The Poverty of Russia’s Protests
By Sean at 6 February, 2009, 12:48 pm
Protests flared around the world last week in response to the global economic crisis. Last Thursday, a one day general strike of 2.5 million people brought France to a standstill. Wildcat strikes hit Britain as workers at two nuclear power plants protested the use of foreign workers. An action of a few hundred Black Bloc anarchists in Geneva turned violent when police blocked them from entering the city’s center. Protesters responded with bottles, the police returned with clubs and tear gas, arresting 60. A column of Greek farmers consisting of 300 tractors, trucks, and other vehicles protesting the drop in commodity prices were met by riot police. One farmer tried to ram a police van as protesters chucked potatoes, tomatoes, and rocks at the cops. Clashes between farmers and police continued into this week as more of the farmers pour into the port of Piraeus. Protests in Iceland brought an interim Left-Green coalition to power which promises to implement measures to quell protests. Latvia saw a protest of 10,000 people turn into a riot against their government’s dealing with the economic crisis. Many of neoliberal miracles of the last decade–Estonia, Lativa, Ireland, Ukraine, and Iceland have hit the economic wall. Experts say that Ireland is the worst hit in the Eurozone. There a job is lost “every five minutes.”
Indeed protest is in the air. More importantly economics stands at the center. As the Guardian described last Thursday:
It’s a snapshot of a single day – yesterday – in a Europe sinking into the bleakest of times. But while the outlook may be dark in the big wealthy democracies of western Europe, it is in the young, poor, vulnerable states of central and eastern Europe that the trauma of crash, slump and meltdown looks graver.
Exactly 20 years ago, in serial revolutionary rejoicing, they ditched communism to put their faith in a capitalism now in crisis and by which they feel betrayed. The result has been the biggest protests across the former communist bloc since the days of people power.
Europe’s time of troubles is gathering depth and scale. Governments are trembling. Revolt is in the air.
And not just in Europe. There is an estimated 20 million Chinese migrant workers who’ve suddenly become unemployed, adding to the estimated 10 million jobs lost in December when manufactures shut their doors. The high levels of migrant unemployment are feared to make an already tenuous situation in the countryside worse. About 50 to 60 percent of rural families’ incomes come from remittances sent from migrant factory workers. Chinese officials are already contemplating a “softer line” to protesters by urging Party officials to address people face to face. And then there is the shoe throwing copycat in London who failed to plant his rubber sole on Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao’s grill. Some experts are seriously wondering if China is on the brink of an enormous social explosion, if not revolution.
Then there is Russia. Russia joined the chorus of global protest as thousands rallied in several cities last weekend. Actions targeted the economic crisis, the government, car taxes and the murders of Stanislav Markelov and Anastatia Baburnova. Important issues for sure. Still these protests appeared no more stage managed than past ones. Many of the usual protagonists were center stage–Other Russia, National Bolsheviks, anarchists and others from the Russian “Opposition.” OMON played its usual part as dastardly antagonist, though one should recognize that this time its iron fist wore a velvet glove. The dance between OMON and dissenters went according to the usual script. The only additions were the unknown assailants who attacked a group of marchers in Moscow. Each side appeared to get what it wanted. OMON (i.e. the state) showed its ability to keep order. Other Russia affirmed its self-importance and secured its foreign press coverage. As one commentator said about the Moscow action: There were “more journalists than participants.”
Perhaps most interesting was Russia’s real political opposition joined the protests’ ranks. The Communist Party attracted large crowds in the provinces. In the Far East, the communists wedded the unpopular car tax with challenges to the “government of oligarchs’” promises to “make life better by 2020″. Maybe this is the first sign that the KPRF might actually become an opposition in content rather than only in form.
Popular discontent is growing in Russia. No one argues against this. Recent polls indicate a increasing drop in Medvedev’s and Putin’s popularity. The former is hovering around a 51 percent approval rating, while the latter commands a 65 percent majority. A Levada Center survey found that people are increasingly questioning whether the government has a plan to deal with the crisis. “Twenty-eight percent of respondents said their biggest grievance was that leaders “can’t deal with the economic problems in the country,” and 17 percent faulted the Kremlin for not having a “well-considered plan of action,” reported the NY Times.
Growing public discontent also fuels speculations that there is widening rift within the Kremlin elite, particularly between the President and Prime Minister. Is the supposed rift a sign of healthy and needed disagreement at the top? The beginning of the son moving to bury the father? Or is this simply wishful thinking fueled by general social uncertainty? If there is any rift at the top, I don’t think veiled criticism uttered by Medvedev against Putin will be the telltale sign. If any fissures emerge, they will begin just below the tandem as Russia’s political boyars use the situation to rally around one or the other to better jostle against their rivals.
Despite the growth in Russians’ public frustration with the authorities, one shouldn’t jump the gun and put their hopes before reality. Granted the police are concerned, particularly about the potential rise of “extremist” youth on the left and the right. But to call last weekend’s protests “rare” or a sign of the Kremlin’s rule looking “shakier” are more rooted in fantasy. The problem is not that protests are rare. One might say there are too many that are too often ineffective.
The reality is that while last week’s protests should be situated within the larger trend of global discontent, they nevertheless show the longstanding poverty of Russia’s self-proclaimed political Other. National Bolsheviks, Red Vanguard Youth, and Other Russia political celebrities will find little public support with slogans and flares. Clashes with provocateurs and skirmishes with neo-Nazis may give the taste of a Wiemar flavor, but it occupies a fringe on Russia’s political palate. The truth of the matter is that Russia’s wannabe revolutionaries are either incapable or unwilling to do any real organizing that weds politics and people’s lives. Instead, ephemeral calls for democracy and rights stand in for real political action.
Perhaps this points to poverty of liberalism itself. And here Russia isn’t alone. Opposition movements have completely purged the hunger for state power from their gut. A general strike of 2 million French a century ago would have brought the state down. If not, it would have certainly lasted for more than one day. Revolutionaries of yore wouldn’t have bothered calling for the resignation of politicians. They would have demanded the destruction of the state itself. Russia’s revolutionaries too, except for the hapless liberals, would have spent more of their energies burrowing within the working masses than wasting them on spectacles.
But what makes the Russian opposition so pathetic is that it rejects its own history. Revolutionaries of the late 19th and early 20th century–whether they were populist, socialist, or anarchist–faced more difficult challenges than the oppositional diletantes of today. They had no websites or youtubes to organzie and propagate with. The Tsarist regime was far more repressive. Funding was more scarce and cadres were smaller and even more vehemently fractuous. Yet, they were far more organized, purposeful, and diligent. And more importantly they endeavored to connect with people’s everyday lives.
But Russia’s liberals of today, let alone many of Europe’s former “socialists,” makeshift anarchists, unionists, and environmentalists, decry this past because of its association with Communism. Well, like it or not, the communists won and they did so not by calling for resignations, democratic elections, human rights, or freedom of speech. Their position was encapsulated in two words that today’s opposition are too incompetent to imagine or too timid to utter: state power.
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“Revolutionaries of yore wouldn’t have bothered calling for the resignation of politicians. They would have demanded the destruction of the state itself.”
Perhaps it is the memory of the tragic consequences of the destruction of the state is what makes people more cautious now. No doubt about it, many of those revolutionaries were well-intentioned and brave. The results, though, were terrible: a much more repressive regime and intolerant regime than the one before, as well as and countless of people dying at their prime.
“But Russia’s liberals of today, let alone many of Europe’s former “socialists,” makeshift anarchists, unionists, and environmentalists, decry this past because of its association with Communism. Well, like it or not, the communists won”
Yes, they won and what followed was years of trauma and a more repressive regime.
Oops. Too bad I cannot go back and edit my badly written comment.
I thought you were trying to sound like Eliza Dolittle.
I wish Communists hadn’t won.
I wish they were far less organized, purposeful, and diligent.
I wish they hadn’t endeavored to connect with people’s everyday lives.
I wish they stayed home and played with YouTubes on their Websites instead.
Seriously, what’s wrong with youtubes? Youtubes’ great! “Fuck the revolution!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88uVqHiAFD8
“…And the glory of the revolution
And the glory of dying for the revolution
Fuck the revolution!
They don’t talk about the glory of killing for the revolution
What’s the glory in taking a man from his bed
And gunning him down in front of his wife and children
Where’s the glory in that?
Where’s the glory in bombing a rememberence day parade
Of old age pensioners their medals taken out and polished up for the day
Where’s the glory in that?
To leave them dying, or crippled for life, or dead
Under the rubble of the revolution
That the majority of the people in my country
Don’t want…”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88uVqHiAFD8
RUSSIA NEED TO GROW UP AND JOIN THE WORLD
http://WWW.BUZZMOI.COM
”Experts say that Ireland is the worst hit in the Eurozone. There a job is lost “every five minutes.””
Yes this is true. Things have never, ever been worse, and I can remember the 1980s, when my old man was the only one in our row of houses who was working and Aer Lingus used 747s to ferry thousands of Paddies to the US in the hope of finding work, many never to return. My best friend, a building engineer, has been unemployed for 6 months with zero prospect of work and 5 kids under the age of 8 at home. Luckily for him he’s getting basically his social insurance he paid over the years but its only a matter of time before the fuel runs out. I myself am in a low-paid job (which would have been highly paid a year ago) and am hanging onto it like grim death. Unfortunately we are ‘hoist on our own pethard’. We all borrowed like no tommorow, so did our banks, and no-one stopped to think that there would in fact be a tommorow and that it mightnt be as well paid as we’d depended on. And our own government has been the worst offender.
”Some experts are seriously wondering if China is on the brink of an enormous social explosion, if not revolution.”
My brother is going there next week to a plant outside Guangzhou that makes parts for the company he works for, he’s always over and back. I’ll try and get the low down from him when he returns. Meanwhile the poxy bollocks is off to see Ireland v France today, our first step in deposing the Welsh false Dmitri, a fact that ires me no end, whilst I’m stuck in front of the TV!
Kasparov lying in 2007 (“he (Putin) is loosing, while we are gaining”):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXAPbonTPq4
“Russian government crashes peaceful protests ….” (Kasparov fail to mention that “Other Russia” didn’t acquire permits for their protests, which would make any demonstration anywhere in the world – illegal).
“I thought you were trying to sound like Eliza Dolittle.”
LOL. My writing is indeed atrocious and my speaking not much better. It’s funny how my brain works (I suspect this is very common): when I read over what I have written, all too often my brain autocorrects my mistakes, so I don’t notice that those mistakes are still on the written page or screen. Alas, I cannot afford a proofreader…
Tess, I admit that this time instead of asking (as I did with John Galt) I googled Eliza Doolittle. This googling first is a good practice, I guess. Of course I knew of “Atlas Shrugged” and of course I knew of “Pygmalion” and have seen “My Fair Lady” years ago. But I didn’t know (or forgot) the name of the characters.
Candide, are you a Randian? Or, if Randian is too strong, are you sympathetic to her thoughts?
Kolya,
I think from the aesthetic standpoint “Atlas Shrugged” is a crime against ‘belle lettres’. Still, she made a mark and continues to do so. Her books are much more popular than Obama’s, for example.
Candide, I asked about you, not Rand. Once again: are you a Randian? Or, if Randian is too strong, are you sympathetic to her thoughts?
It’s not an accusatory or loaded question. It’s a perfectly normal question–just like months ago, when it was not clear to me, I asked Sean whether he’s a Marxist.
Kolya,
I’m not a Randian, but sometimes I find myself sympathetic to her thoughts.
To elaborate, in a perfect world there would be no readership for Rand works. But we do not live in a perfect world.
When people start seriously blaming ‘capitalism’ for global economic crisis, I start getting sympathetic to Rand’s nonsense.
When people who were gorging at the ‘capitalist’ largesse trough for years, literally expropriating goods and services they did very little to produce, start blaming ‘capitalism’ for a cyclic downturn, threatening prosecutions and demanding immediate return to ‘good times’, I become very sympathetic to John Galt saying, “I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
Sean, give it more time.
For revolutionaries to become truly radicalized, there needs to be a prolonged period of social stress beforehand.
France. In 1788 the pressure was on for more accountability and representation if taxes were to be increased. In 1789 a National Assembly of all estates. Later, demands for a weak constitutional monarchy. Finally by 1794 the Robbespierists were in charge.
Same with Weimar Germany. Needed four years of crisis with a less than optimal prior history to fall to Nazism. Or with the Russian Revolution – as is wellknown, it was preceded by three years of a corruptly-prosecuted war and even then it was not the Bolsheviks who won the majority of the votes.
If this develops into a decade-long global depression then yes we might see a resurrection of unpleasant twentieth century political ideologies but before that we play…the waiting game.
All is good in Latveria. Come to Doom!
“Yes, they won and what followed was years of trauma and a more repressive regime.”
You keep saying this, and you keep not realizing that most of the people in the USSR at the time did not agree with you. Nor do their descendents agree with you. You’re being a Plastic Russian.
“I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.”
Selfishness and greed – of course that’s the answer.
Rand simply justified the self … selfishness, total independence, self-interest, and greed. Charity is bad, because it supports the weak. Greed is good because it rewards the strong. Her philosophy ignores the ties of civilization that bind all of us. It ignores the specialization that comes with industrialization or reliance upon anyone other than yourself. It is an extremist point of view and an over-reaction to communism.
Hers is one of the most bankrupt “philosophies” that I’ve ever encountered.
You keep saying this, and you keep not realizing that most of the people in the USSR at the time did not agree with you. Nor do their descendents agree with you. You’re being a Plastic Russian.
You’re flat wrong. I’m not sure what is in the kool-aid you’ve been drinking, but lately you’ve become increasing supportive of a bull-shit point of view regarding Russia and former USSR.
The USSR was NEVER popular rule, I defy you to prove otherwise. While I’ve met Russians who romanticized aspects of that time (most specifically the 1970s), I have never met ANYONE who imagined it was not a repressive regime that caused hardship on its people.
Even Putin has called those killed in Stalin’s purges the “cream of our nation”, as follows:
“We know very well that 1937 was the peak of the purges but this year was well prepared by years of cruelty,” Putin said beside a mass grave after laying flowers at a memorial.
Putin said such tragedies “happen when ostensibly attractive but empty ideas are put above fundamental values, values of human life, of rights and freedom.”
“Hundreds of thousands, millions of people were killed and sent to camps, shot and tortured. These were people with their own ideas which they were unafraid of speaking out about. They were the cream of the nation.”
Does that sound like someone who doesn’t think the Soviet Union was repressive and caused decades of hardship on citizens?
You begin to sound like Averko by constantly arguing that Russia and the Soviet Union are always correct, they were peaches ‘n cream and Putin/Medvedev are always right and Russia had the answer to all the worlds problems.
I wrote:
““Yes, they won and what followed was years of trauma and a more repressive regime.”
Chris wrote:
“You keep saying this, and you keep not realizing that most of the people in the USSR at the time did not agree with you. Nor do their descendents agree with you. You’re being a Plastic Russian.
”
Everything has its context, Chris. It’s a no brainer that what followed the Bolshevik take over was years of trauma as well as a more repressive regime. I wrote the words you quoted in response to Sean’s post about (in his view) the tameness of present-day protesters: as I said, perhaps it’s the memory of those traumatic and tragic years that make people cautious about calling for the destruction of the state.
Chris, you are in the habit sending of sending snarks without engaging in good-faith discussion. I don’t know what a Plastic Russian is, but I do know that it’s totally irrelevant whether I’m a Russian, a Russian American or a Nigerian without an ounce of Russian. Also, at times (perhaps in order to provoke) you self-assuredly ascribe views to me that I certainly don’t have. And when challenged you often don’t reply. For example (and with apologies for digging out a comment of a couple of weeks ago,) you wrote the following about me:
“So, when you hear that Sasha in Volgograd likes Stalin, you assume that Sasha is thinking, “I like mass murdering monsters.” ”
I replied:
“That’s totally false, Chris. I certainly don’t think that Sasha in Volgograd thinks “I like mass murdering monsters.” It should not be too surprising to you, because I wrote about it here more than once. If Sasha loves Stalin more than likely he loves him because in his view Stalin saved the Soviet Union (and perhaps even the rest of the world) and made the Soviet Union into a great power. If Sasha accepts as fact that millions of his own countrymen were either executed or died in camps, he probably thinks that in balance of things the good of what Stalin did outweigh the bad. …
Anyway, as you remember, I liked Roginsky’s lecture on the memory of Stalinism in present-day Russia and I recommend people read it. As an academic summarized one of Roginsky’s main points: “in the public memory of Stalinism in Russia, the existence of victims is widely acknowledged, but without an automatic link in the mind of the broad public to the existence of a crime, viz. a criminal regime. The victims, [Roginsky] suggests, are mourned more like victims of a natural disaster.” Or as Roginsky says, it as if there are victims with no perpetrators. And he gives his own explanation of why this is so.”
It all comes back to Stalin. The funny thing is that this post, or at least how I imagined it, had nothing really to do with Communism except to say that there was a revolutionary movement in Russia that was successful. I was questioning Russian “oppositionists’” commitment to their cause and to point to some limits of liberal politics when opposing a government. Frankly, I don’t think Russian, let alone European, liberals have to guts to take power even if it dropped in their lap (God forbid). And if state power isn’t their ultimate goal, then what is?
“And if state power isn’t their ultimate goal, then what is?”
Chicks.
This reading of the value system of the post-WWII Western world — which has only been around for 60-odd years and is embraced by only a fraction of the population even in Western countries even today — into the lifeworld of early 20th-century peasants in the Russian Empire is quite annoying.
Doom wishes to assure all of you that, due to Doom’s wise and thorough-going implementation of the economic ideas of Von Mises, Latveria is weathering the economic crisis quite nicely.
Native Latverians are, of course, quite wealthy, as Doom is a benevolent leader. However, if anyone wishes to come and perform menial labor for us, you are more than welcome to come on one of our many Gastarbeiter programs.
This reading of the value system of the post-WWII Western world . . . into the lifeworld of early 20th-century peasants in the Russian Empire is quite annoying.
Tell me about it. I suggest people read Mark Steinberg’s excellent Voices of Revolution, 1917 to get a taste what Russian peasant and proletarian morality was really like in those heady years.
Ever read Quiet Flows the Don, the first chapter with the lynching of the witch?
“It all comes back to Stalin.”
I think that’s too easy, Sean. For context, for me the trigger was this remark:
“Revolutionaries of yore wouldn’t have bothered calling for the resignation of politicians. They would have demanded the destruction of the state itself.”
To limit myself to Russia (and as I wrote before), I think a reason why many of today’s protesters are not so eager to demand the destruction of the state is the memory of what happened when the state was destroyed in 1917: terror, civil war, famine, repression, countless of people dying at their prime. All that happened before Stalin. Because of this historical memory, I assume that even those who want to do away with liberal democracy, sovereign democracy or whatever are being much more cautious than their more optimistic (naive) counterparts of the earlier part of the 20th Century.
In addition, Da Russophile’s point was a good one.
Understood Kolya, but this fear is exactly what I’m wondering about. Politics is about power. This is at least how those in power understand it.
If Russia’s oppositionists are afraid of repeating the past, then what is their goal? Are they so naive to think that protest will lead to a desired outcome? If their goal isn’t state power then what is? Or should we think of them as mere cynics who have carved themselves out a niche within the Russian body politic?
I think “lifeworld” is one of the most stupid words I ever came across. What does it even mean? Is it one of those botched translations of some impossibly abstract German philosophic terms? Does it have a comprehensible synonym? It’s antonym must only be “deathworld”, another stylistic abomination.
Regarding the values of “early 20-s century Russian peasants”, there is no mystery to what they wanted: Land and Peace. We know what they were promised: Land and Peace. We know what they were cheated from: Land and Peace. We know what they got: ‘prodrazverstka’ and labor camps.
W. Shedd,
If you read carefully, I called Rand ideas “nonsense”. This is simple. The problem comes with realization that we live in the world where nonsense doctrines hold sway, more often than not. Rand ideas can’t stand on their own, but they stand very well against say, Marxian historic determinism or wishy-washy Utopian Socialism.
Also, I like your taking down of Chrisius, simple, straightforward and effective. Don’t expect him to come with a coherent answer, so we just assume he had to swallow it.
<emRand ideas can’t stand on their own, but they stand very well against say, Marxian historic determinism or wishy-washy Utopian Socialism.
I’d agree with that. I can’t understand what she had against empathy, though.
Sean wrote:
“If Russia’s oppositionists are afraid of repeating the past, then what is their goal?”
I don’t know. Perhaps it depends on the particular issue they are protesting against. And it often is fairly straight forward. For example, if they are protesting against racism or against human right violations, perhaps they want for both society and the state to deal effectively with racism and to drastically improve the human rights records.
For instance, in the US the pro-life movement often has antiabortion marches. They obviously want an end to abortion. When in the beginning of 2003 my wife marched against the Iraq War she was obviously hoping that those marches will have at least some influence on preventing the US from invading Iraq. And when they were not successful the marchers stated that at least it showed to rest of the country as well the world that a good number of Americans actively opposed the Iraq invasion.
“Are they so naive to think that protest will lead to a desired outcome?”
I don’t think that most are that naive. I think, though, they are hopeful that at some level those protests will have some sort of positive influence. They know the odds are against them, but there is always hope. After all, even if not very often protests sometimes do make a difference–even if the effects are not immediate or direct.
If their goal isn’t state power then what is?
Reduced state power, increased state power, or state power of a different kind. As far as I see it, they aren’t protesting about the presence of a government per se, rather the policies of a particular government.
“The USSR was NEVER popular rule, I defy you to prove otherwise.”
Easy-peasy. Gorbachev’s referendum on keeping the USSR intact got ~75% of the vote in favor.
Quod erat demonstrandum.
Speaking of protests, I was pleasantly surprised by an article posted in today’s JRL. The Levada Center asked the following question between February 20 and 23:
“What do you think of the people participating in rallies and manifestations against the falling living standards and therefore trying to defend their rights?”
The results were:
“Nineteen percent admitted feeling respect for the protesters and 41% said they fully understood them. Seven percents admitted interest. Not a single respondent said that street protests were an affront to be put an end to. Twenty-six percent admitted indifference.”
However, “answers to an analogous question concerning street actions in support of the government were different: 31% declared support, 11% sneered, and 41% were indifferent.”
It’s interesting that according to the Levada Center residents of smaller towns viewed street protests more sympathetically:
“Readiness to protest was mostly admitted by residents of small townships (27-28%) where sympathy with street protests was particularly strong (66%).”
From comments and articles I’ve read, I assumed that most Russians learned to view protests as a no-no–as some sort of an affront to the dignity of Russia itself. Not that I expect that Russia will suddenly become engulfed by street protests, but I’m glad that my assumption was wrong.