Posted
at TruthOut Russian
"Paranoia" Monday 16 April 2007 It doesn't matter that the Russian opposition is an extreme minority in public opinion: it apparently still scares the Kremlin. The virulence of the repression of two demonstrations this weekend in Moscow, then St. Petersburg, attests to the nervousness that's taken hold in Russian corridors of power at the approach of the legislative elections in December and presidential elections next March. Yet it's not the heterogeneous coalition led by former chess champion Garry Kasparov that can threaten a regime Vladimir Putin - determined to restore Russia to its former glory - has made ever more authoritarian. All the television and most of the [other] media having been given their orders; it's difficult to see how the assembly of several thousand people - passed over in virtual silence in Russia - can constitute a threat to public order. Beatings and identity checks have succeeded in aggravating a climate of tension while debasing Russia's image as the country loses the capital of sympathy it had enjoyed in Europe. But it's not the bad impression left abroad that will make the Kremlin more accommodating. For a long time now, Vladimir Putin has stopped wanting to please the West and scoffed at the lessons lavished upon him about the benefits of democracy. Russia is certainly a country with its own history, its own principles and its own development path. Disappointed by the Yeltsin years, when chaos took hold over the ruins of communism, more Russians miss the Soviet regime than hope for the arrival of Western democracy. The strong state that Vladimir Putin incarnates would certainly be very broadly elected by plebiscite if the population had to express itself. Consequently, the repression of Kasparov's friends is not going to make them more popular in the eyes of their fellow citizens. The jack-booted police intervention is not going to raise a wave of criticism against the government. By reacting so vigorously to the slightest hint of protest, the Kremlin nonetheless betrays an astonishing weakness. The opponents who got themselves beaten in the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg are not all extremists in the pay of foreigners or dangerous agitators seeking to import the "Orange Revolution" that shook Ukraine to Russia. Eight months away from the legislative elections and a year from the presidential election that will have to organize Vladimir Putin's succession, the Kremlin wants to control everything and leave no room for maneuver to the slightest opposition. Whether it's attributable to the Master of the Kremlin or his entourage, this paranoia risks creating dangers where there aren't any. It can't guide the policy of a country like Russia for yet another year. |