Russia's Patriots and Liberals

 

In my previous article I mentioned a division between Russian liberals and patriots. Here I will explain how that works.

Some people erroneously think that Russians are united behind Putin, who enjoys a near universal popularity. That is of course not true. Putin has his supporters, but also his opponents who exist despite his best efforts to eliminate him.

Unlike other countries that often have two main parties that represent main division in society, in Russia "official" parties exist only to prop Putin. Putin's opponents are routinely denied the right to register their parties.

Nonetheless society informally but broadly divides into two big groups: patriots and liberals. These groups are as at odds with each other as Republicans and Democrats are in the US, possibly even more so. I will begin with patriots.

Patriots

Patriots are stereotypical pro-authority, pro-Putin Russians who often set stereotypes about the country in the West.

This term typically carries an apolitical positive connotation in Western countries. One can love their country and hate tories at the same time. 

In Russia however word patriot is used politically. It's akin to a nationalist in the West and can be as derogatory as term 'tory'.

The reasons for that are in Soviet mythos. USSR claimed itself to be an international union of all workers. Thus, it was against nationalism in theory. However, USSR still wanted to cultivate a sentiment similar to what nationalism is in other countries. At first it was called internationalism, for example in official propaganda surrounding War in Afghanistan, USSR forces were called international contingent. Afghan war veterans were called warriors-internationalists. In modern Russia it gradually became patriotism.

In contrast word 'nationalism' was typically used for minority separatism and always used negatively by the government. This confusion of terms leads to current misunderstanding between Russia and the West.

Term patriot in Russia does imply a set of political believes and stances. It's always paired with anti-Western sentiment, as well as pro-state and pro-military attitudes. It typically implies pro-Putin vies as well, but not always so.

Modern patriots broadly consist of former pro-USSR-system Communists, pro-state government employees who are joined but all sorts of extreme right, neo-nazis, monarchists, neo-imperialists, Eurasianists, neo-Cossacks. A broad array of diverse views, sometimes conflicting with each other. 

However, in general, this group is more cohesive than their opponents. They hold mostly right-wing by western standards believes, but typically call themselves either centrists or in case of communists left.

The reason for that is that Communist Party of USSR began as radical left-wing community of intellectuals. However, after they took power and evolved from a radical revolutionary party into a one-party state governing party, the nature of party began to change. They gradually shed their more radical left wing believes and adopted many that are associated with the right in the West. 

During late USSR CPSU was closer to a typical Western right wing rather than left wing party. It was pro-military, pro-police, pro-state, pro-political dogma, pro-status quo and against any dissent or change. The only exception was economic and cultural spheres. However, collapse of USSR made them abandon their unique economic policies and replace them with reactionary pre-trust-busting right-wing ones.

Despite being mostly radical reactionary right for the most part, some of their vestigial believes make them somewhat different from typical right-wing party of the West. For example, their tendency to see their militarism as internationalist patriotism and zeal to bring global justice rather than nationalism. It is that tendency paired with long history of Soviet internationalist mythos, that allows Putin portray War in Ukraine as internationalist intervention against Ukrainian Nazi.

Liberals

Patriots like to call everyone who disagrees with them a liberal. Sometimes they also use terms, democrat or traitor, but liberal is most common and most descriptive. By this definition liberals are many indeed. 

However, they are very diverse group with vastly divergent believes. Some could hardly imagine working together with some others. There were many attempts by, Yavlisnkiy, Nemtsov, Kasparov and Navalniy to unite the opposition, but so far with only limited success.

Traditionally liberals would be considered right as the opposite to CPSU left. However confusing mix of left and right in CPSU believes that are more schizophrenic than syncretic in nature, led to an equally confusing set of counter-believes. Despite being broadly pro-Western, believes of Russian liberals are hard to compare to any Western ideologies. 

On a political compass it would be bottom most arrow that points to Liberty. One of the most consistent tenets of both CPSU and Putinism was loyalty to the county and the state: Authority arrow of the political compass. Thus, liberals who oppose it, champion individual liberty instead: bottom arrow of the political compass. In a way, a theoretical anarchism is probably the closest thing towards Russian Liberal believes.

However just as Putinism is ambiguous on its economic stance, mixing new liberal economy with some of the traditional Soviet social security. Putinism is willing to bend economic policy any way to maintain authoritarian state and people's loyalty to it. 

Russian liberals tend to have divergent believes on future economic policy. Some lean towards left, others towards right. Individual freedom is a great thing many people in Russia want, however it is hard to build a party around it. Double so without cohesive economic policy, that would outline what work and finance will look like.

However, success of Czech Pirate Party gives us a good example of the kind of liberal party that will work in Russia as well. Syncretic economic policy, anarchist style black flag and internet piracy is possibly the only common ground that can unite Russian liberals.