Who's waiting for change

How "zeroing" split Russian society

Recently, the Levada Center published the results of several surveys. This is the first more or less accurate sociological data after Vladimir Putin explained to the Russians the whole plan with the so-called “amendment to the Constitution”, which in fact was a set of rather chaotic and unrelated provisions that, contrary to the law, are proposed to be accepted as a single and indivisible "package".

The main amendment put into the mouth of the first female cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova on “zeroing the terms” of the current president, which will allow Putin to be elected for at least two more terms until 2036 (I don’t even want to think how many years my unconceived will be at that moment grandchildren), brought unusual clarity to this confusion. And this clarity divided our society exactly in half - 47% of Russians were against the "zeroing" of presidential terms, and 48% were in favor.

Such a polar assessment of current political decisions more or less correlates, as many sociologists say, with the division of our country's citizens on the issue of attitudes towards change. In November 2019, sociologists recorded a sharp increase in the number of Russians who advocate decisive change, up to 59% compared to 42% in the summer of 2017. At the same time, every second respondent (53%) stated that reforms are possible only if the political system is changed.

It was these data that apparently gave impetus to the farce that was played out immediately after the winter holidays. After all, initially the amendments to the Constitution were presented precisely as decisive changes with a change in the political system. Speaking before the Federal Assembly, Putin spoke about expanding the separation of powers, strengthening local self-government, and generally about destroying the notorious word “in a row,” which allowed Vladimir Vladimirovich himself to be in power for a quarter of a century.

And although a little later the separation of powers turned into a strengthening of presidential power, and the strengthening of local self-government turned into its destruction, the general message of the authors of the amendments was that the amendments meant changes.

That is why many independent political scientists began to tell the opposition that it is in a difficult position. After all, it turns out that she, having spent the last 20 years under the slogan “we are waiting for changes,” advocates the conservation of the existing state of affairs, becomes an involuntary retrograde in the Kremlin’s rhetoric, loses her agenda and begins to look ridiculous. This, it seems, made Alexei Navalny immediately declare about the old Constitution that it was “disgusting”, the Yabloko party to propose its own draft amendments, and the young nationalist Yuneman even a new draft of the entire Constitution. Like, we do not hold on to the old. We are also for change!

However, today the situation has changed dramatically:

the amendment about "zeroing" crossed out the motley mix of all the other amendments and firmly entrenched in the public mind as the main one.

And this amendment is not at all about changes, but, on the contrary, about consolidating the existing state of affairs, conservation, stagnation.

And this is good news - the opposition did not have to prove that we live in an Orwellian world and change is not about change, but exactly the opposite. The second good news is the one I wrote about at the beginning: almost 50% of Russians are for real changes, against zeroing. Such a distribution of opinions, almost without undecided ones, indicates a high degree of politicization of society. Namely, we lacked the politicization of society all these years. It was with him, however, that the authoritarian Putin regime fought quite according to classical patterns, which, in fact, is built on the maximum depoliticization of citizens and parasitism on this depoliticization.

But the bad news is that politicization has not become a political activity, a political action. According to another Levada poll, 27% of respondents will not take part in the voting on the amendments, if it takes place, and 43% of them explain their unwillingness by the fact that nothing depends on them anyway, everything is decided for them, and voting is "circus" and "window dressing".

As you know, the bad guys come to power because the good guys don't come to the polls.

But the question in our case is not entirely in this.

It's not about voting as such. Everyone is well aware that this is a vote, which is still unknown whether it will take place or not, in fact, they are trying to organize it according to such rules that you cannot call it except a circus. However, whether this is a vote or another form of expressing the position of those same 47% - this is what turns out to be a necessary step on the path of change. Today, this unwillingness, the inability to present one's position to the state and society and act to promote it is often called "learned helplessness." And it is she, and not the mythical adoration of Vladimir Putin by our people, that becomes a stumbling block.

In this regard, any opposition strategy that offers active participation and involvement of people in political action becomes the most popular and important. It is unfortunate that the majority of opposition leaders have taken a position on this issue that encourages the political helplessness imposed by authoritarianism, stating that the amendments have already been adopted anyway, everything has already been decided and there is no point in rocking the boat. There are different views on the problem of adopting de jure amendments, but the main thing remains that in this story, any “de jure” has already been destroyed by the authors of the amendments themselves, and we are talking about public opinion, about the legitimacy, and not the legality of changing the Constitution. And in the matter of public opinion, in a situation where this opinion is divided 50 to 50, the winner is the one who declares his position louder, more clearly, more convincingly, more effectively.

To make such a big statement, the advocates of change must learn to act. Voting, for all its shortcomings, provided a simple and understandable recipe for combating learned helplessness: after all, it is much easier to come and put a cross in the silence of a booth than to go out with a poster to the square or even express your position on social networks. And, in fact, its results recorded on paper were not so important: more important was the realization of society that it could overcome apathy and make a political act.

However, today, in the context of the epidemic and the economic crisis, when we do not know what will happen tomorrow, and not just in a few months, the vote is in question. But this does not mean that the advocates of change need to relax and not come up with new tools to get out of the state of learned helplessness. And the first step on this path is to realize that nothing has been decided yet. And by and large, if there are so many of us, and can not decide.