And we have a third problem here: the deepening split in the Russian mass consciousness. For many countries, days of celebration and days of sorrow become causes for national solidarity; but for us they have exactly the opposite effect. Victory Day on 9 May and the Day of National Unity on 4 November; the terrorist actions at ‘Nord-Ost’ (when terrorists seized a theatre in Moscow in 2003) and Beslan (the seizure of a school in Ingushetia in 2004); the terrorist acts in the Charlie Hebdo editorial offices and on the streets of Paris: these all become causes for social division. In fact, Russia has witnessed these divisions for the past hundred years, since the time of the 1917 Revolution and the unfinished Civil War of 1918–21; and perhaps even from the time of Peter the Great’s reforms at the start of the eighteenth century. Our mass consciousness is deeply and painfully politicized, and precisely in the way that Carl Schmitt understood politics: as a search for enemies. If anyone is expressing sympathy with MH17, Charlie Hebdo, Paris or the West in general, our propaganda castigates it as ‘a fifth column’. The very act of laying flowers, if it hasn’t been sanctioned by the state – for example, outside the Embassy of the Netherlands – is considered suspicious and potentially an enemy action.
This is why the Russian Internet bursts into a holy war at the slightest provocation; no kind act can pass without some reproach: you grieved over the victims of the Paris attacks, but for some reason you didn’t grieve over the Russians who perished in the Sinai, which means you’re a Russophobe; you expressed sympathy for the victims of MH17, but not for the miners in the Donbass, which means you’re a traitor; you help stray dogs, but you don’t help children, which means you hate people; you plant trees, but you don’t think about people, which means you’re an eco-fascist – and so on. Our public space has become a territory of hatred and mutual accusations; our society has been atomized and struck by social anomie, deprived of any moral guidance or authority, incapable of showing solidarity or uniting in protest. Such a shattered society is very convenient for authoritarian powers, and is the ideal object for manipulation by the media and propaganda.
All this shows that this disunited social sphere can be divided into two groups: the first is convinced that the whole world is against Russia; and the second, that Russia is a part of the world. These two groups are the party of post-imperial resentment and the party of globalization. The former blames the outside world for all the country’s ills, from terrorist acts in the North Caucasus to the loss of Ukraine, from the fall in the oil price to Russia’s social problems: ‘Obama, hands off our pensions!’ as the signs read at the official celebration of the Day of National Unity. It is worth recalling what Yevgeny Fyodorov, the deputy from the ruling party ‘United Russia’, suggested: that the protests by the long-distance lorry drivers against the outrageously high road tariffs were directed by the USA to bring about the collapse of the state in Russia.
In the second group are people who consider that Russia is a part of the global community, and who react to tragedies in the world. I looked at how the avatars and cover of my Facebook profile had changed over the last few years: ‘Je suis Paris’ after the terrorist acts in Paris; a photo of Boris Nemtsov, after the murder of the opposition politician; ‘Je suis Charlie’; a black ribbon in memory of the victims of MH17; the Ukrainian flag (after the annexation of Crimea); the Boston Marathon (the terrorist act in April 2013); the crew of the submarine Kursk (on the anniversary of the tragedy in 2000); the Norwegian flag (for the terrorist act by Breivik in July 2011)… The memorial ribbon waves as a ribbon of grief, and each time my personal sorrow moves out to the wider political context; an act of sympathy becomes an act of citizenly solidarity and identity.
It is no less interesting to analyse the link between the ‘avatars of sympathy’ (with the victims of the terrorist acts in Paris, with Charlie Hebdo, with MH17) and the ‘avatars of protest’ against the ruling regime (usually a white ribbon, which has become a symbol of the opposition in Russia). Clearly, there is a strong link between those who went to the protests on Bolotnaya Square in 2011–12 and on Moskvoretsky Bridge in 2015, where Boris Nemtsov was killed, and those who changed their avatars and laid flowers at the Netherlands and French Embassies after the MH17 and the Charlie Hebdo tragedies. It is basically the same 14 per cent of the population who, according to the opinion polls, do not agree with the current political regime. It is here in this opposition segment that new ways of remembrance are born: wearing the white ribbon, laying flowers on the spot where Nemtsov was shot and repainting their avatars. As opposed to the official, state forms of collective remembrance – such as the official cult of Victory Day on 9 May, or the formal celebrations like ‘Day of the City’ – this practice is deeply private; it comes from below, out of civil society.
At this point we should remember other forms of commemoration: ‘The Last Address’, in which plaques are attached to homes from which victims were taken during the Stalinist repressions; and the annual action of ‘Returning their names’, the reading aloud of the names of those who were shot, which is held at the Memorial to the Victims of Stalinist Repressions on Lubyanka Square in Moscow.[26] The state looks on these actions with suspicion; but they are the points where civil self-awareness crystallizes, where memory becomes an act of resistance to the machine of terror, be it Communist, Islamic or the terror of the police state. In Putin’s Russia, the civil memory becomes a challenge to power; and for those protesting, sympathy and grief become a common cause, res publica. Private emotion develops into social commotion, and as a result becomes political – which in no way detracts from the sincerity of the original personal concern.
Therefore, by painting our avatars in the colours of the French flag, many of us are grieving not only for the 130 people who died in Paris, but also for the 224 passengers who were killed in the sky over Sinai, and about whom, disgracefully, President Putin said nothing for two weeks; for the victims of Beslan and ‘Nord-Ost’; for Kenya and Beirut; and at the same time for us ourselves, who against our will were drawn into the Middle East conflict and the global war against terrorism. Paraphrasing John Donne: ‘Think not for whom your avatar grieves, it grieves for thee.’
PART III: THE WAR FOR THE BODY
PUNITIVE HYGIENE
The battle for a healthy lifestyle has reached new heights. The Interior Ministry has introduced a draft containing corrections to the Code on Administrative Infringements of the Law, according to which, as well as testing drivers, the police will be able to test pedestrians to see if they are sober and in general carry out a medical examination on anyone they want to. (Especially if that ‘anyone’ had turned up at an opposition rally.) It seems that cleaning the social space is becoming the principal task of the authorities, and the instrument they are using is punitive hygiene.
26
Lubyanka Square is where the KGB/FSB headquarters is; behind this large building is the infamous Lubyanka Prison, to which thousands of political prisoners and innocent people were taken in Stalin’s time and later. The memorial – a large stone brought from the Solovetsky Islands, the scene of a notorious prison camp – was deliberately placed on this spot and unveiled in a ceremony in the more liberal period of Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership in 1990.