Read Vladimir Pastukhov: What Russia needs today is not a democratic movement, but a national liberation movement The country has returned to its 16th century—and even earlier. Running through all of Russian history is the conflict between the hardworking “tax-paying” person, whom the weak state could not protect, and the “tati” (an old Russian term for thieves and brigands), who took advantage of that state weakness. But almost never did the “tati” seize the state itself, turn it into an instrument of theft, and mercilessly beat down working people. That happened only in the times of the Horde, when the khan’s detachments stood in every Russian city and protected whoever paid more. But those were outsiders; these are our own. Russian society has taken on the two-tiered structure typical of occupied (colonized) territories. Somewhere “at the bottom” there is a real, productive society, with all the internal contradictions characteristic of the estates and classes that compose it; and above that society there is a “criminal overlay,” made up of parasitic elements not involved in its everyday productive life, siphoning from it everything they can. Today, Russia has been artificially divided into two classes: the “occupiers” and the “population.” The “occupiers” are a thieving elite drawn from lumpens of every kind—“in tailcoats,” “in uniform,” or “in chains,” it makes no difference—organized like a mafia and living by criminal codes, which has taken control of the state and uses it as a tool to redistribute in its own favor everything produced by the population. The “population” is the aggregate of the productive estates and classes, fallen into a “state of coma,” deprived of real legal and political protection, and reduced to servicing the parasitic elite. ... And here we come to a very delicate question. Today, the opposition places general democratic slogans at the forefront, bashfully skirting the question of the need to win power. At the same time, practically everyone understands that winning it by democratic means under the existing political conditions is impossible. You cannot persuade a people of the advantages of democracy when they have never lived under it and associate democracy only with the anarchy of the 1990s. As Trotsky wrote, you cannot learn to ride a horse without getting on it. First give the people the horse—order and legality—and only then teach them democratic dressage. This is not about diminishing or denying democracy, but only about prioritizing slogans. Democratic slogans are strategically correct today, but tactically premature. For Russia at this historical moment, what is relevant is not a democratic movement but a national liberation movement. The immediate goal today is not democratization, but decolonization and decriminalization. The people enter a revolution driven by hatred for the old order, and emerge from it inspired by new ideas. It is not the authorities but the opposition that should be using the tactic of a popular front today. There should be one issue on the agenda: the struggle against crime and the mafia state. Everyone for whom this agenda is relevant should receive an entry ticket, regardless of ideological preferences. A round table is needed not for those who already enjoy talking to one another—they can meet in a restaurant. And still less is a round table created in order to negotiate with the authorities; it is created in order to pressure them. A national liberation movement faces tasks different from those of a democratic one: suppressing criminal elements and their agents in state bodies; restoring discipline and public order; restoring the functionality of state institutions, above all law enforcement agencies and the judicial system. Before building democracy, it is necessary to free Russia from the internal yoke that is choking its productive forces and undermining its moral foundations. First the tumor must be cut out, and only then can restorative treatment begin. http://www.novayagazeta.ru/politics/53942.html