Petersburg)

·       Novgorod (Novogorod oblast)

·       Pomorye (Astrakhan kray minus the Nenets AD and Vologda oblast)

·       Eastern Krivia (Smolensk, Tver, and Pskov oblasts)

·       Zalesye (Moscow and Moscow, Yaroslav, Ryazan, Kirov, Nizhny Novgorod, Kaluga, Tula, Vladimir, Ivanovo, and Kostroma oblasts)

·       Black Earth (Voronezh, Belgorod, Tambov, Lipetsk, Kursk, Oryol, and Bryansk oblasts)

·       Volga (Samara, Saratov, Volgograd, Penza, and Ulyanovsk oblasts)

·       Don (Rostov oblast)

·       Kuban (Krasnodar kray without territories transferred to a restored Circassian Republic)

·       Stavropol (Stavropol kray)

·       Urals (Sverdlovsk, Perm (without the Komi-Permyak District), Chelyabinsk, Kurgan, and Orenburg oblasts)

·       Tyumen (tyumen oblast without the Khanty-Mansiisk and Yamalo-Nenets ADs)

·       Chaldonia (Omsk, Novosibirsk, Tomsk, Kemerovo, and Irkutsk (without the Ust-Orda Buryat District) oblasts, and the Altai and Krasnoyarsk (without the Taymyr and Evenk districts) krays)

·       Trans-Baikal (Trans-Baikal kray without the Agin Buryat district)

·       Far East (Magadan, Amur and Sakhalin oblasts, the Khabarovsk and Primorsky krays, and the Jewish AD)

·       Kamchatka (Kamchatka oblast without the Koryak AD).

Genuine Federalism in Russia Must Rest on Ten Principles, Shtepa Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – In a nine-page policy paper for Reforum, Vadim Shtepa, a prominent Russian regioalist and the editor of the Tallinn-based Region.Expert portal lists the ten principles on which “a reset” of federalism in the Russian Federation must take place if that system is to live up to its name.

            Shtepa points out that the current debate about whether Russia will or won’t disintegrate is taking place almost entirely from the point of view of the center rather than that of the regions. As a result, it ignores the positive goals and aspirations of the latter and focuses only on what the center will retain or lose (reforum.io/contents/uploads/2022/12/reforum-refederalization.pdf).

            At the same time, the regionalist says that “the phenomenon of Muscovite hyper-centralism in both Soviet and post-Soviet times has inevitably led not to the development of federalism but to the rebirth of an imperial model of the metropolitan center and its colonies.” That means that what Russia needs is not some revival of federalism but its “reset.”

            To achieve that, Shtepa continues, the country must follow ten basic principles, each of which he discusses in some detail:

            First, the federation must be voluntary. Those who do not want to join must be allowed to leave and go their own way.

            Second, it must be symmetrical -- that is, all of its subjects must have equal status rather than as now some having more than others.

            Third, the country must undergo “de-Muscovization” – that is, the country requires a political capital that is separate from its cultural or economic one.

            Fourth, the borders of the component parts of the federation, which Shtepa refers to as republics, must be inviolable and based on mutually agreed to treaties.

 

            Fifth, the republics must stop being viewed as “subjects” of the center and instead be “states” which decide what to delegate to the center rather than as now, the center deciding what to delegate to its subjects.

 

            Sixth, human rights must be given priority over any decisions by either the central government or the governments of the states.

 

            Seventh, the principle of subsidiarity must be the operational basis of the system, an arrangement that will mean that the fewest possible decisions and taxation powers will be transferred to the central government from the states.

 

            Eighth, each state must have the freedom to decide which federal programs to participate in and to what degree.

 

            Ninth, the federal center must be blocked from taking any steps that violate these principles of federalism.

 

            And tenth, the federal treaty in which all this must be agreed to must become a fundamental part of the constitution of the new federation.”

 

            All this may seem utopian now and the details of each of these principles remain to be worked out, Shtepa concludes; but they represent only way that Russia can remain in one piece and move forward in the future.

Russians Told ‘Bomb Shelter’ Outdated Term and that USSR was ‘Murdered at Its Prime’

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 29 – Words matter because they affect how people understand what is going on around them; and this week, there were two striking examples of efforts, one by regional officials and a second by a Moscow commentator to change the words Russians use about two key things.

            On the one hand, officials in Saratov Oblast put out the word that residents should not speak about “bomb shelters” because that is “an outdated term.” Instead, they should use “recessed rooms” instead, a less emotional term but one that is almost Orwellian in its deceptiveness (sovross.ru/2022/12/29/chinovniki-saratovskoj-oblasti-predlozhili-nazyvat-bomboubezhishha-uglublennymi-pomeshheniyami/).

            And on the other, Dmitry Agranovsky, a Moscow lawyer and commentator says, Russians should stop saying that the USSR collapsed because in fact it was “murdered in its prime,” a truly Orwellian rewrite of history that invites Russians to engage in a search for enemies (mk.ru/politics/2022/12/28/sssr-ubili-v-samom-rascvete-sil.html).

Putin’s War in Ukraine wasn’t Inevitable But Possibly Occurred Because of His Covid Isolation, Golosov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 28 – Despite what many believe, there was nothing inevitable about Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch his expanded war in Ukraine, Grigory Golosov argues. Personalist dictatorships like his often survive without doing so for a long time, especially if they use elections to legitimize themselves and don’t want to rock the boat.

            But the political scientist at St. Petersburg’s European University says, there is always the danger that this constraint will become less significant in the eyes of such rulers especially if elections are so easily managed or other factors intervene that cause them to decide that war may serve their interests (holod.media/2022/12/28/golosov-2022-itog/).

            If a personalist ruler’s isolation increases, Golosov argues, there is an ever greater chance that he will think about ideas from his past. And that is exactly what occurred with Putin in 2020 and 2021. During those years, he was in covid pandemic isolation and clearly thought a lot about geopolitics and especially the geopolitical model he had learned in Soviet times.

            According to the political scientist, “it is certainly possible that these happy reflects led him to the conclusion that a rapid success on the Ukrainian front would not permit him not only to strengthen his power in Russia” as the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 did “but allow him to go down in history as the worthy continuer of the goals of Russian tsars.”

            Such calculations, Golosov suggests, would have given Putin “psychological comfort,” but they would not have allowed for input by others that might have given him a more objective picture of reality and the risks involved of launching a major war, risks that many of his senior officials were certainly aware of.

            Personalist dictatorships are especially “error prone for the simple reason that they remove the control mechanisms that reduce the possibility for making wrong decisions,” Golosov says. The covid pandemic only intensified that and “in this sense, Russia has been simply unlucky.”

            But this lack of luck, just like the lack of luck which kept both tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union from surviving far longer than they did, has far broader consequences, most seriously for those in countries ruled by such people but also for others who are forced to respond.