Russians, who have acquiesced in Putins external aggression and intolerance of internal dissent, are no more than serfs, expected to accept whatever their lord tells them in the name of the all-powerful state. A prominent member of the Putin elite, Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin, recently suggested in the government-owned Rossiyskaya Gazeta that the abrupt abolition of serfdom in 1861 may have been a mistake. Despite all its drawbacks, serfdom was the brace holding together the nations internal unity, he wrote. It was no accident that, according to historians, the peasants told their former masters after the reform: We were yours and you were ours. Zorkins historical ruminations are no accident. Before Russia annexed Crimea and became a de-facto pariah state, membership in the international community restrained the Putin elite, forcing it to show at least superficial respect for human dignity. Now, its no longer necessary, and Russian citizens are being openly treated as property of the state. The government has already confiscated part of their pension savings to finance Crimea and is now about to scrap the $10,800 subsidy paid out to mothers who give birth to a second or third child. There will be no mass protests because, though Russians once again belong to a master, they feel he belongs to them.
Posted on: Mon, 06 Oct 2014 06:03:23 +0000
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