Back in the USSR?

Filed under: Eastern Europe

The extent to which Russia's increasingly neo-Soviet regime is willing to embrace the failed policies of the past continues to horrify Russia watchers. Perhaps even more terrifying, though, is the continuing lack of active resistance to this pattern of escalation which we see from Western governments and media.

For the second time this month, the Kremlin has brutally crushed a peaceful march of opposition political party members led by former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov and chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, the leading Russian voice of opposition politics in the West.

On March 3rd, the group marched in St. Petersburg, with these results:

The Moscow Times reported: "Truncheon-wielding police Saturday violently dispersed an unauthorized opposition rally in St. Petersburg, rounding up and beating dozens of activists and detaining several organizers."

Then last Saturday, the group marched again -- this time in the eastern city of Nizhny Novogorod. The results were no different:

The Associated Press reported: "Riot police wielding truncheons broke up an opposition rally in a central Russian city on Saturday, detaining dozens of activists and beating some of them in the third major crackdown on a demonstration in recent months." The government waited until the protesters had spent a large amount of money to publicize the event, then declared it illegal and seized 60,000 copies of their political literature before it could be distributed. Prior restraint is another neo-Soviet tactic the Kremlin has adopted: As the AP noted, the group also held a march in Moscow in December, 2006. Then, they were allowed to march, but "police detained dozens of participants before and during the rally, according to organizers."

Not just voices but acts of opposition are now being raised in Russia against the despotic KGB-dominated regime that occupies the Kremlin. Marina Litvinovich, previously recognized by Publius Pundit as a major opposition figure and therefore a target of interest like Anna Politkovskaya, was arrested in the Nizhny Novogorod protest.

It's time for those who support democracy to rally to their aid. So far it's not happening. Kasparov delivered a major speech at the Foreign Policy Association in New York City on February 12th, but the New York Times didn't even report it(nor did any other major media outlet). The Kremlin is already trying to undermine the opposition forces by claiming they are supported by the West, so they might as well actually et some support. Those risking all for democracy in Russia deserve all the support we can give them; if we fail to do so, the consequences of a consolidated neo-Soviet regime in Russia will be ours to bear.

Virtually no mention is made of these protests on national, state-controlled TV in Russia, where Russians get most of their information. Reporting on the Nizhny Novgorod events, the Times of London stated:

Censorship is so strict that TV journalists are provided with unofficial lists of politicians they are not allowed to mention in reports. "We have long been told that as far as we are concerned, those on the list don't exist in Russia," said a TV reporter. News bulletins paint Putin and his policies in glowing terms -- a practice reminiscent of Sovi-et-era propaganda. Parliament, a source of fierce opposition under Boris Yeltsin's rule, is now a rubber-stamp assembly.

The Times added:

"It's shocking that the authorities would go to such lengths and expense to stop people from voicing their opinions," said Denis Bilunov, one of the protesters and a close aide of Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion who has become one of Putin's fiercest critics. "As far as I know, all the organisers have been arrested. The Kremlin calls this a democracy."

So it's equally important to deliver a clear message to the people of Russia that there is a protest movement out there and, just as important, that they will bear consequences for inaction. As Kasparov says: "At the end of the day, it will depend on whether people care. You can't invent public protest. It either exists or it doesn't exist." The Kremlin's violence against these groups is all the more outrageous because there are so few of them and they have so little real power (yet the Kremlin still fears them, just as it feared Solzhenitsyn and Sakharov in Soviet times). Russians must understand that allowing the recreation of a dictatorship will not only cost them their freedom but also the ire of the entire world, leading Russia to the same fate met by the USSR. Kasparov warns: "This regime is getting out of touch with the real world. It's a deadly combination of money, power and blood -- and impunity."

A strong signal of the fact that there is potential for traction in the opposition groups is the nearly pathological unwillingness of the pro-Kremlin forces to discuss substance with them. Inevitably, instead of attempting to make a substantive argument that Vladimir Putin is a good president, those contending with the opposition forces will launch personal attacks against them, just the same sort of thing that was tried in Soviet times. In particular, the pro-Kremlinists like to point out that the opposition coalition contains some unsavory elements from Russia's reactionary right and left; but so does the Kremlin (especially pro-Kremlin radical Vladimir Zhirinovsky), and if the opposition forces are so besieged and poorly supported in the West that they haven't got the luxury of picking and choosing among potential supporters, who can judge their choice of allies?

Of course, the leading example of a personal attack is oil billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's version of Bill Gates, who was arrested and sent to prison in Siberia as soon as he began making noises about seeking the presidency and is now facing a second trial on basically the same charges. Khodorkovsky's lawyer, Robert Amsterdam, has published an elaborate 78-page treatise documenting violations of his client's legal rights during the so-called "trial." It doesn't get any more personal than prison -- except of course for assasination, which has been the fate met by such Kremlin opponents as Politkovskaya and Alexander Litvinenko.

Kasparov and Kasyanov were not the only targets. On Friday, Russia's Supreme Court ordered the small political party founded by leading legislative dissident Vladimir Ryzhkov disbanded, the Moscow Times reported. Meanwhile, the pro-Kremlin youth cult "Nashi" ("us Slavic Russians") not only had no problem mounting a pro-Putin demonstration in Moscow, but the police protected them like bodyguards. The Moscow Times reported:

Some 15,000 young people rallied throughout the city center Sunday for an event organized by the pro-Kremlin youth group Nashi to celebrate the seventh anniversary of President Vladimir Putin's election. Participants, dressed in identical red hats and white T-shirts, handed out glossy pocket brochures titled "The President's Messenger" on Pushkin Square, Triumfalnaya Ploshchad and Prospekt Akademika Sakharova, near Leningradsky Station, among other locations. The brochure bears an image of a cell phone with the state coat of arms, the two-headed eagle.The 30-page booklet warns of the dangers facing the country if the people are not vigilant and cautions that Russia could lose its independence. It is illustrated with photos of Hitler; Andrei Vlasov, a World War II general who fought on the German side after being captured; Eduard Limonov, leader of the unregistered National Bolshevik Party; former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov; and U.S. President George W. Bush.

All this shows weakness, not strength, on the part of the Kremlin -- just as in Soviet times. "It wasn't a demonstration of power. It was a demonstration of fear,"Oksana Chelysheva, deputy chairman of the Society of Russian-Chechen Friendship, told Reuters. "Thousands were prevented from assembling in or reaching the square. People were stopped in nearby streets. Even taxis were detained," Chelysheva said.

This weakness is the West's opportunity to stand solidly behind the forces of democracy in Russia. Will it once again let such an opportunity pass by, only to be faced with an even more difficult problem later on?

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