Tuesday, March 28, 2017

The Resistance Heats Up In Russia

I had been thinking a lot about Russia last week, as shown in my last post. But today I just found out that there were massive anti-Kremlin protests in Russia over the weekend. (See this also.) The vast majority of protesters were youths from middle school age to early adulthood. Как сказать, “Things are getting rather interesting in Russia!” по-русский?

The recent history of Russia is punctuated by several periods of civil resistance, such as the three-year wave of protests that erupted in response to Putin "winning" the 2011 Russian elections under circumstances that smell about the same as the circumstances under which President Chump won the recent U.S. elections. The trouble now is this: it is not very easy for Putin and company to claim that last weekend's protests were the work of some "Deep State" bogeyman, as they have seemingly captured the one nation that could have been blamed for harboring such a "Deep State" - namely, the U.S.A. Yet they have been making the claim that the demonstrators against the Kremlin were paid by outside agents, as some Kremlin mouthpieces also made claims over the last month or so that this "Deep State" is trying to sabotage Chump. But a person who has bad body odor and no manners shouldn't blame a conspiracy for the fact that people don't want to be around him. Will Russian leaders be willing to engage in frank and open dialogue about the grievances of their citizenry? Or will they resort to scapegoating as they have so often?

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