A thread of messianic rhetoric
The Washington Post on Putin’s repression of all traces of dissent:
The speed of Russia’s transformation to Soviet-style “self-purification” has been astonishing. When Russia invaded Ukraine last month, state TV went to wall-to-wall propaganda blaming Ukrainian “neo-Nazis” and “nationalists.” Now, shadowy pro-Putin figures are daubing the words “traitor to the motherland” on the doors of peace activists and others.
The propagandists are seriously busy – I’ve even had a couple here trying to post the “Ukraine–>neo-Nazis” crap in comments.
Despite the risk of fines and jail time, others keep protesting. More than 15,000 people have been arrested since the war started.
Anastasia, wearing a jacket with the words “No to War,” was grabbed by riot police earlier this month as she walked toward a small group of protesters in Moscow. She was arrested and fined.
“It makes me really angry,” said Anastasia, who asked that her surname not be used for security reasons. “On top of anger, I feel a kind of desperation and sadness and regret, specifically a regret that there is nothing good in the future any more.”
Cars carrying imperial flags and bearing the letter Z, a symbol of support for the war, have appeared in Russian cities and towns.
Kirill Martynov, political editor of Novaya Gazeta, was denounced as a traitor and dismissed recently by two universities where he taught two philosophy courses. A parent had heard him tell students that civilians were being killed in Ukraine.
He got out of Russia.
[T]here is a thread of messianic rhetoric from top Russian officials, pro-Kremlin journalists, religious figures and academics, laying out the mission to revive Russian greatness. They revile Western liberalism and applaud conservative, authoritarian orthodoxy.
Make Russia Great Again. It’s not a coincidence that Trump drools over Putin.
The Kremlin in Moscow is the biggest fortress ever constructed, anywhere in the world. I do not find it difficult to imagine the mentality of its inhabitants. Here on the inside is us of the master race. On the outside, stretching far away across about seven time zones on the vast Eurasian landmass are all those lesser breeds who make up our humble and obedient servant class: Ukrainians, Tartars, Georgians, Chechens, Crimeans, Balts; right up north to even Eskimos. Etc, etc.
Everything changes, yet it all remains the same.
It’s actually nine time zones. I’d been wondering and not getting around to looking it up for days and then the other day I saw it in a news story. Nine. It boggles the mind. We here in the hulking US are a mere three (apart from Hawaii but Hawaii is…different).
Later: correction: FOUR. Four in the lower 48.
I just watched an old BBC thriller with Daniel Craig that was about Russia. The plot sounds hokey (because it is): A British scholar of Kremlinology finds himself caught in a conspiracy by Russian elites to bring back Stalinism by revealing that Stalin had a son and heir. Surely the Russian people wouldn’t let Stalin’s son just stroll into the Kremlin and take over, I thought. But as the plot moves outside of Moscow we see how the vast majority of the Russian people live: deeply impoverished, limited in education and access to information, desperate for something better, and willing to believe that the days of Stalin were glorious.
It’s tragic what’s been done to generations of Russian people over the past century by power-mad thieves and villains. I’m not sure they’ll ever have a chance to enjoy a little prosperity in the limited time civilization has left.
Ophelia @ 2
Nit: the US (fifty states) uses six time zones (Hawaiian, Alaskan, Pacific, Mountain, Central, and Eastern). The “lower 48” use the last four. Perhaps you were thinking of time zone differences(like: the east coast is three time zones away from the west coast)?
Errrr yup, I was, like an idiot. I can count to 2 and then I get confused. Which is silly because I’ve lived in three of the four in the lower 48 so you’d think I’d remember.
Artymorty,
The immiseration, deprivation, brutalisation, and oppression of the Russian people by oligarchic thieves goes back far longer than the last century. The Russian Revolution was fought against Russia’s final (and second only ever) royal family — whose head was something like a god-king-emperor, the last of its kind in Europe. For a few centuries, the ruling dynasty didn’t even speak Russian, affecting French instead as the language of the court at St. Petersburg. The Communists, at least once Stalin took over, amounted to little more than a changing of the guard.
@artymorty – I started that movie, was interrupted and couldn’t find it again. What is the name of it? I’d like to re-watch it, this time in its entirety.
@derDurchwanderer – the beards grow longer overnight.
@Michael,
The movie’s called Archangel. (It’s technically a miniseries, but the whole thing is about 3 hours, more of a movie really.) And I have to admit, it gets pretty fun. Seeing a young modern-day Stalin all dressed up and worshipped by the masses as he makes his way to Moscow by train was quite a thrill.