Split Russia: a look from the West

I try to treat Russia objectively, relying on reliable quantitative data. In part, this is a reflection of how I think it is right to think and write (and in general I think that the now turn to the direction of “data journalism” has long been r opened). And partly the point is that I, as an analyst living in the USA, cannot rely on an interview with eyewitnesses of events. Therefore, when I write for Forbes, Slon and other publications, I inevitably use a lot of graphs, diagrams and other joys that can be built in Excel.

Such an approach and, in addition, a sincere desire to better understand modern Russia allow me to communicate, work and even make friends with the Russians of very different political views. Their assessments of Putin's regime diverge radically. Therefore, my tapes on Facebook and Twitter are more interesting to read, and I see how political rhetoric is formed and specified - both the opposition and the Kremlin. Every day and on each question I see what conclusions the Kremlin wants to push people and what those who consider the Kremlin an inhabitant of almost mythological evil think about it.

Do these disagreements seem too evil? Certainly. But even in the most established social democracies like Germany or the Netherlands, politics is a dirty business, the sphere of strife, treachery and other lowest forms of human behavior. In a society like Russian, where the traditions of democratic government are weak and where “dissent” has always been considered with special suspicion, politics is an even more bad occupation. But, despite the heat of rhetoric and obviously strong emotions, the themes of the debate are often amazingly banal: is the economy growing? Is the population really reduced? Is life expectancy growing? Does Putin's rating decrease?

These are empirical questions: they can be given the correct or incorrect answer to them. The Russian economy is either growing or falling, the population is either growing or decreasing, life expectancy is either increasing or decreasing. It was impossible to answer something like "depending on how to approach this." The third opinion is impossible here, an intermediate option.

Yes, people sometimes brought themselves like disputes to madness, but the real bets in them were insignificant. In fact, people who argue about economic growth are divided: they rely on the same analytical foundation and often use the same sources of information (in many cases these are foreign newspapers - the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and others). Sometimes more philosophical questions arose: Russia - part of Europe or not? What type of government does Russia need? But these were extremely rare questions. These were normal political debates, boring, but predictable.

But in the past few months, I have been watching with great anxiety how discussions in Russia quickly move from the empirical zone to the existential zone. Since the crisis erupted in Ukraine, different parts of the Russian political spectrum are not so much drifted as they fly in different directions with space speed. This game is much worse: it is a debate about the most fundamental aspects of the Russian identity and statehood. Now it is seriously discussing whether Russia is really part of Europe or part of Asia, whether it should really integrate into the world economy or lay its own, independent course, whether Russia should generally enter into some relations with the United States and the EU. Opinions that less than a year ago would have considered almost extremist (“Russia must immediately send troops to other countries to protect ethnic Russians”) quickly became a common place. The opposition also radicalized: its already passionate calls to reform the political system have become even more piercing and aggressive.

It is even more frightened by the fact that representatives of different ends of the political spectrum no longer use the same sources of information. People with opposition views, as before, can post an article from FT or WSJ. But people on the other side of the spectrum, people with pro -Kremlin views began to completely ignore the position of large Western newspapers and at the same time began to promote the views of strange Western ideologists, unknown to me, although I am quite well informed in this sense. These debates no longer occur in the general intellectual universe: one side speaks of a democratic uprising against a corrupt and hated politician, the other about the armed seizure of power by the Nazis. When the dispute goes in such a channel, it is impossible to achieve at least some agreements. It is even difficult to call a dispute: these are two separate, unrelated monologues.

I think this is dangerous: when people cease to discuss some general reality, it is much easier for them to perceive each other as enemies. And in this case, the risk of physical violence is growing significantly. Today, different groups of Russian society are so fierce and so sharply opposed to each other that I really fear a surge in political violence.

In general, I always optimistically looked at the prospects of Russia. Until recently, statistics showed that everything was going on, by and large, in the right direction. But this fresh trend, the atomization of society, is unprecedented and very frightened. It is difficult to predict what exactly to wait further, but the experience of societies where such sharp political schisms arose, tells the answer: nothing good.