Gerald Knaus: Reading the below (excellent) article by Peter Pomerantsev on the cynicism in the Russia of Vladislav Surkov reminds us why a few dissidents in Baku this summer - no apparent threat to the regime in any way - are so viciously persecuted and thrown in jail. These men and women are frigthening to the regime because, in a world where everything, from the Council of Europe to prestige in Rome, Paris, New York, from sport events to UN security council seats, is only a matter of money and resouces invested, their actions resist this logic. This drives Bakus leaders mad: what right do these men and women have to assert that there is any morality? To care for others, with no apparent benefit? If all these Europeans in high positions can be induced to play along, why cant these few isolated citizens be silenced? This explains why the regime insists on all the mechanisms of humiliation and pressure to try to break the dignity of its prisoners: letters of pardon, admissions of mistakes, bowing at Aliyevs grave, accompanied by policy, after being pardoned. It is a charade with a serious purpose: the very idea of moral engagement that cannot be bought or inflitrated must be destroyed. These men and women, so powerless on the surface, are a real threat. Over the last 20 years we’ve lived through a communism we never believed in, democracy and defaults and mafia state and oligarchy, and we’ve realized they are illusions, that everything is PR.” “Everything is PR” has become the favorite phrase of the new Russia; my Moscow peers were filled with a sense that they were both cynical and enlightened. (Peter Pomerantsev) theatlantic/international/archive/2014/11/hidden-author-putinism-russia-vladislav-surkov/382489/?single_page=true
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 11:31:53 +0000
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