http://deryugina.com/a-view-from-russian-academia/
A View From Russian Academia
Along with several other Russian-speaking academics outside of Russia, I have been emailing thousands (yes, thousands!) academics in Russia urging them to take action to oppose the war. My letter to them can be found here (scroll down for an English translation). Most of the emails get no replies, but the replies I have gotten have made me truly appreciate how polarized the Russian population is. It’s one thing to imagine a Russian store clerk believing in the story of genocide, it’s another to hear an academic who has published in English-language journals profess such views. Propaganda does not necessarily discriminate.
Today, I received a reply that, based on other replies, captures the situation among Russian academics quite well, both the good and the ugly. With the academic’s permission, I am publishing the reply almost word-for-word (by request, I removed some small details so the academic cannot be identified). The English translation comes first (original Russian below). I also added a few links and notes for clarity.
English translation
“I want to assure you that I am very upset by what’s going on. I recently had a political discussion at work and learned the positions of some of my colleagues. Slightly less than half (me included) share your view, a few others (one of whom has relatives in Donetsk) think that Ukraine didn’t carry out the Minsk agreement and was shelling Donbas, as a result of which Ukraine provoked Putin to start all this and to end nationalism and genocide of residents of that region (they are still against military intervention, but think they would have started sooner or later regardless). One colleague thinks that, like Kosovo, Crimea was annexed legitimately (the region decided for itself) and DPR and LPR should follow its example, and a military operation will be helpful. And a few colleagues have communist viewpoints and think that Russians in Ukraine were being oppressed, that Ukraine wanted to be a threat to Russia and place weapons aimed at the Russian Federation in the East of the country (including in Crimea). They think that, sooner or later, Ukraine, together with Western countries, would have started an aggression against Russia and so in their view the destruction of the Russian economy because of this war is better than the destruction of Russia itself if it were to take no action with respect to Crimea and Donbas. And so they are expecting that Russia will gain control of Ukraine as a result of what’s going on now, after which it will install a puppet government or even try to annex the country or part of it.
I feel very uncomfortable that I am telling you other people’s personal views, and I ask you not to refer directly to what I said, but I hope that this somehow helps us understand the situation. Here is also my view as to why the Russian people are not protesting en masse:
- Negative influence of the USSR: beginning with the immigration after 1917 and Stalinist purges and ending with the destruction of the will to live freely to the falling apart of the country. People didn’t live normally and so don’t want to live normally now, those who protest are mostly very young.
- A non-trivial share of the people are idiots. They can’t or, for many reasons, don’t want to absorb non-one-sided information and just want to be “outside of politics”. And the most accessible information is, sadly, propaganda.
- Propaganda is literally EVERYWHERE. On TV it reaches absurd proportions, and besides that special bot farms write a huge number of online comments, forming a false public opinion and swaying those who are uncertain to their side.
- A huge army of siloviki (strongmen). Ukraine’s Maidan could happen because resistance [against the protestors] was not comparable to that of Russia and Belorussia. The Russian government has a huge horde of policemen and Rosgvardiya [National Guard of Russia] who get paid decent money just for brutally beating people who simply show up to a demonstration (and actually get pleasure out of doing so because they are idealistic and see enemies in those who show up). Then they imprison the people for 30 days and then create problems for them in their studies or work. And any resistance leads to a huge prison sentence. I’m not even mentioning, that people can be jailed for several years for tweets or social media posts (this is not an exaggeration!)
I hope this helps you understand the situation. I apologize for any colleagues and countrymen who may be responding to your email negatively.
PS I ask you to not group the nation of Russia together with Putin and his followers, but of course I understand all the aggression and hate toward us, those who act this way have their reasons…”