In Russia, the mirage of support for the war
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Unmanned drones over the Kremlin, evacuation of civilians in the region of Belgorod, an attack on the nationalist writer Zakhar Prilepin: In May, Kyiv intensified its operations on the territory of Russia. Will these symbolic actions really undermine the credibility of the government? Although the effect of the wave of patriotism still exists, criticism of the elites is also increasing and does not only concern opponents of the war...
At first glance, the Russian ship of state appears to be weathering the storm the Kremlin unleashed when it invaded its Ukrainian neighbour. More than a year after the start of the war, the country's economy is in recession but has not collapsed (-2.1% in 2022). If we believe the results of opinion polling companies, even those independent of the state(1)1, a majority of the population still favours continuing the "special military operation". But the cracks in Russian society are widening, revealing some surprising points of agreement: regardless of their opinion on the war, more and more Russians distrust the "elites". Already noticeable before the start of the invasion in February 2022 (2)2, this mistrust is growing.
At a time when the climate of fear is intensifying in Russia, it is very difficult to feel the pulse of society, but sometimes useful lessons can be drawn from the methodical remarks made by the independent opinion polling companies. One example is the drop in response rates. According to Russian Field, a company that conducts marketing studies and opinion polls, only between 5.9% and 9.3% of respondents now answer all of its questions about the "special military operation", a rate three or four times lower than that of pre-conflict opinion polls (3)3. In one of its polls last February (4)4, the company asked respondents if they preferred initiatives that would intensify the offensive or those that could bring about peace. Only 27% said they support intensification, compared to 34% who preferred steps to peace.
Three groups deserve particular attention. The "party of war" which, according to opinion polls, represents between 25% and 37% of respondents, approves the persecution of dissidents, declares itself ready to sacrifice social policy in favor of military goals, and condemns deserters. This opinion is particularly well represented among the elderly and groups with high incomes. At the other end of the spectrum, the "party of peace" - between 10% and 36% of those surveyed - consists mostly of young people and the poorest respondents. Those who are between the two extremes either say that it is difficult to answer, or give contradictory answers. Although they are often opposed to an intensification of the war, they nevertheless yield to the official position of the authorities.
The Incompetence of the Generals
The party of war has its spokespersons on social networks through the accounts of those who could be called "extreme patriots". In the meantime, their freedom to speak is not subject to any restrictions, but it worries the leadership, which fears competition for supremacy. "We don't have to fear the liberal Maidan [overthrow of the government in Ukraine in 2014]: the liberals all fled. (...) Today, the only danger for our state is the Maidan of the extreme patriots dyed with a little leftism and supported by debates on corruption" declared Mr. Oleg Matveichev, deputy of the Duma for United Russia, the president's party last February (5)5.
Since the beginning of the invasion, the operations have been covered on social networks by so-called "war bloggers" (voienkori), who are actually supporters of the extreme right with military or paramilitary connections. The most famous is Mr. Igor Strelkov, a former officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB) with monarchist convictions. In 2014, as the commander of a detachment of Russian volunteers, he captured the city of Slovyansko, in the Donbass region of Ukraine. Although Moscow provided military support to the separatists at the time, the capriciousness and fanaticism of their leaders worried the Kremlin (6)6. Mr. Strelkov was forced to leave Donbass. Today, his channel on Telegram has almost one million subscribers. In it, he complains that the Kremlin is not fighting the Ukrainian enemy vigorously enough. After the military setbacks in the fall of 2022, Strelkov and other radical nationalists are condemning the shortcomings of President Putin's regime: inadequate organization of supplies for the army, the weakness of the defense industry, the incompetence and corruption of generals, and a second-rate ruling an elite who lives in luxury while the homeland is in danger. They even insinuate that part of President Putin's entourage secretly wishes to reconcile with the West, even if that means capitulation. "If they leave Russia during this war, we probably won't be able to touch their dear partners in the West, but with them we will do everything possible to settle the accounts," Mr. Strelkov wrote on February 3, 2023. He doubts that the current government is capable of winning the war. "The Great Disturbance [as he calls the consequences of the war] is now inevitable. Those in high places know this well, and they are worried. Our goal is to transform the Disturbance into a national and patriotic victory", wrote Mr. Maksim Kalashnikov (7)7, an admirer of Joseph Stalin's power politics, and an ally of Mr. Strelkov.
The "anger" of patriots outside the system has spread to loyalists in the war camp, a cause of great concern for the Kremlin. Against a background of competition with the generals of the ordinary army, Mr. Yevgeny Prigozhin, owner of the Wagner group, a private military company deployed heavily in Ukraine, now speculates about the problems of social inequality, corruption and incompetence of the military hierarchy. But his public activism displeased the presidential administration, which barred him from prisons, where he recruited volunteers for the front from among the prison inmates. The new chief of the military staff, Valerij Gerassimov, reduced the supply of ammunition to Wagner. The reaction of this former staunch supporter of the president was to force his fighters to record videos in the style of Mr. Strelkov, in which the commanders and officials were accused of treason. In one of them, a fighter declares, standing in front of corpses: "Stop the nonsense, (...) let us defend our homeland (8)8." Mr. Prigozhin took a further step when, in a video that appeared on the day of the May 9 celebrations (victory against Nazism, according to the Soviet calendar), he evoked "a happy grandfather [who believes that everything is fine]". "What will become of Russia if it turns out, and I'm only guessing, that this grandpa is a complete scoundrel?" he added, in an almost self-evident allusion to Mr. Putin.
The soldiers and officers in the trenches are also angry. The mobilization announced at the end of September 2022 recruited between 320,000 soldiers (according to official figures) and 500,000 (according to independent estimates (9)9. Recent measures adopted by the Duma in April 2023 - electronic mobilization calls, bans on going abroad for conscripts, blocking of sales of the real estate of exiles - should increase their numbers. The mobilization mainly affected the poorest regions, especially small towns and villages in economically distressed provinces, which make up Mr. Putin's traditional electorate. The authorities initially called for reserve officers and citizens with special military skills: middle-aged men from regions far from Moscow, with low or medium incomes. Most of them are "neutralists," that is, the social group that supports the war not out of militaristic conviction but out of loyalty. But it is they who are now being hit by the full force of combat operations.
To prevent rebellion, the state spares no expense. Salaries average 200,000 rubles a month (about 2,500 euros), ten times more than what a worker could hope to earn in a small town in a deindustrialized region. In April, Mr. Putin announced the creation of a special fund for bereaved family members and war veterans. But in a video posted on his YouTube channel Roi on February 5, Mr. Kalashnikov believes that only victory will ensure the survival of the regime: "A completely new reality is emerging. Soldiers are about to return from the front, holding weapons. They will resemble the German and Italian veterans of the First World War: they will return as maximalists, with a strong sense of justice defied. And they will not listen to the obscenities of United Russia."
In the meantime, the soldiers expressed their "maximalism" in other ways. Spontaneous riots, although sporadic, began to occur. Soldiers protest the lack of equipment and training, leave their squads voluntarily, clash with their officers and stop transport trains. The authorities succeeded in extinguishing the first wave of discontent by repression: soldiers were locked in cellars, beaten and intimidated. Some of the rebels were sentenced to long periods of imprisonment as an example for others (10)10. In January, mobilized soldiers were transported en masse from rear detachments to the front, and casualties rose extremely high. Although in 2022 journalists were able to compile the names of Russian military personnel killed every week at from 200 to 250 (real losses could be much higher), by March 2023. the list had reached more than 800 names every week (11)11.
The press reports on cases of desertions, of which the real numbers are probably higher. Soldiers run away from hospitals (12)12, jump off trains taking them to the front (13)13, drive tens of kilometres and get lost in the rear (14)14. Relatives of mobilized soldiers have set up online forums to help deserters plan their routes, find housing and avoid military patrols. In February and early March, no less than eighteen videos were posted on the Internet in which entire squads of mobilized soldiers refused to carry out combat missions and asked to be returned to the rear (15)15.
The anthropologist Aleksandra Arkhipova counted at least 85 places in 65 cities where locals brought flowers and toys, a silent, sloganless gesture of solidarity with Ukrainians and opposition to the war (16)16. Despite this deliberate discretion, some were arrested next to these "flower monuments" and were convicted of "discrediting the Russian army". But despite this, several thousand Russians deliberately put themselves at risk. The researcher and her team realized that many of them had never participated in opposition rallies before. Monuments appeared in cities that had never before been centers of protests against the registry: Orenburg, Nizhny Tagil, Omsk, Gorno-Altaysko.
Flowers of Protest
Only a quarter of these floral monuments appeared in places associated with Ukraine, such as streets with "Ukrainian" names. In 47 of the 85 cases, these commemorations took place in places associated with victims of state crimes or misdeeds: monuments to the victims of Stalinist terrorism and man-made disasters such as Chernobyl, places where opponents died. "The message is unequivocal: the state has killed people before, it is killing people now, and it will kill people again," Arkhipova says. In the cities of Chakhty and Saratov, monuments to the victims of fascism were chosen as memorials, making a comparison between the war of aggression against Ukraine and the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. Another wave of "flower protests" took place on the first anniversary of the war. Despite more severe repression by the police, at least 82 spontaneous places of remembrance reappeared in 59 cities (17)17. Placing flowers on monuments to the victims of the state thus became an ongoing form of collective action by opponents of the war.
Although the war inspired a wave of patriotism, this must be qualified. Across all social strata and ideological camps, the same process takes place: "us" and "them" take on new meanings. The first encompasses variously "ordinary people", "true patriots", "victims of the state", but the last one is less ambiguous: it concerns those in authority, and no longer only the external enemy. Without a transformation of the situation on the battlefield, the front could move to the homeland. And in the eyes of people on all sides, from nationalists to pacifists, this government, which led the country into disaster, will appear as the sole culprit. Then, the battle for Ukraine will become a battle for a new Russia.
Alexej Sakhin and Lisa Smirnova The article was translated from Russian by Bleuenn Isambard, and into English by Reddebrek.
1The figures given in the article are taken from opinion polls carried out by three research organizations or collectives, the Levada Institute, Kroniki and Russian Field, which receives no public funds. They registered between 56% and 77% of opinions favouring the war in February. The number varies according to the wording of the question.
2Karine Clément, Quiet social protest in Russia. Ordinary social criticism and nationalism, Éditions du Croquant, Vulaines-sur-Seine, 2021.
3'One year of the special military operation: the opinion of the Russians' (in Russian), opinion poll conducted between January 31 and February 6, 2023, Russian Field, https://russianfield.com
4Ibid.
5'Members of United Russia warn of Maidan threat of extreme patriotism' (Russian), Politnavigator, 3 February 2023, www.politnavigator.net
6See Juliette Faure, 'Who are the falcons of Moscow?', Le Monde Diplomatique, April 2022.
7’Dangers and demons of the Great Disturbance’, Livejournal (retejo de blogoj), la 7-a de Januaro 2023, https://m-kalashnikov.livejournal.com
8In a channel called 'Razbruzka_vagnera', Telegram, February 17, 2023.
9'Let's get married. Growing number of wedding parties shows that at least 492,000 people were mobilized in Russia until mid-October' (in Russian), Mediazona, 24 October 2022, https://zona.media
10('Soldier who admonished an officer was sentenced to five and a half years of imprisonment under harsh conditions' (Russian), Gazeta.ru, January 11, 2023, www.gazeta.ru
11Russia's losses in Ukraine, graph regularly updated, Mediazona, https://zona.media/casualties
12'Wounded soldier from the Tyumen region escaped from the hospital in Mirny' (Russian), Tyumen Online, February 7, 2023, https://72.ru
13'Mobilizers escaped from their train in the Voronezh region' (in Russian), RBK, February 5, 2023, www.rbc.ru
14At the border with Donbas, in the Rostov region, a deserter is arrested' (in Russian), Bezformata, February 3, 2023, https://rostovnadonu.bezformata.com
15'The mobilized send their complaints', Telegram, channel 'Viorstka', March 9, 2023, https://t.me/svobodnieslova/1566
16Aleksandra Arkhipova, 'Consent as a form of protest' (in Russian), Kholod, February 2, 2023, https://holod.media
17Calculation made by Alexandra Arkhipova and published on Telegram on February 27, 2023, https://t.me/anthro_fun/2075
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