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Putin’s delayed return – 24 hours |

Source: Financial Times

Translation: Innovator

In the British newspaper “Financial Times”Putin mode Russia delays the return of its history to reforms. The author of the article is a newspaper Europe The editor is Tony Barber. We present the English translation of the article.

Supposedly, global change is taking place in Russia. “Big change” – president Created by the Kremlin under the personal control of Vladimir Putin children and the so-called youth movement.

From an ideological point of view, this initiative is more reminiscent of the Soviet-era tradition of membership in a pioneer organization. Membership in the pioneer organization was considered a transitional period for Soviet youth.

About the “Great Change” movement in Russia the law The project was pioneered on May 19 10Appeared on the day of the 0th anniversary. The bill bans the new movement from cooperating with “foreign agents” and “undesirable” organizations, such as pro-Western and anti-authoritarian Russian critics.

Yes, Putin Ukraine In the fifth month of the war with Russia, the echoes of Russia’s tragic past already sound different.

Anti-war artist from St. Petersburg Alexandra Skochilenko was hospitalized in a psychiatric clinic. This is how dissidents were treated under communism.

In the third decade of his rule Putin the regime by carrying out acts of aggression at home as well as abroad – by carrying out repressions, free is busy tying his thoughts tighter. This is typical of Russia’s recent history. And vice versa – Russia As it enters a liberal period at home (as in the time of the last leader of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev), it tends to reduce international tensions in foreign policy.

Putin It is not reasonable that there will be a liberal turn in the period. But Russia’s history has always been ups and downs: dictatorship under Joseph Stalin, reforms under Nikita Khrushchev, hardening under Leonid Brezhnev, liberalization under Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, and repression under Putin. We can’t say when, but there will be a return from the Putin stage.

Ukraine The war with can play a special role here. The failed Crimean War of 1853-1856 free to Afghanistan in 1979 military The intervention gave impetus to Gorbachev’s perestroika policy and reforms in the 1980s.

But Russia If he wins in Ukraine, the period of repression may be prolonged, as was the case with Stalin’s victory over Nazi Germany.

Historically, there have been many instances in the West where hopes for a positive change in Russia have been dashed.

In 1982, when Yuri Andropov, the former head of the State Security Committee (KGB), replaced Leonid Brezhnev, rumors began circulating in the West that the new leader loved jazz music and a bit of whiskey. This gave hope for progress in the USSR’s relations with the West. It didn’t happen. Those rumors spread to the West from Moscow, although there was not enough evidence to support such rumors.

20When Putin temporarily left the Russian presidency and replaced Dmitry Medvedev for four years, Westerners began to believe that the new Kremlin leader was a fan of the British rock band Deep Purple.

The West saw Medvedev as a former communist who could cope. This thought, this hope also turned out to be wrong. Medvedev landed on social networks He has become a vile Kremlin propagandist who describes Russia’s enemies as “vile and naughty.”

The uncertain nature of Putin’s power structures does not allow us to predict who will represent the next round of the historical stage. Great powers are concentrated in the hands of the army and security forces. But the so-called “Putin’s cook.” businessman There are such influential figures as Yevgeny Prigogine that they do not officially hold any public office.

There was a strict hierarchy in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, in the ministries and research institutes of that time. Western experts were able to watch the rise of reformers in this hierarchy.

Even before the perestroika began, Western experts were able to single out scientists such as Gorbachev, his comrade-in-arms Alexander Yakovlev, economist Abel Aganbekyan, and sociologist Tatiana Zaslavskaya.

During Putin’s 22 years in power, perhaps the most trusted reformist leader was former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov. In 2015, Nemtsov was shot near the Kremlin walls.

Opposition politician Alexei Navalny is another opponent of Putin’s regime. 2020Navalny was poisoned in, and from 2021 he is in prison.

Another thing that distinguishes the past from the present is the change of generations. The generation that stimulated reform in the 1980s was the “children of the 1960s” who grew up in a more liberal era – Khrushchev’s time.

Many Russian liberals today speak of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the chaotic democracy of the Yeltsin era. They gained this experience in their youth, that is, liberalism was tarnished in their eyes.

Therefore, it is likely that the reformers of the new era will come from a younger generation that grew up under Putin’s regime and is ashamed of his policies.

Whatever awaits us in the future, the West must understand that Russia is inside political the ability to direct the course is limited. Russia, freed from the instincts of the empire and focused on improving the lives of its people, would certainly be in the interests of the West. However, old administrative traditions and the recent past show that Russia is finally choosing its own path again.



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