Russia is an easy country to enter. Procedures at
Moscow's airport including passport control allow passengers a speedy departure
from the airport, and the hour-long journey to the center of the city and hotel
passes quickly along the six-lane highway.
Similarly, the reception is pleasant at the hotel, and the
imperfect facilities in the room are of little account. The first
surprise is the availability in the hotel of various foreign newspapers or
mimeographed versions of them, including those in English such as The New
York Times, Le Figaro, and The Wall Street Journal, as well the
local Moscow Times, which contains articles mildly critical of President
Vladimir Putin, and whose cover features an image of Jimmy Stewart in the film,
where he plays a journalist.
If Russia is easy to enter physically, it is not equally
easy to discern politically. Russia today, under the rule of Vladimir
Putin, is becoming increasingly autocratic, but it is not a replica of the old
Stalinist Soviet Union. In the streets in Moscow, there are no traces or
physical reminders of Stalin, though some remain in a few provincial towns.
However, some images of Lenin are present, and though Russia is not a
doctrinaire Communist state, the large statue of Karl Marx remains close to Red
Square. Yet it is noticeable, and perhaps significant as a decision by
Putin, that Lenin's mausoleum in Red Square has still not been reopened to the
public.
Russia is still a puzzlement. The country still has
difficulties coming to terms with its past. President Putin himself has
called for an objective analysis of 1917. In this year, the 100th
anniversary of the 1917 February and October Revolutions, there will be no
formal governmental celebrations since there is no overall message, positive or
negative, that the regime wishes to convey, as was the case in the Soviet
Union. There is no Leninist call for world revolution. Russia, part
Western, part Asian, has no clear national identity, but its government is now
an authoritarian system expanding its influence, internally and
internationally, as a strong central state, supported not only by oligarchs,
but increasingly by the Russian Orthodox Church.
An indication of political changes and the complexity of
Russia's unhappy past and present is recent commentary on the 100 years
of the publication Izvestia, whose story is the story of the former Soviet
Union and present Russia.
Founded on March 13, 1917 by a small group of
revolutionaries two days before the tsar, the last of the Romanovs, abdicated,
it became the official publication of the Soviet Union. It was supposed
to be the voice of the revolutionary councils, known as the Soviets, and had
some political freedom – as much as was possible in the totalitarian regime,
and was more liberal than its competitor Pravda, the mouthpiece of the
Communist Party. Its most famous editor was Nikolai Bukharin. He
was executed in the show trials in 1937, one of four chief editors of the paper
to die.
In the 1980s, Izvestia became an advocate of
reform, but more recently, though a shadow of its former self and with nine
editors in the last 14 years, it has increasingly adopted pro-Kremlin positions
and expressed support for Putin. In a notorious incident in 2015, the
paper published a forged letter claiming that the U.S. embassy in Moscow had
paid gay rights activists to smear Russian officials. Under Putin, the
Russian press has been repressed, and a considerable number of media outlets
have been closed.
What is puzzling in Russia today are implicit challenges to
the status quo as well as public evidence of the horrible past. Some
evidence of this is the monument, the "Solovki" stone slab, in honor
of the "victims of totalitarianism." The stone was brought from
Solovki in the White Sea, which in the 1930s was the first camp to which
political prisoners were exiled.
In an ultimate irony, the Solovki monument is located in
Lubyanka Square, in front of the building that housed the former KGB, the main
security agency, and the secret police of the Soviet Union between 1954 and
1991, which was responsible for the elimination of the victims. No one
needs a reminder that Putin was a mid-level KGB intelligence official for 16
years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel.
Indeed, this reminder is doubly ironic since the Kremlin is
now planning to give the National Guard of Russia, established in April 2006
and directly subordinate to Putin, additional functions that will create
an organization similar to the old KGB. It will have its own
investigative arm and independent ability to conduct police investigations, its
own network of agents, and control of electronic devices. Thus, Putin's own
position will be greatly enhanced.
Contrary to Western perceptions of the issue, Russians
appear to see the annexation of the Crimea peninsula as a great achievement,
second only in significance to the Soviet Union victory in World War
II. There are rumors that the 2018 presidential election is being moved
to March 18, the date on which the Crimea annexation was ratified, so that it
will bring out more voters for Putin. It is also notable that critics of
Putin such as Alexei Navalny, the 40-year-old, partly Yale-educated leader of
the Progress Party, critic of corruption and of Putin, are being barred from
participating in the election.
A major factor in contemporary Russia is the increasing
role of the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) and its virtual alliance with Putin.
It is relevant that Putin for a time was in the KGB's Fifth Directorate,
responsible for oversight of religious groups.
Already in 1997, the ROC helped pass the law restricting
freedom to practice religious faiths considered foreign. The patriarch of
Moscow, Kirill, in February 2012 pronounced that Putin's rule was a miracle of
God. Putin may not be God's chosen ruler or holy Orthodox tsar, but he
has formed an alliance with the ROC and benefited politically from it.
During his rule, churches destroyed by the Soviet Union are being
rebuilt: it is estimated that 23,000 churches are being restored or
refurnished. In addition, Putin has allowed the teaching of religion in
public schools.
A public ceremony on November 4, 2016 illustrated the
political-religious relationship when Vladimir Putin unveiled a large 56-foot
statue to Vladimir the Great, the 10th-century ruler of Kiev who adopted
Orthodox Christianity in 988 and is regarded as the first Christian ruler.
Now he is claimed, as is the contemporary Vladimir, as the person who
united his country and gained victories for his fatherland. In a sense,
the older Vladimir, 11 centuries old, is used as a symbol of justification for
annexation of Crimea.
A new and unexpected feature in Moscow, that perhaps may be
regarded in part as criticism of the existing system, is a fascinating
avant-garde exhibition, "Russia as you've never seen it," at the
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Gorki Park. It presents works mainly
done since 2012 by 68 artists and artist groups across the country. It
thus offers insight into the diversity of social tendencies in the arts scene
of Russia, a country that contains 200 nationalities and more than 100
minority languages.
There is no single theme or overall curatorial statement,
but various general categories or "vectors" and conceptions are used
to describe the artistic milieu in Russia. Some of them touch on social
and political issues, the need for social change, expressions of solidarity
with victims of repression, support for the rights of minorities and socially
vulnerable groups, feminism, fighting domestic violence, and emancipation.
The puzzle remains. In the exhibition, which deals
with the immensely complicated matter of national and cultural identity, to
some extent, a minor spotlight is focused on social and cultural problems.
Nevertheless, the outside wall of Gorki Park still bears the Communist
hammer and sickle and an image of Lenin.
The Trump administration must be well aware of the poor
condition of the Russian economy, which has been too dependent on oil prices,
suffers from the decline in price, and is handicapped by Western sanctions.
It must recognize the pressing problems that Russia presents: the Russian
desire to increase its exports, especially arms, the impact of Russian hacking
and cyber-security; its aggression in Chechnya, Georgia, and Ukraine; its
intervention in Syria and relationship with Iran; its general military buildup;
and its deployment of short-range nuclear capable missiles. In the light
of these problems, it is imperative that the Trump administration understand
the complicated notion of Russia's identity and become capable of responding to
it.
