From propaganda to bludgeon

How Ukraine returned to us

Political theory describes the phenomenon of the "boomerang of violence": a process in which the confrontation unleashed by the state in a remote, dependent region or colony, then moves to the metropolis. This is how Russian society learned cruelty in the 19th century during the Caucasian War. There seems to be no way at all to host something small and victorious on one's borders and then not get a backlash in the capital. Combatants and practitioners of terror inevitably return home from the front.

In Russia, the "boomerang" was discussed in the context of the Chechen wars (the result of which was Ramzan Kadyrov's personal rule in the republic), as well as the Ukrainian conflict. We wrote about the fact that mercenaries going to Donbass after 2014 will no longer be able to return to a normal civilian existence, so Moscow and Russia as a whole will already face a surge of post-war violence.

However, the real scenario for the return of violence turned out to be different and, perhaps, more frightening.

Muscovites' attempt to remind the authorities of their voting rights is read by her - without the slightest reason - as preparation for an armed uprising.

Violence was reimported from the territory of Eastern Ukraine to Moscow in the form of two practices. On the one hand, this is the specific police brutality that we encounter on the streets of Moscow on a weekly basis. If earlier people were tortured in police stations, so to speak, in a private setting, now the beatings are becoming public - there is nothing more to be ashamed of. Unless, just in case, those who beat them hide their faces: as if this is not a specific person with a baton, but the whole state brings down its power on citizens.

On the other hand, there is an intensive import of symbolic violence – one that, on the one hand, dehumanizes the opponents of the authorities, turns them into a mass without faces, “maydauns”, and, on the other hand, provides justification for any cruelty against this mass. The police, following the TV presenters of the federal channels, characterize the Moscow civil protest as a group of conspirators who want to organize a Maidan in Moscow and were sent on this mission from hostile Western countries. The task of the patriots and the police in this context is to clean up the city from the "infection" at any cost.

In previous years, we could laugh at the stupidity of Russian propaganda: stories about the “fascist junta” in Kyiv were obviously intended for the most narrow-minded and incurious of our compatriots. Now the mythology of Russian TV is a direct source of political decisions. In fact, it is precisely on the basis of the Russian myth of the Maidan as a foreign conspiracy against the legitimate Yanukovych that people are imprisoned for participating in the rally and documenting what is happening as “mass riots”.

The inertia of propaganda remains so high that security forces in street cordons, they say, really see twenty-year-old students with Russian tricolors as dangerous rebels on the spot, going to storm the mayor's office or the presidential administration. Law enforcement agencies were ordered not to repeat the mistake of "Berkut" in Kyiv and to use preventive violence against citizens. This logic is perhaps very effective if the authorities are serious about defending themselves against spies and revolutionaries, but completely meaningless when it comes to peaceful civil solidarity. Police violence in response to peaceful actions only strengthens citizens in their own rightness.

There was a very small anti-war movement in Russia that condemned the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The peak of his activity came in 2015. Unfortunately, very little was done; consistent pacifists like the Oryol teacher Alexander Byvshev were caught one by one.

And now, when the protesters in Moscow are confident that they are right and have reason to do so, it is useful to see causal relationships.

We have not been able to stop the conflict with Ukraine, and now the war is coming home to us: in the form of security officials who, after 2014, are confident that political opponents can be taken lightly.

After the Donbass, the dehumanization of people is arranged simply: those who are not with us are always traitors, Bandera and fascists. And this is one of the main factors that now allows the state to disperse the machine of political terror almost without resistance.