In Moscow's Shadows 259: A Bite Out Of The Apple

When the Kremlin changed its mind and decided to ban the opposition party Yabloko (Apple) from running in September's elections, it demonstrated its concern that this could become the new vessel of the 'coalition of the fed-up.' After all, this seeming no-hoper party was suddenly being boosted by a guerrilla meme campaign and looked as if it might even cross the 5% threshold to get into the Duma. This could not be allowed. The Kremlin is not frightened of Yabloko winning, it is frightened of people discovering one another and forming horizontal ties in a system that relies on atomisation and apathy.

From there, I look at The Successor, Mikhail Fishman’s major new biography of Boris Nemtsov, the opposition politician murdered in 2015, using it to explore the dilemmas of opposition politics under Putin: charisma versus organisation, symbols versus power, and why the 1990s still poison today’s reputations. This is also live argument splitting the exiled opposition and Western commentators: should the priority be sanctions and isolation to weaken the regime, or protecting Russians while trying to build a credible future political force? It’s dissident moral authority versus politician’s ambition, with the added warning that collapsing systems can usher in something worse.

The articles I mention are Nigel Gould-Davies's first in the Spectator, then Ilya Yashin's rebuttal in the Moscow Times, followed again by Gould-Davies here.

The podcast's corporate partner and sponsor is Conducttr, which provides software for innovative and immersive crisis exercises in hybrid warfare, counter-terrorism, civil affairs and similar situations.

You can also follow my blog, In Moscow's Shadows, and become one of the podcast's supporting Patrons and gain question-asking rights and access to exclusive extra materials including the (almost-) weekly Govorit Moskva news briefing right here. 

Transcript

Why Domestic Politics Still Matters

MG 0:00

Even in a personalistic authoritarianism, there are politics beyond the backbiting factionalism of the court. And this week we had a very clear reminder of that. Hello, I'm Mark Galliotti, and welcome to My View of Russia in Moscow Shadows. This podcast, of varying length, frequency and format, yet always reassuringly low production values, is supported by generous and perspicacious patrons like you, and also by the Crisis Exercise Software Company Conductor. So a domestic politics episode this time. Of course, look, there are elections coming next month, and however faked and managed these elections are going to be, nonetheless, they do provide an important inflection point, both in terms of domestic processes and also as a chance to give us an opportunity to watch some of those processes at work. And one of the things that we were inevitably going to be watching was the performance of Jablaka, Apple. After all, of the parties that have any chance of actually making it into the State Duma, they're the only one that I think one could call genuinely oppositionist rather than systemic, a fake opposition parties. And in particular, they are the only one that is explicitly against the war. So of those, again, these are the ones that have a national profile and a chance, however limited, of hitting the two magic thresholds, 3% and 5% of the vote. Get 3% of the vote and you're eligible for state funding. Get 5% of the vote, and you can actually start getting people in the Duma. It was always an outside chance, but nonetheless, as I say, in terms of whose chances were least outside, Jabloka was the

Yabloko Barred From The Ballot

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one. Now I've talked about the growing pressure that therefore was being brought to bear on them, but on Monday of this past week, following an appeal by Rodina, the Ultra Nationalist Party, well one of the ultra-nationalist parties, and also attacks from both Just Russia and the Liberal Liberal Democrats, the Supreme Court disqualified Diabloca from running in the elections on some very, very distinctly dodgy grounds to do with foreign funding and in particular copyright infringement that I'm not going to go into the detail, but it really is quite farcical. Now, this is interesting because clearly the Supreme Court wouldn't be doing this just purely on legal grounds, even if they really were credible legal grounds. And first deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Girenka, and his political technologists had originally apparently planned to let Yablka stand really as a safely marginal party, whose, okay, its message, you know, their big slogan was after all, for peace and freedom, was going to divert hardcore oppositionists, but really pose no particular threat. And in the process, we'd be both a safety valve and also provide some kind of minimalist legitimization of the vote. They didn't have any expectation that it would either genuinely get close to the 5% threshold, or frankly, that they would allow it. Remember, the results are going to be whatever they decide it's going to be. What they don't seem to have considered was that in the absence of any other viable alternative opposition movement, Jabloka would become in some ways the seed crystal around which can crystallize all sorts of other protest opinions. I think they probably assumed that the high-profile emigre liberals would back it, and indeed we did have Yulia Navalnaya, Vladimir Karamurza, Ilya Yashin all kind of pledging their support. Even though in some ways this is actually a rather mixed blessing, because the danger is then that allows the Kremlin to paint it as paint Yabloka as some kind of tool of foreign oppositionists. Indeed, Yablka chair Rybakov actually had to distance himself from this overseas backing and more or less say, no, no, no, we we we don't take any real support or funding or whatever.

The Apple Meme Takes Off

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But much more significant, I would suggest, is that there was this kind of interesting grassroots guerrilla meme campaign that emerged really very rapidly, with all kinds of just you know random individuals, but also influencers and even corporate brands actually beginning to incorporate apples into their posts, which is a just about subtle enough way of indicating support. You know, we even had things like clothing brands suddenly for entirely irrelevant reasons, but nonetheless putting apples in their corner, or people just simply having posts on social media just simply saying, you know, I like apples as if it's just the fruit and such like. So this really took off. I've got to remember Russians are A very online and B very adept now, after I was gonna say years, but really if we're talking not just you know decades of oppressive rule, actually quite good at reading between the lines and likewise putting their own messages between the lines. The Atlas Viborov, Atlas of Elections monitoring project, recorded this huge increase in online engagement with or about Yabloka, in terms of you know people putting in search queries like Yablaka elections and so forth. It had gone up by 4.5 times. Now, okay, we should have some caution. Tends to be opposition parties that get more online engagement. Some parties generally are much more online, they appeal to a much more online generation. I mean, the the New People Party, which is uh again a synthetic uh opposition group, but the one that was meant to be there to appeal to entrepreneurs, technologically interested youth, that kind of thing, whose slogan so often does tend to be hey, internet, robots, AI. Um that, as you'd imagine, had a level of online engagement equivalent to the rather stodgier Communist Party. But still, it's indicative. And just let me just take another very sort of small local example. Cia Press, which is a local newspaper from Surgut in Hantimansi Autonomous District. They held a little online poll. And look, of course, the results are going to be skewed by all sorts of factors, not least what kind of people particularly feel that they will actually engage. Only 250 people bothered to vote. But nonetheless, Yabloka received 39.8% of those votes. United Russia came in second with 26.9%, and then you had 8.4% the Communist Party, blah blah blah. In the real elections in 2021, United Russia got 44.74% and Yablka just 2.13%. So look again, these are just all the thinnest small straws in the wind, but nonetheless they were there. And perhaps most seriously though, to suggest that it wasn't just simply a case of a few outlying incidents. Though although this is still unconfirmed, but nonetheless, sources apparently told the emigre news outlet Vjorstka that nationally speaking, in polling, the party's ratings had risen to nine point three per cent. Again, that's I think it's worth stressing that's not so much nine point three per cent for Jabloka. It's that Jabloka had emerged as a vessel for all kinds of anti-war, anti-Kremlin, and indeed economic grievances. And this clearly worried the presidential administration and the Kremlin, with very good reason. Now, various theories have abounded as to why Jablka was then banned. Some say it was the sort of security bloc overruling Kiryenka. I really don't think that's the case. Some saying that there was a fear that its vote share would eat into Rodina's. Well, look, if you can find people who are A interested in supporting an ultranationalist pro-war party, but would be seduced by Yablka, I think you've got some very, very confused electors. No, I think it's really what it seems to have been, which is precisely that the presidential administration and the Kremlin, having originally thought that this was a safe way of discharging unresolved oppositionist potential, decided actually to pull the plug now to avoid this from getting out of hand. The journalist Mikhail Ziegar claimed that both Kiryenka and the FSB advocated this and that Putin had the final say. And frankly, that sounds right to me. So Yabloka is off the ballot. Because there was never any question of it beating United Russia or even the Communist Party. But the fear is that it was catalyzing in a way the the same sort of force that Navalny had appealed to, what I've called the coalition of the fed up. A whole bunch of different people with different social origins, different regional identities, different grievances. But that sense of if you want to be able to express the view that you're sick of it and you want things to change, then you find something to which you can in a way adhere yourself to, even if only temporarily. And this coalition of the Fed up is what was now beginning to cohere around Yablaka. And if that had been allowed to continue, well look, then it's still another almost six weeks for Yablaka's momentum to have grown. And above all, for there to be meetings and petitions and online events and so forth, all of which allows people to connect, people to realize that they're not alone. Grigory Yavlinsky, the founder of Yabloka, presented the campaign as actually specifically not being about breaking into the Duma, but just simply creating a space in which Russians could legally and openly express anti-war sentiment. One of the whole points of these elections is that they are legitimating rituals to give the impression that mass consensus is behind the Kremlin. To in effect encourage the unhappy to think that they must just simply be the only people who think the way they think, to feel vulnerably isolated, and to shut the hell up. Well, anything that creates these kind of horizontal ties amongst people who have scepticism, criticism, outright opposition to the Kremlin is dangerous as a result. Atomization and apathy are after all the greatest weapons of this system. And look, even if Yabloka had polled or had been allowed to get more than 5%, you know, letting someone into the Duma on one level that would have been irrelevant. One, two, three, five deputies in a Duma pact with not just United Russia but all the other fake oppositionists, no big deal. More to the point, the sight of a party which had polled less than two percent last time round, more than doubling its share and crossing not just the 5% threshold, but also embarrassingly the 3%, so that it would be getting state funding, would be deeply embarrassing given its explicitly anti-war, anti-quauthoritarian message. However, simply letting them stand and fixing the vote to keep them out, that also had risks.

How The Kremlin Pre-Rigs Votes

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Remember, this is for me one of the most fascinating aspects of this. You know, we think of these as rigged elections, and they are going to be rigged elections. But the political technologists want to have to rig it as little as possible. The bigger the gap, the bigger the gap between the real vote and what people feel is the real vote, and the announced one. Firstly, the less effective it is in legitimating the regime, quite the opposite, it can actually flip the other way round. But also the more likely it is to trigger more direct opposition. I mean remember the the Balotnaya protests of which more later, the big protests from 2011 to 2013, biggest protests we've seen in post-Soviet times, they were triggered again by a sense that an election had been stolen. So this is one of the reasons why, in effect, the presidential administration as far as possible pre-rigs the vote. It excludes candidates who it thinks it's going to be dangerous, it builds up momentum behind its various fake opposition parties, it blackens the name of its rivals, etc., in order to try and shrink the gap that it's going to need to rig the vote by. So, at the moment Yabloka is now off the ballot. It is appealing the case, and the its appeal is actually going to be heard in the Supreme Court tomorrow. I'm recording this on Sunday the 16th of August, so it's going to be on the Monday. And it's threatening that it'll even take this to the Constitutional Court if need be. So there is some scope. Again, you know, sometimes the Presidential Administration's boys like to manufacture a certain amount of dramaturgia, a certain theatricality. So, you know, it is possible that we will see there an appeal being upheld at some stage, allowing the Kremlin to trumpet that this demonstrates just how democratic and law based the system is and so forth. However, I suspect not. I don't think that at the moment the Kremlin is in a mood to take risks. I think it is defaulting to the simpler and more heavy handed tactics. Yablaka leader Nikolai Rybakov has called for calm. He said that holding protests is dangerous for participants. I ask you not to give in to provocations and to continue supporting us in other ways. Comments, publications, volunteering, donations, other legal and safer ways. I have a suspicion that he, again, not without reason, fears provocations. Fears precisely that the security forces will try to make Yabloka look as if it's dangerously unstable. So I mean look, as I've said in a Twitter feed, this is clearly bad news, but it is, on the other hand, an interesting data point in support of the notion that there is actually a substantial portion of the electorate fed up with the war, but also fed up with the status quo generally. And this inevitably even causes some concerns within the elite. Not everyone is happy with the idea of Yablka being banned. I mean, again, very much on the local level, but already we've had the heads of the Communist Party and a just Russia in the Vladimir region criticizing the disqualification of Yabloka. The communist leader in Vladimir. Certainly this is not something we'd expect to hear from Zyuganov, who is essentially bought and paid for by Kiryenka. Anyway, the Communist leader Anton Sidorko said Elections have long ceased to be a competition of ideologies, programs, and personalities. Parties and candidates unpopular with the authorities are now simply removed from the elections on legal grounds that are literally far fetched. Well, yes, comrade, that is indeed the way the system works. But the thing is, this is not gonna just simply go away.

Appeal Hearing And Apple Saviour Irony

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Because, as I say, it wasn't really about Yablaka. Yablaka was just simply the vessel into which people were pouring some what turns out to be an unrealistic hopes that they would have the chance to express their views. We're gonna see this bubble forth in all sorts of other different ways. I mean, just again, a little side note, it's it's funny how apples have already become symbols, sometimes with unexpected results. Tomorrow isn't just the day of the appeal hearing, but also it's the Orthodox feast of the Transfiguration of the Lord, popularly known as the Apple Saviour. So in Cheetah, in Transbaikalia, the Transbaikal Metropolitanate of the Russian Orthodox Church, and the regional branch of the Young Guard of United Russia, so essentially United Russia's uh Komsomol, you know, Young Communist League equivalent. So it's very, very Putinite movement. Anyway, they have long planned and will be having to go ahead with the distribution of blessed apples in Cheetah and the surrounding region. So already we've got some wags on social media spinning this as entirely mischievously as a sign of secret support for Yabloka. Now, of course it's not, but I think we can expect everything, even potentially Apple related, to become politically symbolic now, between certainly between now and the elections. And this is going to be noticed because the Kremlin, as I said, is scared not so much of Yabloka, but of the latent protest potential that it was channeling. That sense that there is within Russia a bunch of people who who are just looking for, I hesitate to say a saviour, but you know, but something that will allow them to feel part of something bigger and express their opposition to what's going on. The Kremlin, after all, is very scared, frankly, of letting this become an open confrontation. It is still living under the shadow of the Bolotnya protests, and also of its own fears of Western Ghibridneya vojnard. Remember at this point that hybrid warfare, this is meant to be this uh terrible Russian threat to the West. I mean, yes, it is a challenge, but how far it's a threat, well, that that's really up to us. But anyway, the Russians are the ones who actually think that this is the West's tool, that it is the West that is particularly adept and eager to use the dark arts of subversion and opening Fisher lines within society and so forth to bring down regimes it doesn't like. This is one of the things that was scared Putin about Balotnia. He felt that it was in a way the West or the Americans and the Brits finally coming for him, one of the reasons for his particular crackdown thereafter. So, in those contexts, given the paranoias of the Kremlin, this clearly is something that is going to worry it. And well, while I'm mentioning Balotnia, let's think of the past and past parallels. So after the break, I'm going to do that through the medium of looking at, again, another recent book that is worth discussing for a while.

How To Support The Podcast

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Nemtsov, Putin, And The 1990s

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So as I said, what I'm going to do now is look at a recent book and consider also what it can say about the dilemmas of opposition politics in in Putin's Russia today. Before I do, just a quick note. I mean again, as I imagine you can, you know, as I presume that you would assume, I read a lot of books about Russia. And I often like to again, on the whole, I only raise the ones that I think are interesting or important. I don't generally say, you know, talk about books that I think are just not so good or mediocre. Occasionally I will slam a book when I actually think it is particularly poor or particularly problematic. But I do so in the context of trying to sort of connect it to wider discussions rather than just a straightforward book review, because I think there's a lot of those around. I would be curious about how you, the listeners, and particularly if you're patrons, and as ever, if you are an a listener but not a patron, spare a little thought and blessing for those people who actually free up the time for me to make these podcasts for you. Anyway, um if you think this works, if you like this or if you frankly just don't really want to hear about books because I'm not going to do just boring, straightforward reviews. So it's a question of whether I do this kind of blended. Approach or not, so let me know. Anyway, the book in question is Mikhail Fishman's book, The Successor, Boris Niptsov, Vladimir Putin, and the Decline of Modern Russia, which came out this year, 2026, by Pushkin Press. It was originally published in Russian. You'd be very surprised to hear, I'm sure, that it's actually very hard to find in Russia these days. And it's now been translated by Michelle Burdy. And look, it's a massive brick of a book. I've got an uncorrected proof version that's a mere 762 pages long. And it doesn't have an index, which is a bit of a problem with using it, but anyway, the index is only going to expand it further. And and thus, given its size, perhaps rather fittingly, I can't help but think that it's really two books in one. Ostensibly, it's a biography of Boris Nepsov, the charismatic liberal physicist and politician whose career spanned well, in a way, he he got into activist politics even in the dying days of the Soviet Union. But anyway, he was very active in the late Yeltsin era, Deputy Prime Minister, he was co-founder of the Union of Right Forces Party. And then ultimately he was tragically gunned down by Chechens on Moscow's Balshoy Moskvetsky Bridge in February of 2015 while trying to sort of basically mobilize opposition to what was happening in the Donbass and Russia's intervention of that and indeed annexation of Crimea. So the book is about Nemtsov, but in many ways, really, it's an incredibly detailed recounting of the politics of the 1990s and the 2000s, especially, but by no means exclusively from, I think it's fair to say, the liberal side of the political spectrum. While he's now in exile in the Netherlands, Fishman was a former editor-in-chief of the Moscow Times. He was an anchor for the independent TV network TV Rein Dodge. And frankly, he was a political fixture, I would say, of the political scene in those times. So Fishman very, very much has the inside knowledge to pack this tome. Now, to talk about this as a book, or again, two books, a biography and a political biography, should I say, before I spin out some of the wider issues it raises, I think I must confess that it does one of these things a lot better than the other. As an inside account of the political shenanigans, the ins and outs, the personalities, the rivalries of the times, it is very rich and incredibly detailed. I mean there were all sorts of developments, especially in the 1990s, that I confess I had, I wouldn't necessarily say forgotten, but at least let slip further back in my mind from the baleful influence of Yeltsin's former chief bodyguard, Alexander Korchakov, thoroughly unpleasant individual, to squabbles over assets like the Abdovas car manufacturer. And as I say, Fishman has the inside gen absolutely. But he does seem determined to give us all of it. All of it. We are so deep in the weeds you lose sight of the sky at times. There's less of a sense of the big picture than just simply this unrelenting flow of stuff happening. As a source book on the Times, it's absolutely invaluable. As a read, I'm not quite so sure. Now, again, there's so much good stuff in this it's worth noting. I mean if I start plucking out particular plums, then I risk being here all day. But let me just give one example. Fishman is especially good around the rise of Putin. Particularly from, I'd say, kind of an outsider's perspective, since, you know, I think again, Fishman's strength is really on the sort of liberal side of the political divide rather than the inside machinations of the so-called family, the people who were closest to Yeltsin at the time. Still, he recounts a couple of nice lines about this. One of them is when Putin had been picked as Yeltsin's successor, and it's worth noting that Nemtsov, even though at times people had thought of him in that role, nonetheless he supported Yeltsin's Yeltsin's choice of Putin. But then Boris Toltoya, that's Anatoly Chubais, the figure most closely associated with the privatization campaigns of the 1990s. You'll have trouble with him. But apparently Tubais thought Putin could be educated, and that it was possible to work with him. Now I thought this was interesting because it really encapsulates both the naivete of many, who really, in a way, were taken in by this notion of Putin as the self-affacing factotum, everyone's favourite bagman, because that's how he'd risen. Whether it was in St. Petersburg working for Zabchak, whether it was then coming to Moscow, the presidential property directorate, he was everyone's favourite aide de camp. The person who would keep the boss insulated from all their corrupt deals, would fix whatever needed to be fixed, would just simply ensure that everything kept working without in any way looking like a political threat. Of course, once Putin's behind the big desk, he's much less inclined to be submissive. So that's one thing, but also this patronizing attitude that Putin could be educated, the sense that this provincial could be house trained. I mean I think that's something that Putin realized only too well and must absolutely have resented. Remember, this is a man who does is not averse, shall we say, to taking revenge, even if it's a very cold dish. But anyway, at the time the oligarchs and the nineties generation politicians didn't really realize the threat that they were in, or that they were actually creating for themselves, and they were instead way too busy fighting amongst each other. And again, it's a nice passage from Komissant that Fishman quotes. Korzakov wants to jail Gusinsky. All of them want to jail Patanin. Berezovsky and Abramovich want to see Chubais behind bars, and Gusinsky, Primakov, and Lushkov want to jail Berezovsky. Yeah, everyone is looking to basically take down their enemies. I'm trying to think, is it the usual suspects? I'm trying to think there is one particular Quentin Tarantino film, oh that's it, Reservoir Dogs, where basically pretty much at the end, everyone in a Mexican standoff shoots everyone else, and one I think it's Mr. Pink, anyway, you know, the one survivor picks up the bag of diamonds and and and scurries out. Well, I have a slight sense almost that that's that's also the story of Putin, that all of the people who were that much more powerful, arguably, in non-institutional ways, were so busy fighting amongst themselves that they allowed Putin to pick up the diamonds. So lots and lots of fascinating political insights. But as a book about Niemtsov as a person, I can't help feel that this book is much less compelling. Nemtsov is a character in the story rather than the character. Fishman doesn't seem to want to talk about Niemsov as a person, but just as a political actor. We hear again and again that he's charismatic, curly haired, and a hit with the ladies. That he can't help saying what he thinks. Okay, fine, but that's a cameo, not a character. He's present in body throughout this book, but I did feel his spirit was somewhat absent. Though, again, there are all sorts of nice vignettes, like I did love the one about him being asked for a selfie by one of the investigators who was searching his flat in twenty twelve as things are getting seriously tough for him. But no sense of the heart, no real theme, just lots of stuff happening. Now, I imagine it certainly wasn't the intent behind the book, but if anything, I've got to confess I actually finished it less impressed with Nymphs of the Man. His heart was often, though not always, in the right place, and his spirit and courage absolutely unquestionable. But I did end up, I don't know, undefinably disappointed in him. Maybe seeing him at times as a poor politician, frankly, who was coasting on the social capital he'd made in the 1990s and his undoubted capacity to generate new social connections, but who ultimately wasn't able to turn that into something tangible and effective. Despite the book's title, and indeed the fact that Yeltsin often called Nimtsov my successor as president, he never really had a chance of being a successor and to take Russia in a different direction. And so, in some ways, I actually feel that he shone most. Well, firstly, when he was helping organize things like Balotna, by which time he was no longer in the front rank of the opposition figures. A new generation, Naval, Nyudeltsov, Yashin, and so forth had really emerged. But nonetheless, again, using that both experience but also social capital, Nimtsov did indeed play an absolutely crucial role behind the scenes in actually just getting it all together. Just the practicalities, the nuts and bolts, knowing how you bring together massive demos. But beyond that, I mean I think he shone not as Deputy Prime Minister 1997 to 1998, not as governor of Nizhny Novgorod in 1917, nor even actually as the leading light of the Union of Right Forces or its later sort of kind of successor, Parnas, but actually as a member of the Yaroslavl Regional Duma from 2013, a local parliament. But then, you know, perhaps chastened by his years in the wilderness, he really threw himself into local politics and administration and debates, the kind of grassroots politics and administration that Russia so often lacks, and yet which arguably creates the unshowy, undramatic, but absolutely essential building blocks for genuine change, rather than just chanting slogans at a rally. I don't know, as I said, it feels terribly mean spirited to say anything negative really about him, but especially considering what happened to him. And this is not a final judgment, it's just my kind of gut sense on closing this book and trying desperately how to work out how to find a large enough space on the bookshelves

Exiles, Sanctions, And Speaking For Russia

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for it. But anyway, let me look at the relevance of Nyemtsov and Fishman's portrait of the time and the resonance to the present day. There was something that Navalny said to Niemtsov that struck with me, that he was essentially associated with the 1990s. And separately, it is worth noting that although Niemtsov didn't have anything really to do with the privatization that allowed a handful of Russians to become obscenely rich through taking state assets for Kopex on the ruble. Although Nemtsov, Fishman says, does become quite rich through investments, though he rather skates over quite what this was, and I must admit, I would have appreciated more on this, just to get a sense of was there anything, to be blunt, was there anything shady and insider dealing about that or not? But anyway, he wasn't behind the privatization campaign. But the trouble is the privatization campaigns have become so radioactive, so toxic for most Russians, that just generally his role as being a you know a key figure in the politics of the times, his closeness to figures like Tubais and the oligarchs, inevitably mean that he's been tarred with the same brush. The thing is, you can't outrun your history. There's only a limit to how far you can reinvent yourself. And frankly, it gets harder to reinvent yourself if you are honest. And this helps explain, I would suggest, why today so many expat politicians are not coming out wholeheartedly as some would want in support of Ukraine. I mean there are some who do, like Gary Kasparov, but frankly he has no real traction inside Russia. And this is thrown into sharp relief by an interesting recent debate between Ilya Yashin, now in the West, who had been Nymtsov's right hand man and campaign manager, and Nigel Gould Davis of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. In The Spectator, Gould Davis had written For all its genuine antipathy to Putin and suffering at his hands, much of Russia's exiled opposition still seems to prioritize in its activities and lobbying the protection of Russia's people and assets. This is because it hopes one day to govern Russia. Europe's priority is different. To end the war on terms that prevent Russia mounting a future threat, this should serve the opposition's goals too. Will it gain the moral clarity to see this? Well, it's always a bit tricky when foreigners are basically telling people who have faced genuine serious repression at the hands of the Kremlin how they ought to be protesting against it and how they ought to be feeling. And in the Moscow Times, Yashin replied, particularly addressing the demand for more sanctions, more exclusions of Russians from Europe, like for example Germany's decision to suspend its humanitarian visa program for anti-war Russians and Belarusian opposition activists, arguing, quote, on the point that the Russian Democratic opposition places the interests of the Russian people above all else, Gul Davis is absolutely right. I can confirm that for my colleagues in the Peaceful Russia Party and me, the interests of our people are indeed our highest priority. Otherwise we would have no right to call ourselves Russian politicians. And he goes on then to say would it not be wiser then to build constructive relations with that part of Russian society that is capable of creating such a country? Would it not be wiser to regard us as allies and extend a hand to us? Would it not be wiser to support us, strengthening our position and improving our chances of shaping Russia's future? And Gould Davis's reposed also in Moscow Times I promise it's the last chunky quote. This Soviet intelligentsia, he's talking about the dissident movement back in the late Soviet times, saw itself as a moral conscience rather than as a group of politicians in waiting. Its principled position was that Soviet power must be weakened and isolated in order for the regime to change, was also strategically vindicated. Within a decade of the Afghan invasion, the communist system was headed towards collapse. Well, first of all, and this is a particular bugbear point of mine, Afghanistan did not bring down the Soviet Union. Soviet Union was brought down by a the intrinsic contradictions in this system that just simply had basically run out of capacity to modernize and be productive, and also Gorbachev's quixotic attempt to reform it, always the most dangerous moment of trying to reform an authoritarian system. Arguably, if we'd instead just simply got a fairly clear-sighted conservative committed to holding the system together, the Soviet Union would have lasted a hell of a lot longer. I still imagine it would have been by now long since gone, but it certainly would not have collapsed at the end of 1991. So to draw that comparison, correlation is not causation. Afghanistan didn't bring down the Soviet Union. The Cold War arguably absolutely contributed much more directly. I mean it also bankrupted the United States, but that's a whole separate issue. But you know, ultimately what it comes down to is this idea of is it more important just to collapse the system, or is it more important to try and change the system? Because in a way that the Yashin argument is help us change the system. The Gould Davis argument is crash the system and then change is inevitable. Look, there is a hell of a lot more to this debate. I have only really picked out certain elements. My apologies to Bohicky Yashin and Gould Davis for all the elements that I didn't cover, and if I if if you feel that I have uh misrepresented your views, frankly I encourage people to go and read this debate for themselves, and I'll leave links to those three pieces in the programme notes. But I thought there was this crucial point of in some ways dissident versus politician. The thing is, dissidents are essentially creatures of moral rather than political authority. Dissidents do not expect or indeed plan to come to power. They're more concerned with saying I will not accept this, I will not be part of this, I will not keep quiet about this. Politicians still hope to come to power. They hope to actually be the change, not just witness it. Navalny was not a dissident, in my opinion, in the classic Soviet sense. Instead, he was precisely he was a politician, he was an opposition activist. He didn't just simply say, I will not accept this system, he actively sought to change it. So a couple of points that connect this back to Nemtsov and his example. First of all, that history neither forgets nor forgives. The Soviet dissidents who supported sanctions and more, in some ways, well, I mean some of them did end up being to a slight degree discredited, but on the whole they were f okay, they they have still had their place within what we could think of as Russia's moral pantheon, because Russia is a different country, and because they did not seek political power, they were not trying to crash the Soviet system because they saw an opportunity for themselves. Again, this is why Lenin was not a dissident but an oppositionist. Nemsov was not forgiven the government's sins of the 1990s, and perhaps would not have been forgiven his stance on Ukraine. I'm not sure, but I think it's certainly clear that if he was around today, he would probably have been again supporting this line, that anything that allows Ukraine to beat Russia in the hope that that weakens the regime enough to bring it down is a good thing.

Collapse Versus Change In Authoritarian States

MG 40:59

And that may well have counted against him if he was still around. I definitely think that the emigres, the emigres today calling for Russia to lose, in effect cheering on Ukrainian attacks, and thus in effect welcoming Russian casualties, are not going to be forgiven. Yes, defeating Ukraine might contribute to ending the system. Maybe. I mean let's not assume that there's going to be necessarily a direct connection there. But you know, on the whole, a genuine defeat, which is not the same as just basically calling a stop to the war, holding on to the 20% of Ukraine you've got, and then starting negotiations, but a genuine retreat. That absolutely would be a humiliation and might well be an existential blow for the Putin system. But A, it's not likely to happen. And B, ending the system is not necessarily a good thing. However ghastly the Putin system, late Putinism may be, there are worse things around. In fact, after all, collapsing systems can in fact be a very negative thing. Let's even if we set aside the fall of Weimar Germany and Hitler's rise to power, you know, one can't bring everything back to Germany and Hitler. There's a host of other examples. Whether we're talking about, I don't know, Bolivia's devastating defeat against Paraguay in the Chaco War, that led to the rise of military dictatorship, to arguably defeat in World War I, ultimately opening the way to Bolshevik authoritarianism in Russia. Collapse can be a catalyst for bad things happening, the rise of someone who promises simple, easy, and quite possibly violent solutions. So I would say that Nemtsov's example shows that, again, through the effect of the 1990s, the degree to which one has to think, how are the choices I'm making today, the company I keep today, and the statements and policy platforms that I present today going to be interpreted in the future. And then we come back to this whole issue of was Nimtsov a dissident or a politician? I think it's a really interesting question. And one that I don't think he was ever really certain about in his mind. I mean, reading this book, I felt that this was a man who set out to be a politician, but who had the soul of a dissident. He was an idealist in a ruthlessly pragmatic world, in a way that Navalny, for example, was not. And I say that in some ways as a compliment to both men in their own particular ways. One reason why it was Kadyrov who had Niemtsov killed, to Putin's deep discomfort at the time, something that Fishman does indeed cover, is precisely this dissidents are not dangerous to Him and the system in a way that opposition politicians can be. It was in some ways Kadyrov who, unsophisticated to the last, prone to turn to the gun and the thumbscrew when he doesn't like someone. It was Kadyrov who had Nemtsov killed, and in the process had Nemtsov himself elevated to the level of a sort of secular saint of Russian descent. And that little patch of the bridge where he fell, the one that in time and time again the authorities clear away the little impromptu memorial that is a keeps emerging there, time and time again it's reconstituted. I mean it demonstrates, I think the other thing that it's worth noting is that Niemtsov, the politician, like all politicians, would have had a limited shelf life. I suspect that frankly he had already peaked. But Nemtsov, the symbol the symbol not just of just how brutally thuggish this regime can be, and sure, Putin did not have Nemtsov killed. I think that's fairly clear to say. But Putin also chose to cover up the real cause. Yes, you had some of the triggermen being convicted. But as soon as the then investigator Krasnov, who did have this nickname of the wolf hound, because he was actually a very, very assiduous investigator, as soon as he started putting the dots together and realizing that this led all the way to Grozny, he was removed from the case, essentially removed from it by promoting him somewhere else. And a more politically amenable prosecutor was was appointed in instead. Well, you know, Putin decided to cover up Kadyrov's role and therefore is entirely, in my opinion, morally compromised by this. But the point is he would not have had Navalny killed, I don't think. Because a symbol can be a lot more powerful than a probably past his sell by date, however charismatic and curly haired he still was, politician. So to summarize, this is a book which, for all my at times rather lukewarm takes on it, is an invaluable trove of insights and insider information about the politics, particularly of the 1990s and the 2000s. But it's also in some ways maybe appropriate given its massive size, a fitting tombstone. A monument to the degree to which actually I would say Niemtsov and his career, especially his later career, really demonstrates that the firstly, that the dissident tradition in Russia is not dead under late Putinism. But also that, yes, of course, there is the political power that can get a law passed or a contract awarded, but also the power precisely of example, the power of being someone who is willing to say, I will not accept this, not in my name.

What Yabloko’s Ban Really Signals

MG 47:15

And to finally loop this back to Yabloka. Look, had I been a political technologist in the presidential administration a week ago, I too would have been saying to Kiryenka, frankly, now is the time to stop this from going too far. But what's happening with Jablka was not so much about Jablaka, but about precisely the degree to which it had become this vessel for other people's dissatisfactions with what was going on in Russia at the time. And I think that, although I don't think for a moment we're necessarily going to be talking about this three years from now, but as a symbol, as a symbol, firstly, that there is this other silenced but not mute Russia, and that parties like Jablaka can emerge as ways for them to find their voice, and that the Kremlin is sufficiently scared of them that it has to do this reverse ferret, this last-minute dramatic change in policy to remove it from the ballot box. In some ways, I wonder if that actually is not going to prove more corrosive to a system which, let me reiterate, finds apathy and atomization as its most useful instruments. But well, maybe I'm just desperately looking for silver linings to this cloud. We will just have to see. Well, that's the end of another episode of the In Moscow Shadows podcast. Just as a reminder, beyond this, you can follow my blog, also called In Moscow Shadows. You can follow me on Twitter at Mark Galliotti or Facebook, MarkGaleotti on Russia. This podcast is made possible by generous and enlightened patrons, and you too can be one. Just go along to my Patreon page, that's patreon.com slash in Moscow Shadows, and decide which tier you want to join, getting access to exclusive materials and other perks. However, whether or not you contribute, thank you very much indeed for listening. Until next time, keep well.