Degrees of Risk

By Alexander Podrabinek

Translated by Arch Tait

May 2016

This article is published in English by The Henry Jackson Society by arrangement with Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. The article refects the views of the author and not necessarily those of The Henry Jackson Society or its staf. DEGREES OF RISK

1 Conflict with the government in power is never-ending. The less a regime is beholden to the community, the more grounds there will be for conflict. There have been variations. At one time, when there were tsars and nobles, popular discontent was voiced by jesters, later by the educated gentry, then by an emergent and disaffected middle class, by students and revolutionaries. At a turning point in Russian history, armed resistance to the Bolshevik regime came, not from those marching under red banners, or the White Army, or Cossacks but from striking workers and from pesants rising in revolt. In the brooding Stalin period, discontent smouldered deep in people’s hearts, only rarely, in moments of total desperation, bursting out in open protest. During the ‘herbivorous’ Brezhnev era, intellectuals, enthused by the recent thaw and hopes of change, came together in the democratic movement and again went public.

Today, when civil liberties have not yet been completely crushed and society is trying to assert its rights, the burden of confrontation with the regime has been assumed by a political opposition. Thirty years separate the last days of the democratic movement in the Soviet Union from the current regime of one-man-rule under Putin. During that time, the communist system and the Soviet empire have collapsed, democracy in Russia has been born and swiftly stifled, there has been a succession of presidents, but the never-ending conflict with the government in power continues.

In the Beginning Was Literature ... The way Russian history has developed, the primary, most widespread source of resistance to despotism has been the word. Literature. This may be due to a baffling respect Russians have for the written word. Their trust in anything printed on paper almost beggars belief, and is something successive regimes have not been slow to exploit. Contrary to the view widely held in the Soviet era that the common people in Tsarist Russia were all but illiterate, literacy levels were actually quite reasonable. The 1897 census found that 21 per cent of the population were literate. In 1916, the then Minister of Education, Pavel Ignatiev, put the literacy rate at 56 per cent.

In the Soviet period, compulsory school education and universal literacy were successfully exploited by the communist regime for total zombification through propaganda, but this was a two-edged sword: the free word was remarkably corrosive when pitted against the constructs of the propagandists, not least because those writing uncensored literature were generally more talented by an order of magnitude than their officially approved, pen-pushing colleagues. From its birth, the democratic movement in the Soviet Union demanded free speech and was umbilically linked to the struggle for the right to freely access and disseminate information.

The impulse for the first mass public campaign in defence of free speech was a court verdict on the writers Andrey Sinyavsky and Yuliy Daniel for publishing their works abroad. In 1966, they were sentenced to 7 and 5 years imprisonment respectively. This evoked numerous protest letters from writers, scholars, artists, and filmmakers. Over time, protesting become the core of dissident activity, and in 1968 led to publication of the uncensored samizdat bulletin Chronicle of Current Events which, in the course of the following 15 years, became the organizational focus of the democratic

1 This paper was written for the Russian Service of Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty. It can be accessed at, Podrabinek, A. ‘Stepen’ riska’ [Degrees of Risk], svoboda.org, 11 April 2016, available at: http://www.svoboda.org/content/article/27650774.html

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movement. It was a movement of many and varied colours, but the whole spectrum was displayed in the Chronicle.

In all likelihood, the greater part of the KGB’s operational efforts “The Soviet regime were targeted at stopping samizdat. During searches they seized not understood what a only manuscripts but also novels long ago published in the West or danger free speech reproduced in the USSR, poems, historical research, philosophy, and represents for a totalitarian regime. any other items that had not been given the seal of approval of the Today’s regime is no Glavlit [General Directorate for the Protection of State Secrets in the less aware of that.” Press – ed.] censorship committee. The Soviet regime understood what a danger free speech represents for a totalitarian regime. Today’s regime is no less aware of that. The restriction of free speech in contemporary Russia has not yet reached the level that existed in the Soviet Union, although Vladimir Putin’s regime is moving slowly but surely in that direction.

This manifests itself in the imposition of government monitoring of editorial policy of the media, especially television; in the hampering of the media’s economic independence; in intimidation of journalists, leading to self-censorship; and in direct, politically motivated oppression of independent journalists and internet writers. Roscomnadzor, the current censorship agency, compiles a list of banned publications and media output. This register lists tens of thousands of items, most of them internet web pages. Today's Internet is closely comparable to Soviet-era samizdat.

Despite the similarity of the tools for suppressing free speech, and the state’s attitude to sedition, there is an astonishing difference between Soviet times and the present in the attitude of those with a vital interest in free speech. That means, first and foremost, journalists and writers.

During the rigours of the Soviet period, the polarization of writers was “The journalistic more pronounced. Party propagandists had favours lavished on them community in Russia and were awarded what by Soviet standards seemed like enormous manifests an extremely benefits in everyday life. Those who refused to bow down to low level of professional aspiration ideological censorship found themselves, at best, out of work, and at and concern about free worst in prison. There was, of course, a middle-of-the-road option, speech.” pursued by a brittle, browbeaten band always at the ready to capitulate. The monthly magazine Novy Mir, Moscow’s Sovremennik and Taganka theatres were highly visible examples of half-strangled free speech. The more intellectual section of society, itself steamrollered by communist propaganda, enthusiastically embraced these islands of half-truth, overlooking the fact that the other half was lies.

The forms of the old Soviet model are replicated today. There is a frenzied output of Kremlin propaganda on the federal television channels, and there is an Internet free of censorship. There is also a middle of the road: institutions manoeuvring between the regime and society, in the form of the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, the radio station Echo of Moscow, and the television channel Rain (Dozhd’). There is, however, a huge difference between the price that had to be paid for free speech then and the price that has to be paid now. Today courageous journalism is not punished by instant expulsion from the profession and inexorable politically-inspired repression. We see this on the example of such internet resources as Daily Magazine (Yezhednevny Zhurnal) and Facets (Grani)

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which, although blocked by Roscomnadzor, continue to be produced and are accessible to anyone willing to make even a slight effort.

Reporters trimming and tacking their way through the ocean of the media, the middle-of-the- roaders, are not putting their lives and freedom at risk, as they would have been in Soviet times: at worst their media may be closed down, starved of funding and lose government licences. This is no doubt upsetting, even an ordeal, but bears no comparison with the consequences that befell those defending free speech 30 or 40 years ago. To be fair, some journalists do go far beyond the commonly accepted limits, and for them the occupational hazard increases exponentially. It can amount to much more than being subjected to censorship by their editors or losing their jobs: for the most daring and talented it can mean assassination.

On the whole, though, the journalistic community in Russia manifests an extremely low level of professional aspiration and concern about free speech as a precondition for normal work as a journalist. We have only to look at the annual meetings with Vladimir Putin, when press conferences are duly attended by even Russia’s most outspoken journalists. It is a sorry sight.

Human Rights Activists The situation of the media and journalists is analogous to that of the opposition. In the Soviet period, the functions of a political opposition were performed by the democratic movement, of which the human rights activists were the most visible and effective component. These usually insisted that their activities were non-political, although the claim was somewhat disingenuous and necessitated playing with words and splitting hairs over definitions. In reality, any activity affecting the foundations of a political system can be considered political, and in a totalitarian state with a rigid system regulating every aspect of the life of the community, any departure from the rules imposed by the regime is seen as transgression against the status quo.

That is just the nature of totalitarianism: the regime’s ambition to control everything under the sun leaves no room for uncontrolled public initiatives. Consequently, anyone could find they had become a political opponent of the Soviet regime: a professor proposing a new economic model; a writer whose novel was not in the spirit of socialist realism; a composer writing ‘chaotic’ music; a lawyer who honourably undertook to act for the defence of anti-Soviet citizens; an artist exhibiting his painting on waste land rather than in a museum; a Jew who wanted to return to his historic homeland; a worker protesting about low wages and high work quotas; a farmer who spent more time working on his private plot than at the collective farm; or a bloke standing in the meat queue who told a political joke. At that time, everything was political. Activists demanding observance of human rights in the Soviet Union were most definitely challenging the foundations of the state system. That was the kind of system it was: every word of truth wreaked irreparable damage.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the establishment, on shaky “The regime, and only foundations, of democracy, human rights activism ceased to be the regime, is the political. The activists faced plenty of problems, but political source of human rights persecution was not one of them. On the contrary, many found violations, ergo human themselves in favour with the regime and accepted various perks from rights activists dependent on the it. That did not last long. As democracy shrivelled and regime have a conflict authoritarianism grew more assertive, the activists faced a choice: to of interest.” remain, in Sergey Kovalev’s words, idealists and rebellious

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intellectuals or to accept the new rules of the game and pile with other courtiers loyal to the regime into a community where everyone has his place and is accorded a slice of the pie.

Different human rights organizations resolved the issue in different ways. Some kissed the hand that fed them presidential grants and were awarded the no doubt enviable status of courtier. Others refused collaboration and paid for it by having their organizations brought down. Many vacillated, inclining first in one direction then the other. Just like the journalists, today’s human rights activists are not risking all that much: really only the loss of their legal registration. On the other hand, cosying up to the regime is de facto incompatible with defending human rights. The regime, and only the regime, is the source of human rights violations, ergo human rights activists dependent on the regime have a conflict of interest.

For the human rights movement this is not a new dilemma. How uncompromising should activists be? How long should they persist? Where should they draw the line at further compromise? The quandary has always been there, but there is a world of difference between the Soviet era and the present. In the Soviet period, refusal to compromise meant banishment to the labour camps; today the sanctions are organizational difficulties and loss of legal recognition.

During the years of totalitarianism, human rights activists did on occasion compromise, for a variety of reasons and in a variety of circumstances. Thus, the Moscow Helsinki Group formed in 1976 proceeded on the basis of an international document with, on the Soviet side, a non-legitimate signatory. The Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe was signed in Helsinki in 1975 by the General Secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, Leonid Brezhnev, who was formally the leader of a party, not of the state. The truth of the matter is that Soviet power in its entirety had no legitimacy. How important was this formality? Opinions differed. Most dissidents considered the issue a minor matter but Anatoly Marchenko, for example, refused on these grounds to join the Moscow Helsinki Group.

There have been more extreme instances. In 1987, more than 200 political prisoners were released from labour camps, prison and exile in return for writing, at the suggestion of the regime, appeals to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. They were pardoned and given early release. Only fifteen or so political prisoners and exiles refused to do so, preferring to sit out another year or two and then be released unconditionally.

In order not to whitewash the democratic movement, we have to admit there could be instances of less principled behaviour. In some, rare, cases dissidents were turned and bought their freedom or right to emigrate by cooperating with the KGB. They were the exceptions.

Different people have different views on the limits of compromise but if, in earlier times, intransigence would cost you your freedom and possibly your life, intransigence today costs only official disfavour. If, in the 1970s, members of the Moscow Helsinki Group were languishing in prisons and labour camps, today’s Moscow Helsinki Group representatives are comfortably in the president’s entourage and in receipt of government grants for running their organization. A considerable difference.

Despite their varied understanding of what defending human rights entails, many of today's activists go to considerable lengths to imitate their predecessors, but usually in a purely superficial manner. There have been, and still are, attempts to bring out new human rights publications under the

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legendary brand name of the Chronicle of Current Events. Although they claim to be continuing a tradition, all their efforts have in common with the old Chronicle is the title.

Different human rights and political groups compile their own lists of political prisoners, and it is considered heroic and a great achievement to hand one of these to some representative of the regime (preferably the president). Such a fuss is made that the activists tend to see this purely symbolic gesture as an event of major political importance. At one point, it became such a fad that the public were finding it comical. The actual reality is, of course, far from comical.

The groups have different, often vague, criteria for inclusion in their “During the Soviet era, list of political prisoners. The Memorial human rights society, for repression was example, regards violation of the legal right to a fair trial as one incomparably more criterion for regarding a conviction as political. This, however, could harsh, but the defenders of human lead to classifying almost every convicted criminal as a political rights enjoyed prisoner, because the level of the court system in Russia is so abysmal incomparably greater that nobody gets a fair trial. The Union of Solidarity with Political prestige abroad.” Prisoners includes as political prisoners those persecuted for political reasons and who have emigrated. Someone might be living in Kiev or Paris and classified as a political prisoner in his homeland! The lack of common criteria means there are different numbers of political prisoners on different lists: Memorial lists 37; the Union of Solidarity with Political Prisoners, 84; Viktor Davydov’s List of Political Prisoners in the Russian Federation, 217. In the light of such discrepancies, it is little wonder international organizations and the foreign media have no great confidence in the lists, particularly when they include people convicted of blowing up a passenger train or of war crimes against civilians in Chechnya.

What is the difference between today’s lists of political prisoners and those kept during the Soviet period? Quite simply, the credibility of the information and of the people compiling it. In the 1970s, the list kept by the Russian Community Fund for Aid to Political Prisoners was based largely on information in the Chronicle of Current Events. Later, after the Chronicle and the Fund had been crushed, the listing of political prisoners was continued in Germany by Kronid Lyubarsky.

At that time it never occurred to anyone to compile competing lists: everything was just too risky and serious. The compilers did have qualms about some individuals, notably those alleged to have committed war crimes during the Second World War (particularly in the Baltic states and Western Ukraine) or accused also of non-political crimes. Standards were not beyond reproach even then, but the compilers had such authority that they could not be ignored by anyone interested in the issue of political persecution in the USSR. Today’s human rights defenders do not enjoy that kind of authority, and for this they have no one to blame but themselves. It would be absurd to try to blame the regime. During the Soviet era, repression was incomparably more harsh, but the defenders of human rights enjoyed incomparably greater prestige abroad.

The incongruity of the current situation is that today’s human rights activists are trying to wear two hats: they want to defend human rights, while not falling out with the regime. They hope for cooperation, fruitful debate, constructive engagement, and all things nice in their dealings with the regime, but are not prepared to dig their heels in if the regime refuses constructive cooperation. They are prepared to back down purely in order to preserve those organizations so dear to their hearts, in order not to be left, God forbid, without their leased premises, their printing press and

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their bank account. In those circumstances, they would find it just too uncomfortable to defend human rights.

So they renounce Western grants in order not to be categorized as foreign agents by the Ministry of Justice; they sit on the public committees at ministries or with the president in order to bolster their official status; and they accept presidential grants to compensate for losing Western grants. What distinguishes most of today’s human rights activists from their Soviet-era predecessors is their fear of being excluded from mainstream politics, sacrificing the advantages of legal recognition, and ending up in the underground.

Opposition If in the Soviet period dissidents found they had unintentionally become ‘the opposition’ because that had been forced on them, today’s opposition articulates its political objectives very clearly. The democratic movement in the USSR was primarily a moral movement, founded on a determination ‘to remain free in an unfree country’, and the political dimension was imposed on it because the regime was intentionally amoral and considered anything that went against its outlook to be political protest. The current political opposition is not compelled to confine its activities to moral dissent from the regime. It has far more in common with the normal opposition in democratic countries than with the democratic movement in the times of the USSR. It also has vastly more facilities, runs fewer risks, and faces substantially less repression.

Civil liberties are being eroded and the situation is getting worse, but even now it bears no resemblance to the situation in the Soviet era. Opposition leaders are free to travel abroad, can publish and distribute printed materials, organize demonstrations and rallies with thousands of participants, and express their views on radio and television (when there are radio and television stations brave enough to let them). The anti-Soviet opposition had none of this, and any attempt to make use of such rights was swiftly and harshly punished.

The current political opposition in Russia has as its main objective the struggle for power, and indeed sees that as the sole aim of political activity. This utilitarian approach ignores such important matters as presenting for public discussion an alternative path along which politics could develop, interaction with the institutions of civil society, accepting opposition as a permanent institution for opposing those currently in power, and solidarity with kindred political forces abroad. If the opposition restricts its activity to securing seats in the parliament and hypothetically contesting the presidency, its prospects are not encouraging.

In the Soviet period, the dissident opposition appealed much more to basic communal values. That was, of course, partly due to the impossibility of engaging in effective political struggle in any modern sense, but it did as a result enjoy more trust, probably in the USSR and certainly in the international community. Viewing politics as purely a struggle for power has already in the past made fools of the democratic opposition. Setting up political alliances, merging fractions, forming government coalitions is all standard practice in a normal parliamentary democracy.

When, however, democratic forces cooperate in a semi-authoritarian state with their anti- democratic opponents in order to replace the country’s political regime, that is, to say the least, puzzling. What kind of regime are the democrats seeking to establish with the Communists and nationalists? Is that something worth taking to the streets for in support of the opposition? That issue caused the democratic opposition to fail in the protest movement of 2011-12. It succeeded in

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bringing under one umbrella Stalinists like Sergey Udaltsov and nationalists like Konstantin Krylov, but that was generally seen as a private matter between politicians and cooperation of this sort did not endear it to the public. That it would in any case prove short-lived was obvious from the outset.

In Soviet times too, the political underground included diverse trends. “We are not living in Ideological opponents most often met each other in the labour camps, the 1970s, when the and generally coexisted peacefully. Passions occasionally boiled over, dissidents could not for example, between Ukrainian and Russian nationalists, and in one even dream of playing a legal role in politics.” camp they came to blows, but that was exceptional. Eurocommunists and revisionists peacefully coexisted in the camps with democrats and human rights activists because they faced a common enemy: the camp officials.

In order to ‘come together against’, you can cooperate with almost anyone (depending on how fastidious you are). Before you ‘come together for’, however, you need to be highly selective about your allies. If the dissidents had had a positive political platform they would never have dreamed of collaborating with anti-democratic forces. Their peculiarity was, though, that they had no political programme. They believed in freedom, and were not struggling to come to power and exercise political influence.

Today’s democratic opposition in Russia is calling on everyone to ‘come together against Putin’. It is certainly one way of rallying all the disgruntled, including those who believe Putin is a despot and those who consider him too soft. As a tactic in a struggle for power, such a temporary alliance could be perfectly serviceable. If, however, the aim is not merely to replace Putin with a figure from the democratic camp but to change the political regime, a different approach will be called for, one suitable for constructive action rather than merely overthrowing a tyranny.

We are not today living in the 1970s, when the dissidents had not the remotest prospect of legally taking political action. There is an opportunity today to rally a significant segment of society round a constructive programme. The opportunity to prevent a restoration of totalitarianism has not yet been completely lost and it is not too late for the democratic opposition to take it. Right now they seem to lack a broader perspective. They are unduly focused on short-term problems, of which their top priority is creating their own faction in the State Duma. Such parochial goals are not going to prove attractive to any substantial segment of society. Support for the opposition, including electoral support, cannot be built on calls to ‘trust us and vote for us’ in elections of, to say the least, questionable fairness. Parochial political aims lead to compromises that are flies in an ointment of vague promises. We might do well to look back to the experience of the dissidents.

It would never have occurred to anyone in the years of ‘advanced “Faint-heartedness is socialism’ to ask the regime’s permission to hold a demonstration or not a virtue for an rally. What applications? What ‘coordination’? Dissidents turned out opposition which does to protest when and where they saw fit. ‘We are free people in an not compare at all unfree country,’ and they suffered accordingly. Today’s opposition, favourably with the dissidents.” with few exceptions, grumble mutinously as they submissively follow the regime’s instructions on where they may march, how many people there should be, when they should start and when it will be time to finish. The dissidents in their worst nightmares could never have imagined voluntarily allowing the police to search them on the approaches to a rally, inspect their bags and briefcases, and then kettle them into areas chosen by the police. Today that is a common sight at democratic rallies.

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Which of the authors and distributors of samizdat, that bastion of free speech, would have agreed to have it censored in order to minimize risk to themselves? The very idea is ridiculous. Today, at the first demand from Roscomnadzor, oppositionists take down ‘seditious’ pages from their websites and edit out paragraphs from articles in newspapers.

In the Soviet period it would have been inconceivable that the democratic movement might, in order to obtain some substantive, not merely hypothetical, benefit have paid lip service to the claim that the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia was justifiable, or the aggression against Afghanistan in 1979. Today, both the Yabloko and RPR-PARNAS parties have voluntarily agreed to approve the extension of Russian jurisdiction to annexed Crimea. Why? In return for the right to take part in rigged parliamentary elections there.

This sort of faint-heartedness is not a virtue in an opposition which does not compare at all favourably with the dissidents. In the view of a very large part, perhaps a majority, of the community, the present-day opposition are scrambling for power, preening themselves as candidates for high rank and titles, are applicants for cushy jobs. In most cases, that is quite untrue, but the way the opposition goes about its business, its indiscriminate choice of political partners, and the humiliating games it plays with the regime, create a terrible impression among the Russian public.

In the USSR, nobody could accuse the dissidents of money-grubbing. The most a very few were guilty of was trying to engineer an opportunity to emigrate to the West. Why was it impossible to suspect those active in the democratic movement, the opposition of the time, of careerist ambitions? Former dissident Sergey Kovalev gives the answer: ‘There was no possibiity of self-interest there. The only prize you were likely to win was a prison sentence.’ At that time, the selflessness of the dissident opposition was plainly visible to everyone not duped by Soviet propaganda. That is less obviously the case with today's democratic opposition.

It would significantly improve its image and gain public support if it would behave in a more consistent and comprehensible manner, if it would stop trying to please everyone and to unite with all and sundry and instead target those Russians who are genuinely committed to freedom and democracy.

This would require it to decide its position on the issues which most concern the thinking population. If the democrats came to power, would that merely signal a change of personnel in the top positions, or would it herald a change of the political system? And if the system would change, then how, in what direction? How would a transition to democracy be accomplished? What would be the downside? How would free enterprise be protected? Would there finally be a vetting of officials?

The issue of screening is highly sensitive, but it is one of the most crucial for a transition. As always, many current politicians are apprehensive, including some in the opposition – anyone, in fact, with something to hide. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, vainly aspiring to be the nation’s leading opinion former, spoke out recently against screening, confusing this method of guarding against restoration of the old regime with reconciliation and repentance. Another opposition activist against vetting is Gennadiy Gudkov, but this is unsurprising given the past of this retired KGB colonel.

Nevertheless, the issue of vetting is crucial if people are to put their trust in a new system. It is fundamental to the question of whether the new system would be robust and would resolutely

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defend democracy, or continue to vacillate and be ready at any time to backslide to the ways of the recent past.

It is not at all absurd to suppose that today’s opposition may be tomorrow’s government. For the dissidents that was not a realistic prospect: toppling the regime seemed out of the question. No one was counting on anything of the sort. Politically, theirs was a lost cause and everybody knew it. At the time, though, that was not what mattered.

Today, the opposition is clearly in with a chance to change Russia’s destiny. In that it is better placed than the democratic movement in the USSR, if only it does not miss its opportunity again.

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About the Author Alexander Podrabinek was a Soviet dissident and is a Russian human rights defender, journalist, and community activist.

About The Henry Jackson Society The Henry Jackson Society is a think tank and policy-shaping force that fights for the principles and alliances which keep societies free - working across borders and party lines to combat extremism, advance democracy and real human rights, and make a stand in an increasingly uncertain world.

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