MOSCOW The war in Ukraine has not yet made a big impact on the streetscape of the capital.
The Z marks celebrating the “military special operation” are hardly visible. Billboards at bus stops and along the streets present Russian soldiers as war heroes, and the pedestrian street Arbat has a photo exhibition of Donbas children.
The Russian leadership justified its “military special operation” with the suffering of the civilian population in the areas it controlled.
Mayor of Moscow By Sergei Sobyan has tried to keep the war far from the everyday life of the townspeople. He even announced many other regions of Russia earlier that the goals of the partial business launch in Moscow have been met and the invitation points will be closed.
The partial movement proposal crumbled the social contract, which the president Vladimir Putin has prevailed in the period: if citizens do not try to interfere in politics, those in power will let them live their lives.
– For the first time, Russian society realized that it is at war, says the sociologist and left-wing social critic Boris Kagarlitsky in a video interview from St. Petersburg.
Kagarlitski says that the rhetoric about a military special operation had worked until then: the majority of Russians did not feel that the country was at war and were not interested in it.
Mayor Sobyanin is one of the technocrats of Putin’s system who have focused on keeping the wheels of the system moving during the war. He has not sought to profile himself as a hard-line war hawk like the former president Dmitry Medvedev or the leader of Chechnya Ramzan Kadyrov.
But in today’s Russia, there is no room for the elite to stand aside. President Vladimir Putin jointly appointed Sobyanin prime minister by Mihail Mishustin with to lead a committee whose task is to harness the economic life in support of the Russian armed forces.
War penetrates more and more into the everyday life of ordinary Russians. The big shock was the partial launch of the movement announced by Putin in September.
On Friday, the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu announced that the goals of the business launch have been met. Kagarlitski doubts the announcement and says that a very large part of the population believes that the authorities are lying.
– But the motion is actually stopped so that the conscription boards can start conscripting conscripts, Kagarlitski guesses.
When not enough conscripts can be gathered, conscription starts again.
The apolitical society avoided information about the war
In opinion polls, the majority of Russians have stated that they support the so-called military special operation in Ukraine. Kagarlitski estimates that many Russians do not really have a strong position.
Kagarlitski says that the majority of the population was quite ignorant of the war, even though it is talked about on television every day.
– The vast majority of Russians do not watch political programs on television, Kagarlitski points out.
In the representatives of the opposition, this may raise the hope that people would then watch their programs on the Internet. Kagarlitsky dashes that hope.
– People watch thrillers, music programs and so on on TV. Then they go on the internet and watch shows about fashion, geeks and music shows, he laughs.
Kagarlitski says that modern Russian society is atomized and fragmented. There is strong solidarity within the family and close circle, but this solidarity does not extend beyond the family circle.
In Kagarlitski’s opinion, Russia’s market economy reforms created an extreme capitalist society in the country, but capitalism would need external structures and institutions such as culture, ideology, religion, art and the struggle of the working class as stabilizers.
In Russia, such stabilizing institutions did not emerge, except for the state’s violence apparatus, which filled the void.
– As a result, a totally depoliticized society was born, says Kagarlitski.
Although part of the population is extremely politicized, it is a minority. Kagarlitski estimates that in this group there are more opponents of the war than supporters. But supporters have the support of those in power, so they gain visibility more easily.
Uncertainty breeds fear
Boris Kagarlitski says that a full motion might have caused even less fear and panic than a partial one.
– A partial motion means uncertainty, and uncertainty means a threat.
There is confusion in the atmosphere, a sense of loss of direction, Kagarlitski describes. The social climate is changing rapidly.
Kagarlitski estimates that Russian society may become politicized quickly. It’s not certain. There is also no certainty as to what forms a potential field of resistance would take. Until now, the resistance has been passive: people hide or run away.
The declaration of martial law also adds to the uncertainty. President Putin declared actual martial law in effect only in those areas of Ukraine that Russia recently announced it would annex.
In the rest of the country, a multi-level scale of preparedness was created. It delegates solutions to regional leaders, governors, in the same way as in the fight against the corona pandemic.
For example, in Moscow, Mayor Sobyanin immediately announced that the state of heightened readiness will not affect the daily life of the residents.
Despite all the assurances, the exceptional conditions may be slowly spreading throughout the country.
Traditional values to the rescue
In the midst of uncertainty, those in power have sought the people’s support by declaring themselves defenders of “traditional values”.
President Putin has painted a picture of a degenerate Europe that pushes its own extravagant liberal values all over the world.
Kagarlitski believes that those in power do not understand and do not want to understand the society in which they live. They are speaking to an imagined audience.
– It is an imagined Russian society, the deep ranks of the people, which they have invented themselves and in which they themselves believe.
According to Kagarlitski, an apolitical reindeer-bourgeois consumer society prevails in today’s Russia, but it is not neoconservative. Only a small part of the population are actually Orthodox who actively practice their faith.
– There is quite a strong neoconservative tendency in the West as a reaction to liberal values. Russia doesn’t have it at all. Liberal values have not prevailed in Russian society, so there is no backlash to them either, says Boris Kagarlitski.
Read more:
‘s updated monitoring of the Russian war of aggression