You Can Only Close Your Eyes to So Much
Russians aren't as fanatical as America's right-wingers, and that is why their acceptance of Putin's fascism is harder to swallow
It’s a lazy kind of support. There aren’t many Russians who are ready to storm the Bastille, White House, or Hermitage these days over the ideas of the Kremlin. This is why when Russians do things like steal children from Ukraine and force them to accept new lives in Russia, it is particularly appalling. They are going through the motions of these crimes because they, well, are lazy and uninspired. Selfish.
The Russian missing child poster went up in Crimea soon after Rostyslav Lavrov escaped last month.
“HELP FIND,” it read. “17 years old, born 2006 … Height 160 cm, thin build, dark hair, blue eyes.”
“Anyone who knows anything about the whereabouts of the teenager is asked to report this.”
The attached photo — which Lavrov said was taken several months ago when Russian authorities holding him against his will tried to issue him a Russian ID card — showed the Ukrainian teen sullen in a white shirt and tie (Russia Held These Ukrainian Teens Captive).
The only time Russians seem to get a little antsy, a little inspired by an idea is when it allows them to wreck someone’s life, and, in the case of this Ukrainian teenager who was stolen from Ukraine after Russian forces entered in 2022, to return him to a place he considers worse a prison. He was denied the right to live with his family simply because someone in Russia benefitted from this horrific policy of stealing children.
When you compare the emptiness of the Russian belief system to that of the average American’s belief system, the echoes from the emptiness are earsplitting. As more and more Americans express a desire, even a willingness, to end democracy and establish a clownish dictatorship revolving around the nightmare that won’t die, Donald Trump, the world continues to scratch its head over Russia’s fascist revolution that has no real roots in anything discernible. All of the Western attempts at trying to justify Russia’s current frame of mind are buffoonish at best.
The passions and race hate that characterize America’s descent into fascism are missing in Russia. Fashionable young women march with mittens on, long hair pulled back in ponytails, holding up clever signs, geniusly playing on the nuances of language. The men, if they are out, stand by the side and watch as Russia’s other men, the uniformed ones paid well to protect the regime, beat them with rubber batons.
Russia’s next revolution is being built on nuance, the subtleties. It festers, smolders in the margins, and, most importantly, much of it occurs warm and inside, safe from the cold weather. The kids filled with fire-and-brimstone passions need their TikTok time, their escapes into video games, and whipped-cream-topped coffees.
Having spent 30 years with these people, many of the protesters were not alive when I first moved over and watched as Russians managed their way through the rough-and-tumble 1990s, I have worked with and taught many in the generation now responsible for disrupting Putin’s fascist takeover.
As well-intentioned as they are, I don’t put faith in them, not because they are weak or intellectually incapable but because they are just too Russian. Since the 1990s, a period Russians love to obsess about being so hard, everything eventually gets back to material hardships. So long as Putin can maintain a semblance of material normalcy, Russians will tolerate his express train to North-Korea-meets-Iran pariah status.
This had to happen sooner or later
Even those who ridiculed the idea that Putin would invade as late as February 22, 2022 — “It’s completely irrational for him to invade, and Putin is a rational person!” — after he invaded, the justifications became “Well, this had to happen sooner or later. We had to right the wrongs that had been done against us by America after the collapse.”
This justification now serves as a mantra for many, like the little train chugging up the mountain — “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” Maneuvering their way through contemporary Russia that, with each passing month, comes to resemble more of a miniature golf course with a series of bizarre obstacles — the old worn tire, the kiddie pool with floating tin ashtrays, and, of course, the chaise-lounge chairs turned into a “treacherous” tunnel — than it does a country fighting for its existential survival.
Nonetheless, I understand the reaction of most Russians. I disagree with it, but I get it — having lived there, I can relate to the collective sigh that always means: “What can I do alone? One warrior on the battlefield is not an army.” This makes sense because one warrior going up against 1000 is suicide. In the U.S., however, our dumb and vile fascists would seldom leave “one warrior” out there on his own.
This is why America’s fascists, for all of their criminality and betrayal, are men and women dedicated to a cause regardless of how grotesque it is. The same can be said for the 9/11 terrorists. They were hardly cowards. Boarding a plane you know is going to be flown into a building requires a devotion to cause that Russia’s pro-regime supporters don’t feel for Putin or his war of genocide.
This is why the situation with “stolen children” from Ukraine is so bad. Sitting around their holiday tables laden with meats, salads, and bottles of vodka, Russians love to bullshit each other about the richness of their “soul” and the “undying devotion to family.” Foreigners in the know usually giggle inside during these over-the-top toasts. Being drunk and soulful are two different states of mind. Russians are always “rich in soul” when the vodka glass is full.
And yet, no one is offering even the tiniest hint of disgust at the case of the thousands of stolen children. Suppose an American fascist from Oklahoma or Ohio adopts a Mexican child taken from her parents at the border. In that case, it is quite possible to imagine that the dummy fascist believes wholeheartedly that his actions are pure. The child will benefit from the Ohioan’s “selflessness.”
When a Russian “adopts” one of these kids stolen from their Ukrainian families, the Russian doesn’t care enough about the policies or the person who started the war to find any goodness, regardless of how questionable that goodness may really be, in his actions. He is most likely adopting the child because it will benefit him politically, professionally, or materially. The act of disrupting a child’s life and depriving her of seeing her beloved parents is as normal as putting anti-freeze in the car before winter. The average Russia sees nothing really wrong with it because, after all, the child is being added to the big, oppressive scrum that Russia has become, and a common sentiment in Russia is to share the pain. Why should some children born into a democratic UKraine have a better prospect for life than 140 million Russians?
He is one of three Ukrainian teenagers who fled Russia or Russian-occupied Crimea this summer and shared their experiences with The Washington Post in lengthy interviews in Kyiv and Kherson. They each described systematic efforts by Russian officials to keep them in Russian-controlled territory.
Ukraine says there are thousands of Ukrainian children like Lavrov who were forced to move to Russia or Russian-occupied territory, including Crimea, since Russia’s February 2022 invasion. What makes Lavrov exceptional is that he got out, carrying with him memories of his experience that could one day be used in court to prove Russia committed war crimes by relocating children (Russia Held These Ukrainian Teens Captive).
If Russians were committing these crimes because they had a strong opinion about why Ukrainian children should be removed from their families and raised amidst a Russian value system, I would say it’s a bunch of bullshit, but at least it would be a passionate belief.
They are doing it because it’s a way to earn a bit more money for a better TV or something. And with a shrug of the shoulders and an “I really don’t care one way or the other,” an atrocity-committing Russian can just as easily not commit the atrocity, light a cigarette, and relax with a big sip of his over-sweet tea.