Our future may be worse

The case of Leonid Razvozzhaev, who was kidnapped on the territory of a neighboring country, tortured and eventually confessed in the case of the riots on Bolotnaya Square in Moscow on May 6 of this year, again made many of us think about what time and what country we live in. What does the Russian political landscape look more like this October - the Soviet Union on the eve of the Great Terror? On the USSR before the collapse? In Germany at the beginning of 1933 - after a party of supporters of unlimited authoritarianism came to power through elections and quickly began to show teeth not only to its opponents, but also to its own voters.

From the point of view of a person who still hopes to live his life in Russia and not end up in another knacker, of these options the only relatively acceptable option is the end of the USSR. But recent empirical experience teaches us that the end of the USSR, in addition to the very illusory triumph of democracy, also turned into violence, although for some time it did not come from the state. Instead of outright carnage, he brought a lot of people to the social dump. And for this reason, it will not be possible to reproduce in 2012 any year 1988 with its democratic euphoria. The point is not only in theoretical disappointment, but also in the fact that in 2012 we are dealing with a completely different country than in 1988: much poorer, much less educated, endlessly tired and at the same time angry.

Of course, this country has nothing in common with the USSR on the eve of the Great Terror. But the Great Terror did not begin overnight either. At first there was one arrest. And we already have a whole series of them. For one person who, in violation of the law, is taken, dragged, beaten, forced to sign some papers, it does not matter whether the Great Terror began with him or not. His life is ruined. And if society does not react to such behavior on the part of the authorities, it begins to use such methods more and more widely. This is simply the law of moving along the path of least resistance. And society is not just silent - now, of course, it is no longer silent. But it remained silent, for example, all the years while extrajudicial executions became the norm in the North Caucasus. It seemed to him, to society, that this was almost a different country. The country may be different, but the state acted there and continues to act in the same way. And that means, sooner or later, from some Vladikavkaz pre-trial detention center with the windows of the upper floors covered with bars, like in the Gestapo, so that the people under investigation do not jump out, these methods will reach Moscow.

It’s a dubious consolation that no human rights activists would have come to any Razvozzhaev in Lefortovo in 1937 and would not have gone to talk about this campaign on the TV channel that the country’s president happened to be on. There are two dubious consolations - in order to build a real authoritarian regime, the builders first need to abandon the very fat, very convenient for them scheme of distribution of material wealth. The first consolation is very unreliable: undoubtedly, it is possible to ensure that human rights activists themselves end up in Lefortovo in one moment. The second is more serious. But the horror is that it more or less guarantees us not only a future without a huge era-long meat grinder, but also the final collapse of the project called “Russia”. We live not in 1937 or 1988, but in 2012. And our future may turn out to be worse.