Russia's trembling elites

The Russian opposition Meduza publication recently published an interesting section of the opinions that prevail among the ruling class there after Ukraine's Armed Forces liberated Kherson. In order not to go into details, I will quote only one fragment of this text: “The interlocutor, one of the businessmen from the closest circle of Vladimir Putin, expressed himself very harshly: “Understanding came - we lost the real war. People are starting to think about how to live on, what place they would like to occupy in the future, what bet to make, what to play on. (On the one hand) there will be revanchist sentiments. On the other hand, there will be a request for normalization and stabilization””

That is, as we can see, the mood is not the most optimistic. On the contrary, despair, depression and hopelessness prevail at the top of the Russian iceberg. In principle, in recent years (even before the Ukraine-Russia war in 2014), these attitudes did not change, but Moscow's business and cultural elite considered it necessary to be loyal to the "leader", seeing this loyalty as a key to success. The Ukrainian sociopsychologist Oleh Pokalchuk has a wonderful article Trembling Elites, so although its topic at the time of publication was not Russia, it is now suitable for characterizing the servile Moscow elites.

(For the sake of truth, I will say that among the elite Russians and those who believed otherwise, they tried to escape from Putin's "titanic", and some of them succeeded).

So, Oleh Pokalchuk writes that "people's behavior changes depending on what others expect of them." And what does the Russian people expect from the national, actually atrophied "elite"? That "deep people", whose brains are filled to the brim with Kremlin propaganda, an infantile commoner from some "Mukhosransk" (pejorative quasi-toponym denoting "provincial town" - Ed)? And nothing.  The people pray to the "leader", realizing that all other "great people", "boyars" are only pawns in Putin's game.

“The Russian rich are not at all afraid of the demonized "rebellion". It does not pose any threat to them, because it is actually unreal. It is like Baudrillard's "silence of the masses". "The silent majority is neither an essence nor a sociological reality, it is a shadow that the government rejects, the abyss that opens before it, the form that absorbs it”

The Russian rich are not at all afraid of the demonized "rebellion". It does not pose any threat to them, because it is actually unreal. It is like Baudrillard's "silence of the masses". “The silent majority is neither an essence nor a sociological reality, it is a shadow that the government rejects, the abyss that opens before it, the form that absorbs it.”

This risk factor for "trembling elites" is absent.  There are much more significant threats, what at the beginning of the invasion the Russian oligarchs considered a toy to live with. Do you remember how they fussed after the first sanctions of the international community, trying to hide their assets, take expensive yachts to safe places, hide luxury planes, transfer villas on the Velvet Coast to other people? How did they later complain that the world had peeled them off like sticky tape and they couldn't even hire maids? This was the first psychological blow for people who only yesterday considered themselves the masters of fate - and not only their own, but also that of millions of compatriots.

Hence came the disappointment: the world had no intention of stopping at the introduced restrictions and prohibitions. True depression and hopelessness prevailed after the first defeats of the "second army of the world". On the one hand, the elites realized that they were thrown to the margins of geoeconomics, on the other hand, they felt themselves hostages in the crazy adventure of the Kremlin leader, who turned from a "patron" into a pariah ignored by almost the whole world. The third, perhaps, the most troubling aspect is in the understanding that it is they, the "Deripaskas", the "Friedmans", the "Abramovichs" (their legion), who will have to pay for the Ukrainian war.  Paying for someone else's game, not knowing what will come to Putin's mind in the next minute. “They don't keep us a secret, we learn a lot from Ukrainian and Western news. It seems that we are constantly making concessions and even trying to hide it,” Meduza quoted another interlocutor.

“On the one hand, the elites realized that they were thrown to the margins of geoeconomics, on the other hand, they felt themselves hostages in the crazy adventure of the Kremlin leader, who turned from a "patron" into a pariah ignored by almost the entire world.”

The feeling of being second-rate in the world is intensified by the realization that in the country, dubious and brutal types, such as Prigozhin or Kadyrov, play an increasingly significant role - populists and thugs. Inferiority in one's own country, whatever it may be, the need to finance the projects of marginal types - this also, without a doubt, increases fear and despair.

And most importantly, the elites lost their false image of "liberals" and Whitman's "citizens of the world." They used it well and successfully during the so-called "fat times" of high oil and gas prices. Now - a receipt. This product is not running. And there is no other. Philosopher Roman Kechur writes that “Russian liberals are those who know how to sell their liberality well. Like Russian image makers, they are professionals only in that they know how to sell their own image well.”

“The third, perhaps, the most troubling aspect is in the understanding that it is they, the "Deripaskas", the "Friedmans", the "Abramovichs" (their legion) who will have to pay for the Ukrainian war. Paying for someone else's game.”

Russia is rapidly turning into North Korea or Polpotov's Kampuchea. And the time is not far off, when yesterday's people, corrupted by wealth and fortune, will work somewhere in the forest, side by side with the "deep people" who never understood them, and they, after all, did not notice it…

About the author. Ihor Hulyk, journalist, Editor-in-Chief of the Espreso.West website. 

The editorial team does not always share the opinions expressed by the blog authors.