This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
To what extent is it true that Putin's government - I know they try to make it all about Putin, but let's say Putin's government - is authoritarian. It's described in the West as practically like a police state. And this report from The New York Times, they talk about demonstrators being crushed and arrested. Apparently three or four thousand people were arrested on Sunday. So what is the truth of the lack of democracy, for example, as compared to the United States?
Aleksandr BuzgalinFirst of all, it's difficult for me to compare with the United States. I was not beaten in the United States by police. But I think you and your friends have this experience. I have experience with Russian police. So as far as these demonstrations is concerned, I saw an attack of police on demonstrators in the United States. These water machines, bullets, gas, and also a lot of arrested people. It was in France, yellow vests. It was in the United States, Black Lives Matter. And so on.
In Russia, first time it was less violence than typically in the West, by the way. Today, it was really violent attacks, but again, it was no all this water machines. It was maybe one time gas, but maybe not. Nobody knows exactly. Three thousand people were arrested, but majority of them were liberated in one, two hours. They were arrested just to destroy the demonstration.
So, it's bad. Of course, it was necessary to give permission to organize rallies in the open square without all these restrictions and without attacks of police. Of course. But this is unfortunately normal for the United States, for France, for many other countries. We don't have a much worse situation than in other countries.
I had one time a dialogue with Western journalist, I think U.S. journalist, and he said: You don't have freedom; you cannot say that Putin is son of a b*tch. I said, might be on central TV I cannot say this, but in the Internet, I don't know, thousands of websites and resources are telling these terrible things about president, even stupid things. But, I ask, can you on the First Channel (Russia's most popular channel) of U.S. television say that Putin is good guy?
Paul JayThe conversation we're having now, to my mind is realistic, balanced. Neither is Putin the devil. Neither are we claiming anything, fantasy. You could never have this on any television channel in the United States.
Aleksandr BuzgalinYeah. By the way, in Russia we have not main TV, central TV channel. One of the TV channels is the so-called social TV of Russia, public TV of Russia, maybe ninth or 10th in the rating of main channels. And I have open-air, 10, 15 minutes, five minutes nearly every week. I cannot criticize directly the person (Ed. Putin). What I can say that state policy in the economic sphere is terrible. I can say that we need changes in education. And so on.
I tell the same as here, only without his name. Name is nearly forbidden to pronounce (i.e., to say). This is a formal difference. In the U.S., in Europe, you have more formal liberties. In our country, less formal liberties. But the nature of the system is everywhere the same. And you said it's the power of big capital, together with top bureaucracy and the secret police, and so on, and media, mainstream mass media. And manipulation is a real tool for the organization of all political, social, cultural life, - permanent manipulation.
By the way, it's not only in politics. It's in economic life when everybody understands that it cannot be Christmas without Coca-Cola. You know, that that that that Coca-Cola, that truck for I don't know. Do have they said they have every Christmas, this terrible story in that. So it's manipulation. Every corporation organized this system of manipulation and (the) state. In Russia, it has more primitive forms, I can say. And maybe not even so efficient as in the United States, but nature is the same.
Paul JayYou could see it in the United States. It serves the American elites for the media always to make this about the person of Putin and not the oligarchy and capital and the vicious exploitation of Russians by Russian oligarchy and capital. Exactly the same way CNN and MSNBC, they love to make these personal attacks on Trump, and certainly he deserved it. But they never wanted to talk about the sections of big capital and the oligarchy that were behind Trump.
And I'm not only talking about the right-wing billionaires, you know, the Robert Mercers and Sheldon Adelsons, who almost never got connected on mainstream media as the people that helped make Trump president. But big capital on Wall Street that so benefited from the tax cuts and such, including companies like BlackRock that are traditionally actually pro-Democratic Party, loved Trump for most of the time he was in office. At the end, he had outlived his usefulness, and they got rid of him. And what I think, I'm calling it a coup within a failed coup. I won't get into that now. But the same thing, you make it all about the person, never about how the system operates and how classes operate.
Aleksandr BuzgalinYeah. I know it was money, money, money, money. Unfortunately, big capital, together with violent bureaucratic structures, they are together, and they are rulers of the world. And it's more or less the same in different countries. Of course, Russia needs to have more freedom, positive freedom. I can say even not freedom, but liberation, because freedom has different contents and contexts. But social liberation is extremely important. We have terrible labor court. It's nearly impossible to organize strike.
By the way, we have a leader of left movement, of one of the left movements, Nikolai Platoshkin; he is professor, intellectual. He was arrested four months ago. No court. Nothing. Where is cry, I don't know, voice of the Western fighters for human rights. Professor is arrested for nothing. Absolutely nothing. He tells that we need new economic, social, political course. We need socialism. We need a new president, not Putin. Nothing illegal. He is not under the court. He is in his home, arrested, sick. He has a heart attack because of isolation, and so on. Where is the protest? Nothing. Navalny is, honestly, a son of a b*tch. He is much worse than the majority of Putin's officials as far as his economic, social position, nationalist, and so on. But he is useful. He is a good puppet in the hands of manipulators.
But, I want to stress, in our country there is a typical critique of all these protest actions, saying this is the only result of the U.S. government, European Union government's propaganda, and so on. It's not true. Of course, U.S. officials, press, secret organs, secret police, and so on, made lot of efforts to support the opposition. But real reasons are internal. It's the same like in Belarus, by the way. I don't know if I can say, but we wrote with Andrey Kolganov article in critical sociology journal Political Sociology, and we made the release of Belarusians contradictions.
In Russia, we have very similar situation. And this is internal contradictions. And the people are tired from absence of subjectivity, political subjectivity. They want to be actors, not puppets. And this is what's important. And, by the way, I think protest in the United States, protest of yellow vest (in France), was also interconnected not only or mainly with racism and poverty, but with some understanding, maybe not understanding, but feeling of people that they're just puppets. They're nobody. They're not persons.
And people are tired from this. In academic language, this is alienation, social alienation. People are tired from social alienation, from this dust atmosphere, atmosphere of swamp where we are like frogs, but even is forbidden to say quack, quack.
Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
