The Russians should hate their state, their authorities, and then Russia will sink into chaos and become weaker. It seems the Russians had to develop an antidote against such a primitive approach.

original text by Petr Akopov
translated for the Saker blog by Olga
source: https://m.vz.ru/opinions/2021/1/20/1080946.html

Among the loud and quite predictable campaign in the West in response to detention of Alexei Navalny – with declaring him a “prisoner of conscience”, demands to free him immediately b threats of sanctions – the most indicative is this one: “Kremlin attacks on Navalny is not simply violation of human rights? It’s an insult of the people of Russia, who want their voice to be heard/

This is the statement by Jack Sallivan who becomes an advisor on national security for POTUS. This is the core of Western policy towards Russia.

Here is what they sell us: “friends of Russian people” (the most russophobic-minded western politicians always specify that their claims are not to the people, but to the authorities, and the poor people moan under the yoke of authorities) want to convince the people of Russia that they give them a helping hand. It’s not necessary to be an expert in history in relationships between Russia and the West, not necessary even to know Russian history to see this endlessly repeated approach – “tyranny regime” in Russia is dangerous for the world and its own citizens and is seeking to suppress all neighbouring people and oppresses its own people, only true heroes challenge it, so the West helps them with all means in their hard but noble struggle/

This is such a stable structure that it doesn’t change for many centuries. And it is considering that during the last 104 years in Russia there were three absolutely different forms of government and ideological patterns of power. That is to believe that Russian authorities threatened the world and its own people under the tzars, under bolshevics and under Putin the person should be either typical russophobe or typical idiot.

We won’t remind the times of Ivan Groznyi or Peter the Great – at that time they also tried to frighten the children but media and communications didn’t allow to address to “suffering Russian people” directly. However, the last two hundred years they apply this very pattern – “Russian authorities do not express the opinion of the people, so we will speak on his behalf” – we mean the West.

Yes, the is here because nor Herzen, nor Lenin, nor white immigrants, nor Solzhenitsyn were of any interest for our western “friends”. That is their real views, aspirations, struggles, tosses, and searches – all of it is just the pretext to confirm the simple propaganda thesis: the authorities in Russia have nothing to do with people, the power is a tyrany and it’s occupational that’s why the people should (no – they dream of!) to overthrow it and we’ll help them with the best of our abilities. All this structure serves absolutely pragmatic geopolitical interests of deterrence or even submission of Russia. That’s why the help to Russian people in its nature always turns out to be a military intervention and sometimes is limited to information war.

Russians should hate their authorities, their state (even better – their history). And then Russia will sink in unrest and become weaker. It seems Russians should develop an antidote against such a primitive method long ago. But there is a problem – one of the main our qualities is very strong self-reflection, empathy, doubt in everything and everybody. Together with our civilizational pursuit of justice it makes us exceptionally trusting nation. It isn’t gullibility of fools. It is trustfullness of honest people searching for truth and considering every person who speaks about fairness to be an honest and good man.

Many times it backfired us, but the main deterring factor was always the same – reasonable and responsible authorities. Though only till the moment when in authority and elite in general there was no critical mass (not the majority, even some minority) of people who had no experience of working through the consequences of imposing “starry-eyed dreams”. Then there happened a division during which the most irresponsible and adventurous part of elite took over speculating on people’s aspirations. The country fell into unrest, division and nearly perished.

But how much the West loved and praised it! What praises to “people’s authority” were sung by the “friends of Russian people” – both after February 1917 and August-December 1991. At last Russian people threw off the tzar (communist) yoke, at last the best people came to power! Now Russia will become a part of civilized world which gladly will hold it in its arms!

These were the moments when Russia fell apart and perished and its geopolitical rivals divided it into spheres of influence and bought its treasures cheap. But when Russia began to restore that very moment it was declared a threat to humanity and its authorities were claimed tyranny and anti-popular. This fairy tale is old enough – it’s time to repeat it?