“Russia’s Trajectory: Repression, Murder, War” OsteolopaThis is the second consecutive issue dedicated to the developments in Russia since its attack on Ukraine a little over two years ago, documenting the logic of escalation that has seen Vladimir Putin’s regime move toward ever more extreme violence both at home and in the conduct of the war.
In their editorial, Manfred Sapper and Volker Weichsel describe the “apparent contradiction” of contemporary Putinism: “A supposedly omnipotent regime is in fact powerless. Only by increasing the level of violence can it sustain itself.”
Colonialism
Yuri Andrukhovich, a Ukrainian novelist, poet, and essayist, argues that since Peter the Great, the relationship between Russia and Ukraine has been that of colonizer and colonized. He laments how difficult it is to convince the Western academic community that Ukraine was a Russian colony. According to the tenets of decolonization theory, not only must a colony be geographically distant from the seat of colonial power, but the colonized must be at least non-European, if not non-white.
Pointing to the Holodomor, the mass starvation of Ukrainian peasants in 1932-33, Andrukhovich calls the ruthless, exploitative economic exploitation, planned genocide and large-scale resettlements of depopulated areas by representatives of colonial powers “a classic example of predatory colonialism.”
Russia may have always been a colonial empire, but Andrukhovich points out that it is atypical in one important respect: “Russia is the only former empire that tried to revive itself by reconquering its colonies,” and it has never repaid the crimes of its imperial past. “Today, Russia firmly believes in its right to conquer and subjugate.”
Navalny
In one of four articles in an issue dedicated to the life and death of Alexei Navalny, cultural historian Wolfgang Stephan Kissel examines the cultural politics of the opposition leader’s funeral, which will take place on March 1, 2024.
The events of March 1 were unprecedented in post-Soviet Russian history, Kissel writes: “In the three decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there had never been such a large-scale, high-profile funeral that captured the nation’s imagination.”
The regime, through proxies for the Russian Orthodox Church, tried to pressure Navalny’s family not to hold a full Orthodox funeral, but stopped short of an outright ban, which would have risked angering the overwhelmingly Orthodox public, as Navalny is an Orthodox believer who frequently quotes from the Bible in his speeches.
Authorities succeeded in shortening the service and preventing large crowds from flocking to the church, but the heavy presence of state security forces was unable to prevent the procession that followed from turning into a spontaneous anti-government demonstration.
In his brief history of Russian public mourning ceremonies, Kissel points out that in the past, it was the funerals of “cultural heroes” like Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Mayakovsky and Sakharov, rather than of politicians, that unleashed the most socially disruptive and destructive energies. And here too the pattern applied: “After this ceremony, Navalny was no longer just an anti-corruption fighter, politician or street activist, but the first Russian cultural hero of the 21st century.”
Georgia
An interview with literature scholar Zaar Andronikashvili details the delicate situation in Georgia ahead of parliamentary elections scheduled for October this year. Recent electoral reforms have made it harder for incumbent parties to consolidate power, putting the Georgian Dream party, which has ruled Georgia since 2012, at real risk of electoral defeat.
The elections will take place amid tensions created by the massive street protests that took place in Tbilisi in 2023-2024 in response to the government’s “Law on Transparency of Foreign Powers,” which would require most NGOs to register as “organizations serving the interests of foreign powers.” By passing this measure, which is essentially a copy of Russia’s notorious Foreign Agents Law, the government wants to “destroy the interests of foreign powers.” [Georgia’s] “An independent civil society.”
Behind these schemes lies an invisible figure called Bidzina Ivanishvili, a billionaire former prime minister, founder of Georgian Dream and a man of the shadows in all aspects of Georgian politics who was elected honorary chairman of Georgian Dream late last year as a way of indirectly reasserting his authority.
Since returning to politics, Ivanishvili has cast an increasingly authoritarian, populist and pro-Russian line for the Georgian Dream, conspiratorially accusing the “War of the World Party” of trying to drag Georgia into the Ukrainian conflict and denounced his opponents as a rootless, foreign-educated elite.
Parliament recently passed a transparency bill, but the discontented popular movement in support of EU membership and against Russian subordination shows no signs of abating, setting the stage for a showdown in October. “Euromaidan, Belarus, or repeal of the bill – the outcome remains to be seen,” Andronikashvili concludes.
Reviewed by Nick Siwak
