Opposition errors

Just the other day, a video appeared on the Web, on which the former Ephesians, and now the Ukrainian nationalist and public figure Ilya Bogdanov gives an interview with Espresso TV and offers methods to improve the fight against the Kremlin propaganda. At the same time, many Russians were outraged by the phrase of Bogdanov that "Russian liberals live under Putin, as in chocolate, and they succeeded." As a force capable of resisting the growing authoritarianism in Russia, the former FSB officer offers the right and left radicals, which, according to him, will “transfer” the war from Ukraine into Russia.

Leaving aside the emotional assessments that caused such peremptory judgments, I want to pay attention to a number of Bogdanov’s fundamental mistakes, which, unfortunately, many public figures repeat after him.

1. The error is essentially . Nationalist rhetoric as such is not close to me, but if you replace it with a patriotic in the broad sense of the word, then the very fact of the opposition of “liberals” and “patriots” is not a way of combating the Kremlin propaganda, but its organic continuation. In fact, this is precisely Russian propaganda for several years so actively “pushed” the thesis into the heads of Russians that "the liberal cannot be a patriot." It was so often repeated: "Liberal hates Russia" that this thought was accepted as an axiom not only of opponents of democracy, but also, it seems, the liberal intelligentsia itself.

This was the fundamental mistake of supporters of democratic transformations. The liberal intelligentsia not only meekly adopted a division into "liberals and patriots", but partly played him. Some of its representatives for the most part from the shocking and spite of the persecution called themselves "agents of the State Department", others joined "discussions with patriots" - with the complete preservation of such terminology. Unfortunately, this error is repeated now. A characteristic example was the story with the Immortal Regiment . Supporters of the authorities operating in Russia repeatedly replicated photographs of the action, giving it as an example of the actions of "half a million people united by a common idea and who go after their president." Obviously, many participated in the Immortal Regiment’s shares, regardless of Putin’s personality, and journalists came up with the action from the already dispersed Tomsk opposition television channel. The authorities, of course, did not have the right to “squeeze” the victory in their interests and speculate on personal tragedies of specific families, creating the appearance of “popular support” of a march with the participation of the president. However, as a result, it was the representatives of the opposition who began to actively write irritation among many of these people that only repaid or forcibly brought state employees took part in the action. Those who were not paid or driven out probably felt slandered.

In my opinion, there is no contradiction between patriotism and liberal values. An example is not only, for example, the United States, but even Ukraine close to us, in which the movement for European integration took place under national flags, the singing of the Ukrainian anthem and the prayers of the clergy from the stage.

2. Error in form. The very fact of an appeal to one or another ideology as a form of confrontation between Kremlin propaganda is ineffective for one simple reason: “liberals”, “nationalists”, etc. In Russian society, it is understood completely not what it is customary to mean by these terms in political science. Actually, the authorities in Russia have been doing everything for the past 15 years in order to devalue moral absentants, values and terms - and this turns out quite successfully, especially in the last period. As a result, many Russians have formed a kind of "conditional reflexes", a false associative series on certain words.

For example, if you tell the layman that Russia needs democratization, in his imagination, most likely, a picture of “color revolutions”, which develops into a civil war, anarchy and poverty, financial pyramids and unjust privatization, will occur repeatedly broadcast by television. The corresponding associative series is also caused by nationalist rhetoric, not to mention the fact that many nationalists themselves are prone to excessive radicalism.

Of course, most of such reactions are only artificially inspired phobias, but this does not mean that they can be ignored. The Russian propaganda, on the one hand, managed to discredit and debunk the values of law and freedom as such, and on the other, to give rise to irrational fear of carriers in the minds of Russians, equally democratic or nationalist views both outside and within the country.

Only peace -loving rhetoric, combined with a constant indication of the need to restore the country after the war that has devastated it, still has a chance to ensure a bloodless change in power in Russia

Even the anti -corruption topic no longer causes the expected effect in Russia. The paradox is that the Kremlin propaganda did not particularly try to hide the extent to which the vertical of power built by Putin is permeated by theft and iniquity. However, the authorities managed to convince the population: there is no point in “changing some thieves to others”; theft for Russia is the norm; Any person who is in power will invariably steal. Moreover, in the collective consciousness of the Russians, not only the axiom was firmly rooted that they “steal everything”, but also the thesis that members of the Putin elite are “just thieves”, and their opponents are thieves, and “foreign agents” who will not only steal and “saw the budget”, but also consciously “collapse Russia on the orders of the Uzkean owners”.

At the same time, it is useless to explain to such a layman that there is no “order from the outside”. He is sure: “their” crooks and thieves are on guard and protect him and his loved ones from “enemy agents”, and therefore, in gratitude for “protection” “their” should be allowed to steal.

As a result, taking into account the split in society on an “ideological” sign, an abundance of stamps, labels and phobias, appeal to a particular opposition ideology - in contrasting with the other - if it is able to threaten the current regime, then it creates a feeling of a threat of civil war and chaos in a huge territory with nuclear weapons. It is clear that neither Russia, nor Ukraine, nor the rest of the world need such a result.

At this stage, the ideal “counter -propaganda”, capable of at least slightly reducing the level of aggression in Russian society, is anti -war. Regardless of the views of people, one can and should show them that war destroys Russia, leads to suffering and death. It is important to explain that those "foreign policy threats" with which the Kremlin intimidates Russians arise due to the aggressive policy of Russia, are its consequence, and not the cause.

Judging by the state of society, only peace -loving rhetoric, combined with a constant indication of the need to restore the country after the war that has devastated it, still has a chance to ensure a bloodless change in power in Russia, which does not develop into the war of all against all. As Dmitry Bykov rightly noted , "we need pathos of creation, not excitement of destruction. And then restructuring will not turn into a parade of sovereignty and a demonstration of oligarchs."

Ksenia Kirillova - a journalist, a former correspondent of Novaya Gazeta (Yekaterinburg), lives in the United States