2023-07-10 12:12:29
By Masha Chaykina, factory worker, correspondent
Assessing the consciousness of the masses under a dictatorship is a difficult task. In Russia, the masses are silent.
The working people and the exploited and oppressed sectors do not have their own organizations, they do not have their own leaders.
There is nothing that can serve to collectively express not only their discontent, but even their opinion. There is fear of the state power machine, which showed its cruelty in Chechnya, in Georgia, in Syria and… now in Ukraine. Numerous “fabricated” criminal proceedings and excessive sentences with false charges are demonstrative of this perversity of the regime within the country.
And, of course, two decades of rabid and insane chauvinist propaganda have also done their dirty work: there is still a significant portion of workers and ordinary people who approve of the war with Ukraine. However, according to very approximate estimates, derived from indirect data and even sensations –since there are very few who agree to respond to opinion polls– about 20% of Russians strongly oppose the war and condemn the regime’s aggression. Furthermore, according to the same indirect data, the majority of young people and low-income workers are against the war. By contrast, the proportion of support for the regime is older among the elderly and, interestingly, the middle class, about the same 20%. And I say that it may be curious because many “public figures” or intellectuals who went into exile like to criticize and despise the people. “inert, dark and bitter”. This does not mean that all the workers are against the war and all the inhabitants of the privileged districts of the big cities are in favor of it. The vast majority of ordinary Russians be quiet and continues to live his routine life, generally poor, preferring not to think or talk about the war.
The war polarized society.
However, the issue of war heated up and sharpened the extreme polarization of society. Opponents of the war will never forgive Putin and the regime for their crimes, for them (for us) life has changed and they live with an expectation and a wish: the collapse of the regime and the punishment of those responsible for the war. On the contrary, supporters of the war also consider their opponents not just political opposition, but real traitors and criminals. These are the extreme poles of society, but this division exists and is deep and irreconcilable. This gives reason to speak of the possible threat of a civil war in Russia. This division literally runs through families, and this is a real tragedy. Taking into account that about a third of Russians have relatives – and often the closest ones, brothers/sisters – in Ukraine. This division acquires the dimensions of a catastrophe for Russian society.
The working class
It is important to understand that the Russian workers themselves are extremely oppressed. The years of “stability” of the Putin regime were and are years of hard work for the workers, with losses of social benefits. Russians are leaving small towns and cities en masse where there are no jobs, where schools and hospitals are closed. In order to get a more or less decent income, we have to work our ass seven days a week, eat and sleep little, live in rented apartments, travel in crowded transport. For the working masses, there are simply no physical conditions to think, analyze, plan…
The regime has destroyed all the more or less independent media. The secret services permeate the entire society, suppressing, controlling or infiltrating the slightest self-organization, which only occurs when it manages to find the necessary strength and will. All that is left is the television with rampant, alienated chauvinism or stupid YouTube or TikTok videos.
Therefore, it’s false which is spread widely all over the world: “Russians massively support the regime and the war”. no mass support. What there are are workers and working people oppressed to the limit. As well as original oppressed peoples in the multinational Russian Federation. It is evident that, in percentage terms, the majority of those recruited for the compulsive mobilization for the war are residents of national republics, such as Buryatia, Yakutia, Dagestan… And it is no coincidence that in these republics the most significant protests against the mobilization in October last year. And in addition to ordinary people, there are elite intellectuals, living well-to-do in big cities, who for years put on fashionable shows or published exquisite magazines for crumbs from Putin’s corporations. Some of them left the country to lie about the “massive support for the regime by the people”. Of course, a large number of the intellectuals who left Russia are true fugitives from the regime’s ongoing repressions.
Prigozhin’s rebellion, riot or “march”
And precisely, regarding the “massive support for the regime”, what has been seen on June 24. March «Wagner» to Moscow. There was not a single demonstration in support of Putin in any Russian city when he denounced the rebellion in his message to the nation.
Many Russians did not even know what “Wagner” was. Older people who followed the news on TV thought that Rostov had been captured by the Ukrainian army! And they couldn’t understand what a “Private Military Company” means. How is it “private”?
Some veterans got caught up in the analogy made by Putin: “that Prigozhin is like Lenin, who struck from the rear of a country at war.” “He (Prigozhin) is like Lenin, he goes in an armored car, history repeats itself”said one, shocked to see and also not understand the logic of the rebellion.
“If Putin wanted to restore order, he would hit Wagner!” – said a worker, who perhaps spoke for the first time since the war began. Another classmate looks at her in silence, but she says in a low voice and almost in secret, but with joy on her face: “that they burst with each other”. An office programmer, who is against the war: “It will be a theatricalization to show Putin weak”.
In general, that day was a summer holiday. But on the subway, people were looking at their phones all the time, following the news. Yet there was no fear or panic. This was in stark contrast to what the “authorities” were feeling and reflecting: Putin addresses the nation in an emergency speech, at 10am on a Saturday and talks about “a military mutiny and that Russia is in danger.” There are rumors about the departure of flights with well-known oligarchs and the escape of high-ranking officials. Checkpoints and roadblocks on the outskirts of the capital. Cancellation of the graduation party (an important event for every teenager, almost as important as a wedding) and also suspension of all public events.
But the people followed the events without panic, but with interest and excitement. A construction mason, a Kyrgyz immigrant, with an ironic smile comments that his parents called him: “Maybe you have to go back, it’s dangerous back in Russia now”…. Although when it was not “dangerous” for him and the immigrant workers from Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, who are half of the working class in the big cities of Russia, they permanently suffered the permanent oppression and humiliation of the state through the police and migration service.
One worker, who has supported the war since the early days of the offensive, is sending out memes and videos mocking the “Russian rebellion.” Old retirees from the town, opponents of the war, learn with astonishment and distrust that the president of Belarus intervened in the rebellion to mediate “Lukashenko? Oops! It can’t be!… What is he doing here?»
A Moscow manager, father of three, who is sympathetic to Putin’s war, is called by his parents from another city because they are worried about how they are there. He answers:“Don’t worry, we’ll just stay home and watch movies!”
So we are under the Putin dictatorship. Supporters of Putin’s war, locking themselves in their houses before the first riot. Opponents who wanted “both Putin and Prigozhin to bust each other.” The elders who did not understand what a “private military company” is. And others who insist on asking: “Rostov is a Russian or Ukrainian city? The young people whose graduation party was stolen, but did receive that night the belated “greeting” from President Putin who had panicked that morning. And all this in the midst of the complaints and discontent of the majority of the population, exhausted to the limit by a poor and routine life.
This dictatorship is “strong” only in its repressive apparatus. And this apparatus is about to explode from within due to the stalemate in the war (and this despite the fact that the Ukrainian offensive has not yet reached full force). There is no massive support for the war. It is illusory and frantically fed by official propaganda.
Many active supporters of the war sympathized with Prigozhin and are now extremely embittered, but they are not afraid. They saw that after all, the rebellion was not suppressed. Still supporters of Putin only want “stability” even if it is apparent. In their words they may be “fierce” chauvinists, but in reality they hide at home at the slightest danger. However, the most important thing is that there is a wide silent stratum of the townbut who sees everything, who hates the regime, who wants the victory of Ukraine and who wants to prepare for the possibility of active intervention. This is how we see the situation in Russia from the inside.
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