ANOTHER RUSSIA

PUTIN ALCOHOLISM AND DISSENT IN MODERN RUSSIA


As the crisis in Ukraine has enfolded, fuelled as it has been by Putin’s ongoing campaign to destabilise the country, it has obscured another development taking place in the region, and that is the acceleration of the crackdown on opposition to president Putin in Russia itself. Ever since his re-election in 2012, and in particular the widespread protests against the electoral fraud that characterised that election, Putin has been steadily eliminating all possible sources of opposition.[1] The remaining few vehicles for dissent are being closed down or taken over, the law now so restrictive as to make any challenge to Putin’s authority impossible. Still there is another Russia.

1.
There was always another Russia. As Nicholas 1st sought to crush all internal opposition and strangle the nascent intelligentsia, as nihilist fanatics laid down the foundations of red terror and as Stalin exterminated two generations of the brightest and the best, there was always another Russia. A Russia characterised by great courage, a love of humanity and a celebration of the human spirit. The Russia of Belinsky Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Turgenev and Herzen, the Russia of the Kronstadt sailors, of Mandelstam and Akhmatova of Sakharov, Solzhenitsyn and Ginsburg. These are just the names we know, there were hundreds, thousands of others who, refusing to yield, were swept away into oblivion, initially by a brutal but inept autocracy, then by a ruthless totalitarian machine. Russians who often demonstrated superhuman levels of courage as they spoke truth to power. They represented an enlightened, civilised and humane vision of what Russia could be and in doing so contributed to wider European culture and the history of ideas. The whole of European civilisation would be poorer without this Russian contribution.

 Now as Putin seeks to suffocate civil society and shreds the remaining civil liberties[2] there is another Russia. It is the Russia of those imprisoned following the demonstration at Bolotnaya Square,[3] it is the Russia of Pussy Riot and Gary Kasparov. It is the Russia described toward the end of Oliver Bullough’s book, ‘The Last Man In Russia and the struggle to save a dying nation’ [Allen Lane 2013].
Father Dmitry
Bullough’s journey follows in the footsteps of the dissident Orthodox priest Father Dmitry Dudko. Dmitry, born in 1922 witnessed the man-made famine created by Stalin’s ‘dekulakization’ i.e. the destruction of the wealthier peasantry and the seizure of grain to pay for industrialisation.  He also witnessed the German invasion and occupation of southern Russia and later served in the Russian Army. Following Stalin’s rapprochement with the Orthodox Church Dmitry, a committed Christian, began training to become a priest. He was arrested in 1948 for writing a poem criticising Stalin and served eight-and-a-half years in the gulag.
In the 1970’s in the sclerotic Brezhnev years Father Dmitry’s preaching became a focal point across the dissident spectrum, including non-believers and members of the Jewish community. The growing numbers flocking to his sermons, where he encouraged free speech and an open exchange of ideas, became too much for the authorities and he was arrested yet again in 1980.
What then happened provides the decisive moment in Dudko’s life and it is not surprising that Bullough turns to George Orwell and 1984 in describing it.

II.

There is now a considerable amount of literature describing life in a totalitarian state. For obvious reasons of dramatic tension we invariably see life in such a society through the eyes of the dissident and like to imagine that we too would be the outsider, the lone voice willing to speak truth to power, even if we doom ourselves by so doing.
The truth however is a little more uncomfortable; for every dissident there are millions willing to make the daily compromise with lies, to turn a blind eye, to take whatever steps may be required to lead a quiet life. From Pinochet’s Chile[4] to South Africa and the Soviet Union protest and dissent was always an activity engaged in by a tiny minority. Perhaps we would be brave and take a stand. The likelihood is however that rather than being the courageous dissident we would be just another curtain twitcher, consumed by fear and guilt as our neighbour is taken away.
 Few reading this in this country will ever have to face such an extreme test whilst for Russians down the ages such terrible dilemmas have been woven into the very fabric of life and Russia has a proud history of courageous individuals standing up to tyranny. We know a few of their names, we do not know the names of the countless others crushed by the Tsarist and Soviet regimes. It is in the nature of tyranny, particularly of the totalitarian variety, that it possesses the power to make both its citizens and their protests disappear. The names we know invariably a tiny minority of a minority who have managed to get their story out to a wider world.
Thus it was for Father Dmitry when he was taken yet again by the KGB. It took, given all they had previously subjected him too, very little to break him. Six weeks after his arrest he appeared on Soviet television ‘confessing to his crimes’ and recanting his former beliefs. More than that he also openly named those who, at great risk to themselves, had assisted him. It was a moment that shook the whole ‘dissident’ world, a great public act of betrayal. Bullough does not condemn him, he condemned himself at first, then unable to stand the guilt sought to justify himself by embracing ever more extreme views, including anti-Semitism as a means of explaining his actions.
The real reason for his betrayal are unclear, perhaps nothing more than a moment of weakness, he had already spent one extended period in the Gulag, perhaps the idea of facing another was just too much for him? We who have never faced such a predicament are not in a position to pass judgement. Perhaps the most penetrating criticism came from another dissident, a friend of Dudko’s, who reflects that if he was not strong enough to face the consequences he should never have raised his voice. Better to be silent than betray.  
From this sad morality tale Bullough explores the whole history of modern Russia addressing the great sickness that Dudko sought to combat, a sickness at the heart of Russian society, alcoholism. For Russia is a dying society, its birth rate has collapsed, its villages becoming empty shells, mini Marie Celeste’s,  and the country, both men and women, is drinking itself to death.

III. 

A Dying Nation


The most remarkable thing about Vladimir Putin is that he is teetotal, truly in the country of the blind the one eyed man is king.  According to a World Health Organization [WHO] 2011 report annual per capita alcohol consumption in Russia is about 15.76 litres, or the equivalent of about 22.5 700 millilitre bottles of vodka; the fourth highest volume in Europe.[5]  ‘A study by Russian, British and French researchers published in The Lancet scrutinized deaths between 1990 and 2001 of residents of three Siberian industrial towns with typical mortality rates and determined that 52% of deaths of people between the ages of 15 and 54 were the result of alcohol abuse.’[6] Male Life expectancy reached an all-time low in of 58 years in 2003, it currently stands at 63 years.
These facts would be disastrous enough on their own they are combined with a disastrous collapse in the Russian birth rate. The number of Russians has been shrinking by 0.5 percent each year. Whilst attempts have been made to improve fertility rates from about 1.2 children-per-woman in 2002 to 1.6 in 2011, they still fall short of the 2.1 level experts say is needed to sustain a population.[7]
Bullough describes the physical consequences of these realities in the graveyards and deserted villages.[8] There is a pervading sadness about the book and Bullough believes, as indeed do I, that there is a link between the current state of Russian society and the trauma’s inflicted on Russia in the twentieth century.
Of all mental health conditions alcoholism is most often comorbid with depression; depression itself a complex problem with diverse roots, one of which is inverted anger and rage connected with feelings of impotence and powerlessness. Alcohol serves to temporarily alleviate the symptoms and create feelings of power and control, as when shy people suddenly find a voice and are able to connect with the extrovert aspects of themselves. Alcoholism separates from problem drinking when drinking is no longer merely a means to make reality easier to handle but an attempt to create and live in a different reality altogether. It is therefore perhaps not too fanciful to suggest that from Smolensk to Vladivostok millions are seeking to create another Russia. An attempt of course doomed to failure, to a vicious cycle of elation, remorse and increasingly severe bouts of depression only temporarily relieved once more by short spells of drunken elation. The cycle only broken by an early death. 

IV.

There is a potent passage in the book when Bullough speculates on what kind of Russia might have emerged had the best in Russia not been destroyed by Stalinism. He leaves the question hanging.
What kind of Russia might have emerged had the warped ideology of Marxist/Leninism not consigned the brightest and the best to, to adapt a phrase of Trotsky’s, ‘the dustbin of history.’
There was only one revolution in Russia in 1917, which took place in February. There followed a coup d'Ă©tat in November of the same year in which a small, disciplined party of professional revolutionaries seized power espousing a toxic ideology, a mix of Marxism, wishful thinking and ruthless zeal. Marxist Leninism was a disaster of gargantuan proportions both for the Russian people and then for the whole world. Stalinism was its logical manifestation, Pol Pot its final frenzied conclusion. Millions upon millions of workers, peasants, petty bourgeois, and technocrats were sacrificed on the altar of its deranged vision. The struggle for socialism and equality was irreparably set back as a consequence. 
Germany’s much vaunted de-Nazification was always little more than skin deep, but at least some effort was made to acknowledge there was a serious problem. There was never an equivalent recognition in Russia after the collapse of totalitarian communism.[9] One of the consequences now being that an ex KGB man, who holds Yuri Andropov as a role model, is now head of state.[10]
Putin’s vision is not new, it is the traditional Tsarist vision of an ascendant Russia, which subjugates and dominates its neighbours providing an alternative authoritarian model of social order to that of the decadent democracies of Western Europe and America. To implement this vision he must destroy all domestic opposition and consequently is now extinguishing the last few sources of free expression.

Unfortunately for Putin there is another Russia.

V.

Pussy Riot


On February 21, 2012, five members of the Russian Punk group Pussy Riot staged a performance in Moscow's Cathedral of Christ the Saviour. Their actions were stopped by church security officials. They later turned the performance into a music video entitled "Punk Prayer - Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!" The women said their protest was directed at the Orthodox Church leader's support for Putin during his election campaign.
The mutual embrace of Putin and the Orthodox Church is the least surprising development in contemporary Russia for anyone who knows the history of the country. Orthodoxy and Tsarist rule was indivisible, the Tsar was viewed by the peasantry as a combination of saint and God’s representative on Earth. The Orthodox faith underpinned Tsarist rule. Later, though much less reported, the Church also cozied up to Stalin and the ‘atheist’ Communist state. Father Dmitry was as much the victim of the Orthodox Church, the patriarch of which was a fully-fledged KGB agent, as the KGB. 
Now the Church and Putin have entered into a similar pact, as ‘unholy’ as it is cynical and mutually convenient. It was this that Pussy Riot was drawing attention too.
Pussy Riot on Trial
 The reaction of Putin and the church was as swift as it was cruel and vengeful.  ‘On March 3, 2012, two of the group members, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Maria Alyokhina, were arrested and charged with hooliganism. A third member, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was arrested on March 16. Denied bail, they were held in custody until their trial began in late July. On August 17, 2012, the three members were convicted of "hooliganism motivated by religious hatred", and each was sentenced to two years imprisonment.’[11]
On their release however they refused to be cowed and have continued to defy the Putin machine. They stand in a long line of Russians who have refused to bend, they too represent another Russia.

VI.

Putin’s Plight


Putin has the power to silence the majority of his domestic critics and now possesses a subservient mass media which pumps out the Kremlin propaganda line every hour of the day. He can also gain short term popularity by exploiting the crisis in Ukraine and appealing to Russian chauvinism. But the long term problems of Russian society continue to fester as the economy begins to stagnate and decline following a prolonged period of boom. As many an autocratic ruler has learnt before him Olympic circuses and military adventures only last so long and when whatever plaudits he receives from tweaking the nose of NATO and the EU fade he will be left with the reality of a nation that is deeply sick. His most likely response will be further repression. Should he so respond we can all be grateful for that other Russia?   
   




[4] It is worth noting that it is alleged that Putin is a great admirer of the former Chilean dictator.
[5] Interestingly all those with higher rates were former Eastern Bloc countries. One being Ukraine, which during the Soviet era was seen as little other than a province of Russia. 
[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcohol_consumption_in_Russia
[9] Nor indeed in Bulgaria, with equally dire consequences all too clear to this day.
[10] Andropov was the ex-head of the KGB, who had been heavily involved in crushing the Hungarian Uprising in 1956 and the destruction of the Prague Spring in 1968. HE always pushed for the hardest possible line against dissent. For a brief period he became Soviet President. It  also something of a moot point how much of an  ‘ex’ KGB [now re-branded FSB] Putin actually is.

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