Putin is Not Forever

Putin is Not Forever

By: Erreh Svaia

“Stalin is the most popular figure in all of Russia.”

Vladimir Putin

Five years, a new election ahead and a new generation of Russians who rage against the Putin's political machine known as Untied Russia, or as dissident Aleksei Navalny calls it, "the party of crooks and thieves", this time, is not about Moscow middle class protesting against Putin, this time is a younger generation of Russian teenagers who only know the Putin regime and who can´t stand its corrupted nature, this time it wasn’t only the streets of Moscow that were filled with youngsters, it was a parallel protest in almost 82 cities in Russia, a clear sign that political reform is being demanded strongly in Russia and a clear sign that Putin´s game of using outsiders to hack elections all over the world can be played against him, considering the video made by Aleksei Navalny, it looks like the Putins dictatorship is about to receive a cup from its own “antiestablishment” soup. 

In the weekend we saw he biggest street protests since 2012, a year that instilled fear in Russia's strong man Vladimir Putin, as the Arab Spring was sweeping chaos in the North of Africa, Putin freaked out at what could mean the end of his regime, five years ago, Putin's nationalists worked out brilliantly, he is as popular than ever, but now it's the turn of prime minister Dimitry Medvedev, who is in the spotlight after broad public accusations of corruption, reports about him owning a fortune of more than a billion dollars in mansions and yachts, Medvedev, who served once as a president for the country in tandem with Putin stance as PM, looks as if he is about to become a sort of a scapegoat for Putin's government in order to contain social unrest in the road to a Soccer World Cup and Russia's presidential election a year from now, could this mean big trouble for Putin just as it happened in Dilma Rousseff Brazilian government? This time it looks as if Putin has been very busy interfering with elections in other countries and behind his Manchurian Candidates instead of taking care of his own business as dramatic social inequalities are increasing in Russia's inner sphere and it looks as if Putin's ride towards 2018 is going to be a bumpy one, as some protesters, tens of thousands of them including Pushkin Square are not willing to take Putin's way anymore, Putin´s kid have grown up, just like the kids under the Ceausescu regime in Romania, now are turning against its creator, they are growing tired of being sold “ghost campaigns” like Ukraine or Syria and they are demanding true better social conditions, as Russia could be sick from within just like Venezuela, states that haven’t been able to grow its economies to past and leave their oil dependency. 

Now, being a dissident in Russia has never been an easy thing, we have witnessed several deaths of those opposing Putin´s government, you have shootings, those of journalist Anna Politkovskaya murdered in Putin's birthday, the street shooting of the liberal Boris Nemtsov near the Kremlin, the recent killing of Nikolai Girokhov, lawyer of whistleblower Sergei Magnitsky, and the murder of Denis Voronenkov in Kiev, the countless arrests of leftist leader Sergei Udalstov, of maverick writer Eduard Lemonov, the continuous harassing of anti-corruption blogger Navalny and of Chess champion Gerry Kasparov, forced to leave Russia, and let's not forget the poisoning with a radioactive substance of ex KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko in the UK, being a dissident in Russia is close to be a criminal in a country that is slowly drifting into authoritarianism, with Putin closing his fist on power, with democracy slowly but steadily replaced by so called illiberal democracy, a system fully controlled by an elite ruling government bent of getting ridiculously rich (some even consider Putin one of the world biggest millionaire with a hidden fortune), old Soviet style communism without ideology, a KGB controlled state with a repressive police acting against dissidents trying to neutralize them in any possible way, and one obsessed with funding other authoritarians in order to pervert the moral foundations of democracy, in a world full of authoritarian strong men hell bent on enriching themselves, who would have the moral stature to confront Putin?

2017 marks the 100-year anniversary of the Russian revolution, a supposed social movement that brought a supposed people´s government, a ruling party that kept power for 70 plus years, a dictator that rewrote history and grew a cult of personality, an authoritarian elite than betrayed its initial promise, a toothless dinosaur refusing to die, yes, it draws immediate comparisons with México’s own history, revolutions, ruling parties, betrayal, dictatorship, Stalin keeps being one of the most important historic characters, just like Lazaro Cárdenas, an Stalinist, remains popular in México, it’s almost symbolic that after 100 years, the Russians are back to the streets, not looking after revolution this time, but looking for change in the way of reforms and in the way of democracy, after 700 protesters were arrested it looks like a spark of unrest has been set in motion, the policy of asking for permission to make a protests has been disobeyed by a society that demands true compromise and not false promises of greatness, Russia is a great country, Russia is not Putin and Putin is not forever, he must remember the Arab Spring and the end of dictator Ceausescu, but Putin knows that he has little chance of coming out alive of the motion he started.