Everything Was Fair and Nothing Hurt
I can almost be counted as a part of the Generation P but not exactly - there were four years of Yeltsin, which I, of course, don't even remember. And there was Medvedev. As I am struggling to explain why I am feeling so devasted, so hopeless...why I am suddenly feeling pain as a result of the event that shouldn't have caught me off guard. I mean...this is Russia - dictatorship, kleptocracy, lacking civil society, and whatever other descriptives my political science books use. So, as I am struggling. I can't help thinking of this trick of Medved. I was in my teens and left the country for the first time - first to study in Malta, then in the US. My President was quite young and hip; he was learning how to use iPhone and loved Led Zeppelin. Medvedev tricked me into believing that Russia's Soviet legacy is a thing of the past, that faces can and will change even though they might all be United Russia's faces. That did not seem too bad.
Then came Putin's third - a nightmare that turned into emotional agony. There were rallies of Navalny with thousands of people participating - that made us hopeful. Sobchak's decision to run made me feel even more so. For the worst.
Putin's latest nuclear speech terrified me. Russians applauded. My own father suddenly remembered that he is a military man and *insert logical connector here* will be voting Putin. I guess the logical connector is - Sobchak can't be commander in chief, in fact, no one can except for ex-KGB operative. Well, that is logical, I assume.
But of the worst. The worst is Russian political analysts (even the best of them) who still remember Brezhnev era. Well, they lived through worse and this is just another one of them. But maybe even worse are Russian analysts in the West - I know that tomorrow I will wake up to a countless number of articles titled "Tzar's Rule Continues","What Putin's Next Term Means for the West" or "Putin's Russia 4.0". Putin's Russia lives. Putin's Russia takes time to vote for the leader. I am often asked, "well you know Trump supporters...who are the people that vote Putin?" Well, those people are not ashamed of their choice and they are anything from factory workers to young upper-class Muscovite girls. "We wouldn't live as well as we do right now without him," that is the universal explanation. With no desire of being politically correct, I must say, that makes me sick to my stomach.
And lastly. I am disappointed in fellow Tatars and Bashkirs who just quietly swallowed all the humiliating policies put forward by the Kremlin and still voted for the government that has no respect for their culture. But what am I talking about? Citizens of Russia once again swallowed all the humiliating policies put forward by the Kremlin. Fake debates, cheap food markets at the voting stations, web cameras at the stations covered with balloons, carousel voting... - my government much too often thinks that I am stupid, lazy, uninterested...or simply scared.
Then came Putin's third - a nightmare that turned into emotional agony. There were rallies of Navalny with thousands of people participating - that made us hopeful. Sobchak's decision to run made me feel even more so. For the worst.
Putin's latest nuclear speech terrified me. Russians applauded. My own father suddenly remembered that he is a military man and *insert logical connector here* will be voting Putin. I guess the logical connector is - Sobchak can't be commander in chief, in fact, no one can except for ex-KGB operative. Well, that is logical, I assume.
But of the worst. The worst is Russian political analysts (even the best of them) who still remember Brezhnev era. Well, they lived through worse and this is just another one of them. But maybe even worse are Russian analysts in the West - I know that tomorrow I will wake up to a countless number of articles titled "Tzar's Rule Continues","What Putin's Next Term Means for the West" or "Putin's Russia 4.0". Putin's Russia lives. Putin's Russia takes time to vote for the leader. I am often asked, "well you know Trump supporters...who are the people that vote Putin?" Well, those people are not ashamed of their choice and they are anything from factory workers to young upper-class Muscovite girls. "We wouldn't live as well as we do right now without him," that is the universal explanation. With no desire of being politically correct, I must say, that makes me sick to my stomach.
And lastly. I am disappointed in fellow Tatars and Bashkirs who just quietly swallowed all the humiliating policies put forward by the Kremlin and still voted for the government that has no respect for their culture. But what am I talking about? Citizens of Russia once again swallowed all the humiliating policies put forward by the Kremlin. Fake debates, cheap food markets at the voting stations, web cameras at the stations covered with balloons, carousel voting... - my government much too often thinks that I am stupid, lazy, uninterested...or simply scared.
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