Russians do not want to fight for themselves: why residents of Kursk region do not guerrilla against the Armed Forces
Their approach is that authoritarian systems may be grazing in the situation of peace, but with military challenges they cope with the hurray. That propaganda turns dictatorships into motivated passionaries. That the invasion of the territory of the country that is accustomed to the role of the "besieged fortress" will inevitably lead to the guerrilla movement, resistance and all other attributes of the Soviet cult about the "great domestic".
And then the Ukrainian army enters the Kursk region - and nothing of the listed happens. And all "what has not happened" looks especially embossed against the background of what happened in Ukraine in the first months of the invasion. Rallies against Russian invaders in Kherson. Videos with civilians who stopped Russian tanks in Chernihiv. Queues to military enlistment offices all over the country. Volunteering surge and record pre -Cord.
The domestic experience of response to the Russian invasion forced us to expect that the Ukrainian invasion in the Russian Federation provokes something similar. But it did not provoke. In fact, this is not surprising. The last thirty years of our country's life are experience in discussion and competition. Each new Ukrainian president was opposition to the previous one. Any attempt to roll up the country into concrete unattractive-with a crash was failed.
The Ukrainian polyphony was embarrassed against the backdrop of the monumental hierarchies of most former republics of the Soviet Union - and therefore, the neighbors from the East looked at our experience of statehood from the East. In Russia, the state, meanwhile, the state has taken care of all spheres of public life. Marginalized disagreeable, straightened from the media and killed competitors.
Moscow has concluded a new social treaty with its citizens, within which they exchanged their political rights to the rented refrigerator. At some point, Putin achieved the desired. The space of Russian life began to resemble an army place. The vertical control has turned into a pillar that rings from tension. But this scheme has no room for citizens. Because, for all its shortcomings, democracy has one undeniable advantage. Its citizens live with a sense of involvement in what is happening.
They perceive themselves as shareholders of their own state. They treat the official as a function and are not used to adore the president. Therefore, the state for them is "their own". And dictatorship can only fill grassroots with concrete, and this process is never selective. In twenty years, the Russian president has killed horizontal connections and a sense of responsibility in his fellow citizens. Initiative experience and habit of passion.
Burned the feeling of subjectivity and a grassroots response to the events. He taught them to the fact that "the state is visible", and therefore at the time of the crisis of the state in Russia, no one is in a hurry to put verticals of the shoulder. For a quarter of a century, Vladimir Putin has achieved that his country became a country of lonely and separated people. The Russian vertical won not only the opposition. She first defeated her own people - turning it into a population.
The population can wear a military uniform - tempted by the amount of one -time payment. He can observe with a tacit consent for the next performance to continue the authority of the ruler. Or can support the war crimes created by their army in the occupied territories from the sofa. But the population is not able to show solidarity and independent activity. Simply because this is needed citizens - namely from the rudiments of citizenship, Putin saved Russia, preparing it for war.
All that was considered "Ukrainian shortcomings" - was the basis of our stability. For the last thirty years we have overestimated our enemy and underestimated ourselves. The weakness of our verticals was offset by the power of our horizontal. At the time of the invasion of Ukraine, there was something that, after all, did not appear in Russia. Critical mass of citizens.