Putin destroyed Russian society – Maxim Trudolyubov

In the years of Vladimir Putin’s presidency, the Russian leadership waged a fierce struggle against the public space. Political administrators (administrators, mind you, because no one has ever elected them) have persecuted all forms of freedom and have ousted activists, politicians and journalists who had an independent position. Their place was occupied by figures whose job it was to create a semblance of reality. The leaders of the presidential administration have pledged to transform any autonomous party, group or structure into artificial and controlled “cells”.

Everything that was authentic was branded as different, foreign, extremist and even “terrorist”. It is worth remembering the civic network created by Alexej Navalnyj: an organization aimed at the political and non-violent struggle against the regime and, for this very reason, qualified as a criminal.

The work of destruction has racked up impressive successes. However, let us not forget that these “successes” have been achieved through murders, pressures and expulsions of people from the country. The faceless administrators, who at various times worked under the leadership of the political leaders of the Kremlin (Vladislav Surkov, Vjačeslav Volodin, Sergej Kirienko), made a clean sweep in close collaboration with the special services. The results of this activity are tremendous.

A distorted alternate reality
We remember the jailed activists. We think of those who have been forced to leave the country and those who have abandoned public activity after having assessed all the risks associated with it. Let’s not forget the murdered politicians, journalists and public figures and whoever was behind them.

Putin’s administrators tried to manage not only civil society, but also the world of sport. The logic of fair competition was violated: the leader evidently did not believe in it. Russian athletes had to be better than everyone else, at any cost. Therefore the competition has been replaced by a doping program aimed at setting up a resounding success for the benefit of the leader. The 2014 Winter Olympics became a blueprint for a guaranteed victory. This management method was eventually exposed by a deserter, the former head of the anti-doping laboratory in Moscow, Grigorij Rodchenkov. Thanks to him we have a detailed picture of this shameful case.

But creating a reality with criminal methods is difficult. The machinations with which Putin aspired to build a ghostly alternative to a living society have turned out to be a real failure. After all, those who transformed us into “others” (“strangers” or “unwanted”) never created anything.
Their alternate reality turned out to be a distorted mirror of the real public space: clowns instead of politicians, imitations instead of real civil society organizations, propagandists instead of journalists and analysts.

It was easy to live with it: for clowns you could not vote, you could not read false analyzes, journalists like Dmitry Kiselev and Vladimir Solovev could not listen to them because, after all, it was clear that they were not standing alone. They are bad actors, they read someone else’s text, tools of a crude political game. As soon as the authorities’ grip was released, this whole building would collapse. The cause of this weakening, I too thought, could be some kind of natural process: an economic crisis, a decrease in the leader’s popularity, a generational change in power.

The crisis would have wiped out the artificial characters: those so-called politicians and journalists would have simply evaporated because, like machines, they only worked if powered by the state system. Russian citizens would suddenly break free from the illusion and watch the building crumble. As in the ending of Alice in Wonderland the king, queen, knights and judges suddenly turn out to be just a deck of cards. Or the ending of Call for a beheading by Nabokov: “A swirling wind lifted and carried away dust, rags, painted splinters, small fragments of gilded plaster, cardboard bricks…”.

A mentality that can kill
But today rockets, bullets and bombs are killing Ukrainians and Russians for real. The whirlwind that crosses the land of Ukraine today is completely real and the debris and bricks are debris and concrete bricks. Not taking Putin’s alternate reality seriously was a widespread and tragic mistake, which I too made. The virtual feeling of this policy was deceptive. In the end the staging did not dissolve in gilded plaster, the stones did not become cardboard. It was exactly the opposite: the rough theatrical scenario, which nourished those who moved there, materialized and transformed into death and suffering.

I am aware of the profound inconsistency of my attempts to bring it down, when it was still possible, before the war. I was sure they would collapse on their own.

Believing that life, conscience, talent and recognition can be bought and sold is a harmful and despicable worldview. And this is not an innocent mistake. Those who, at a certain point, became convinced that everything is sold and bought, that society can be occupied, subjugated and that in its place he could create his own reality, financed by him, brought not only his country but the whole world to catastrophe.

This person not only believed in his reality, which he financed, but also transformed it into a pretext to act in the world. It is now clear that his plan for a brief military operation against a brother country was based on a fiction he built. He evidently expected that the use of force by the “real” state – that is, his own – would lead to the instantaneous collapse of the “false” Ukrainian state entity. He seemed to believe that his fictitious “approval rating” would turn into real support from Russian society.

He thought that everyone would believe the story of the Ukrainian “fascists” and his mission as a liberator. He probably assumed, surrounded and advised by his valets, that Russia was ready to face war and sanctions.
Putin is convinced that Ukrainian society is the same kind of staging in which he, through murders and threats, transformed his Russian society.

He thought that the Ukrainians – from simple soldiers on the battlefield to the top of the country he hated – would turn into a deck of cards as in Alice and that they would recognize his authority. Who will ever be the president of Ukraine and the mayor of Kiev, if not a former comedian and a former boxer? He really had to seriously believe that he had a psychological and moral advantage over today’s Ukraine and the entire democratic world. His distorted world view prevented him from realizing that all of his “enormous weight” was his jesters who invented him. For many years, his television and its media have had only one customer and one true viewer: him. He poisoned himself with his own lies as him.

Over no one has the slightest moral superiority. Only in military strength does he have an advantage. But for this advantage to turn into victory, a clear mission, readiness and a sense of justice are needed. In this war there is a clear mission, readiness and a sense of rightness, but only on the part of the Ukrainian state and people.

Rebuilding a social system
Perhaps now Putin is faced with a choice: to use or not to use all the destructive weapons he has at his disposal? This will bring more death and more suffering. And it won’t change anything at all.

His war with reality was to remain a personal matter. If you want to live in resentment and anger towards the whole world, go for it. But he forced his presence on the Russian people by force, manipulation and lies. For many years he has achieved very high “approval ratings” with all the means available to him. By binding Russian society to himself by force and threats, he has debased the identity of his people, who once, together with the Ukrainians, fought in a common and just war.

He poisoned not only himself, but Russia as well. He has brought about the contempt with which everyone in the world will look not only at him, but also at us, Russians and citizens of the Russian Federation. For many years to come we will not be able to convince the world that “we are not like that”, that “this is not us”. For many years to come – after Putin – we will have to rebuild a social system in Russia, free from political fiction and manipulation.

Russia has already lost this war, morally, even by just starting it. Regardless of the events on the battlefields, it has lost as a political, economic and social entity, as a country, as a part of the world. Once with the word war – without specifications – we referred to the great patriotic war (ie the second world war). Now this word has a different meaning. A war without qualifications or adjectives is the war that he unleashed and that made me and all the Russians responsible for that catastrophe.

(Translation by Alessandra Bertuccelli)