Russia: a prison camp “zone”

Unbelievable! For years all those extremely popular highbrow experts who have long taken a worthy niche in mass culture have been promising the death of the Kremlin regime in the next couple of hours, yet this regime is growing stronger. Today some experts point to unacceptable losses caused by the breakup with Turkey, considering that the commodity turnover was worth over $40 billion. Granted, but the collectivization and industrialization campaigns were assessed in similar terms. True, the Russian authorities never considered the Holodomor to be a loss because it was a means of governing part of the Soviet Union. All changes caused by sanctions against Turkey are also a means of ruling a big country whose population must be kept in misery and fear.

Of course, this population must be kept ignorant, too. All Russo-Turkish research and cultural projects are being closed and Turkology in Russia is under attack. These measures are becoming increasingly like an ethnic discriminatory campaign against the Turkic peoples of Russia who have maintained the strongest ties with Turkish society, culture, and science. One is reminded of Soviet anti-Islamic repressions when one could be sent to the camps or even executed for possessing a sheet of paper with a text in Arabic. The Cyrillic alphabet and atheism were asserted that way.

It’s time Russians were told “Basta! The party is over.” Enough empty illusions. Solzhenitsyn and Shalamov taught us not to do that from behind barbed wire. We are already there, behind that wire. But few will readily accept the fact, so Russians keep telling themselves fairytales about poor Russian soldiers who don’t want to die in Syria. The fact is, no Russian conscripts have taken part in hostilities since the second Chechen war. Only contract soldiers have fought in Georgia, are still fighting in Ukraine, and Syria. As for officers, participation in combat operations remains the main way to make a military career. The same is true of any army in any country.

This regime conceals its monstrous identity behind the foreign policy which is not negotiable. If this condition is accepted – why not, considering that it serves one’s benefit – then a game of pluralism may be played provided it is supervised by the right kind of people. All attempts to organize opposition have failed. Well to be expected. Mikhail Kasyanov with his political analysts and spin doctors are a laughing stock with their statements about the coming elections. They are as ridiculous as Savchenko and Sentsov with their advice to hire a good lawyer, considering that the ones they have are sitting pretty. That’s as much as they can do – except legitimizing rigged courts and distracting public attention from the growing number of in camera high treason trials with all those show trials. Espionage witch hunt is obviously gaining momentum.

This is the stick part. The carrot part is the alleged possibility of Aleksei Kudrin returning to power. In fact, this possibility boils down to vague hints in the media, yet this sufficed for his Civil Initiatives Committee to stage that reptilian Forum of Civil Initiatives and get ready to merge with the Russian Popular Front, a classic totalitarian movement.

Kudrin is supposed to become the key economic reformer – and one has to admit that the economy isn’t in bad shape even now. Making it a market economy is another story, with an increasing number of Russia’s enemies and the fact that Russia severs economic contacts with each. There is information that contacts with foreigners, looking for a job abroad, are qualified as acts of treason during court hearings behind closed doors. If so, what will happen to these contacts?

This is an outward controversy. Bright top market managers and experts are needed precisely to combine Russia’s paranoia and secrecy with modern market technologies in the interests of the ruling elite. This elite will retain their property in Cote d’Azure and Latvia, their children will be well provided for in the US and UK. They will not allow the common folk to bask in the sun in Egypt and Turkey. Indeed, creating an insurmountable barrier in consumption, double consumer standard is a very important part of governance. Compensation: totalitarian egalitarianism reaching the egalitarian autocratic level.

How egalitarianism works is seen from the example of Navalny who, together with the late Nemtsov, took part in the replacement of certain boyars (now in the bad books with the Kremlin), including Vladimir Yakunin. Of late, chronic Navalny psychosis has been exacerbated by long-range hysteria. The progressive public has launched a boisterous campaign in defense of truck drivers, calling them proletarians, totally oblivious to the historical fact that back in the States their unions were the pillar of the Mafia and that they had played a major role in the toppling of Allende in Chile (one can hardly blame them in that particular case, although the whole affair turned out ugly).

The truckers’ manifesto leaves no doubt that their protest against the new levies is aimed at the Rotenberg clan and Prime Minister Medvedev. Their actions make one wonder: Is this boyar strife or oprichnina [Ivan the Terrible’s policy in 1565-72 instituting the secret police, practicing public executions and confiscation of land from Russian aristocrats]? In other words, is this political turf war or Putin’s manipulation?

Eventually the truckers calmed down, cursed America, and reaffirmed their loyalty to the president, trusting him to figure out the situation and mete out just punishment. One is reminded of the 17th century, the salt and copper riots, Streltsy unrest, boyars being thrown off the tsar’s porch. Then Peter I came to power and slaughtered the Streltsy the way the oprichniks had been before him. Then came turn of the janissaries and storm troopers, and finally the victor generation after WW II.

All such public unrest, rallies of protest are part of the system. That’s OK unless you utter a word against the annexation of Crimea or what the West thinks. Now the Memorial Society is an enemy agent, Sakharov Center, Soros Foundation, and the likes of them are subversive organizations. Is this regime in its death throes? Time will show.

By Dmitry SHUSHARIN, Moscow-based historian and political journalist, special to The Day