Fire in the boiler room

The confrontation between the government and the opposition is growing fiercer. Following the dispersal of the “March of Dissent” in St. Petersburg, unprecedented mass repressions followed in Nizhny Novgorod. Let's try to understand the nature of this phenomenon.

Sociology and political science have spent a lot of intellect, time and pages trying to answer the question “Why do people riot?” One of the most widespread theories, the conclusions of which have been and are finding many confirmations, uses the beautiful term “relative deprivation”. It means society's perception of the gap between value expectations and value opportunities. Value expectations are people's ideas about how they would like to live. Value opportunities are ideas about how they can realize their needs and expectations in real life. A sharp increase in the gap between value expectations and value opportunities leads to an increase in relative deprivation. Society finds its way through protest and rebellion. This theory explains, for example, why people do not rebel when they feel bad for a long time, but only when a long period of improvement is replaced by a sharp deterioration.

There is a misconception that only socio-economic conditions can be a reason for radical discontent. That such abstract categories as freedom, democracy, political competition, etc. have nothing to do with it, especially here in Russia. This is not true both theoretically and practically. The theory says: there can be any reasons for dissatisfaction. It is only necessary that they be clearly recognized and contrasted with others.

This is exactly what happens here. Political repressions in Russia are not total. They are concentrated exclusively in the sphere of political competition. The authorities quickly compensate for social discontent. With rare exceptions, protests from environmentalists or moral guardians are ignored. They don’t care about art and there are no forbidden areas for them in science, as there were under the Bolsheviks. The reason is clear: the authorities are only concerned with what directly and in the short term threatens its self-preservation. But the same circumstance makes the sphere of political competition, the zone of political freedom contrasting, clear, clearly visible, and therefore fuels the growth of relative deprivation.

The second condition for the mentioned growth: narrowing of value opportunities. Usually it involves the efforts of the authorities, as is the case in our case. The authorities, trying to ensure “stability”, “continuity” and predictability of elections, suppress political freedoms and, thereby, reduce value opportunities. As a result, relative deprivation increases.

Relative deprivation may vary among different social groups. For example, its growth may not be threatening in those groups that can change their value expectations downwards. Now this is happening to a large social group of people who lived a significant part of their lives during the era of Brezhnev stagnation. They can conformistically resign themselves to the loss of value opportunities, hypnotizing themselves something like this: “Well, we lived under Brezhnev without any elections! And nothing!” As a result, value expectations decrease and the growth of relative deprivation weakens.

It’s a different matter for young people – the first unflogged generation. They have no experience of our conformity; they grew up in conditions of expanding freedoms. And they (not all, of course) perceive their narrowing as a loss, as a drop in value opportunities; Moreover, they cannot painlessly lower their value expectations. That is why we are now seeing an increase in radicalism among young people. Moreover, there is no doubt that it will grow beyond the efforts of the authorities according to the laws of fashion distribution. This will be facilitated by the fact that the government, through its repression, creates heroes, in this case, fashion leaders.

Everything I said at the everyday level is expressed by the well-known formula: “You cannot solder a heated boiler.” We see that the authorities are doing exactly this. The consequences are obvious.

Now let’s use the theory described above to try to predict in which other social groups a sharp increase in relative deprivation with the resulting aggravation of radical protest is possible. To do this, you need to answer two questions. First: in what areas was there an increase in value expectations? Second: in which of these areas has there been a sharp narrowing of opportunities? When the questions are posed in this way, the answer suggests itself: this is the sphere of entrepreneurship.

Indeed, from the late eighties to the beginning of the 2000s, it was here that significant changes in opportunities took place, leading to an increase in positive expectations from self-realization in this area of ​​human activity. It is no coincidence that active people from various professions rushed into entrepreneurship. At the same time, over the past seven years there has been a sharp reduction in opportunities here. This happened as the bureaucracy became monopolistic and completely uncontrollable. As a result, corruption grew uncontrollably.

Over the past two years, patterns of behavior of the federal authorities in the field of taking away other people's property have begun to rapidly spread to all levels of government and, accordingly, to all levels of business. Research by the INDEM Foundation indicates not only quantitative, but also qualitative changes. One thing I have already said is the comprehensive growth of this type of corruption as business takeover. But entrepreneurs also complain about something else: corruption ceases to be a service sector, but becomes ordinary robbery. Extortions for the “right to live” have spread. If under Yeltsin, as our respondents say, they “took and did,” now they “take, promise and don’t do.”

The growth of value expectations is facilitated by a successful economic situation: a large influx of hydrocarbon income into the country. But if in a normal economy this could become a condition for general economic growth, in our country this leads to a jump in property stratification, as evidenced, in particular, by the unnatural swelling of the ranks of dollar billionaires.

The increase in relative deprivation in this area is obvious, but it has not yet resulted in an organized protest of entrepreneurs-owners. The reason is clear. Unlike young people, businessmen are accustomed to evaluating and weighing acquisitions and costs. Now the government’s practice is extremely simple: if you mess up, we’ll take away the business. So far, individual losses from such an outcome are assessed as more significant than collective gains from organized resistance.

And two more circumstances. First: losses from resistance are immediate, and gains are distant. Our business, conditioned by an aggressive environment to prefer short-term strategies, tends to overestimate short-term losses and underestimate long-term gains. Second: owning private property does not, to put it mildly, encourage collective action. It is not surprising that well-known associations of entrepreneurs-owners were created in our country with the blessing of the authorities and became very servile. At the same time, the emerging middle class, consisting primarily of a new generation of managers, is more active and, without fear, is organizing to protect its property interests.

The hysterical and frenzied actions of the authorities are prompted by fear of the specter of the Orange Revolution. This fear is not only irrational, but, moreover, has no basis in reality. Russian society is not yet ready for mass organized resistance of such a scale that would turn into a real threat to the regime. If we abstract from the authorities’ own efforts and take into account only the public resource, then it will mature, as various estimates show, by approximately 2012. However, the authorities' efforts to limit uncontrollable political forces lead to the opposite effect. Sometimes you even get lost when you look for the reasons for this kind of ridiculous actions. What is this – schizophrenia or conscious destabilization of the situation? It is madness or provocation to demonstrate so clearly, with an interval of about 24 hours, the glaring gap between the repressions in Nizhny Novgorod and the magnificent show of “Nashi” in Moscow. The Russian people are not rednecks, and our youth are not jaded idiots.

The authorities are in a strategic trap. A dictatorship is only stable if it extends its sphere of control beyond politics. This happens, but sluggishly and spontaneously, so the effect of such an expansion of control can be neglected. By concentrating control on the political sphere, the government localizes the growing resistance in the most dangerous area. The desire for unlimited enrichment of the bureaucracy will inevitably create conditions under which entrepreneurship will feel the insignificance of the costs of losing business. And then it will become another source of organized resistance. The question is when and in what forms. And the growing scale and ferocity of the suppression of opponents will inevitably only lead to an increase in protest and accelerate its transition beyond the critical level of scale.

Without having warm feelings for the current government, I should rejoice at its unreasonable actions. But my aesthetic differences with the regime are suppressed by a distinct feeling of anxiety. This power, through its actions, has led to the fact that the Orange Revolution in the country is becoming extremely unlikely, but for a new reason.

Let me remind you that the Orange Revolution occurs in conditions of socially sensitive deviations from political competition close to equal rights (again a consequence of increasing relative deprivation!). When the systemic opposition, significantly represented in power, legally participates in this competition. All these conditions have been destroyed by the current regime. Therefore, the country has been brought to the brink of radical upheaval.

By their actions, the Russian government has deprived itself of the opportunity to participate in a legal change of power, in which representatives of the previous ruling group remain in the establishment, simply changing their status to opposition. The fact of participation or non-participation in this transition of the active masses is immaterial. Let me remind you that in Ukraine they played the role of arbiter of election fairness - a role that official institutions could not play.

Given the continuation and extremely likely tightening of current political practices, a change from the current kleptocracy to a more or less sane regime (this is at best) is only possible as a result of a transition through a period of radical political upheaval. However, in the context of such upheavals, the chances of an illegitimate seizure of power by radical forces, for example, a military junta, become real. And such a regime will make the current ruling clique its first victims.

Responsibility for future political upheavals, no matter what form they take and no matter how they end, lies with the current regime, led by the bulwark of its “stability,” V. Putin.