The Kremlin’s “Controlled” Opposition May Become a Human Shield against Unhappy Citizens
Predictably, Russia’s remaining true liberals met the demolition of the Union of Right Forces (SPS) party and the formation of a new democratic party under the aegis of the Kremlin, to be composed of what’s left of SPS, the Civic Force, and the Democratic Party of Russia, with much skepticism. The new party is unlikely to help promote democracy and the freedom of choice in the county – it can only attempt to preserve the chance to bring these virtues back someday.
The news of the Union of Right Forces’ (SPS) political party self-disbandment and the dissolution of whatever was left of it in a new, “loyal” liberal party caused a sharp reaction from the benign opponents of the regime. Summing up all of their arguments (and willingly adding some of your own), you can easily destroy the whole idea. SPS is adulterated with the sediment of cynicism (the Civic Force) and the dregs of mason clownery (the Democratic Party in the name of curly-haired Andrei Bogdanov). The Kremlin’s order to “unite, if you can” immediately turns the new social suspension into a parody on true liberalism. Liberals are really liberals, and democrats are really democrats because they move not from the top down, but from the bottom up. The plans and ideas of the tops can work only for the bureaucracy; the celebration of obedience is something fit for a functionary or for a businessman at most, but for a free politician it can be perilous.
The chances that the controlled liberals will suffocate in the Kremlin embrace are very high. The danger that they will be used as a human shield as soon as the masses realize the full scale of the crisis is even higher: see, they came back and joined the regime, they share the responsibility, let’s get them! This is likely to deal a blow to the reputations of people and organizations who agreed to help the authoritarians. The unification of the opposition based on a real political foundation was about to take place, but without the puny little radicals. This is just when the preemptive betrayal of the common cause happened, against the background of demonstrative, petty revenge that the “epaulet carriers” are taking on Mikhail Khodorkovsky for giving an interview to Boris Akunin. The circle of freedom-lovers is extremely narrow already, but it is bound to shrink even more, and so forth.
But let us ask ourselves a pointed question. What stage of social degradation are we presently at? What do the supporters of Russia’s free will have to fight for in the foreseeable future? The future depends on the answer.
If we believe that a leap from authoritarianism to a democratic kingdom of self-governed freedom is possible, and that this leap will happen right here and right now, then we need to turn our back to the Kremlin, face the future, and roll ahead. But what if we issue from something else? From the fact that the situation is much worse and that the disease has spread much further? The general apathy is certainly about to end and the impeding collapse will wake up the masses, but who said that it will awaken the Europeist and not the beast? There are two possibilities of what’s to follow the brave calls of the intelligent boys who look contemptuous, wear bright-colored silk ties and speak pretty words—either an indifferent silence, or some cheerful bearded man (and not a young fighter for democracy) will climb out of the trench and attack the authorities, stepping on the corpses of the indignant ones who awakened him. Which will it be? We need to give it some serious thought.
I perfectly understand the duality, ambiguity, and certain vulgarity of the above-defined position. There are situations in which you cannot afford to consider all the details of the status quo, since you might lose yourself. Should one collaborate with the Bolsheviks only because they won, and their victory is serious and long-lasting? Should one give himself up to the mercy of Joseph Stalin, since the latter has crushed his enemies and squashed his opponents? Should one lean on Adolf Hitler because the nation is with him, and not with Thomas Mann? Given such an approach, Sergianism (religious loyalty to the communist regime) is a blessing, Martin Heidegger was right to have joined the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP), and Maxim Gorky should be praised for taking writers to Belomorkanal. But, to be completely honest, has anyone seen any Bolsheviks in the Kremlin lately? Where is Stalin now, in the Kremlin? We know which building the supporters of his efficient management style work in. But where is Stalin himself? The current elite is not god-awful, it’s not de-humanized, it is just mostly cynical and deeply alien. Of course, it’s like taking the rap for someone else. But at least it’s not dying.
So, anyway, what should we stake on—a quick collapse of the unfounded system (with the victory of the common democratic sense), or on a time-consuming dismantling of the system? Is the rotten tooth already hanging by a mere thread, or do we need to loosen it slowly, with anesthesia readily available, and, most importantly, having already made an appointment with the dental technician? I may be mistaken, but it seems that in the foreseeable future, the democrats will have to fight not for immediate democracy, but for the possibility of bringing it back one day. They will have to keep up the dimmed but not extinct democratic instincts – the habits of attending polling stations during elections, of participating in public discussions, of involving college students in the conversation about political values and social ethics. And this means that between political suicide by being relegated into oblivion and a not-so-pleasant chance of talking to people about future freedom, we should choose the chance given to us by the emerging Opposition of His Majesty.
This is the chance to legally, publically stand up for values that are incompatible with the ideology of sovereign democracy, the chance to participate in elections (especially regional ones), to work with the new generation – not on the streets, not during rallies, but in classrooms, to slowly expand and gradually nurture the electorate. To enlighten minds. It makes no sense to expect anything more from the new party. Let’s just hope it doesn’t give us less. As for the risk of it being amicably taken over, the danger of it becoming infected – there are two very simple recipes for political contraception. You have to immediately flee from a place where you are forced to stay silent about the most important things, for the benefit of the cause, as well as from a place where you’re forced to lie for the same cause.
So far (and this is a first for modern history), the participants of the Kremlin project of controlled opposition have not been forced to lie. From the very start, they have been publically and openly saying that this is a Kremlin project. It’s a limited-effect project of and by the political top. A defective project. And this gives some semblance of hope that something might come of this idea. Or at least that there will be less damage than benefit, and that we’ll be able to avoid a second temptation: that of saying “no” to the request to stay silent, if such a request is made. To not say anything – about the Khodorkovsky case. About the true scale of the growing crisis. (“In America, all the main indexes dropped by five percent; the European exchanges dropped by an average of seven percent; the Russian stock market has also decreased,” read a news report on the day of the 20 percent market crash.) To stay silent about the increasing nightmare in Ingushetia. About the price of recognizing Ossetia and Abkhazia. And so on.
Yet it may well be that the danger of this project is not in the potential suffocation, not in the amicable takeover, but in setting those who have gone out into the streets against those who have gone into the bureaucratic offices. And in mutual accusations of solidarists and conformists, in their bright, affected, unstoppable informational self-destruction. When everyone ends up stained and discredited – and not by United Russia, but by each other--they will be so easy to dust off the table, on either side of the tabletop. This is why it’s best to acknowledge that active people with democratic views and beliefs who have made incompatible decisions about tactics form not two different sides of a barricade, but two columns of demonstrators that have taken different paths: one bypassing the obstacle, the other – right across it. Only to come together afterward and see which one was right.
