| Kavkazcenter.com |
| Latest events from Kavkaz-Center |
Russia going through third and final stage of Putin's rule
7/5/2014 11:32:45 AM
An American journalist of Russian origin reported on Putin's Russia:
Russia is going through the third and final stage of Putin's rule. It's the final stage, the most dangerous, the scariest – it may last a very long time, it may not.
But everything up until now has been working up to this stage. If the first stage of his regime, which probably was the first five years, was destroying the democratic gains of the 1990s. It was actually very systematic: he dissembled the electoral system, the Kremlin took over the media. Over the course of five years, every level of elections was either cancelled entirely, like with the gubernatorial elections, or transformed beyond recognition. Then there was a period of affluence and stasis after that had gone into effect and sort of a system of balance of fear and power and money had taken hold.
And now for the last two years, we've been living through an all-out political crackdown that has led to the war with Ukraine – that's the only word to call it – there's a war between Russia and Ukraine. And that is leading to the agonizing death of all the independent media – what remains of the independent media in Russia. It's an all-out crackdown on political dissent.
I think it's a natural evolution, but it was also fear – Putin was terrified when the protests broke out, and because in his mind there's no such thing as something that grows naturally. He couldn't actually conceive of a protest movement, or a protest culture, in the way that we conceive it, and in the way that I think is right. People, for a variety of reasons, some because they've gotten wealthier and their priorities have changed, and some because they learned more about what was going on, and some because they just couldn't take it any more – but for a variety of reasons, many people, from very different walks of life, and actually with a variety of political views, came together for these mass protests.
In Putin's mind that's impossible. He sees everything as coming from above. The idea that's been very strong, and has been key in this whole transformation, is that there has to be a puppeteer. So, it has to be the United States. So that's why Putin's first reaction to the protests was - he said that they were personally inspired by Hillary Clinton. The reason is that, in his view, when he sees all these protesters, he sees not people protesting the regime, but people protesting Russia itself. Well, who protest the state itself? Only an enemy of the state. And who is the enemy? It has to be foreigners. The foreigners have to be driven by somebody. So, clearly it's Hillary Clinton, who was the secretary of state at the time. That was why the initial stages of the crackdown were so focused on foreign agents – because that's a literal expression of what Putin saw driving the protests.
Department of Monitoring
Kavkaz Center
You are receiving this email because you subscribed to this feed at feedmyinbox.com
If you no longer wish to receive these emails, you can unsubscribe from this feed, or manage all your subscriptions
No comments:
Post a Comment