> "Before, when a person walked into the store and found only empty shelves, they blamed the system, but now, when they walk into a store chock full of consumer goods but cannot afford to buy them, they blame themself. This is even truer when they admit that other people no more capable or intelligent have somehow adapted to this system and prospered. " - https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2021/01/04/the-kremlin-need-have-no-fear-of-mass-economic-protests-a72537
This article is a very good analysis in general although this particular conclusion seems to be an overstatement in my opinion. Most people I know in Russia can see a causal connection between Putin's politics and the economic situation.
Agreed, it's simplified for the sake of the argument, but at its core, there's a lot of truth there.
Letting the individual believe they are themselves to blame for all their ills is something we've seen also across Western Europe... not only having the poor believe they have nobody but themselves to blame for their poverty, but also, e.g., that the people have nobody to blame but themselves (or their neighbour) for public health failures in recent months.
This is indeed a very valid point in general. I just don't think it specifically applies to modern Russia for two reasons:
1) especially the older generation in Eastern Europe has a strong tendency to blame everyone else ("them") for any failures; the attitude is sometimes called Homo sovieticus (after Mikhail Heller's book) or "sovok" in Russian
2) the whole point of Putin's "raising Russia from its knees" movement was about the state taking more responsibility
And yet, when I think in particular at this other part:
> "Stolen elections, politicians who cheat people’s expectations, police brutality and the persecution of popular public figures can still shake people out of their lethargy – but economic injustice no longer can."
...of course, economy is always to some extent part of the issue, but it's rarely the core demand. It is not, for example, in the case of Belarus in recent months. But even back to Russia, what united the last big wave of protests in Russia (2011 presidential elections to Bolotnaya), the unifying issue was "for fair elections", not economy (even if Udaltsov and other leftists were part of the protest).
Tsikhanouskaya is not a threat because of its distinct economic policy. Neither is Navalny (even if that is already a different story).
100% agreed, we see these protests with non-economic trigger all the time. We saw that in Ukraine, USA, Russia, Poland, Middle East, Hong Kong etc.
