World must recognize totalitarian nature of Russian government

Anatoly Pakhomov, member of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia Party and current Mayor of Sochi, was at somewhat of a loss last Friday. Honestly, I can’t really blame him. In the run-up to the city’s mayoral election, Pakhomov made an appearance at a ceremony dedicated to remembrance of the Armenian genocide, one which should be interpreted as a purely political move as Pakhomov was courting the Sochi’s significant Armenian population. After his speech, another man unexpectedly took the stage: Garry Kasparov, former chess Grandmaster turned political campaigner (what was he thinking?), came out in support of Pakhomov’s opponent. Displaying a frankness rarely ever seen in politics, Kasparov pointed out that at the time of the mass killings, Russia had supported Turkey, and went even further, by connecting the past atrocities with the rise of Russian jingoism and anti-foreign sentiment in modern day. In his words, “Genocide doesn’t just appear out of nowhere, and to put it mildly the government is doing very little to stop this debauch of nationalism.”

 

This sort of audacious challenge to the power of the dominant party in Russian politics, United Russia, is all too rare. Though Russia is politically free on paper, in reality I’d wager that current President Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s handpicked successor, is only in power because of a pesky Constitutional rule that bars Putin from serving three successive presidential terms. So until his puppet’s time is up, Putin is content with the position of Prime Minister, after which, he can run for President again. Granted, the popularity that he and his party have enjoyed, essentially amounting to a monopoly on political power, did not spring from nowhere. True, the economy expanded rapidly with Putin at the helm, recovering from the harsh times that fell upon the country in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

 

But as Kasparov hints at, there is an uglier side to all this growth and prosperity. Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal goes so far as to call Russia a “fascist state.” Continuing, he says “It does not matter here, as the Kremlin's apologists are so fond of pointing out, that Mr. Putin is wildly popular in Russia: Popularity is what competent despots get when they destroy independent media, stoke nationalistic fervor with military buildups and the cunning exploitation of the Church, and ride a wave of petrodollars to pay off the civil service and balance their budgets.”

 

The crucial question now is what all this means for Russia. As mentioned, Kasparov’s act was an isolated event, and without more challenges of this very sort, without more hard questions and a demand for honest answers, it will be very difficult to dislodge or even challenge Putin and his party. Just to give you an idea of how wide support for Putin is, in 2007 he had approval rate of 81 percent. Is it so surprising then, that all he had to do to assure Medvedev’s ascendancy to the presidency in 2008 was endorse him? Well, perhaps not all. According to a 2008 report from the Human Rights Watch, “As parliamentary and presidential elections in late 2007 and early 2008 approached, the administration headed by President Vladimir Putin cracked down on civil society and freedom of assembly.” It’s becoming easier to see where all this wild popularity is coming from, and even harder to guess at where it will lead.

 

But what is perhaps most significant is that, as usual, the rest of the world is pretending that everything is well. The occasional harsh word is all we ever seem to have for Russia, and of course, they are more than happy to respond in kind. We, as Americans, need to take a good hard look at ourselves and figure out who we really are. If we truly believe in freedom and democracy, then what are we doing maintaining even pseudo-friendly relations with Russia? And if we don’t, well, then we should stop with all the false pretensions. Frankly speaking, I don’t see any room for middle ground here. We are either for liberty and equality, or we aren’t.