WORLD WORLDWIDE BULGARIA News Journal Update - (en) Bulgaria, FAB: THIRTY ONE THESIS ON POST-SOVIET RUSSIA (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 This article attempts to draw in broad strokes and in the form of short theses

the history of the Russian Federation between 1991 and 2002, to outline, on the
one hand, the political anthropology of the population, which has had an unusual
course over the decades; on the other hand to examine the rise and construction
of the new power. Things that can allow us to better understand some of the main
political determinants of the current situation, trying to draw some conclusions
about it, not forgetting that the lives of thousands of Ukrainian civilians are
being destroyed day after day, night after night. In times of algorithmic and
generalized dehumanization, we can never say it clearly enough: any analysis or
theoretical attempt that "forgets" the human perspective (and the living in
general) would disqualify itself.

PREMISES OF " POLITICAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN RUSSIA"

1) Stalinism had as its promised project the construction of the "New Man and
Communism" in the USSR. All means to achieve the goal were declared legitimate
from the moment they were recognized by the Communist Party as "effective."
Public and individual liberties were judged as formal and abstract essences of
capitalism. The right to a decent life, postponed until the advent of communism,
remained hidden behind the industrialization of the country and the arms race.
The state machine of Stalinist propaganda had "convinced" the citizens that they
were at the gates of a socialist paradise, which they had to accept unless they
took the path of various forms of marginalization or the missing millions of people.

2) In the late 1980s, the revelation of Stalin's crimes was an event of
considerable socio-historical scope, comparable in its implications to the
beheading of a pre-industrial monarch by divine right. It was not the result of a
popular mobilization, much less a revolution. The devastating effect on
consciences was even more profound. Especially since the scale of the phenomenon,
due to a lack of adequate socio-historical development, left only one way for
"salvation": repression. And to consolidate it, denouncing the supposed source -
Bolshevism - another novelty in the revision of official history, which led to
even greater confusion for all believers.

3) This is how the principled (or axiomatic) ideological position of the October
Revolution collapsed, and with it the concrete cornerstone of "Soviet truth", in
other words, of the entire social life, stably established for three generations.

4) At the same time, the political foundations of power - the messianic law and
its autocratic exercise - were displaced, which was deepened by the abolition of
the institutions of the USSR, born of the October Revolution. In other words,
Gorbachev questioned Stalinism while still remaining strongly attached to
Sovietism as the state model of his rule.

5) In addition to this sudden and unexpected collapse, occurring once in 100
years, was added the separation of the party and the state: there was no longer a
general secretary at the head of the USSR, but an elected president stripped of
all "Communist clothing", that is, without politburo and without real power.
Gorbachev paid the price-Yeltsin eventually did too, despite the liberal support
he enjoyed-something Putin had learned from his commanding position in the
presidential administration.

6) During the first two years of the existence of post-Soviet Russia (1992-1993),
the parliament with a Stalinist majority systematically opposed through decrees
the policy of neoliberal economic reforms led by Boris Yeltsin. The emblematic
coup of the president in September 1993, then the dissolution of the parliament
in October, represented the starting point of the new regime enshrined in the
Constitution adopted the following 12 December. Presidential supremacy was
henceforth constitutionally established; it contributed decisively to opening the
way to profound economic, social and political changes. After Stalinism,
Sovietism and Communism, they had to join the accessories of a tragic history.

NEOLIBERALISM IS SETTING IN

7) The ideas of the "neoliberal counter-revolution" spread quickly in Moscow
thanks to a few rich former apparatchiks or the young wolves they patronized like
Yegor Gaidar or Anatoly Chubais. All Westerners without exception were surprised
by the rapid collapse of the Soviet country. There is no need to invoke the
"great American organizer" for this collapse: the mafia oligarchies will emerge
from their own past and their own vicissitudes, even if in the second phase
Western capital seeks to take advantage of it through the foundations, the World
Bank, the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) and the IMF.
But on the periphery was: the fantastic perception of the USSR, the absence of
cogwheels for effective decision-making and the rapid expansion of the mafia
system, pro-emerged from the native nomenclature.

8) The "Shock Therapy" started in 1992 by Yeltsin's government was a much bigger
"robbery" than the one carried out by German capital at exactly the same time and
which we called the "Anschluss of the GDR". Over 112,000 state-owned enterprises
were privatized, so that in 1998 about three-quarters of GDP was in the private
sector. The Russian Privatization Center, headed by Anatoly Chubais, played an
important role there, similar to that of Treuhand. But in Russia, looting, theft
and mafia practices on a large scale will govern the birth and expansion of the
oligarchic phenomenon, which will dictate its law to the power that gave birth to it.

9) The way to install this radical destruction of the economy and society was
based on the following credo: act quickly and create a situation that makes any
return to power of the Communist Party impossible.All this was done by promising
the population a higher standard of living, greater social justice, modernization
of the consumer goods sector, and employee control of the means of production by
handing out "privatization coupons." Their value and their property rights will
ultimately prove to be completely illusory to the common man. On top of that, in
1995, the first generation of oligarchs took advantage of the loan-for-equity
system, which allowed them to take stakes in the twelve largest state-owned
enterprises in exchange for loans designed to save the federal budget.

SOCIAL CONSEQUENCES AND REVIVAL OF THE STRONG STATE

10) A great depression followed, as deep as that in the United States or Germany
in the early 1930s. Public services collapsed, life expectancy and population
growth collapsed. Inequalities exploded: the new billionaires grabbed everything
that could increase their capital and personal wealth. In three years, inflation
exceeded 3700%. The shock was huge. Half the population lived below the poverty
line in 1998 and the level of real wages in 2001 was still 50% of what it was in
1989. As a result - we certainly could no longer we are talking about civil
society as such at that time - social mobilizations were marginal, fragmented and
certainly not proportionate to what was happening.

11) In 1996, Yeltsin had to stay in power only with the help of the seven leaders
of banks, who were called "Semi-Bankershchyna", who, holding more than half of
the Russian economy, dictated the most important economic and political decisions
of the country . These were Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Vladimir
Gusinsky, Alexander Smolensky, Vladimir Vinogradov, Mikhail Fridman and Vladimir
Potanin. Only the last two, who had completely transformed, would survive Putin's
arrival in the Kremlin.

12) Faced with the terrible regression and social discontent provoked by the
neoliberal "shock therapy", a strong power tried to put itself in its place by
stigmatizing the "lower classes ready to revolt" as opposed to the middle classes
that benefited of the "economic drain" from the oligarchic system were given as a
reward for their patience and obedience.

13) The coups of 1991 and 1993, the first colonial intervention in Chechnya in
1994, the instrumentalization of terrorism by the FSB in the fall of 1999 to
trigger the second Chechen war, these were just some of the acts of unprecedented
violence designed to strengthen the new power. They sounded like a warning to
opposition aspirations that would later be completely silenced.

14) The remarkable indifference of Westerners to the Chechen tragedy - a share of
the empire of no vital interest to them and to the Muslims - transformed the
ability of power, whatever the cost, to pursue business with a brutal
dictatorship and above all, "the ability to outrage, vice versa proportional to
the strength of the aggressor". It is this Western policy that has been operating
for twenty-three years and bears its share of responsibility for causing the
current invasion of Ukraine.

15) In order to strengthen the ideological foundations of the new power, the
beliefs of the Russian population were oriented towards another past, at the same
time consoling, reassuring and substitute. Thus, the recurring representation of
tsarist Great Russia as a society moving towards "Western modernity" consisted of
offering ordinary people a return to a mythical "primordial Russian identity".
But the appreciation of the authoritarian and conservative tradition of the
tsarist era did not fit well with the propaganda and neoliberal policies of the
Yeltsin government. Especially since a mafia and generalized corruption has
blocked all the channels of modernity to impose itself in front of everyone's eyes.

THE ARRIVAL OF THE PUTIN CLAN REQUIRES A TRIPLE MOVE:

REMOVAL OF THE OLIGARS, FOUNDATION OF A NEW NATIONAL ROME AND RULE OF THE
ABSOLUTE MASTER

16) To overcome the ideological difficulties encountered by the previous
government, Putin and his followers understand that it will be necessary to move
beyond the "unfortunate 20th century" and to restore another link with the past.
Then they embark on a new interpretation of national history, glorifying "Great
Russia" through the ages. All history textbooks, from school to university, will
be precisely rewritten with this in mind.

17) Before and after World War II, the Stalinists enforced the rejection of the
West, reduced entirely to capitalism. After 1991, the rich in post-Soviet Russia,
especially the oligarchs, had established all kinds of ties with the West, mostly
with its real estate, banks or tax havens. Putin made the cessation of
hostilities, and then the war with the West, the basis of his regime, and his
propaganda machine imposed on the population a vision of the West as the eternal
enemy of the Russian people.

18) The assertion of the "special path" of Russian history over the centuries
will turn into the fortress from which to fight against everything that may
remind of the "corrupt West". Populists, anarchists, socialists, Bolsheviks, will
be classified as "foreign agents". To present the old autocracy as the guardian,
after Constantinople, of the foundations of the "third Rome," of the glory of the
nation, and the preserver of the eternal virtues of Russia, was to make the
people recognize who embodied them now, and why we should accept his absolute
power...

19) But the glorification of the "Great Patriotic War" is the find that made
possible the re-establishment of a broad consensus around the "incomparable
self-sacrifice of the Russian people", raised into a popular and sacred icon for
all generations. Moreover, the new alliance with Orthodoxy (Patriarch Kirill was
a KGB agent) made it possible to sanctify this Russophile nationalist-Czech
vision and assert it with each new "test". At the same time, the image of the
guardianship of the rehabilitated Stalin was updated, thereby consolidating the
"virtues" of the strong state and authoritarian power.

20) As in the time of the "father of all nations" - Dzhugashvili, Putin's
government spared no expense to publicly glorify its "great national narrative":
categorical authoritarian policies, large historical exhibitions, theme parks,
lavish celebrations with the help of the Church, which um-knifes the places of
worship dedicated to the "victims of the revolution", etc. Cinema, television,
new media, the so-called social networks, everything is used to forge the
national novel of this "new Russia under attack from all sides".

THE BUILDING OF AN AUTOCRATIC, NATIONALIST AND MILITARISTIC GOVERNMENT

21) In the USSR, the state was the alpha and omega of the public and private life
of Soviet citizens. The state owned everything, the individual a little, he had
all the rights, the individual none. With Putin, we are witnessing the return of
the dominance of this very specific state form to the center of Russian life.
Especially since the imperial interventions haven't really stopped since 1991.
Since 2012, Russian TV has started to look more and more like a new face of
Soviet TV with soap operas, documentaries and daily talk shows dominated by power
singers Vladimir Solovyov and Margarita Simonyan: lies and hatred became
constant, especially against "Ukrainian and German Nazis and their Western
allies." Through its stranglehold on public media and the banning of others, the
Kremlin has imposed the idea of the "deep Russian people,"

23) Following the model of the history of the "Great Patriotic War", today we can
hear the following terms for the war in Ukraine: "the liberation of the
territories" (as during the occupation of Poland in 1939, after the German-Soviet
Pact); "the annexation of territories" (as during the occupation of the Baltic
states by the Soviets in 1940); "special military operation" (such as the
invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact armies in 1968)

24) Putin's first circle and his ideologues, nostalgic for the Russian or Soviet
empire, condemn the Western imperialisms that were at the root of the collapse of
the USSR, which amounts to masking the process of the mafia collapse of the
Stalinist nomenclature, which began well before 1990 .In fact, after the defeat
of Stalinism under Gorbachev, the violent displacement of property relations
initiated by Yeltsin's kleptocracy - without whose power nothing could have
happened - was the decisive element in the radical transformation of social
relations in Russia in that time.

FROM THE MATTED OLIGARKY TO THE CONSOLIDATION OF THE "FIRST CIRCLE" OF THE FAITHFUL

25) Even if they were also corrupt, the only Russian institutions that will stand
the test of time between 1987 and 2023 are the FSB and the other "silovaks".
Under the unquestioned authority of their leader, the presidential clan was able
to use them throughout its rise of more than three decades. In large industries,
in all ministries and in state apparatuses since the beginning of the 2000s,
former employees of the FSB or from St. Petersburg have been at the helm.

26) The eradication of all non-governmental organizations, the destruction of all
opposition and the grip of this clan on all media only deepened the collapse of
society. The many liberticidal laws passed since the start of the war in Ukraine
will further restrict the right to free speech and to demonstrate. As a result,
it is now much more difficult to sympathize with organizations, associations and
activists who defend freedoms or oppose the invasion of Ukraine than it was
during the war in Afghanistan.

27) In 1990, the price of a ton of oil in Russia was the same as that of a pack
of imported Marlboro. Those who managed to sell Russian oil and other crude
abroad made huge profits. This was the starting point of gigantic mafia traffic,
especially in St. Petersburg, and the beginning of Putin as the leader of the
millionaire clan. When the ruble collapsed, similar opportunities arose because
the prices of oil, timber and minerals remained flat in ruble terms while their
dollar value soared.

28) The mafia oligarchy of the Yeltsin years had taken over the state for its own
benefit. Putin will change the rules of the game after his dazzling rise to
power. In fact, from a petty lieutenant colonel in the KGB in 1990, he was
co-opted into the presidential administration in 1996 after creating an
all-powerful clan in St. Petersburg, then became head of the FSB in July 1998. to
be finally promoted to First Minister a year later; just five months later he was
also given the post of president during the war provoked by attacks attributed to
the FSB (500 killed in Russia) to "save the honor of the Russian state". He will
remember the lesson of the Yeltsin period: in 2002, the former oligarchs will no
longer play any political role.

29) In contrast to the Yeltsin oligarchs, the big bosses of the "first circle",
often billionaires, form a kind of capitalist nomenclature, personally connected
to Putin, because he owes everything to him. The most emblematic figure is Igor
Sechin (born 1960), the head of the third conglomerate in Russia, Rosneft. This
former translator, who made a career in the KGB, is close to Vladimir Putin, to
whom he served as chief of staff at St Petersburg City Hall in the 1990s, before
following him into the presidential administration in Moscow and holding various
senior posts with him, both in the Kremlin and in the government when Putin was
prime minister. He had no business experience before being appointed head of
Rosneft in 2012.

30) The overall strategy for controlling key sectors of the economy stems from
blocking boards of directors. This includes, among other things, ensuring that
revenues from energy, raw materials, and armaments do not escape the control of
the state and members of the "inner circle," who also hold positions in the
presidential administration, within multiple "power structures ", the Attorney
General's Office and the federal government.

31) Through their position in state apparatuses and their control over the
economic sector, the "first circle" was thus able to shape the relation of
dominance according to "the logic of loyalty and of
reward/opposition-punishment". It is a body composed mainly of decades of common
motives and practices inherited from the KGB, and which has sworn absolute
loyalty to its leader. He is so dependent on this personal allegiance to Putin
that he will not outlive him and neither will the regime.

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