Important article on Russia: "Russia’s Search for Itself"

October 9, 2013
Russia’s Search for Itself
By VICTOR EROFEYEV, New York Times. Via JD on Facebook

MOSCOW — This fall, the political landscape in Russia became considerably livelier. In place of the monotony of vengeful and predictable authoritarianism, there arose a mirage of pluralism. A radical change of generation got underway. Onto the public podium stepped young people who had never lived in the Soviet Union, some even as children.

Almost every week there are clashes of two Russias. One is the Kremlin Russia, with its stern principle of state command over everyone; the other is young Russia, which seeks to subordinate the state to people and their needs. To these two we can add supporters of communism, adherents of a radical nationalism approaching fascism.

But these are all known players. A new, ever more visible face is the young Russian with a mixed outlook, an intermediate figure who at times believes Kremlin propaganda and at other times rises up against it. The future of my country hangs on which position this wavering person will embrace.

Historically, the main conflict is between Kremlin ideology and liberal ideology. This collision is best symbolized by the Pussy Riot case: Two young women sentenced to labor camps continue to fight against their tormentors, exposing the vile nature of the contemporary Russian gulag.

Debates divide families and turn into small civil wars. Such was the unexpectedly strong showing of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny in the recent Moscow mayoral elections. Almost a third of the Russian capital voted for him. Even now, a campaign is being waged in Moscow for the release of the 30 international activists from Greenpeace who were arrested protesting off-shore drilling in the Arctic.

Russia has ceased to be exclusively about Putin. It is about the search for its future.

Caught by these new winds, the powers are driven to inconsistency. At the meeting with Western experts on Russia at the Valdai Club in September, President Vladimir Putin changed his rhetoric somewhat, letting it be known that he was not against political polyphony.

This unusual openness is partly explained by his satisfaction in outmaneuvering the Americans on Syria. The Kremlin is convinced that Putin is the best political player in Russia: He gets the most votes. Thus his openness resembles a show of force. The authorities have not abandoned efforts to intimidate the public through continued criminal cases against demonstrators arrested last May.

Will a new generation liberate the country from savagery, slavery and fear? Will it pass a final verdict on Soviet totalitarianism, the way young West Germans turned indignantly away from Nazism?

The generation of 20-to-25-year-olds will determine whether Russia will exist within its current borders, whether Russia will become attractive to its neighbors, whether it will follow an imperial track or move toward European values.

Yet it is impossible to find a more fragmented population than ours. Russia has lost the traditional values that shape a people, but it has not yet found the forms of a modern nation. And each of us is passing on his own through this intermediate stage between people and nation. Relying only on himself as he wanders through the darkness, poisoned by the propaganda of national television, our contemporary invents his own means of survival.

Some look back to an archaic national consciousness that needs neither freedom nor responsibility, but has Putin’s helpful cult of power. When angry voices rise from prisons, whether Mikhail Khodorkovsky or Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, exposing all sorts of humiliations, many — including some who serve the Orthodox Church — come to the defense of the prison.

Russia was a prison even in the lighter version of the czars, and it is naïve to think that after the long hold of Stalinism it has ceased to be a prison.

The phenomenon of a divided consciousness has taken hold in the Russian masses, especially among the young. I meet with these people everywhere. They’re on the Russian Internet. They surround themselves with an aura of global suspiciousness, but at the same they are surprisingly convinced of their suspicions.

They do not like America, and are convinced that America wants to take away Russia’s sovereignty. At the same time, they are prepared to emigrate to America on a moment’s notice. They are convinced that Navalny is a secret agent of the Kremlin, but if told that in this case they are also agents of the Kremlin, they get angry. Europe for them is rotten and decadent, but they yearn to get a residence at least in Bulgaria.

In the morning they dislike the authorities; at noon they dislike the opposition, and then it all gets mixed up. Their brains are like a wrecking ball.

No doubt, a consciousness caught between people and nation is better than the hopeless attitude of the post-Soviet man who misses everything Soviet — what we call a “sovok.” The new consciousness has elements of individualism and ambition, which approach the rudiments of European civilization. But for such Russians, living in the fast expanse of my country, it is still a long way to becoming European.

Where, then, are our Russian Europeans? They live mostly in Moscow and other large cities; they are visible, but they are still a minority. To win elections, they need to fool the majority of the voters, purporting to be ultranationalists.

What’s the alternative? To raise a liberal rebellion and install a liberal dictatorship? That is not realistic. Russia can continue to exist as it is, but for how long, nobody knows.

Victor Erofeyev is a Russian writer and television host. This article was translated from the Russian by the IHT.