Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War

[dalton99a]

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/09/world/europe/putin-russia-war-ukraine.html

Spurred by Putin, Russians Turn on One Another Over the War
Citizens are denouncing one another, illustrating how the war is feeding paranoia and polarization in Russian society.
By Anton Troianovski
April 9, 2022 Updated 6:46 a.m. ET

Marina Dubrova, an English teacher on the Russian island of Sakhalin in the Pacific, showed an uplifting YouTube video to her eighth-grade class last month in which children, in Russian and Ukrainian, sing about a “world without war.”

After she played it, a group of girls stayed behind during recess and quizzed her on her views.

“Ukraine is a separate country, a separate one,” Ms. Dubrova, 57, told them.

“No longer,” one of the girls shot back.

A few days later, the police came to her school in the port town of Korsakov. In court, she heard a recording of that conversation, apparently made by one of the students. The judge handed down a $400 fine for “publicly discrediting” Russia’s Armed Forces. The school fired her, she said, for “amoral behavior.”

...

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A board in support of the Russian armed forces is on display in the city's main thoroughfare Nevsky Avenue in Saint Petersburg, Russia March 4, 2022. A board displays the symbol "Z" and a slogan: "We don't give up on our people". REUTERS/Staff/File Photo

[riversedge]

1. what is shameful is that parents are teaching their kids to rat out others who have different views-

and in the case the School is doing that also [based on fines and horrible labeling of the teacher].

[sanatanadharma]

11. Your words sound like a description of regressive America

Or in other words, authoritarian-representatives for life government.

Edit: I type too slow

[tavernier]

21. That IS communism!

When the Communists came into the Baltic nations, the children were taken from their homes at a are very early age and put into schools where they were taught to tell on their parents if they ever talked against the government. They were rewarded for it. I’m sure the same was true in Russia. To these people, turning in your friends and neighbors and family is the heroic thing to do.

My aunt from Latvia years ago sent me a couple of school books that were taught to children at an early age. It was revolting. Fortunately, the people of the Baltics fought hard against this type of brainwashing and immediately ended this once they regained their independence, but I’m sure that Putin wished for those types of schools to remain.

[MadameButterfly]

27. THat is Authoritarianism

Yes, the Communists have done this but it's because they are anti-democratic, has nothing to do with their financial system.
I make this distinction because many people (most?) conflate Communism and Socialism. They think if we became more Socialist, things like this would happen in our country. So they hate Socialism, while supporting authoriarian trends which are the real problem.

I'm not suggesting we become a Socialist country, but I think Socialistic aspects of our society have saved Capitalism: public schools, roads, libraries, progressive tax structures, social security...None of these infringe on freedom of speech or turn people in for undeserved punishment.

I know i'm preaching to the choir here, but as long as Socialism is the boogie man (next to pedophilia) we'll get nowhere. So I make the distinction between what happens because of specifically Communist systems (Authoritarian + Socialism) versus Authoritarian systems.

[groundloop]

22. This is what GQP states are becoming with regulations about what can & can't be said in classrooms

[tanyev]

2. Wow, Putin jugend.

Google translate says that would be Putin molodezh in Russian.

[Native]

3. Authorities are texting citizens, asking them to rat others out. Here's more...

There are reports of students turning in teachers and people telling on their neighbors and even the diners at the next table. In a mall in western Moscow, it was the “no to war” text displayed in a computer repair store and reported by a passer-by that got the store’s owner, Marat Grachev, detained by the police. In St. Petersburg, a local news outlet documented the furor over suspected pro-Western sympathies at the public library; it erupted after a library official mistook the image of a Soviet scholar on a poster for that of Mark Twain.

In the western region of Kaliningrad, the authorities sent residents text messages urging them to provide phone numbers and email addresses of “provocateurs” in connection with the “special operation” in Ukraine, Russian newspapers reported; they can do so conveniently through a specialized account in the Telegram messaging app. A nationalist political party launched a website urging Russians to report “pests” in the elite.

“I am absolutely sure that a cleansing will begin,” Dmitri Kuznetsov, the member of Parliament behind the website, said in an interview, predicting that the process would accelerate after the “active phase” of the war ended. He then clarified: “We don’t want anyone to be shot, and we don’t even want people to go to prison.”

[dalton99a]

5. "We don't want anyone to be shot, and we don't even want people to go to prison" - BUT

"You made us do it"

Russia is famous for purges and gulags - Putin calls it "self-purification"

[MadameButterfly]

29. Maybe this is why Putin has a high favorability rating

They've killed, imprisoned, or at least terrified anyone who would be against him.

[2naSalit]

32. That's, pretty much, it.

[PatSeg]

4. My god, that is terrifying

Like something out of 1984 - Big Brother is always watching and anyone can turn you in to the state.

[sop]

6. Sounds like DeSantis' Florida.

[2naSalit]

7. And Abbott's Texas.

[uponit7771]

8. +1,

[Pepsidog]

15. +1

[justhanginon]

17. I'm sure they are busily taking notes. This would be right up their alley!

[3auld6phart]

23. #6 #7

Damn scary. The Salem witch trials, the feckin inquisition. This
shit has been going on forever. Can one hope that assholes
like them will pass on in a slow painful, lonely way ?

[peppertree]

24. Which figures, since it also sounds a little like Bush in 2003

While beating the war drums, his surrogates were busy trying to paint anyone who even voiced doubts over the wisdom of invading Iraq as being "for the terrorists."

Once the war started going sideways just weeks after the 'Mission Accomplished' fiasco, Republicans started looking like the silly sheep they usually are.

[2naSalit]

26. I suspect...

That it's a bit more visceral than what we see here, even on one of our most horrid days.

Endemic in the society is a groupthink that is hard to penetrate, been carefully cultivated for decades. It's how these despots remain in power in Russia. I have been informed by friends from the region, cultural anthropologists, that there is a sense that feels 18th century and seems to be as far as a lot of the members have advanced when they consider conformity and dissent and it is not pretty but resembles what we are starting to see here with seemingly random acts of crime in the streets these days.

[peppertree]

31. True. When all you know is Tsars, dictators, and despots - it's hard to move forward

As my area of expertise is more in Latin America, I can tell you many voters from that region - particularly white voters - are somewhat similar.

They see dissent - against right-wing governments, even dictatorships - as a threat to their own well-being.

And while most of those former dictatorships are now democracies, white voters in those countries still tend to chafe against what they see as the "chaos and disorder" of living under basic freedoms.

This is why Republicans, as you know, have been trying for decades to woo white Latin American immigrants (who, besides, tend to have high turnout rates).

And they might have been successful - were it not for all the bigotry in the GOP and most of its base.

I know of a number of white Latin Americans whose daily lament is that "I walk in the stores, and they're all smiles - but the second I open my mouth, they instantly put on a cara de culo (butt-face)."

And they know that people like that almost always turn to the GOP.

[CaptainTruth]

19. I was just going to say that.

[XanaDUer2]

9. Cute students nt

[peggysue2]

10. This is what authoritarianism is all about

This is what the Republican Party is eager to bestow on Americans. Banned books, censorship, group-think. double-speak, etc.

Politicians like Abbott and DeSantis are already trying on the mantle: Neighbors snitching on others, the offer of rewards.

Fox News, Koch Industries, the mega-rich (Peter Thiel), religious zealots, white nationalists are banging the drums, hoping the rhythm mesmerizes the electorate with their particular song of faux 'liberty.'

But it's the same old tune--we will control you whether you want it or not.

[Flaleftist]

12. Ah, the junior spies.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

13. "We don't give up on our people" is empty propaganda. Ask mothers of Russ bodies left in Ukraine

RuZZia doesn't care and Russian military doesn't care and especially the putz doesn't care.

Russia is abandoning its dead troops in Ukraine.

Further, the political sloganeering around "reuniting" Russians into a greater Russia with Belarus is very empty. At various times they claim Ukrainians are Russian "brothers" or the Donbas is filled with Russian brothers, and then they go drop bombs on them and kidnap their children and commit dreadful war crimes against them.

Eventually (how long?) a majority of Russians will realize putZin shat on them and their self-respect. Probably some time after Putin leaves the scene, after a period of de-putiniZation.

[Pepsidog]

14. History certainly has a way of repeating itself. Hitler youth repeated in Russia.

[plimsoll]

16. I see why the GOP is so fond of Putin.

On the other hand that kid has a future in FSB, or is it the KGB or the Okhrana, I get so confused on the names these authoritarian states give their political police.

[Shanti Shanti Shanti]

18. No doubt in my mind the vast majority of Russians would approve of nuclear war, nationalism

[Farmer-Rick]

28. Well, they are about to find out how radiation works

A lot of those Russian convoys got all into the Chernobyl red forest radiation. Some are dying right now.

See how Putin and his Generals treat Russian soldiers like disposable waste. Russian families don't hug your returning soldiers too tightly. Also be careful around some of that equipment used at in the red forest at Chernobyl.

[Joinfortmill]

20. She's lucky that's all these phucks did to her. I hope she leaves.

[C Moon]

25. That's some democracy they got going there.

Obviously a dictatorship. This is what tfg, desantis and the turtle have envisioned for the US. But our voting keeps getting in their way. They’re working on that detail, though.

[MadameButterfly]

30. Too bad Repubs don't have the imagination

to make the connection. I thought for sure Putin committing war crimes would turn them around.

[Crunchy Frog]

33. Russia is now a full on fascist state,

The 21st Century equivalent of Nazi Germany, complete with genocide.

[struggle4progress]

34. ... For those denounced by their smug, horrible children

For a peppermint-star and the praise of the Perfect State,
For all those strangled, gelded or merely starved
To make perfect states; for the priest hanged in his cassock,
The Jew with his chest crushed in and his eyes dying,
The revolutionist lynched by the private guards
To make perfect states, in the names of the perfect states.

For those betrayed by the neigbours they shook hands with
And for the traitors, sitting in the hard chair
With the loose sweat crawling their hair and their fingers restless
As they tell the street and the house and the man's name.
And for those sitting at the table in the house
With the lamp lit and the plates and the smell of food,
Talking so quietly; when they hear the cars
And the knock at the door, and they look at each other quickly
And the woman goes to the door with a stiff face,
Smoothing her dress.
"We are all good citizens here. We believe in the Perfect State."

And that was the last time Tony or Karl or Shorty came to the house
And the family was liquidated later.
It was the last time.
We heard the shots in the night
But nobody knew next day what the trouble was
And a man must go to his work.
So I didn't see him
For three days, then, and me near out of my mind
And all the patrols on the streets with their dirty guns
And when he came back, he looked drunk, and the blood was on him ...

Litany for Dictatorships
Stephen Vincent Benet, 1935