LITMIR.BIZ

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Guys”) movement or similar pro-Kremlin youth organizations and the opposition is a thing of the past. Nashi was replaced by new organizations: less centralized, not so obviously connected with the authorities, but acting with its tacit approval. The pro-government attackers “Nascists” (in the oppositionists’ lingo) have been replaced with Nodovtsy (National Liberation Movement) and the “anti-Maidan” crowd.

      According to the CEPR report, almost two-thirds of cases of violence against the opposition are carried out by direct physical impact. Attackers often use weapons that not only can cause severe damage to health, but also kill: knives, brass knuckles, clubs, iron bars, pipes, etc. Sometimes they resort to firearms and traumatic weapons.

      In addition to the murder of Boris Nemtsov in 2012—2016, there were several more attacks on the opposition with letal outcome.

      Igor Sapatov, who fought against abuse of protected environmental zones, was shot dead in July 2013 in the Kamsk-Ustinsky district of Tatarstan. In November 2013, in Nizhny Novgorod, the oppositionist Nikolai Savinov was beaten to death. On February 9, 2012, the anti-fascist Nikita Kalin, a member of the Fair Elections movement, was killed in Samara.

      Victims of violence are often seriously injured. For example, in April 2015, during the elections in Balashikha, Stanislav Pozdnyakov and Dmitry Nesterov the Golos (Russian word both for Vote and Voice) observers were beaten by eight unknown persons. The attack occurred after the ballot stuffing was found out by the observers. Folowing the attack, Pozdnyakov had his spleen surgically removed. In June 2015, in Magadan, unidentified men attacked Navalny’s supporter Dmitri Taralov and knocked his teeth out. Approximately 10—15% of cases of attack entail damage and destruction of property: burned cars, broken windows, etc. Another 20% of cases are associated with intimidation, insults, and lesser physical effects.

      About 35% of all recorded attacks on the opposition occurred in Moscow or St. Petersburg, the rest in the regions. In St. Petersburg, two peaks of violence were identified: in 2014 and 2016. In 2014 it was due to the election and aggravated situation in Ukraine; and in 2016 following the publication of a blacklist of Whoiswho social network users.

      Since most of the attacks are carried out by unknown persons and outside of public places, the police cannot prevent these incidents for objective reasons. However, when an attack occurs in public places or directly under police supervision (for example, in protest actions), law enforcement officers often turn a blind eye to the actions of obvious provocateurs.

      CEPR experts note that often in the event of conflicts at public events, the police detain representatives of both sides of the conflict. And sometimes, as a result, the attackers who provoked the conflict are quickly released, but it is the victims of the attack who are accused of wrongdoing.

      As noted in the CEPR report, cases of attacks on oppositionists are usually qualified as hooliganism or as violence with no specific motive of hatred, even when the facts indicate it. In most cases, if the legal proceedings are initiated, the investigation is delayed, and the responsibility for the attack shifted entirely on the executors, but not the organizers.

      When prosecuting oppositionists themselves, investigators, in their turn, often bring cases under extremist articles, even in controversial circumstances. As a result, the extremist articles work in a one-way fashion22.

      The build-up of institutional and extra-institutional repressions is a consequence of planned, systematic and thought-out lawmaking, comparable to Hitler’s. Hitler swiftly passed laws on racial purity, Putin has been forming a system of laws securing inviolability and irremovability of power gradually and deliberately. Nuremberg’s laws isolated part of the population from politics on the basis of race. Putin’s laws isolate the entire population denying it all participation in power. This is akin racism, but racism applied socially and indiscriminately. Like Hitler’s policy, the new order is being established in the name of the nation. As a direct appeal to the masses, the new totalitarian movement is established: the All-Russian People’s Front, designed to gradually replace the party system.

      The crude interpretation of totalitarianism comes down to the total control of the state over all aspects of society. However, it is the state in its positive meaning that suffers losses. The state submits itself to a complete deterioration of its most important functions, as can be seen in today’s Russia. Totalitarianism is not the nationalization of all aspects of life, but the destruction of a democratic, new European state. Here are the Russian examples of this phenomenon:

      Cheka/KGB and the successors have always been and remain both a punitive and myth-generating bodies. The organization is busy inventing and manufacturing monsters, foes, and demons for their demonstrative punishment.

      The army is the mechanism of initiation, leveling of the individual and an institution of forced labor. This refers to the conscription part of the army. But the hired troops leading a hybrid war are difficult to call an army. The so-called “polite people” are fighting without documents and insignia, and when captured, they declare themselves retirees. And the decorated ones who wear epaulettes, are fighting for the irremovability and solid permanence of the people in power who made the state their property.

      Education is designed to prevent the development of educated people. In the past, similarly worked the campaign of the elimination of illiteracy in conditions of total censorship.

      Health care is always ready to rid society of populations deemed to be a burden, which is what is happening now. A detailed and temporarily deferred draft law on euthanasia was ready in 200723.

      It goes without saying that the courts are subservient tools. Previously they worked to replenish the number of slaves. Now they help in asset-grabbing and political terror.

      Penitentiary system is the habitat and breeding ground for replenishment of the underworld. It is used to be the economic commissariat and now one of the state corporations.

      You can go on down the list. But the main thing here is the one formulated by Hannah Arendt: the state is destroyed by totalitarianism as a representative of the interests of all social groups. “All” is the key word here.

      And it happens on the basis of consensus, I would add. This consensus leads to the conclusion that it is impossible to reduce totalitarianism to a single act of demolition. Demolition is the mopping-up of the construction site. Then a new structure is to be built. Not lack of culture, but a different culture, not immorality, but a new morality. Not lack of spirituality, but a new spirituality.

      Which means that to expect a stagnation of Putinism is a great misconception. It’s an exact opposite phenomenon. Putin does not return the country to Brezhnev era, that is, to a developed totalitarianism, but to Stalin time, to an early and very dynamic stage of totalitarianism.

      Stagnation means only where development is prohibited or stalled itself. In all other respects constant changes and innovations are happening: in the legislation, property redistribution, personnel policy. After all, the Gorbachev coined term “stagnation” is not really adequate definition. Under Brezhnev, there was social development, which gave rise to perestroika. And it is precisely this development that Putin, like Stalin, will not allow.

      The Russian public has one dream that cannot come true. Some people admit, and some do not, that most would like to live in glorious Brezhnev times. But this is hardly possible.

      Brezhnev’s stability and prosperity is the GULAG transfigured. Nobody was going to create Belle époque on the basis of petrodollars. There is no economic and, what is more important, social base for the new belle époque. Those social strata that have formed over the past thirty years are subject to elimination, if not physical, but in all other aspects of their social existence, proprietary, morally, and legally. Belle Époque is for the new generations.

      The Brezhnev era is exactly the opposite of Stalin’s, it was Khrushchev’s continuation. Contrary to the common

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