9/20/19
Russia is witnessing an unprecedented campaign in defense of individuals imprisoned for taking part in peaceful protest rallies in Moscow. Teachers, doctors, publishers and even priests have published open letters in their support. These are the people who keep this country running, and their lives offer the best measure of the state of the country. A number of actors, outraged over the absurd sentence handed out to fellow thespian Pavel Ustinov, formed a picket line in front of the presidential administration building all day and into the evening on Sept. 18. Never before in modern Russian history have the people in police uniforms and court robes — long accustomed to deciding other people’s fates — encountered such determined resistance from citizens. Investigative Committee head Alexander Bastrykin and his cronies thought they could grab all of Russian society by the throat. They thought that by rounding up the “rabble-rousers” and “fringe elements” in even greater numbers than they did after the Bolotnaya Square protests they could earn themselves a few more commendations, promotions and budget increases. Instead, they only managed to mobilize entire segments of society against them, people who had previously shown little interest in politics. The first to arise were students who were under no illusions about the Russian courts. It only took them a matter days to understood that the case against Yegor Zhukov was a sham.
The concept of civil society does not refer to the moral qualities of the individuals comprising it. Not every individual has to be highly principled and concerned about the welfare of all mankind. Civil society is a much more specific phenomenon. It occurs when a great number of horizontal connections — unfettered by state control — form between a mass of ordinary citizens. Civil society is much more developed in Germany than in Russia, but not because Germans are constituted differently in a moral sense. It is because Germans are more involved in the life of society. While the average Russian can only rely on support from his family and a small circle of friends, a well-developed civil society acts en masse to protect its own. And those actions, in turn, strengthen the wider society even more. And when people take note of an obvious injustice perpetrated against someone close to them and whom they readily understand, they also begin to notice other injustices around them. This is why “students for students” and “actors for actors” is the best thing that could happen to Russia. This compartmentalized solidarity evolves into a broader civic solidarity. This is probably the most important development of the year. The people being freed are now working to defend others.
