Seismic historical events often happen just after Christmas in Russia..
On 1 December 1825, Emperor Alexander I (1777-1825) died. When the expected successor, Constantine Pavlovich (1779-1831) refused the throne, his brother of twenty-nine years stood poised to take the reins of power. Young Nicholas, however, did not have the full allegiance of the armed forces, and a significant portion of the military rebelled and attempted a palace coup the day after Christmas. Although some of the insurrectionists were able to break into the Winter Palace, they were ultimately outnumbered and crushed - and the 'Decembrist Revolt' came to an end. Nicholas became Nicholas I, and his nearly thirty-year reign would prove to be one of the cruelest in Russian history - especially to Jews.
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Mikhail Gorbachev (b. 1931) was an enlightened Communist. He was born after 1917. As such, he was not as steeped in Marxist dogma as those of the Revolutionary generation. By the time he was tapped to head the Soviet state in 1986, it was already too late. The economy had been crushed under the weight of a massive bureaucracy. More importantly, people, including those in the Soviet satellite-nations in Eastern Europe, wanted Marx's 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' and all of its trappings to disappear. The Stalinist state, replete with secret police and gulags (concentration camps for dissidents), began to crumble without believers.
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Gorbachev made a valiant attempt to keep the ailing utopian experiment alive through economic restructuring (perestroika) and by allowing more freedom of expression (glasnost), but less than a week after Christmas on 31 December 1991, the verdict of history arrived on Communist tyranny - failure and extinction.
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After Christmas 2011
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On 4 March 2012, Russia will hold elections to determine the next president. Vladimir Putin (b. 1952), who held the post from 2000-2008 and now serves as the prime minister, will again vie for the top job. Putin's former Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Medvedev (b. 1965), is the current president and will likely have to defeat his old boss in the election to remain in power. Aside from Putin and Medvedev, Mikhail Prokhorov (b. 1965), a Russian billionaire, has recently decided to run for president as an independent candidate. Notably, he has said that his first act if elected would be to pardon Mikhail Khodorkovsky (b. 1963) - a former oil tycoon and once the wealthiest man in Russia - who was convicted for fraud by the government. At the very least, Khodorkovsky was targeted in part for financing political candidates that opposed the interests of Putin and his allied ruling clique. Indeed, the human rights organization Amnesty International considers Khodorkovsky and his jailed partner, Platon Lebedev (b. 1956), 'prisoners of conscience' and has demanded their release.
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In putting Khodorkovsky and Lebedev behind bars, the Putin-Medvedev led government has 'castrated democracy' - a phrase rightly uttered by the now eighty year-old Mikhail Gorbachev a few months ago. Then again, democracy in Russia since 1992 has been a matter of forms rather than substance.
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Laws and Bullets: Silencing Opposition
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If you are a Russian parent of a young, recent college graduate, the last thing you want to hear is your son or daughter wish to become a journalist at Novaya Gazeta. Last year, twenty-five year old Novaya Gazeta intern Anastasia Baburova (b. 1983), a bright Ukrainian who spoke four languages including French and English, began investigating emerging neo-Nazi groups for the purpose of publishing independent articles on their workings. Not long into her research, she and human rights lawyer/journalist, Stanislav Markelov (b. 1974), were murdered in cold blood.
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While her interest in writing on emerging neo-Nazi movements may have induced her assassins to take action, it is more likely that her outspoken nature and affiliation with Autonomous Action, a political organization dedicated to fighting nationalism, militarism and corrupt capitalism, constituted the larger threat to the thinly-veiled mafia-kings that control large parts of the Russian state. By killing Markelov at the same time, they were able to silence an up-and-coming leader and critic of Moscow's vicious campaign against Chechnya - one that has been replete with torture and executions.
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For Russians, it is the same old story. Nearly six years ago, Anna Politkovskaya (1958-2006), a journalist for Novaya Gazeta and human rights activist, was gunned down at her apartment building after publishing many articles and several books revealing the heinous crimes of the Russian military in Chechnya. Her murder remains unsolved...or does it?
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Everyone in Russia and around the world with any political sense knows who is behind these murders. It is the half-shadow government of quasi-legitimate oligarchs that control most of Russia's major industries, own most of Russia's wealth and are closely allied with the military.
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Welcome to proto-fascism - a lethal mixture of ultra-nationalism, militarism and a concentration of wealth in the hands of a small elite. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, many Russians could economically afford to ignore their politics. Wages and purchasing power increased for a large segment of the population. Over the past two decades overall, however, the oligarchs have amassed a larger and larger share of the wealth at the expense of the nation. While the richest 20% of the population has seen its fortunes almost double since the last day of the Soviet Union in 1991, nearly two-thirds of Russians have either stagnated or regressed economically over the same period. If left unchecked, wealth will continue to drain out of the middle and lower classes to the top.
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The Choice for Russia After Christmas
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Although the election of Mikhail Prokhorov would be a step in the right direction to restoring democracy, the dark forces of tyranny in Russia can only be defeated through the courage of each and every Russian citizen. Following the footsteps of the brave protesters that overturned the corrupt Mubarak regime nearly a year ago by conducting non-violent displays of solidarity across Egypt and the intrepid female-led movement for democracy in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, the Russian people - no matter how cold the weather - must now take to the streets in mass numbers to usher in a new era of political, economic and social democracy with complete transparency and full freedom of speech.
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141,000,000 citizens united against a corrupt elite simply cannot lose.
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(Photo: A Christmas Tree In Saint Petersburg, Russia)
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Key Sources
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1. For Gorbachev's take on Putin's 'castration of democracy,' see the following BBC NEWS article from 18 August: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-14580709
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2. To read an article on the disparity of wealth in Russia, see the following 11 April 2011 article in Guardian UK: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/11/russia-rich-richer-poor-poorer
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3. To read on the limited freedom of the press in Russia, please click onto the following 18 December 2010 article in The Seattle Times (USA): http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013706866_russiamedia19.html?syndication=rss
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4. For the Amnesty International report on the Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Platon Lebedev, who have been designated political prisoners by the European Court of Human Rights, please click onto the following link: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/russian-businessmen-declared-prisoners-conscience-after-convictions-are-upheld-2011
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J Roquen