In society

The results are not pleased ...

January 3, 2021 Peter Filippov

The results of 2020 do not delight me. We, Russians, continue to follow the disastrous "special path", the ways of confrontation with the civilized world, with legal democratic states. This is not the first to us. Therefore, evaluating the results of the past year, it is useful to recall the story. A hundred years ago, we believed in the Marxist-Leninist utopia, expelled from the country three million educated and enterprising fellow citizens, and many Russians were destroyed in the fields of the civil war, during collectivization and the Holodomor, in the process of mass Stalinist repressions.

Let many objects, they say, these are not us, these are different! But you can not live in society and be free from society. This cannot be canceled - as a law of worldwide gravity. The people are responsible for everything that happened and is happening in his country. We, the Russians, built an extremely ineffective cost economy over the years of the Board of the CPSU. Drenched machines and cars were produced. Russia, which was before the revolution, the world exporter of grain, could not provide the population with bread. But we were proud of our nuclear bombs and missiles, the opportunity to destroy humanity in nuclear apocalypse. And they almost did this in the days of the Caribbean crisis.

Over the years, we have lost faith in a bright communist future and supported market reforms. Even the apartments and land plots agreed to take into their property. But the difficulties of the transition to the market painfully hit us, and now in 2020 almost half of the Russians sighs about the "glorious Soviet past." Freedom of speech, press, the opportunity to take part in parties and NGOs was not in demand. We do not participate in political parties, we do not go to the elections. Moreover, they are not ready to control the work of election commissions.

Such a zigzag in the development of our public consciousness contributed to historical conditions. High prices for oil and gas in the first decades of the new century made it possible to increase the living standards. And although this happened precisely thanks to the market formed in the 90s, this was perceived by the people as the personal merit of President Putin. And the annexation of Crimea unleashed by him spilled on our imperial consciousness.

What are the realities of 2020? Sad. Neither in the past year, nor earlier we were able to affirm the democracy in the country and organize the control of citizens and the deputies elected by them for the work of officials. We are not the Swedes, we are not ready to resist the selfish aspirations of bureaucracy and oligarchs. We are not worried that by the level of corruption we are ahead of the planet of the whole, and by the number of officials per 100 thousand people - one of the leaders in the world. We are little worried that officials receive salaries many times higher than the salaries of workers and engineers. But we dream of freezing prices and cards for products.

As the surveys of the levada center show, in 2020 more than half of Russians believe that everything is going on fine with us. And this is despite the fact that more than 22 million Russians live behind the poverty line, that the real incomes of citizens have been actually reduced by 3-4% per year for 10 years. Anyway, you can live. And so not only the corruption officials or oligarchs, who have sucked to the budget feed, think, so ordinary people answer. With an increase in prices for food, with income falling and a high level of inflation. Really, we are tolerated!

Judging by the surveys, many young Russians who do not want to live in slavery are ready to emigrate from Russia. Pandemia will pass, the emigration process will accelerate. But what awaits the people who leave the most intelligent and talented? Squalor. And the emigrants themselves are to blame for this perspective, but their fellow tribesmen with their combination of slave and imperial in their heads.

An important event of 2020 is a joint investigation of The Insider , Bellingcat and CNN with the participation of Der Spiegel , according to which a group of eight FSB operatives, which acted under the guise of FSB forensics , made an attempt to poison Navalny with chemical weapons. This investigation was followed by an audio recording of Navalny’s telephone conversation with one of the defendants in the investigation - military chemist Konstantin Kudryavtsev, all this inflicted a strong blow to the image of our mafia power in the eyes of not only the world community, but also Russian inhabitants, and therefore increased the chance of changes in Russia for the better.

At the same time, in 2020, our authorities not only tightened the repressive policy, but also brought “legal justifications” under it. The State Duma has adopted laws by which police can use weapons, if they consider it necessary, cars can also hack. But they now do not need to introduce themselves to citizens. Now any demonstration, any protest - is illegal and can be dispersed with violence. So that the security forces are not embarrassed to use it, classify personal data and addresses of living not only themselves, but also their relatives, increase salaries. Russia in front of our eyes turns into a vile police state. However, it is known - the closer the collapse of the empire, the tougher its laws ...

All these measures are the reaction of the authorities to the demonstration of the Khabarovsk residents and the protests of the fraternal people of Belarus against the falsification of the elections. These demonstrations are a very important positive in the results of the outgoing 2020. They give hope that not everything is lost, that with a change in generations and the growth of social ties over the Internet, the chances of reinstalling our lives in common interests are growing. The people, although with difficulty, wake up. People begin to understand that it is the people-the source of power, that this is not an empty phrase from some kind of brochure called the Constitution, this is the norm that should be fulfilled!

Undoubtedly, our power will still try to deal with those who open its nature, its selfish interests. But an attempt to repeat the practice of mass Stalinist repressions is unlikely to be undertaken. Those in power are understood - this is dangerous. It’s easier to isolate young and active, intimidate those who are older. Point repressions will be toughened, but if the people for the mass realize that you can’t live like that further, then the days of the regime will still be numbered. I am sure that soon we will see the development of this political process during the collapse of the power of the tyrant-Samoznan Lukashenko.

There are in the realities of 2020 things that give a ray of hope. This is an increase in the number of users of YouTube. Such information authoritarian regimes as Russian are kept due to propaganda, use their monopoly on television, radio and other media. But the Internet struck a gap in this monopoly. And its censorship threatens the ruling regime with mass protests. The authorities, having weighed the "pros and cons, are not yet ready to limit the Internet.

The other positive in the realities of 2020 is that the Internet has increased the transparency of the punishment crimes. As the investigation of Navalny’s poisoning showed, it has become more difficult for the Chekists to hide their operations to persecute dissenters. It seems that technological progress does not yet lead to the threat of universal chipization of commoners, but contributes to the information openness of society, which means to promote its rule of law and democracy. I would like not to be mistaken in this.


Photo: 1. Russia. Moscow. Portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin by the artist Mikhail Yusupov during a meeting of the leaders of Moscow theaters in the mansion of Peter Smirnov on the Tver Boulevard. Mikhail Tereshchenko/TASS