The Russian Totalitarianism. Freedom here and now. Dmitrii Shusharin

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СКАЧАТЬ the publications on the second page of “Zavtra” there was one more:

      “The people and the party are separate”:

      “The party model is useless in solving strategic problems. After all, partisanship is the dominance (sic!) of the part over the whole. The country that is in search of wholeness needs least of all the party fever”

      This was the first warning of United Russia, the ruling party. Those who were familiar with the classic work of Hannah Arendt, got the message: the next step was the creation of a totalitarian movement.

      At the same time, the conflict within the power elite became noticeable. An unprecedented thing happened: the head of one of the security departments, personally close to Putin, came out with criticism of the existing inner estates situation.

      The article of Viktor Cherkesov, head of the Rosnarkokontrol (Drug Control Service), published in Kommersant,48 caused a lot of comments. The conflicts of various special services was discussed, which, in fact, was not news. The article was rightly called “a humble petition”. It became clear that the country is facing a transition to a permanent rule of a man whose name everyone knows. Just calling him the national leader doesn’t do the anointing in one easy step. The question arose how to verbalize the establishment of one-man rule. Enter Cherkesov with his article, outlining the ground rules of Chekism.

      This is not a set of verbal clichés to be used by a national leader in his address to the nation. On the contrary, it is a memo stating that such addresses are superfluous. No national or state idea. Instead of it, a tribalistic narrative.

      According to the author, the main historical mission of the future eternal ruler of Russia is the unity of the Chekist tribe. And it was not called, say, “the backbone of the nation.” Cherkesov’s writers offered him to articulate perfect torture chamber formula: a Chekist hook on which post-Soviet society is hanging. The society is generally perceived as something lifeless, some kind of carcass. And, of course, everything that happened in the early nineties, that is, at the emergence of a new Russian statehood, was presented as a “full-scale catastrophe”.

      Thus, Chekism, in the interpretation of those who prepared this article, and in the presentation of the head of the Rosnarkontrol, is an anti-state ideology. This is not even a concept of a corporate state. This, I repeat once again, is a tribalistic way of thinking.

      The worldview and the value system of these people developed back in the seventies, when Viktor Cherkesov was compelled to call himself a “soldier of the party”, sending Leningrad writers to the camps. The Chekist tribe was already sick and tired by the fact that it was forced to be in service of the party officials. And now it seems to have adapted the state for its needs. It remains to be totally incapacitated and then destroyed. But the main thing is how the carve-up will be carried out.

      Cherkesov’s writers offered him the opposition of soldiers and merchants as the main thesis of the article. It’s risky, of course, to throw stones at your glass house cohabitants. The anti-drug service entrusted to Cherkesov the control of the chemical industry and ensured that the confiscated stuff was kept at his agency’s disposal. But this is just a side issue. The main thing is something the commentators never mentioned.

      The article poses a fundamental question about how the emerging political regime will function. It’s not about how to deal with society – a shapeless carcass hanging on a hook at your unbridled disposal. Chekizm implies that members of the tribe must accept humiliation, forget about self-esteem, be able to set-up and double-cross their own. Therefore, no use to explain the appearance of the article as a response to the offending actions of a competing special service. Everything was much more serious.

      The main issue was the right to use force. Viktor Cherkesov did not like the fact that there is no monopoly on repression. Different groups within the tribe of the masters were allowed to conduct internecine wars. But this, according to the head of the Federal Drug Control Service, shouldn’t be that way. And he was right: the regime of one-man power can be sustainable if repressions are carried out only by one and only the political center. Viktor Cherkesov did not ask to bring to heel his rivals, and even less he cared to admonish them. His recommendations to the chief of the Chekist tribe included radical change of the situation: stop intra-tribal feuds and become the only source of fear and violence. Not directly, of course, but outlining a gloomy picture of the internal destruction of the corporation, which allowed that the squabbles between its leaders became the subject of public discussion.

      And all this was proposed to be implemented by Putin. By the end of 2007, the main question was the third presidential term of the incumbent president. Then came the buzzword “Putin’s plan.” This plan, of course, had one goal – perpetual rule… But the question is whose? Let’s just say: so far Putin is the one. For that time being and for now, too.

      Eight years of president’s staff policy have been a testimony of his dependence on the “narrow circle of limited persons”. Under Stalin or Brezhnev, the first secretary of the Chukotka Obkom would never live in London buying yachts and football clubs. The details of Putin’s plan – imaginary, genuine, explicit, secret – were the subject of constant discussion. But only details were discussed. Meanwhile, there was no answer to the main question: what is the reason for the success of a person who has held power for eight years and, in the end, failed on all reasonable criteria? Because the propaganda hysteria was a sure sign of the failure. Having built propaganda on opposing his own rule to the nineties, Vladimir Putin could not do what Boris Yeltsin did: the resignation of the first Russian president from power was not accompanied by a crisis. He created a viable state and left an effective successor. Nothing fell apart as a result of his exit.

      The proponents of Putin’s indefinite rule (makes no difference – president or national leader) built their propaganda on the presumption that without him everything would collapse. But there is no worse justification for any leader, whether it’s the president of a country or the director of a club.

      In Russia, however, the performance criteria for politicians and managers, adopted in the civilized world, have been useless long ago. This explains what happened eight years before, what Putin’s plan was aimed at and what is behind his success and popularity. The thing is that Putin was absolutely adequate not to social or political demand, but national. He’s been acting and operating in the paradigm that, from about the beginning of the nineteenth century, defines Russian national and state self-identification. Since that time, Russia has positioned itself as a state consolidating itself in opposing the formation of nations both within and outside the empire.

      Power – in full harmony with the people – sought to form an anti-nation that defines itself and exists only in opposing the whole world. The inevitability of existence in this world complicated the movement towards the goal, and sometimes stopped it. A very long stop began with perestroika. Everything was fine before, Andropov shot down the South Korean Boeing, and Chernenko boycotted the 1984 Olympics.

      That was the time point of destination to which Putin’s planned to bring Russia back. Not only the nineties were declared a historical nightmare. There was a very obvious tendency to abandon the main achievement of the eighties, from the beginning of a new historical era of new thinking in foreign policy, openness and disarmament.

      In the preceding years attempts were still being made to present the developing regime as a specific form of a democratic system. So came the catchphrase “sovereign democracy.” But in practice it turned out to be a home-grown legitimacy disregarding СКАЧАТЬ