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Wladimir Putin. (Archive image) © Eraldo Peres/AP/dpa
Staying silent about the Ukraine war is no longer enough: Russia is demanding that its citizens conform with the state. Even supporters of the war are in Putin’s sights.
Russia falls back into its totalitarian past.Wladimir Putin increasingly calls for the total conformity of the individual with the state.Russia’s population can fall out of favor with the slightest dissent.This article is available in German for the first time – the magazine first published it on August 1, 2023 Foreign Policy.
Moscow – A month after the failed mutiny of the head of the Wagner group, Yevgeny Prigoschin, Russia is well on its way from authoritarian control to totalitarian repression. As in the old days of the Soviet Union, rumors are circulating in Moscow about purges at the top of the military. Elsewhere, too, the machinery of state repression is turning faster and faster. The Russian authorities are casting an ever-widening net after supposed internal enemies.
Many of the most vocal anti-war activists are already dead, imprisoned or exiled. The security services are now targeting even slight signs of dissent. Last week they arrested Marxist academic Boris Kagarlitsky and accused him of “promoting extremism”.
His alleged crime: In a Telegram post he wrote in October 2022, following Ukraine’s first attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge linking Russia with occupied Crimea, Kagarlitsky called the attack “understandable” from purely military point of view. So even a neutral, objective assessment is now a crime.
Long prison sentences for unpleasant statements about the Ukraine war
Russians from all walks of life today face lengthy prison sentences or hard labor for something as trivial as posting on social media. Nikita Tushkanov, a history teacher in Mikun, a town in the northern Komi Republic, was sentenced to five and a half years in a labor camp. He had described the bridge explosion as a “birthday present for Putler”, using a neologism of “Putin” and “Hitler” that was widespread on social media.
Even private conversations are suspicious, as former police officer Sergey Klokov found out when he was sentenced to seven years in prison. He had spoken to Ukrainian acquaintances on the phone about the crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine.
Ordinary Russians have been able to express their opinions – that’s over
Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has long been an authoritarian state. However, the prosecution has mainly focused on opposition politicians and activists, from assassinated opposition politician Boris Nemtsov to imprisoned anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny.
Even after tough new censorship laws were passed early in the Ukraine war harsh prison sentences were not very common. They were mostly used as exemplary punishments for prominent dissidents. These included Ilya Yashin, an opposition politician who oversaw the massacre of Russian soldiers in the Ukrainian Butcha in a series of social media posts. So far, however, ordinary Russians have still had ample opportunities to speak their minds – among themselves, on social media, or at the occasional small-scale political protest.
Even sending an emoji can be dangerous in Russia
But recently, Russia has shed its totalitarian mask and has become less and less tolerant of dissent of any kind. Not only is the prosecution of dissent now official — with new laws expressly forbidding any criticism of the so-called special military operation in Ukraine. But also its scope has considerably expanded.
The victims are increasing numbers of ordinary Russians, and the offense can be as small as posting an affirmative emoji to a war-critical social media post. Similar to 20th-century European totalitarianism, children today are both state informers and victims of oppression: some children have reported on their teachers and parents and have been denounced by their classmates or teachers. Some were also separated from their parents, who were arrested for political activism.
Russia falls back into the communist past – schools militarized
In another throwback to the communist past Russian schools will be militarized. State media recently reported that children will soon begin basic military training, including training to become unmanned aerial vehicle pilots.
There are even reports of forced labor in drone factories using students from a local technical school in Alabuga, Tatarstan. State propaganda justifies and idealizes this kind of militarized childhood with references to World War II, when Soviet children assembled artillery shells after school to support the war effort.
Russia: List of banned organizations is getting longer
As in the old days, Russians are cut off from the outside world. A new law on conscription makes it harder for men under the age of 30 to leave Russia. Dealing with independent media is also curtailed. The Kremlin was not content with driving the last critical journalists out of the country. He also recently declared TV Rain, an independent Russian news channel operating from exile in Latvia, as “undesirable”.
It is now a crime for Russians to post links to content on social media originating from the broadcaster. Even with media like Medusa, Novaya Gazeta and others that are on the list of banned organizations, it is, and the list grows longer by the week.
Russian people may soon be isolated from the global internet
Russia is also introducing Chinese-style internet controls, with state censorship agencies forcing increasingly sophisticated filtering protocols on Russian internet providers. This makes it increasingly difficult for Russians to access banned websites via bypass solutions such as virtual private networks, including on media and social networks outside the country.
The prospect of complete isolation of Russian users from the global Internet is now a real possibility, awaiting some testing. When Putin first floated the idea in 2014, it still seemed like a feverish dream to the population.
As usual, the repression is accompanied by scapegoats. Putin’s Russia has left the LGBTQ+ community, already one of the most marginalized groups, declared public enemy number one. Not only is any kind of activism or self-organization illegal, but also the lives of LGBTQ+ Russians are restricted.
Even supporters of the Ukraine war are no longer safe in Russia
As the web tightens, not even the most ardent supporters are of the Ukraine war secure. These include right-wing nationalists who are crowdfunding equipment for the Russian army, calling for Ukraine to be treated as harshly as possible, and bemoaning the Russian military leadership as weak and indecisive.
On July 21, Russian police arrested the most prominent of these voices, Igor “Strelkov” Girkin – a former Russian intelligence officer wanted by The Hague for war crimes. He is accused of promoting extremism. Among other things, Girkin had demanded on his Telegram channel that the bureaucrats in the Russian army responsible for the soldiers’ wage arrears should be executed.
The seriousness of the allegations makes it very likely that Girkin will spend the next few years behind bars. So far, the Kremlin’s most ardent nationalist supporters have been able to speak out relatively freely, criticizing the war as inconsistent or genocidal enough.
Totalitarianism in Russia: Simply remaining silent on the Ukraine war is no longer enough
This change points to a fundamental shift in the nature of the regime itself. If authoritarianism is about eliminating political opposition, totalitarianism requires the total conformity of the individual with the state. While most ordinary Russians used to be expected not to actively oppose state policies, mere silence is no longer enough. Active and open support for the war is required today.
Those who refuse to participate in these rituals risk being harassed, threatened, ostracized, and forced out of their jobs. Ekaterina Mikryukova, a family doctor in Moscow, also had to find out. She had refused to take part in a fundraiser organized by her neighbors for a wounded Russian soldier. She has since left Russia.
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The Russian military is also being purged of dissenters
Wartime repression is a useful cover not only for getting rid of vocal opponents, but also for securing the loyalty of the Russian elite. This includes not only those who do not support the invasion clearly enough, but also those who criticize the invasion for its alleged lack of harshness and ruthlessness towards the Ukrainians.
Similarly, the Russian military itself is being purged of actual and potential dissenters. Several key military figures who may have been friends with Prigozhin, including the supreme commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces Sergei Surovikin, have disappeared from public view. Others were removed from their posts or demoted.
Presidential elections in Russia are exacerbating the situation
The heightened repression is also a sign of the regime’s nervousness ahead of those scheduled for March 2024 presidential elections. While the Russian elections are obviously rigged and there is no doubt that Putin will stay in power, they still bring some uncertainty into the system.
Next year’s elections will be a spectacular, complex piece of political choreography, with much that can go wrong en route to the Kremlin’s minimum target of the 80 percent majority for Putin. That’s where the arrest of Girkin comes in: Angry nationalists, unhappy with the way the military leadership is conducting the war, are an unpredictable factor. Expect more of them in the coming months get arrested.
Eternal war in Ukraine offers Putin unlimited opportunities
The crackdown also indicates that the regime is preparing for a protracted war in Ukraine. Faced with multiple military failures and no realistic prospect of victory, Putin appears to have settled on the next best option to consolidate his power. A perpetual war in Ukraine, presented to Russians as an existential struggle for their nation’s future, offers nearly limitless opportunities to quash dissent, rally Russians behind the regime, and root out even the slightest shred of opposition.
To the author
Alexey Kovalev is a Berlin-based investigative journalist. Twitter (X): @Alexey__Kovalev
We are currently testing machine translation. This article was automatically translated from English into German.
This article was first published in English on August 01, 2023 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com“ was published – as part of a cooperation, it is now also available in translation to the readers of the IPPEN.MEDIA portals.
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