It just looks that Russians themselves don't want to die in the war but otherwise supported it.
I am reading vk.com and generally there was 1 post or comment against the war in Ukraine for every 10 or 20 posts pro-war.
Now the ratio is 1 post against the draft versus 1 post pro-draft.
You see the change? Russians mostly supported the war and those few people who were ready to protest against the war were simply overwhelmed and suppressed by those who supported it. Some people live in bubble where they see that everybody around them thinks similarly to them but that doesn't seem to be the whole reality in Russia.
I am not convinced about the resistance against covid restrictions in Russia. Russia had its own share of lockdowns and restrictions. It wasn't as free as Sweden. It avoided some most stupid ones like vaccine mandates. But the UK also didn't have vaccine mandates. Was it due to people actively resisting? Possibly, but I don't think you had something so active as Canadian convoy in Spring 2022. It can rather be explained that the authorities were not really very eager to introduce those measures in the first place. When they encountered even lukewarm resistance, they gave up because vaccine mandates were not effective at all.
Look, Russia had abysmal vaccination rates among elderly (the only measure that really mattered). That shows the failure of public health institutions. The UK (no mandates) and Canada (strong mandates) both had very good vaccine coverage among elderly – which shows that regardless of mandates, it is possible to ensure high vaccination uptake among risk groups. Russia doesn't have that and mandates wouldn't have helped anyway. No wonder authorities gave up so quickly even with a moderate resistence to those measures.
I actually have been detained once in Russia. I paid some fine and was let to go after several hours. But I haven't been arrested anywhere else, so I cannot compare.
In any case, if people are serious, they make sacrifices. It is not like dying in Ukraine war is better than being jailed. I just think that actual number of people seriously against war in Russia is quite small.
You lucky, I'm okay with police too. But there are a lot of true stories of torturing people arrested for politics. And poeple here prefer to go to another country and continue to live normally than protest, and there are A LOT of them. Besides, guys who worked as contract soldier, retired because they don't want to fight.
In my small city one guy BURNED himself at bus station because he was against war.
Do you think that if all people started loudly complain and write on vk etc., the police would be able to round them all up if they were >30% of the population?
The resistance of Russians seem to be little more than passive-aggressive behavior, making initiatives more difficult to implement to the point that the people in charge back down. Doubtful that as a rule that kind of resistance particularly scales up.
Too, I wouldn’t underestimate the harm of centuries of powerlessness and lack of agency to create a culture of submission, where there’s no strength to oppose beyond passive-aggressive behavior. Russia has had a culture of individual impotence forever. As always, breaking things -- here, a society and social norms -- is far easier than fixing them, let alone to a point that they’re good as new. Russia has had the former, has yet to experience the latter to any extent that matters.
Too, Prof. Greene’s theory at or around the time of the invasion was that it was motivated less by security concerns and more by economics issues. So query whether that theory is still operative. I believe it still is.
I agree that centuries of powerlessness play a huge role, but I wonder if they are also not afraid of changing things for still worse as was the case with the October Revolution in the long run.
IIRC, fear of change is part of the cliche picture of Russian Slavs -- as you note, if that’s correct it’s not without reason. Change hasn’t been net good for them forever, pretty much.
Let's hope that it will be different one day. Prof. ended his text with "What happens next depends on Putin.", but I think that it depends on other countries too. If we will not believe that change for good there is possible, for sure they will not. I don't expect too much now. except maybe some areas getting independent, but each protest is a building block for the future. Ukraine victory would also change a lot - that is why partly Putin is so afraid of it.
The US doesn’t do “change for good” other than using the line for propaganda. Check your CIA history.
There are two macro-elements, so to speak, about any nation. One is that a nation gets the government the powers that they choose to allow. Look at our own de facto one party neoliberal state. Per that, I’m not expecting any huge change with Putin’s successor.
Second is the answer to this: just how well does the state serve its people? Put like that, the nature of the state is less important (*not* unimportant, just less) than how well its people do, the lives they have or are allowed. We here are lucky (or not) that a significant minority accept having awful, brutal lives and refuse to accepts any responsibility of the state to correct that in any way. That question, applied to Russia, is a complete unknown to me.
BTW: none of the preceding is a defense of the invasion of Ukraine, which was 1,000% unjustifiable.
"Had I written that article two years later, I could have included the remarkable (if tragic) resistance that Russians put up to the state’s attempts at Covid-19 restrictions, which entirely upended the government’s pandemic response."
"It is early days, but the level of individual resistance is reminiscent of the fight Russians put up against Covid-19 restrictions and may, in and of itself, be enough to sabotage Putin’s draft."
It would seem that the ultimate test of the Russian government’s pandemic response was the level of vaccinations. Russia apparently reached a country wide vaccination rate of 59% (at least one dose). The world average was 68% and the US 80%, this according to Our World in Data. Given that a vaccination mandate was never put into effect by the Russian government (vaccinations were voluntary), a 59% vaccination rate does not necessarily sound like collective resistance and/or government failure, especially since 25% of Russia's total population lives in non-urban areas spread across a vast country.
Hello everyone from Russia. There are plenty of people who want to go to war. But seems like majority don't want to lose their lives, jobs and close people. A LOT of people go to close countries like Georgia, Kyrgisztan etc. And there are protests here of course. People just don't want to be arrested(it's not like in Europe, where people have rights). Peace
The fact remains that calling someone's detailed argument supported by evidence "delusional" is not a strong counter-argument. I'll be ready to be convinced when you advance a proper argument with evidence of your own.
It just looks that Russians themselves don't want to die in the war but otherwise supported it.
I am reading vk.com and generally there was 1 post or comment against the war in Ukraine for every 10 or 20 posts pro-war.
Now the ratio is 1 post against the draft versus 1 post pro-draft.
You see the change? Russians mostly supported the war and those few people who were ready to protest against the war were simply overwhelmed and suppressed by those who supported it. Some people live in bubble where they see that everybody around them thinks similarly to them but that doesn't seem to be the whole reality in Russia.
I am not convinced about the resistance against covid restrictions in Russia. Russia had its own share of lockdowns and restrictions. It wasn't as free as Sweden. It avoided some most stupid ones like vaccine mandates. But the UK also didn't have vaccine mandates. Was it due to people actively resisting? Possibly, but I don't think you had something so active as Canadian convoy in Spring 2022. It can rather be explained that the authorities were not really very eager to introduce those measures in the first place. When they encountered even lukewarm resistance, they gave up because vaccine mandates were not effective at all.
Look, Russia had abysmal vaccination rates among elderly (the only measure that really mattered). That shows the failure of public health institutions. The UK (no mandates) and Canada (strong mandates) both had very good vaccine coverage among elderly – which shows that regardless of mandates, it is possible to ensure high vaccination uptake among risk groups. Russia doesn't have that and mandates wouldn't have helped anyway. No wonder authorities gave up so quickly even with a moderate resistence to those measures.
VK is full of kremlin bots. And there is a big difference between being arrested in Canada and in Russia
I actually have been detained once in Russia. I paid some fine and was let to go after several hours. But I haven't been arrested anywhere else, so I cannot compare.
In any case, if people are serious, they make sacrifices. It is not like dying in Ukraine war is better than being jailed. I just think that actual number of people seriously against war in Russia is quite small.
You lucky, I'm okay with police too. But there are a lot of true stories of torturing people arrested for politics. And poeple here prefer to go to another country and continue to live normally than protest, and there are A LOT of them. Besides, guys who worked as contract soldier, retired because they don't want to fight.
In my small city one guy BURNED himself at bus station because he was against war.
Do you think that if all people started loudly complain and write on vk etc., the police would be able to round them all up if they were >30% of the population?
The resistance of Russians seem to be little more than passive-aggressive behavior, making initiatives more difficult to implement to the point that the people in charge back down. Doubtful that as a rule that kind of resistance particularly scales up.
Too, I wouldn’t underestimate the harm of centuries of powerlessness and lack of agency to create a culture of submission, where there’s no strength to oppose beyond passive-aggressive behavior. Russia has had a culture of individual impotence forever. As always, breaking things -- here, a society and social norms -- is far easier than fixing them, let alone to a point that they’re good as new. Russia has had the former, has yet to experience the latter to any extent that matters.
Too, Prof. Greene’s theory at or around the time of the invasion was that it was motivated less by security concerns and more by economics issues. So query whether that theory is still operative. I believe it still is.
I agree that centuries of powerlessness play a huge role, but I wonder if they are also not afraid of changing things for still worse as was the case with the October Revolution in the long run.
IIRC, fear of change is part of the cliche picture of Russian Slavs -- as you note, if that’s correct it’s not without reason. Change hasn’t been net good for them forever, pretty much.
Let's hope that it will be different one day. Prof. ended his text with "What happens next depends on Putin.", but I think that it depends on other countries too. If we will not believe that change for good there is possible, for sure they will not. I don't expect too much now. except maybe some areas getting independent, but each protest is a building block for the future. Ukraine victory would also change a lot - that is why partly Putin is so afraid of it.
The US doesn’t do “change for good” other than using the line for propaganda. Check your CIA history.
There are two macro-elements, so to speak, about any nation. One is that a nation gets the government the powers that they choose to allow. Look at our own de facto one party neoliberal state. Per that, I’m not expecting any huge change with Putin’s successor.
Second is the answer to this: just how well does the state serve its people? Put like that, the nature of the state is less important (*not* unimportant, just less) than how well its people do, the lives they have or are allowed. We here are lucky (or not) that a significant minority accept having awful, brutal lives and refuse to accepts any responsibility of the state to correct that in any way. That question, applied to Russia, is a complete unknown to me.
BTW: none of the preceding is a defense of the invasion of Ukraine, which was 1,000% unjustifiable.
I am not in the US and didn't have in mind only the US.
"Had I written that article two years later, I could have included the remarkable (if tragic) resistance that Russians put up to the state’s attempts at Covid-19 restrictions, which entirely upended the government’s pandemic response."
"It is early days, but the level of individual resistance is reminiscent of the fight Russians put up against Covid-19 restrictions and may, in and of itself, be enough to sabotage Putin’s draft."
It would seem that the ultimate test of the Russian government’s pandemic response was the level of vaccinations. Russia apparently reached a country wide vaccination rate of 59% (at least one dose). The world average was 68% and the US 80%, this according to Our World in Data. Given that a vaccination mandate was never put into effect by the Russian government (vaccinations were voluntary), a 59% vaccination rate does not necessarily sound like collective resistance and/or government failure, especially since 25% of Russia's total population lives in non-urban areas spread across a vast country.
Hello everyone from Russia. There are plenty of people who want to go to war. But seems like majority don't want to lose their lives, jobs and close people. A LOT of people go to close countries like Georgia, Kyrgisztan etc. And there are protests here of course. People just don't want to be arrested(it's not like in Europe, where people have rights). Peace
Wow, what a strong counter-argument. 🙄
Obvious point is obvious.
The fact remains that calling someone's detailed argument supported by evidence "delusional" is not a strong counter-argument. I'll be ready to be convinced when you advance a proper argument with evidence of your own.