RUSSIAN WORLD The alternative forces of Russia

There are not only exalted warriors, autocephalous and schismatic religious hierarchs and hosts of diversand saboteurs who- + explosive drones. There are men and women, families and children, believers and non-believers who are not interested in establishing the borders of nations and peoples, but in living in peace in their own land, with their own faith.

The drone attacks against the Moscow palaces a few days ago have given the Russian-Ukrainian conflict a much more convulsive and contradictory movement, after months of sterile and tragic bombings and endless repetitions of empty and bombastic propaganda. One wonders if the time has come for a counter-offensive or an internal revolt in Russia or even a plot by the powers that be, to impose a definitive level of total war. As often happens in the Kremlin, the variants overlap and get confused, opening up alternative scenarios that are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Ukraine is one step away from fulfilling its destiny and becoming a full member of the international community, the Western alliance and Europe. The strength and prestige that its institutions, its army and the popular spirit have acquired encourage it to seek a solution to the war that forces Russia to withdraw into its isolation and stop attacking its neighbors with its imperial dreams. That is why counterattack forces seem to be moving, for now quite indefinite, in search of the neuralgic point on which action must be taken to disperse the ranks of the enemy, which until now have seemed much superior in number and firepower.

At the same time, Russian supporters of Ukraine are beginning to make their way, who from outside and inside Russia are undertaking various actions, from guerrilla incursions in the Belgorod region to the carousel of drones against Moscow and other symbolic cities, trying to make the apparatus nervous. Kremlin political and military These “partisans” act both as counterpoint and accompaniment to the “musicians” of private groups, a name derived from the lyrical title of Prigozhin’s “Wagner”, the main institution of “alternative power” in Russia at the moment. . Spoilers like Ilja Ponomarev, a Russian opposition politician who organizes these raids from abroad, rule out allying with mercenaries, but the effect ends up being the same: weakening the credibility of the Putin regime.

There is no shortage of hypotheses of a machination concocted directly by the Kremlin, or by the security organs that depend on it, for which sowing panic in the population could help to radicalize the situation, justifying a state of war and a general mobilization that Otherwise, it would provoke much more negative reactions. The drones that miss the Kremlin dome by a few centimeters, or that brush the roofs of the houses of the powerful in Rublevo – the area on the outskirts of Moscow where political leaders have lived since Soviet times – and that later end up destroying some buildings inside are more anonymous, all this suggests a farce organized to get advantages. On the other hand, Putin’s rise to power that began in the late 1990s has repeatedly been accompanied by real and supposed tragedies, justifying in each case a broader and more forceful use of force, political and military, or even religious. .

These different scenarios evoke contrasts and changes of position that are characteristic of ancient and modern Russia, a country that has always oscillated between openings and betrayals, self-destruction and rebirth, alliances and exclusions within and outside its vast territories. As much as Putin’s regime may evoke the granite solidity of Stalinism, the ideological madness of Nazism or the impenetrability of Maoism, it remains a Russian system, capable of sinking into its own contradictions, as it did during the Soviet years.

One of the main contradictions, which usually arises in “dark” periods, is the sudden appearance on the scene of quite unlikely and destabilizing figures, who in Russian respond to the title of samozvantsy, “self-proclaimed”, characters who attribute or claim a decisive role. outside of all institutions and on behalf of all the people. No one could have foreseen that Putin’s war in Ukraine, so similar to Soviet-era “brotherly invasions” in Poland, East Germany, Hungary or Czechoslovakia, would give so much space to an oligarch “cook” with his own army. Perhaps more predictable was the self-glorification of the Chechen leader Kadyrov, who is anyway another samozvanets product of the tumultuous war in Grozny at the turn of the millennium, thanks to which emerged from the post-Soviet fog precisely the ominous and indecipherable figure of Putin. In recent days Prigozhin has made a lecture tour throughout Russia: he has already spoken in Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Nizhny Novgorod and Vladivostok to present the project “Wagner. Second Front”, intended for the patriotic education of the youth but also for the truthful account of the war, according to which “if we want to win, we must now announce the general mobilization”, unearthing the planned economy and the death penalty. It is not clear to what extent his initiatives are in line with or alternative to the Kremlin line, nor are Kadyrov’s changing statements, which wink at the possible independence of the Caucasus and at the same time agree to send his “exterminators” – the Chechen militiamen known as kadyrovtsy – to replace Prigozhin’s “musicians” in the Bakhmut/Artemovsk area which they have abandoned.

One of the main historical episodes of this tragicomedy of “populist” power – which is also so fashionable in our time throughout the world – is the rise of the first Cossack hetaman, Bogdan Khmel’nitsky, in the middle of the 17th century, who fact was the founder of Ukraine. The son of Polish nobles, he studied in Lviv with the Jesuits, who made him convert to Catholicism although he later quietly returned to Orthodoxy, as often happened with important Russian ecclesiastical figures. Bogdan later participated in the wars against the Turks, where he met these “free” warriors, the Cossacks, who defended their homeland from the Zaporozhe region – which for them meant the possibility of remaining independent from any power. Together with the Khmel’nitsky Cossacks, he even participated in the siege of Dunkirk, supporting Cardinal Mazarin in the war between the French and Spanish. He made a career at the court of the Polish King Ladislaus IV and later led the revolt of the Cossacks against him, after the betrayals and intrigues that had expelled him from the circles of power. In the end he placed himself under the protection of the Tsar of Moscow, Alexei, in order to assure the Cossacks more extensive free territories, called “Ukrainians” because they were “on the borders” of the empire. Thus Ukraine was born, as a field of dispute between Russia and Poland, East and West, and the Cossacks remained as “alternative” forces on both sides.

Just recently, in the Ukrainian region of Zaporozhye occupied by the Russians, a private group of soldiers descended from the region’s Cossacks has been formed, called Volja aba smert, “Freedom or Death”, whose members imitate the ancient images of their ancestors, with rings in their ears and long smoking pipes. At first with improvised weapons, and now equipped with automatic weapons and grenades “intended for Russia”. The myth of the Cossacks has given rise to the first form of “dissidence”, another dimension that has apparently been stifled in Russia today but in reality continues to regenerate itself. As in Soviet times, there is an important difference between the dissident, the one who openly rejects the current regime, and “the one who thinks differently”, the inakomysljaščij who does not publicly express his ideas, not only to avoid repression but also to “not give satisfaction” to those outside. If dissidents like Navalni or Kara-Murza languish in concentration camps, with few supporters at home and many in exile, in reality there is no lack of generalized feelings and opinions among the population, which are not he wants war but at the same time he also doesn’t want to give in to the Americans.

To the “free spirit” of the Cossacks, Ukrainians and Russians, was added, also in the mid-17th century, another form of dissidence that has always been present in the Russian world: the religious pride of those who feel above and beyond. of the official hierarchies. Thus began the schism of the Old Believers who, instead of rebelling, set themselves on fire in spectacular bonfires in the squares and on the banks of the rivers so as not to submit to the “Westernizing” liturgical reforms of Patriarch Nikon, who sought to restore the Greek roots of Slavic devotion. Today the Russian clergy and faithful are forced to support the war with special prayers and litanies, and even with devotion to icons, but in reality there are many priests, monks and simple parishioners who go to church or make long pilgrimages to the sanctuaries of the country to ask God to restore peace.

In March 2022, three hundred Russian Orthodox priests signed an anti-war letter. Several of them have been suspended or disbarred, some even arrested and convicted. Many continue to celebrate in silence as “partisans of the spirit against war” – as some anonymously told news agencies – choosing different litanies or just silence, and followed by faithful who are often bewildered, but always eager for peace. In Russia and the Ukraine there are not only hotheaded warriors, autocephalous and schismatic religious hierarchs, hosts of diversanty and saboteurs who launch explosive drones. There are men and women, families and children, believers and non-believers who are not interested in establishing the borders of nations and peoples, but rather living in peace in their own land, with their own faith.

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