Siberian disobedience

(To Gino Lanzara)
13/08/20

The Eastern Lands remain a fascinating geopolitical case; far from the superficial contextualizations of the west, they are the frames of a film where history flows according to times and with interpreters often incomprehensible to the men of the Middle Lands.

The launch of the red banner led to the fragmentation of a Empire which, using hammer and sickle for 70 years, for ineffable historical irony, has returned to hoist double-headed eagles, saints that pierce dragons, and St. Andrew's Crosses on the prows of warships, always dear to any autocrat occupied the Kremlin, especially now in the presence of a conflictual liaison with NATO.

From a sudden New Hope to the flashes of the idea of ​​a Empire is, under the embers of wars and revolutions, it has continued to burn, Russia lives between a past made up of Tsars and General Secretaries, and a present of Presidents eternal, di caudillos which, unlike what happened in Spain, do not prepare the ground for the return of any king.

Conservative narratives are repeated, constitutional changes are generated capable of allowing very long stays at the top, but the appearances of a controlled democracy; even with a government apparently strong, power is beginning to present cracks which the last constitutional referendum, conditioned by heavy observations about its regularity, intended to remedy, despite the criticisms from abroad and the opposition1.

In the imperial Far East, in Khabarovsk, thousands of succeeded they demonstrated against Putin, drawing attention to decreasing approval rates, indices that in the past have always been influenced by a muscular and assertive image.

COVID-19, together with the decline in oil export revenues, has weakened government policies of - partial - support for the people, who felt this way, especially in some regions, entitled to protest and ready to take on an unpredictable role in the next federal consultations in 2021 .

Putin, in power since the end of 1999, has personalized national politics so much as to make Russia split from his person unimaginable, and to run for a leadership second only to that of Stalin; the re-edition of the Soviet centralization of power, with the consolidation of elite2 strongly ideologized and often in competition with each other, but cohesive in maintaining power, it has so far guaranteed social stability, consensus, but also a significant limitation of regional autonomy, which has led to a pyramidal hierarchy made up of increasingly higher levels, which it is accessed more for loyalty than for capacity, and to the fortification of an increasingly pervasive financial oligarchy, which has neither been able nor able to allow the definitive leap in quality, above all due to bureaucratization, corruption, recession and sanctions following the Ukrainian crisis .

In the face of a present so complex in which the indefinite defense of sovereignty and legitimacy is in force, Putin has returned to past of the defense theory, aiming at the radiance of a future that, however, while referring to Stalin's patriotism, is struggling to arrive; all this while, with more or less version troops expeditionary in Georgia, Ukraine and Syria, in Russian man Continental which re-evaluates the height Soviet, the belief creeps in that, in the face of past glories, man's inflexibility stahl steel, could be an acceptable price to pay. It is no coincidence that the political opposition has remained acquiescent Sui generis; the system does not allow exceptions, and therefore allows the use of the judicial instrument as happened with Ivan Safronov, journalist of Kommersant arrested for high treason for allegedly passing secret information to a NATO country, but after previously reporting on the spy submarine incident Russian submarine Losharik and on international arms contracts.

A first question to ask therefore concerns the Russian destiny, if and when one of the different elites were to prevail over the others without the current political filter which, now more than ever, needs a popular investiture, albeit induced, to ensure the priceless heritage of legitimacy; it is therefore both political and internal acknowledgments, to which Putin does not seem to be so sensitive unless it is a question of granting concessions capable of ensuring a comforting captatio benevolentiae, than external: the case of Belarus is sufficient where, despite the difficult political sustainability of its ally Lukashenko, Moscow cannot deprive itself of its support to maintain a precious regional strategic depth to guarantee the security of the space that separates Smolensk from the Baltic naval base of Kaliningrad.

But the biggest concerns for Putin now come from the east, from Khabarovsk a few kilometers from the Chinese border, where on 9 July Sergei Furgal, regional governor, former businessman and former Duma deputy, was accused of involvement in three murders and disappearance. of competing entrepreneurs, dating back to about 15 years ago, and was transferred to the Moscow prison of Lefortovo; his arrest caused significant and unusual protests that recalled the White Revolution of 2011-2013, and which became even more vibrant following the government decision to remove him from office, to replace him with Mikhail Degtyarev, a member of his own party, the liberal democrat, however, in the opposition, completely unaware of the problems of a region that is two and a half times larger than Italy, not particularly rich in resources, embedded in the complex Siberian reality, and with a population of 1 million and 300 thousand inhabitants.

The election of Furgal, certainly not a liberal hero given his entrepreneurial background, was an unexpected event: the Kremlin did not consider him capable of defeating the candidate of United Russia; from the moment of his election, Furgal has dealt empathically with the social base, gaining a consensus that has become an expression of the rejection of government political imposition in a country where in fact there is no real form of opposition, and where the people are not never sympathetic to anyone.

However, it would be wrong to consider Furgal as completely exempt from responsibility, given that he maintained a fluctuating political line: at first he agreed to withdraw in the second round of voting in exchange for the vice-governorial office, only to change his mind, thus inducing Moscow to evaluate his taking a stand as an unforgivable precedent, which was followed by the transfer of the Far Eastern district capital to Vladivostok; later Furgal also failed the appeal test, consisting in supporting constitutional reforms, which did not meet expectations.

Putin, who aims to prevent Khabarovsk, in recession for years, from becoming a Russian Gdansk with Solidarity attached, has so far opted for a sort of monitored non-intervention, according to some analysts for lack of real interest in such a remote area, according to others for having underestimated a story heralding consequences that are difficult to contain, much more likely because delegating to a party competitor the task of resolving the outstanding issues, meant passing a lit match with the intention of burning the fingers of the less versed in the art of politics.

According to Andrei Pertsev of Meduza3, Furgal would have gained media attention for his opposition to the reform of the pension system, for the reduction of both the expenses considered superfluous and his own emoluments and, above all, for having met Alexei Navalnij, a strong opponent of the government; however, ambivalently, Furgal himself avoided open confrontations with Moscow. While the demonstrations (in streaming) collect 45% of the votes, Mark Galeotti4 argues that Khabarovsk protests are indicative of the "decline of Putinism".

Waiting for moves by the Kremlin, careful not to exacerbate situations that could turn against them in anticipation of the regional elections in September5, and to give precise signals to aspiring governors with the stigma of dissidence, what can be hypothesized is that, rather than violently expressing discontent, society will seek forms of adaptation to the worsening of general conditions, also because it must be considered that all roles key were assigned to Putinians, that the opposition is in any case internal to the system, that the control over FA and security agencies is not currently under discussion, and that imprudently test the secular arm of the regime would be a grave political error.

To assume that the events in Khabarovsk are the prelude to something more significant, or that the disputes can take root permanently elsewhere, could be misleading; realistically, the Kremlin, which will have to draw new ideas and greater flexibility from the cylinder, will treat the Khabarovsk affair as a local problem, limiting it within precise geographical-political boundaries, cutting off contacts with St. Petersburg, Kazan and Moscow itself, where they have manifest sympathy thread Siberian.

1 In Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, voters could win a car; ten apartments were up for grabs in the Khanty-Mansiysk region.

2 Siloviki or representatives of state agencies and other structures to which the state delegates the right to use force, oligarchs, technocrats. There Reuters is in possession of the government directives regarding the conduct of voting

3 Riga online newspaper

4 Lecturer and writer on transnational crime and Russian security affairs.

5 Regional elections will be held on 13 September in 18 regions, along with 11 elections of legislative assemblies and municipal councils in 22 regional capitals

Photo: Kremlin