Allow me to respectfully dissent in part. As near as I can tell from studying history, the CHEKA, under all of its acronyms was always, fundamentally, a criminal organization, and was always the route to power in the Soviet state…The party certainly did not run the state while Stalin was in power. It was in Stalin’s pocket, and his use of the CHEKA under its various names, was the means by which he controlled it once he, himself had power.** Party rule was a sham**.
Undoubtedly, party rule was a sham. I agree. Yet the ‘myth’ was there back in the Soviet days that the Politburo functioned as a unit and acted as a lever on other organs of the state, whether this actually occurred or not is beside the point. The ‘myth’ that a nation tells itself about itself is important, as every country is essentially founded on some kind of origin myth that symbolizes its values. The ‘myth’ in modern Russia is more akin to the Stalin and Breshnev eras of the charismatic strongman embodying the nation, yet with the KGB criminality culture now effectively the only stall in town. For me, that is truly disturbing and is potentially more dangerous than even the Cold War, where both sides at least had some measure of each others actions and how far not to go.
The basic crux of the analysts I referenced is that “Chekism” - which as you say is nothing else but organized, state-level criminality hiding behind security services - is today more powerful than likely at any time during the Soviet era. This might be a counter-cultural and disconcerting, even unbelievable, truism for our “post-Cold War” generation to take in but the facts speak for themselves.
The “CHEKA” now runs Russia, but the pretense is somewhat different. The organization no longer claims to be the servant of the Communist Party. But it is no less criminal and no less dominating than it ever was. Presently, it appears, the “Eurasian” myth is the cover for its criminality
Agreed
It appears Europe is beginning to awaken to that fact. Obama is reluctant to credit it, but has to deal with it even so, and with the people who are beginning to see the reality of what Putin’s rule really is.
Yep.
One wonders what Russians really think of all that. Some undoubtedly are “true believers” in Putin/Dugin-ism. Probably many are not. But the latter will remain silent for the most part because real dissent can be very costly in a place like Russia today. It’s like Solzhenitsyn used to say of most people who were dissidents in their hearts
This I don’t know. Eurasianism is utterly ludicrous so I have a hard time believing that anyone could buy into it. Yet people in the know whom I’ve read and spoken to (at university) seem to think that, incredibly, the basic rudiments of Dugin’s theories are believed by more a few influential voices in Russia (ranging from army generals to the Orthodox hierarchy). It has its staunch, die-hard adherents and under Putin these people have been allowed to grow powerful.
I think its a case of “lies feeding on lies”. If you tell a lie for long enough and live in a world where the fabricated reality is continually put forth as fact, you might start to believe a little bit of it yourself.
As for the general public in Russia, I really don’t know. I think your basically right that the majority probably doesn’t believe in the finer points of this deranged worldview but submit out of fear. Naturally the effect which propaganda has upon people is a difficult question to answer for a variety of reasons, not least of which being that we cannot read minds and people might not necessarily being telling the truth.
I feel its important to point out something here, that the historian David Welch said with reference to Nazism:
“…As a general statement, it is fair to say that propaganda tended to be most effective when it was reinforcing existing values and prejudices, than when it was attempting to manufacture a new value system…”
***- David Welch, The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda (2002 Edition) p51 ***
Welch argues that propaganda succeeded more effectively in reinforcing already-held attitudes within the Third Reich than in actively conditioning Germans to believe in the Nazi
Weltanschauung (worldview), and he furthermore subdivides the effectiveness of propaganda into a number of different strands, for example stressing the void between overall support for the Hitler regime – which was significantly strengthened – and that of specific Nazi policies, which were not always given broader appeal through propaganda. Neil Gregor explained this further when he stated that, “
dissent on single issues could exist alongside fundamental support for the regime as a whole”.
If you want my :twocents: this is what has happened in modern Russia vis-a-vis Putinism/Eurasianism.
Eurasianism reinforces many existing prejudices and latent beliefs that the Russian public seems to have concerning America, their declining “great power” status etc. and which state-controlled media continually reinforces. It plays on all the worst elements within traditional Russian nationalism, imperialism and chauvinism, ignoring the more ennobling parts. So while they may not believe all of Dugin’s mystical clap-trap (who could?!), this dissent on “single issues” doesn’t necessarily mean that they don’t buy into its basic tenets and support the Putin regime. The central, non-mystical ideas on American unipolarity, Russia’s righteous crusade on behalf of multipolarity, the revival of Russian Orthodoxy and so on, are probably latently held by a good number of people.
All I do know is that, whether we like it or not, the Kremlin’s current ideology
in public (and I reiterate “in public”) is essentially the Eurasianism of Dugin.
) Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your viewpoint, there is no pure, innocent race of people anywhere.
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