What Halloween Teaches is Why Some Russian Reactionaries Want to Ban It, Blogger Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 31 – This year as every recent year, some in the Russian Orthodox Church as well as other self-proclaimed defenders of Russia and its culture are demanding that Halloween be banned as “a cult of death and Satan” and even insisting that the Russian state take this step; but that would be a mistake, according to Ilya Varlamov.

            The Russian blogger says that it is time to respond, “Hands Off Halloween!” because this is an important holiday, one that is “not only happy but also useful,” perhaps especially because the messages it sends are exactly those that the obscurantists and reactionaries in the Russian church and society don’t want disseminated (echo.msk.ru/blog/varlamov_i/1865488-echo/).

            Drawing on a recent article, unnamed, in a British journal, Varlamov argues that there are six reasons to view Halloween as something extremely positive.  He gives six reasons for that conclusion:

1.      “Halloween unites people.” In many countries, people don’t know their neighbors; but Halloween provides an opportunity for them to meet and socialize, developing social ties that they might not otherwise have.

2.      “Halloween teaches people how to receive and how to give.”  Children who collect candy and share it with their friends and relatives learn something important. “In daily life, they do not take candy from strangers, but Halloween gives them the chance to be a little braver. Moreover, it is a good occasion to remind them about manners, to teach them to be polite and to say thanks.”

3.      “Halloween is useful stress.” Stress in small amounts can be useful and help people function better and be able to forget for a time their daily routine and “feel a taste for life.”

4.      “On Halloween, you can become whomever you like.” Halloween gives children the chance to dress up as various figures, including evil ones, and thus to get a chance to “investigate what it means to be bad. It is certainly better that this occurs during Halloween games than in daily life.”

5.      “Halloween shows that death isn’t terrible.” Varlamov notes that “the overwhelming number of people are afraid of death. But Halloween transforms it into a game and helps them avoid this sacred fear.” And to the extent that it does so in both adults and children, it provides a good occasion for people to reflect about their own lives and how better to lead them.

6.      “Halloween is a lot of candy.”  That is good in itself, the Russian blogger says, especially if it is good candy.

            For all these reasons and others besides, he says, those who don’t like Halloween should relax and realize that it is simply a happy holiday and there is nothing wrong with one of those.

Russians Turning Against Putin Regime Thus Making Revolutionary Change More Likely, Solovey Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 30 – Deep background sociological research is showing that Russia is at the beginning of “a significant transformation of mass consciousness” that will eliminate much of the loyalty to the regime that the populace now shows in a way tht will recall what happened at the end of Soviet times, Valery Solovey says.

            And this shift, the MGIMO professor continues, “will take plece [first] in the heads” will involve less a willingness of people “to come out against the authorities” but rather to consider them as not “deserving obedience and respect” and thus causing them to loose whatever legitimacy they have (gazeta.ru/comments/2016/10/30_a_10293293.shtml).

That does not mean, Solovey says, that there will be a violent revolution – the end of the Soviet Union wasn’t violent either and the Russian people don’t want it – but rather that the situation will change in such a way that the current rulers will likely have to exit the scene if they cannot radically change their own policies and approaches to the population at large.

In an interview with the Moscow newspaper “Gazeta,” Solovey discusses a wide variety of themes he has addressed in his new book, “Revolution! The Bases of Revolutionary Struggle in the Contemporary Era,” that will be released in the coming month. 

He argues that the events of five years ago failed to lead to this kind of change because they were a moral rather than an economic protest, because the opposition parties were so weak, and because they were the work of a middle class not yet radicalized by its loss of its economic as well as its political position.

Now the members of the middle class have suffered and are ready for harsher action, and the lower classes are angry as well, although most of them are satisfying their anger with “deviant behavior like alcoholism and petty hooliganism.” But over time, the two groups are coming together with regard to the regime.

“Five years ago,” Solovey says, “Russia was close to a so-called velvet revolution in which the authorities most probably would preserve part of their positions.” But the events of the intervening period mean that “now the development of events in the case of a revolution will proceed according to a harsher scenario,” albeit not necessarily a “bloody” one.

What needs to be recognized, however “paradoxical” this may sound, is that “in Russia there are no forces which are interested in the defense of the powers that be,” just like in 1991 with regard to the Soviet hierarchy.  The current powers look strong as a result of their brutality, but in fact, they are incredibly weak, Solovey argues.

The bureaucracy and the middle class don’t like the current regime and know that any succeeding regime will have to make use of their talents. The siloviki are not best pleased either and they will be concerned during a crisis in the first instance to save themselves rather than save the system that elevated them.

The regime could save itself by making reforms and reaching out to the population, but once again as so often in Russian history, it is a case of “’too little too late.’”  That doesn’t mean there will be an apocalyptic destruction of the regime or the country, but it does mean that it is at risk of imploding as the Soviet system did.

And because the authorities continue to make “mistake after mistake,” the situation is only getting worse and something will almost certainly happen in the next year or two, and not 20 years from now as some in the Kremlin think, especially because ever more groups will conclude that they have nothing to lose by ignoring those in power if not actually fighting them.

Russians don’t want another violent revolution, and they don’t have the youth-dominated demographic structure that such transformations usualy have. But they are being pushed in a revoltutionary direction by their common demands for justice whether they believe that “Crimea is ours” or not.

If protests do break out, the likeliest scenario is that the supporters of the regime will stay at home, even as its opponents take to the streets. The forces on which the regime relies will see this and act accordingly because they will want to protect themselves in the future, the MGIMO professor continues.

Had the last 15 years been used constructively, he concludes, all of this might have been avoided. But they weren’t. The issues of justice have reemerged. And the regime is rapidly losing its legitimacy even though most people out of fear or indifference or inertia are prepared to tell poll takers otherwise.

And in a country that has not engaged in lustration or build real institutions, the consequences for radical change, call it revolution or not, should not be underrated, Solovey concludes.

Hopes that Putin Will Turn Away from His Fascist Course Misplaced, Skobov Suggests

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 30 – Every time Vladimir Putin makes even the slightest suggestion that he is moderating his position, there is a chorus of people who argue that he is about to scrap most or even all of his recent policies and return to where he supposedly was at the beginning of his time as president.

            But such hopes – and it is entirely likely that Putin himself is interested in promoting them to keep the West off balance and interested in making a deal with some new “new” Putin – are almost certainly misplaced.  According to Aleksandr Skobov, there is little chance he will stop his drive toward fascism and allow Russia to become again a normal country.

            In a commentary for the Kasparov.ru portal, the Moscow commentator says that he does not believe “even for a second” that Putin will return his regime “to some kind of ‘bourgeois normalcy.” Instead, he argues, “the objective course of events will push the regime further in the direction of fascism” (kasparov.ru/mterial.php?id=58137B7aADF2FE).

            Moreover, Skobov says, he does not believe in the possibility that “there will appear in the ruling elite some kind of health-thinking progressive forces.” That group of people is so thoroughly compromised that “there is no one in it with whom one can enter into a dialogue” about a better future.

            But those just below that level, he suggests, are very different and may include those who are deeply disaffected with the ruling elite.  “In this milieu, it is entirely possible that disappointment in Putinism will begin to appear and at first take the form of a striving to “cleanse from perversions Putinist legality.”

            Up to the present, he continues, “all attempts to construct a certain moderate ‘Putinism with a human face’ have failed.” Those interested in doing so have been so attacked by the regime for even the most modest suggestions that they have moved away from it into positions of silence or of radical opposition.

            But they are the place to look for the emergence of an opposition within the regime – at least among those who oppose the use of repressive measures.  And Skobov points to the comments of Moscow blogger Kristina Potupchik as an example of such people. See her posts at krispotupchik.livejournal.com/694549.html and krispotupchik.livejournal.com/694523.html.

            The place not to look is higher up the latter or to Putin. Neither those immediately around him nor the Kremlin leader himself is going to “reinvent” or “reset” the regime in a way that would meet even the most basic humane criteria.