Russia is rotting in absurdity and repression, veteran rights campaigner
says
Send a link to a friend
[July 12, 2023]
By Guy Faulconbridge and Filipp Lebedev
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia is decaying in a potent brew of absurdity and
repression that is comparable to the Leonid Brezhnev-era of the Soviet
Union, Oleg Orlov, one of the Russia's most respected human rights
campaigners, told Reuters.
Orlov, 70, is on trial in Russia for articles he published last year
which cast Russia as a "fascist" state seeking revenge for the perceived
humiliations of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union. He faces up to
three years in prison.
One of the leaders of the Memorial rights group, which won a share of
the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 a year after being banned and dissolved in
Russia, Orlov stood by his articles and cast Russia as a country gripped
by the demons of history.
"Russia is going backwards," Orlov told Reuters in his Moscow flat over
a glass of the traditional fermented kvas. "We left Communist
totalitarianism but now have returned to a different kind of
totalitarianism. I call it fascism."
"What is happening in Russia right now is absurd," he said when asked
about the failed June 24 mutiny by Wagner mercenaries and the apparent
absence of punishment given to the mutineers while he was prosecuted for
publishing an article.
Russia's future, he said, would be decided on the battlefield in
Ukraine, though he expressed regrets that Russia had missed a historic
chance to occupy its place among the powers of the 21st Century.
"If this regime persists for a long time, then Russia will face a long,
slow decay, lagging behind the whole world," Orlov said. "Russia has
already been thrown somewhere out of the 21st Century, not even into the
20th but into the 19th Century."
Orlov, a biologist who as a Soviet dissident sought to shed light on the
1979-1989 war in Afghanistan and the rise of Poland's Solidarity
movement, said he did not believe in revolution but that if Putin's
successors were from his entourage there would never be true reform.
"Mostly likely what awaits Russia is a slow rot," he said, adding that
Russia had missed a major opportunity to reform as the Cold War ended.
'MAN OF WAR'
He said that the early 1990s were a period of intense struggle and
hardship for the Russian people, but he remembered the years as "a time
of change and hope and opportunity".
The hopes of what he called the revolution of 1991 began to unravel, he
said, during the First Chechen War (1994-1996) and then after Vladimir
Putin's rise to the top job in 1999 amid the Second Chechen War
(1999-2009).
[to top of second column]
|
Russian veteran human rights campaigner
Oleg Orlov attends an interview with Reuters in Moscow, Russia July
10, 2023. REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
"For Putin, war is his political technology," Orlov said. "Putin is
a man of war."
Current Russian levels of repression, he said, could be compared to
the Brezhnev era of the Soviet Union after the arrest of writers
Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel in 1965.
"This is the Brezhnev period," Orlov said. "The state intervenes in
everything: not only in politics, not only in public activity, not
only is the economy entirely subordinate to the state, but also
culture and even private life."
Putin has repeatedly cast himself as a Russian leader who brought an
end to the tumult of the 1990s and started standing up to an
arrogant West which he says dismissed Russian interests and has
repeatedly plotted to split up Russia.
Supporters of Putin dismiss campaigners such as Orlov as unpatriotic
Soviet-era dissidents who are in the pocket of the West and who fail
to grasp the trauma of the Soviet collapse which was mired by
corruption, poverty and decay.
When asked about such a critique, Orlov said: "If they think that I
and my like-minded people do not represent anyone, then why is such
the huge machine of the state aimed at our suppression?"
Asked whether his criticism was unpatriotic, Orlov, citing Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago", pointed out that military
defeats have played a significant role in driving reform and
development Russian history.
"I know that I will not be acquitted," Orlov said of his trial. "But
what option do I have: Should I ask for forgiveness, weep and
promise never to do it again? I will not do that."
He showed Reuters the pro-war graffiti that was sprawled on the
front door of his flat, including a giant "Z" - a symbol of the war.
So what will a 70-year-old do if he is sent to a Russian prison?
"I will sit and try to survive in very difficult conditions," Orlov
said. Asked what he might read, he said that he would read some
William Faulkner and certainly Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Brothers
Karamazov".
Orlov's wife, Tatiana, told Reuters that she was extremely worried
about the prospect of him going to prison.
"But I must carry on so I can support him."
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge in Moscow, Filipp Lebedev in
Tbilisi; Editing by Nick Macfie)
[© 2023 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.
|