Ship of Fools: Russian Autocracy, Authoritarianism, and the identification of Scapegoats/the "Other"

Thread: Russian Autocracy, Authoritarianism, and the identification of Scapegoats/the "Other" Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

To visit this thread, use this URL:
http://forum.ship-of-fools.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=70;t=026617

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

So what are the dynamics and dynamic inter-play currently driving the apparent growing authoritarianism, nationalism, and systematic anti-gay scapegoating that we see in Russia?

These seem to be recurrent themes of Russian history. The Tsarist autocracy was coupled with particularly oppressive and vicious anti-semitism. Russian communism, after an initial period of partial liberalism (yes, that was always coupled with official terrorism against identified class enemies)devolved into growing authoritarianism and then into Stalinist autocracy, with the scapegoating/"otherness" of "saboteurs" and "spys" to bolster the regime's total control of society and to deflect identification of its own incompetencies and failures.

Now, the Putin regime waxes ever more authoritarian, nationalistic, and autocratic, with the particular scapegoating of the LGBT population as an evident tool in the service of state control and popular solidarity.

Russia seems to be involved in a new type of cold war with the EU, with all its former imperial vassals (Ukraine, the Baltic states, etc), and with America.

How much of this should be ascribed to the malign influences of Putin's personality and that of the opportunists with whom he surrounds himself; and how much is an essential enduring aspect of Russian political and cultural character?

How much is just great power-ism, and how much a specifically Putinest or Russian modus operandi?

Where's it all going?

[ 14. December 2013, 12:34: Message edited by: Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras ]

Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :

I think Putin wants to be a modern day tsar. Scapegoating minority groups is a way of consolidating his power with the majority of Russians. Hard to say much more. Russia is just such a unique place. From my reading of history, I'd say it always has.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
I think Putin wants to be a modern day tsar. Scapegoating minority groups is a way of consolidating his power with the majority of Russians. Hard to say much more. Russia is just such a unique place. From my reading of history, I'd say it always has.

Is it that unique? I wouldn't have thought so.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

I don't want to stray into DH territory, but ISTM that the LGBT community is being cast in the role of surrogate for all that is Western, liberal, and foreign, and most of all representative of an emphasis upon personal liberty and uncompromised freedom of expression, as against a collectivist and tribal identification with the nation-state and its leader above all else.

Historically, this just seems to be a reversion to more of the same. Liberalising periods seem to last only a few years.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

The imperialism and cynicism of the Russian state aren't particularly unique. Nor is the scapegoating tendency per se. However, there does seem to be something truly unique about Russia's way of identifying itself in opposition to Western liberalism and Western notions of democracy and freedom of personal expression. The trends in Russia are operating in a direction contrary to those in the West, and at the moment the growing freedom and social integration of LGBT persons in the West would seem to be an especially prominent development and symbol of Western values against Russian autocracy, authoritariansim and collectivism.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

Is the mistake in thinking that Russia is culturally any closer to the West than is the Islamic world or perhaps China, notwithstanding Russia's superficial Westernisation since the time of Peter the Great?

Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Beeswax Altar:
I think Putin wants to be a modern day tsar. Scapegoating minority groups is a way of consolidating his power with the majority of Russians. Hard to say much more. Russia is just such a unique place. From my reading of history, I'd say it always has.
Is it that unique? I wouldn't have thought so.

Russia of course isn't unique in scapegoating minorities. It is unique in so many other ways. I guess its hard to put that into words.

Posted by no prophet (# 15560) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
The imperialism and cynicism of the Russian state aren't particularly unique. Nor is the scapegoating tendency per se. However, there does seem to be something truly unique about Russia's way of identifying itself in opposition to Western liberalism and Western notions of democracy and freedom of personal expression. The trends in Russia are operating in a direction contrary to those in the West, and at the moment the growing freedom and social integration of LGBT persons in the West would seem to be an especially prominent development and symbol of Western values against Russian autocracy, authoritariansim and collectivism.

I agree with the first part of what you say, about Russia not being unique, but not so much the second part. For much of the 20th century, the west defined itself in opposition to communism, though more accurately, in opposition to a Russian dictatorship and expansionism that was labelled communism. Defining a nation as in opposition to something seems to be the general way this always go, which, in the absence of one clearly challenging nation, is now west against Islamic states, and against the economic challenges from China. For the west, I think it is probably roughly the same as post-1815 when England was ascendant and really had no challengers, but found plenty of wars and people to fight.

Russia is looking at the situation of defining itself, hasn't figured out how much the Orthodox church should influence, and is struggling with the rule of law, I see elements of the wild west where law, religion, manifest destiny and other muddled things haven't sorted themselves out yet. Plus there is plenty of corruption, but there's plenty of that everywhere, considering our bankers, the recession and their corruption that caused it.

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

It is specious to compare the brief period of the ascendency of Sen. Joe McCarthy with the long history of institutional illiberalism in Russia. In America the forces of liberalism have almost always been able to prevail against the forces of reaction, bigotry and authoritarianism. America has culture wars, certainly; but these are culture wars in which the forces of reaction and illiberalism gradually - and sometimes rather suddenly - give ground to the forces of liberalism. The USA exemplifies the Hegelian dialectic far better than Russia. In America we do see advances in personal liberties giving rise to reactionary attempts to win back lost ground, but over time these attempts have not ultimately succeeded. I'm not at all sure the same can be said for Russia.

Posted by Beeswax Altar (# 11644) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Is the mistake in thinking that Russia is culturally any closer to the West than is the Islamic world or perhaps China, notwithstanding Russia's superficial Westernisation since the time of Peter the Great?

That's what makes Russia unique.

Posted by SeraphimSarov (# 4335) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Is the mistake in thinking that Russia is culturally any closer to the West than is the Islamic world or perhaps China, notwithstanding Russia's superficial Westernisation since the time of Peter the Great?

That has been the question for historians of the country since 1700

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Is the mistake in thinking that Russia is culturally any closer to the West than is the Islamic world or perhaps China, ...?

If you are a Russian, is there any particular reason why it should be?

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:

quote:
Originally posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras:
Is the mistake in thinking that Russia is culturally any closer to the West than is the Islamic world or perhaps China, ...?
If you are a Russian, is there any particular reason why it should be?

The country has been long engaged with the West, whether ambivalently so or not. Its monarchy was related by blood and marriage to monarchies of the Western nation-states, it has been in alliance with Western powers at various times, it shares elements of a common artistic patrimony.

Russian Orthodoxy and the Third Rome tradition are surely important elements, even if most Russians are not observantly religious today, nor perhaps even believers in a meaningful sense.

I'm not saying that Russians should necessarily think of themselves as being part of the Western tradition, though they seem to play at Western culture. Interesting to note that the Russian elites used to affect French as their social language, rather than Russian.

[ 14. December 2013, 16:04: Message edited by: Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras ]

Posted by stonespring (# 15530) on :

The homosexuality-as-a-sign-of-corruptive-Western-decadence meme seems pretty common now. You see it in Uganda, Iran, Nigeria, India, etc. It is often taken advantage of by politicians and by militant/terrorist groups looking for popular support. It has more to do with nationalism than religion, although religion is much stronger in these other countries than in Russia. It is ironic that in the countries that are former colonies, the laws against homosexuality that are now being strengthened in Africa or restored by the courts after having been struck down in India were put in place by the colonizers. I am not arguing, as some do, that Africa and India before contact with Islam and the West were completely accepting of homosexuality, but the visceral hatred of homosexuality as a foreign ideology corrupting their traditional values is something straight out of post-colonial thought.

Homosexuality was illegal in communist China and Cuba, in addition to in the USSR, because it was called a decadent bourgeois lifestyle that harmed the state by decreasing the number of children born. Homosexuality has been attacked for contributing to poor population growth (although I doubt there is any scientific evidence that shows this) by just about anyone who criticized it in the 19th and 20th centuries (including the Nazis), although anti-homosexuality campaigners in the West in current decades, realizing that they will never succeed at making homosexuality and public expression of it illegal again, have moved on to arguments that gays raising children and being incorporated into the institution of marriage will have a corruptive influence on traditional values (a different argument than saying that homosexual activity itself will be the source of the downfall of civilization). The older anti-gay arguments are still widely seen in the rest of the world, though. A lot of otherwise secular parents and grandparents in places like Russia and China feel that their children and grandchildren have a duty to provide them with the traditional experience of having grandchildren and an opposite-sex child-in-law. The West has lost a lot of this sense of social duty to provide one's elders with the kind of family they expect, although it does still exist in some places.

In Russia, most people identify as Orthodox (largely as a re-adoption of Russian cultural identity in the post-Soviet spiritual vacuum) but people rarely if ever attend church and many think and act like atheists. Here, the opposition to homosexuality is all about nationalistic pride. It isn't just about scapegoating the West, though. Russia's negative population growth, astronomical abortion rate, low life expectancy given its technological advancement, very high incidence of death from alcoholism and alcohol-fueled violence and accidents, high emigration rate, and general feeling of social malaise all contribute to a desire to have traditional families and make babies that will be the heirs of a new, renewed, healthy Russia. They want traditional families because of all of the dysfunction and disintegration of family cohesiveness that accompanied the late-Soviet economic woes and the upheaval of democratization and privatization. Therefore, the human rights argument they hear from the Western media that everyone can live the life they want loving whomever they love, with or without children, sounds like a direct attack on the sense of familial duty that they want to cultivate and restore.

Putin may actually believe that Russia needs a strong dose of traditional values, enforced by violence, in order to increase its birth rate, reduce its abortion rate, reduce its emigration rate, and address the hopelessness that leads people to alcoholism and violence. He is wrong - and the way he is going about doing it is very wrong. He is also obviously using scapegoats to secure his authority. His opponents are liberals, after all.

Antigay violence also rises whenever men feel their masculinity is threatened. Unemployment, poverty, lack of educational or professional opportunities, and sense of being threatened when women assert their autonomy can all contribute to this (I am all for female empowerment, and it is no excuse for violence of any kind).

Posted by Stetson (# 9597) on :

Sronespring wrote:

quote:
The homosexuality-as-a-sign-of-corruptive-Western-decadence meme seems pretty common now. You see it in Uganda, Iran, Nigeria, India, etc.

quote:
It is ironic that in the countries that are former colonies, the laws against homosexuality that are now being strengthened in Africa or restored by the courts after having been struck down in India were put in place by the colonizers.

Iran's Hidden Homosexual History

A review of a book which argues that anti-gay ideology actually entered Iran via the west, though not through the channels a 21st Century reader might expect. According to the writer, it was actually westernized MARXISTS who made anti-homosexualuty a staple of their propaganda against traditional Persian society, in the early 20th Century. By 1979, this stance had been embraced by the Islamic revolutionaries, who instituted the death penalty for the offense.

Stonespring wrote:

quote:
The older anti-gay arguments are still widely seen in the rest of the world, though. A lot of otherwise secular parents and grandparents in places like Russia and China feel that their children and grandchildren have a duty to provide them with the traditional experience of having grandchildren and an opposite-sex child-in-law. The West has lost a lot of this sense of social duty to provide one's elders with the kind of family they expect, although it does still exist in some places.

My understanding is that while many non-western societies have been more tolerant of same-sex relations within a limited framework(eg. bachelors having sex with each other as an outlet before marriage), open tolerance of EXCLUSIVE LONG-TERM homosexuality pretty much originated in the west.

You could probably compare it to how we regard alcohol and drunkeness. Lots of people might get drunk every Friday night after work, but would be aghast were anyone to suggest that it's a good thing to be drunk every day of your life.

And no, I'm not saying that I personally think being drunk your whole life is like being gay your whole life, just that many people in those societies view it that way. Likely for the reasons you mention, related to a stronger sense of reproductive obligations.

[ 14. December 2013, 17:41: Message edited by: Stetson ]

Posted by Gwai (# 11076) on :

If this thread is about authoritanrianism, it belongs up here. If it is about views of homosexuality in various countries, it belongs in DH. I am mainly posting because this feels like two very interesting threads to me. Why doesn't someone start the one down in DH, and keep the authoritarianism up here?

Posted by Lietuvos Sv. Kazimieras (# 11274) on :

I intended to start a thread about politics in Russia specifically.

Posted by Kaplan Corday (# 16119) on :

There seem to be elements here of the old nineteenth century Slavophile / Westerniser divide, most recently exemplified personally in the late Solzhenitsyn's ambivalence about the two.

He supported Western political liberalism in his exposes of Stalinism, but fiercely turned against Western social and cultural liberalism, which he saw as corrupt and deracinated.

Posted by Horseman Bree (# 5290) on :

and there's the clue: "deracinated" implies not having YOUR tribe to hide in.

Black students coming to university are often assailed for leaving the tribe. My daughter pointed out to me that the black students could only be accepted by their black friends if they played football for the university; what they wanted was a degree and a passport out of "the projects", but the football disguised that.

A lot of tribal societies (which means most societies) have built protective emotional barricades to keep their people in, trying to hide the attractiveness of "western" society from the tribal members who might want to leave. The more often individuals leave, the louder the scaring becomes.

Posted by Grammatica (# 13248) on :

Only because no one has mentioned this yet: The outgoing German Foreign Minister, Guido Westerwelle, is openly gay. The Russian press apparently piled on the homophobic insults when he made his recent (and probably last) visit to Russia as the Foreign Minister.

So perhaps in addition to the other aspects mentioned, there is a situation-specific insult to Germany. Putin has been known to do this kind of thing before; letting his very large dog roam freely in the room where he and Angela Merkel were seated, while the cameras rolled, for example. She has a notorious fear of dogs, and he knew that.

[Westerwelle is the outgoing Foreign Minister because his party, the Free Democratic Party, did not do well enough in the last election to qualify for seats in the Bundestag. Not because he's openly gay.]

Posted by Martin PC not & Ship's Biohazard (# 368) on :

I find it fascinating that once a tribe gets a persona, that's it.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

A former colleague of mine who used to work in Russia once told me that Western commentators tend to underestimate just how disastrous the Western-backed Yeltsin was, and consequently the level of distrust felt towards pro-Western politicians. It's not so much that Russians are mindless adorers of Putin, but that they fear the alternative.

UBB.classic^TM 6.5.0