RUSSIAN WORLD The political apathy of Russians in the midst of wars and attacks

One of the consequences of the Krokus City Hall massacre perpetrated by ISIS-Khorasan terrorists, beyond the resurgence of intolerance towards Central Asian immigrants spread throughout Russia, is that the Russian population has sunk even further into apathy and depression that has caused the loss of all hope in a future of normal relations with the entire world due to the war, and the uncertainty in the internal coexistence itself, increasingly subjected to repression from above and now also to the attacks and dangers in places of mass concentration. On April 11, a Central Asian man's attempt to blow up a Moscow synagogue was narrowly avoided.

The reaction of the Russians to the invasion that began on February 24, 2022 had already been characterized by a distancing from politics, as if the matter concerned only “the high command” who evidently “will have their reasons” for taking such measures. radicals. At that time, in addition, skepticism and indifference towards everything that was happening in the world and within the country were already strongly fueled by the two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, which was largely considered a “global conspiracy.” decided by some dark power, in the United States or Europe, to take over the consciences of the most defenseless people. And this persecution complex has remained deeply rooted in the souls of Russians, as well as many other peoples.

Today the “ostrich policy” is not justified only by the desire to preserve one's own private space, because war already penetrates deeply into life and the world of information, with all the conditions of official propaganda on the one hand and of universal condemnation by the other. The director of the Levada-centr, Russia's main sociological research institute, Denis Volkov, explains in the column signal of Medusa that “only 10% of Russians are actively interested in politics, and war represents a superpoliticization of a minority compared to the depoliticization of the masses.” The reaction to the dramatic problems of society and foreign relations is the Russian phrase davaite nie ob etom“let's not talk about that,” to protect oneself and avoid any form of repression, especially due to the possibility of being betrayed by someone around you, because you cannot say “I don't know anything” or “I don't understand any of those things.” “, given that the tragedies are already before everyone's eyes.

On the other hand, indifference and denial are also a consequence of the social conflicts of the Yeltsin decade, which destroyed the sense of “mutual trust” that remained from the Soviet legacy, at least in the younger generations. The politics of the “liberal world” was seen as “a dirty thing”, without ideologies or principles with which to identify, an instrument of the powerful and the most unscrupulous oligarchs. Still according to sociologists, Russians in the post-Soviet era are increasingly less willing to trust even friends and acquaintances, and on this basis Putin's “vertical of power” has been built: everyone minding their own business, that we take charge of public affairs on behalf of everyone, and as for the rest of the world, it is better not to trust at all. Mutual trust grows in moments of crisis, when one is afraid of not being able to cope alone, feels dependent on others and looks for someone who inspires confidence; One closes oneself to the world and proclaims that all problems are solved “from above”, and the need to look at what is happening around becomes increasingly diluted.

The main theorist of the “sociology of everyday life”, the Polish Piotr Sztompka, explains that “only trust allows us to overcome the frustration of not being able to deal with social problems”, but all research shows that in the last thirty years Only 30% of Russians are willing to trust people outside their increasingly narrow circle of family and friends, and the percentage fell even further between 2018 and 2020, after the reform that raised the retirement age, with which also collapsed certainty about material aid from the State, not to mention the subsequent years of pandemic and war. Public declarations of loyalty to the head of state, such as those during Putin's electoral plebiscite on March 17, or those addressed to the Army and the security services, actually seem like a smokescreen to hide the decision not to believe in anyone. , to avoid any type of involvement or conflict in daily life. It is better to hurry to pay tribute to the tsar, especially after tragedies like the death of the latest dissident Alexei Navalny, before someone takes it directly to us.

The truth is that mutual distrust is now the norm of Russian social life, which is evident in the hypocritical consensus within and, speculatively, in the impossibility of building an agreement between Russians living outside the country, who never achieve form a compact pole of opposition, as the Belarusians have proven capable of doing. On the other hand, the ideological solidarity of the Soviet era has been replaced by the mirage of personal success in the era of the oligarchs, later embodied by the autocracy of the supreme oligarch in the new millennium. Even in the Orthodox Church, patriarchal dictatorship has been imposed, in a tradition that should be predominantly “conciliar”, but the theological divinost has been replaced by the political-ideological one represented by the figure of Kirill Gundjaev, the ecclesiastical alter ego of Tsar Vladimir V. The recent Nakaza document proclaiming the holy war, was spread as religious dogma, despite being a new ideological delirium that should have nothing to do with the Church, although it was presented by the patriarch in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow, in the shadow of the Kremlin.

The apotheosis of apathy is demonstrated in the feigned enthusiasm for “traditional moral and religious values”, which everyone celebrates and no one practices, from the “natural” family to the defense of unborn life, including the education of children. , which is intended to be taught from kindergarten to launch attack drones against the enemy. The false patriotic collectivism is actually resolved in the most cynical and radical individualism, much more than in the digital narcissism of Western societies: almost no one goes to church in Russia, except when they have their eggs and eggs blessed in the yard. he kulič, the little Easter sweet bread, an apotropaic gesture similar to that of going to vote for Putin. Another important sociologist, Grigory Judin, defines Russian society as a “people a la carte”: all communists and then all Orthodox, all pacifists and then all warmongers, depending on what is imposed from above, all homophobic and traditionalists in a country where The most popular entertainment is the sexy bars and night shows of all kinds, which today the police ostensibly close (one in a hundred) to promote the “patriotic conversion” of the people.

“Let's not talk about this”, that is, about war and mobilization, which must be left only for the chernotathe “black woman” as Caucasians are called in Russian slang, with whom the asiaty – the minor peoples of Siberia -, criminals and even politicians accused of corruption and other crimes, who spend a few weeks on the Ukrainian front to regain their virginity. Due to the war, sanctions came, which were supposed to sink the Russian economy, although it continues to resist, and if French wine does not arrive, we drink Georgian, and instead of the Maremma or the Côte d'Azur, we go on vacation to Antalya or Bali.

Undoubtedly, economic indicators clearly demonstrate that Russia is heading towards a new zastoj, a Brezhnevian-like economic “stagnation.” What Putin magnifies as “the fifth economy in the world and the first in Europe” has not actually grown for a decade and the prospects are far from rosy, with the loss of Western markets and the enormous expenses to continue the war in all latitudes. Then we will have to make do, as when there was never a lack of salami and vodka in Brezhnev's government, although it will not be easy for a population already accustomed to unbridled luxury, especially in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the metropolises that now live immersed in the terror of the Tajik aggressors. And the cuts in social spending are being felt more and more, from the unheated frosts of the ending winter, to the undammed and unprotected floods at the bottom of the Urals, for which the evil Kazakhs are blamed for not having emptied the wells in time, another good reason to organize as soon as possible a new “special military operation” to put all the vassals of Central Asia in order.

An Italian singer-songwriter who died prematurely, Francesco Puccioni, whose stage name was Mike Francis, released his first album in 1984, Let's Not Talk About It, from the “disco-funky” musical genre. It also achieved some success in the Soviet Union, where the entire country stopped to watch recorded episodes of the San Remo Festival and adored Italian singers, some of whom still grace the stages of Putin's Russia. “Let's not talk about that”, at that time he expressed the desire to forget the conflicts of the years of lead to start enjoying life, and in Russia the desire to put an end to the totalitarian system to which unfortunately it has returned today began to spread. . The world is collapsing, wars multiply, even the waters destroy everything as in a new universal flood; But this, in Russia and in many other places in the world, is better not to talk about.

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