My Dear Friend!
This time around – some political philosophy.
People have often repeated the words by Niccolò Machiavelli that long-term tyranny corrupts human nature and that peoples deprived of liberty for more than seventy years when gaining liberty by deed or fortune are unable to hold it and soon get back under the power of tyranny again.
We did not benefit from the lesson and we hate to regard ourselves as “corrupted nature”. We also wonder why the post-soviet countries on gaining the ability for the democratic development successively moved towards the “new” type democracies – from the familial democracy of Azerbaijan and the Turkmenian Khanate to the governed democracy in Russia.
There is no new thing under the sun! Doesn’t the new development appear a return to the forms of governing traditional for these territories with inevitable degradation instead of moving forward? However, it’s almost intolerable to admit that. Because such admission would deprive people of their hope and they are the people who sincerely want changes and are ready to make a considerable sacrifice to lead their new-old countries out of a historical deadlock.
The governor has to admit that he does not express the will of the people but expresses his own illusionary representations of what this will is. In addition, one may champion illusions and fictions only after having lost the touch with reality. However, if we take an unbiased cynical look we may say:
Democratic changes in all of the post-soviet countries may come into being only in consequence of non-democratic actions. Restitution of the rule of law is only possible through lawlessness.
My God, that what I have written reminds me of the Marxist dialectics that I hate so much!
If Russia has returned to its traditional ways of development then what does Putin have to do with it? What has he done to it?
This is the continuation of reflections – they go side by side with Machiavelli – regarding the path of Russia that returned into the fold of autocracy.
Naturally, “introduction of one-track mindedness in Russia” does not mean complete agreement of the population with the ruling establishment – from the bottom of the pyramid to its bright top – with the relative conformability of those who have authority, rely on authority and crave for authority handouts and with the one-track mindedness of those who can influence things.
The rest are relatively free since they do not matter. “Proles and animals are free” as Orwell wrote in his famous anti-utopia. It is an interesting law – the less freedom you have the more you weigh.
If we bring this principle to a head, it will appear that the leader has no liberty (‘the Tsar’s heart is in God’s hand’. Or in somebody else’s).
Russian society differs from the classical totalitarian society only in “selectivity of oppression”. Considering that today “for us the most important of all arts is the TV “, the oppression in this field is particularly strong. The more influential the channel, the stronger the displacement energy. Although the benefits are high here.
EU sanctions against TV journalists are the highest appreciation of their services in the construction of neo-authoritarian Russia.
Serious literature has no essential effect whatsoever that is why it is free – for the time being.
The authority only acts as a catalyst of oppression of free literature speech. As the Soviet tradition demands it is the inside writers’ job. All it takes is to set up a feeder and fill it with shorts.
Yours,
Borya