A quiescence has descended over Russia with only a month to go before the Duma elections, Kirill Martynov says. “No one is thinking about the protest meetings which have accompanied Russia the last two years. The political opposition is defeated.” And independent media have been reduced to a minimum.
In short, Martynov says, while the powers have won “a crushing victory over society, the repressions are continuing – simply because they can.” They don’t serve any broader purpose than the acting out of the grudges some people hold about others. In the past, such people had to restrain themselves unless give the order. Now, their hands have been untied and they can act.As so often in history, “the persecution of political opponents at the end of the summer of 2021 has been transformed from an instrument in the hands of the Russian powers that be into a process intrinsic in itself and one by the way extraordinarily profitable for those who carry it out.”
“Our societal stability ever more recalls a cemetery through which an armed man is walking.” He is lonely, the editor continues, and soon he won’t have anyone else in the political system to punish. When that happens, this armed man, the state machine, will seek out new victims from among those “who have nothing to do with politics.”
Read More:
- Putin better reflects underlying Russian values than does the opposition and his system will thus outlast both, Pastukhov says
- Putin’s essay on Russia and Ukraine about far larger issues than that, Yavlinsky says
- “Agents,” “undesirable,” “extremists” — how modern Russia combats dissent
- Moscow moves from justifying GULAG to glorifying it
- A Killing Epidemic: The Culling of Russia’s Opposition Journalists (2018)
