Russia’s Ruling Class Sees No Alternative to Putin or Support for His War, Preobrazhensky Says

Putin’s Claim that Lenin Created Ukraine Alarming Non-Russians whose Republics Bolshevik Leader Also Set Up, Solovyeva Says

Saturday, February 25, 2023

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – Vladimir Putin has said repeatedly that Ukraine exists only because Lenin established the Ukrainian SSR, statements that are alarming people in the non-Russian republics whose state structures were also set up by the Bolshevik leader, according to Elena Solovyeva.

            In a commentary for Posle media, she says that some of the non-Russians fear that what Putin is now doing in Ukraine will be the opening of a new attack on their republics, a worry that has been exacerbated by Moscow’s increasing extraction of resources from them and its installation of outsiders to run them (posle.media/komi_colony/).

            There is a growing sense, Solovyeva continues, that they are colonies, especially in paces like the Komi Republic where the feeling is that “we send all our resources to Moscow and Moscow sends us its trash,” a reference both to the planned trash dump that sparked the Shiyes protests and, it appears, a judgment about those Moscow sends as its rulers.

            Such concerns have grown in anger over the last year, the commentator says, not just because of Putin’s comments about Ukraine but also because there is growing evidence that Russian census takers falsified the results of the 2021 enumeration, artificially reducing the number of Komis by refusing to list them as such or even by listing them as ethnic Russians.

            As a result, there is a coalescence of environmental and economic concerns with political ones in places like Komi and other non-Russian republics, a coming together that has been overshadowed by protests about Putin’s war in Ukraine but has led to the rejection by the Komi of Moscow-nominated politicians and to large demonstrations.

            Without attracting much attention outside the republic, she continues, “the national question in Komi as a whole has become so sensitive that any further pressure from the center can and will provoke an increasingly fierce response,” transforming the current low boil to something more radical.

            “Can the separation of the republic from Russia be the result of the anti-colonial rhetoric now heard in Komi?” she asks. “Theoretically, yes. Formally, the republic already as a state structure including a constitution. “But geographically, it may turn out to be  in the position of an enclave state,” surrounded by Russian territories.

            For the time being at least, Solovyeva suggests, “the internal demand for Komi statehood is not that great.” But real demands for “greater federalization and greater economic and political freedoms” exist” and “as soon as the federal government begins to weaken, the republic, along with other regions and republics, will more actively seek to win back its rights.”

Russia’s Ruling Class Sees No Alternative to Putin or Support for His War, Preobrazhensky Says

            Staunton, Feb. 20 – Russia’s ruling class sees no alternative to supporting Putin or his war in Ukraine, Ivan Preobrazhensky says. “There’s nowhere for it to run,” and the dangers of protest are all too real. As a result, the elite in Russia remains “monolithic” in that regard, something Putin chose to underline by scheduling his address to the nation on February 21.

            Despite the expectations of many in the West and the fact that many in the Russian elite have suffered because of Putin’s policies, the Deutsche Welle commentator says, “the Russian ruling class approaches the anniversary of the start of the war perhaps even more monolithic than it was” a year ago (dw.com/ru/kommentarij-u-elit-v-rossii-vyhoda-net-ili-vmeste-za-putina/a-64746718).

            In both the Russian and European media there is talk about “a Party of February 23” which supposedly consists of those who “would like to return to the re-war period. But in the Russian ruling class,” Preobrazhensky says, “there is much more strongly represented what one might call “the Party of February 21.”

            “It is no accident,” he continues, that Putin chose this date to deliver his address because exactly a year ago, on February 21, 2022, Putin assembled the Russian Security Council and forced his inner circle to “publicly support the aggression that was beginning. For him then this date is clearly very important.”

            By taking that action, Putin himself “openly showed that he is most afraid not of popular risings for which he has large repressive resources to suppress but a split in the elites.” By forcing them to commit as he did, the Kremlin leader left them with no chance to oppose him in the future about the war or about his remaining in power.

            In working to keep the elites around him monolithic, Putin has also employed carrots as well as sticks. Most prominent among the former over the last year was his decision to cancel much of the anti-corruption efforts his regime had made. Now, the elite, as long as it remains loyal, can enrich itself with less worry about the future.

            Putin can thus look to the future with confidence as far as his domestic situation is concerned, Preobrazhensky says, “because after a year of war, he has been able to maintain the main thing, the loyalty of the ruling class.”