What Is NOT To Be Done (in Russia)

(It’s been years since I used photoshop lol)

I’ve wanted to write a guide for what Russian patriots ought to do for awhile. I feel that it is a worthy exercise to compare and contrast the strategies that Americans and Russians ought to pursue given the different political situations that they find themselves in.

So, without further ado …

Things are moving in the right direction in Russia. The Liberal opposition has largely been destroyed, their media projects largely scuttled and the public has found the ire necessary within themselves to rally against them. All of this means that there is an opportunity for Russian patriots to start making moves.

The Liberals, because of their wealth and connections, were quite powerful in their own right. But they had to rely on “Democratic best practices” like corruption, bribery and assassinations (both media and otherwise) to wield power. They can only rule as a hated minority using their control of the much-vaunted “Liberal Democratic Institutions” such as the media, the school system, the courts, the office plankton in Moscow and the money of the oligarchs though. Populist-patriots, on the other hand, have to rely on the power of the people, such as it is, and make up for their lack of institutions by relying on sheer numbers in the voting booths, the streets and in their own organizations, such as they are.

Back in the day, the FSB was quite harsh on Russian patriots and did their best to prevent any Russian patriotic populist gaining steam. This is largely because all governments fear the populist right - a political position that is insanely popular and which occupies an enviable high ground in terms of legitimacy and popularity relative to all other movements.

Nowadays though, the Russian government is being forced to reach out to the patriotic base of the country because of the showdown with NATO and the lack of any other sections of society to hang their support on.

Allow me to illustrate what I mean.

This was Putin at the beginning of his reign:

And this is where we want Putin to be at eventually (he’s moving in this direction already):

Crude, but, that, in a nutshell, should be the goal of the patriotic-populist movement in Russia. Every ruler needs an organized base of support and our guys need to position themselves as that base.

To get to that point, the patriots need to be organized and useful. They’re already useful at the ballot box and they’re going to become more and more useful as the country begins slowly mobilizing for austerity and confrontation with the West. There are, however, other cards that the patriots needs to draw from the deck to make their hand stronger. For example:

• Popular media products

• Cancel culture hit squads/ability to push back against anti-Russians agitators

• New “ideological” talking points for domestic and international propaganda

• Useful friends abroad should the need to start making friends arise

This isn’t theoretical theorizing on my part. The leader of the Rodina party - a hardcore nationalist movement in Russia - was pulled into the Presidential Administration and made the head of the space program because he was too dangerous and his right-wing movement too potentially popular to be allowed to exist outside the Kremlin.

Rogozin’s interesting flag design lol

Putin’s administration has proven itself to be practical above all else. Create the necessary conditions and the Russian government will come to the negotiating table with you.

There are, of course, other useful cards that I could list, but I’m trying to be somewhat realistic about the deck that right-wingers are playing with. In the past, right-wingers used to have access to money - like the land-owning Junkers and steel giants in Germany. Or in America around the same time where there were patriotic car-manufacturers or the like. Speaking of modern-day America, you only really have that pillow guy in the populist corner.

And I don’t know of any big businessmen or sectors in Russia that are patriotic either, sadly. That guy who makes cheese and likes Putin, I suppose.

That makes the rhetorical job much easier though. Patriots can lean into anti-corporation, anti-capitalism rhetoric without any second thoughts. Thankfully, there is no Libertarian tradition in Russia to confuse and befuddle the right and most people dislike the business class as a result of the experiment in laissez-loot capitalism in the 90s.

Now, the key point of this essay is to point out what patriot-populists ought NOT to do. I just had to lay down the basic model for my reasoning before I could get to my favorite part of any essay - the bullet-points.

Basically:

• Engage in street marches against the government (good way to get your entire organization rounded up by the FSB and thrown into the Gulag)

• Talk about overthrowing President Putin (why would you even want to do that? what is wrong with you?)

• Make any deals with existing political parties (corrupt and people don’t trust them)

A useful corollary: do not attack or go against things that are popular. Even in Russia, you have access to public opinion polls from the Levada center. The policies, people and institutions that consistently garner popular support in the polls are not to be touched rhetorically or otherwise, even if you harbor animus towards them. Thought leaders of the movement ought to start memorizing those poll results.

A corollary to the corollary: attack things that are unpopular such as the media, journalists, the secret police, the Duma, the West, the migrants, the gays, the Jews, doctors, lawyers, universities, Hollywood, the oligarchs, druggies, fat people and so on.

IMPORTANT!!!!

The goal in Russia ought to be REFORM not REVOLUTION.

The agenda is to force through PATRIOTIC REFORMS that make society stronger and more able to stand up to NATO.

Populism needs to be used NOT as a battering ram against the government, but as a negotiation chip to bring the government to the table and to give President Putin the political capital to continue making positive, patriotic changes in Russia.

To cement the victory, high-level positions need to be secured and enemy chinovniks REPLACED by populist-patriot rabble-rousers.

Long term structural changes are a more complicated matter, and we will discuss them another time, in another essay, as we dig deeper into exploring the structure of Authoritarian government. But, in short, eventually, the Duma ought to be disbanded and more power placed into the hands of the executive branch. Term limits need to be extended and the institution of the periodic all-Russian national referendum (Земский собор) re-introduced and re-popularized. Also, there is no need for a huge secret police network in a patriot-populist state, so that deeply unpopular institution has to be downsized or done away with.

I’ll probably end up writing a more rhetorically pleasing document in both English and Russian eventually, but one always sacrifices clarity when one strays from using the people’s direct and blunt vernacular. The point here was to outline an overarching plan and methodology, not to get people to start rushing to the barricades. I’ll do one for America as well, eventually, but it’ll be a lot shorter and less constructive because there’s really very few options left for the hapless Western population at this late stage of the game as I see it.