Gazeta.ru February 7, 2005 Unattributed article: "A Trunk With Ghosts"

The government's use of the terms "provocation" and "provocateur" implies that they can be applied to any citizen of Russia who decides to make a protest about anything.The speculation one hears more and more often to the effect that the current government not only has a poor creative capacity but does not have a very clear notion in general of what, essentially, it is leading, is getting more and more corroboration -- among other things in the
government's reaction to events. That is, the government is doing very poorly at what our so-called political scientists call appropriate responsiveness to political and social challenges. We should note that the forcible seizure of other people's assets and institutional powers, for all
of its effectiveness, is a highly monotonous and therefore not very productive line of activity. And not a universal one at all. So to achieve greater responsiveness the Kremlin administrators have to go beyond the time-tested tools of the stagnation era and dig even deeper -- in quest of new, that is, even more forgotten recipes.

The suggestion is made to the public, as in the good old days, to read between the lines and draw its own conclusions. Now President Vladimir Putin, at a meeting with functionaries of the prosecutor's office,
explained their immediate tasks to them. Actually, there was nothing new -- counteract terrorism, extremism, fight organized crime and the narcotics threat, protect the business environment from criminal and corruptive
pressures. All of these wonderful political slogans have already been issued, and more than once.

Calls for the prosecutor's office to become the coordinating center for this struggle are also quite logical, although, like all political slogans,
they are not related in any way to real results.

Here, incidentally, the government is completely united with its people neither one expects any positive results in this area. But between the lines of the presidential statement one gets roughly this message: what a great job the prosecutor's office is doing, what wonderful specialists work there -- they will take care of everything. Coordinating the law-enforcement agencies, guaranteeing that business -- or what is left of
it -- is socially responsible, and wherever trade unions are falling short in the area of working people's rights and wages, the prosecutor's office will help out there, too.
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>The notion that the main task of the prosecutor's office is not to coordinate but to GUARANTEE strict compliance with the law by all institutions, including government and law-enforcement institutions, is not apparent between the lines.
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>Nor is it apparent in the lines, either. But the expansion of the functions of the prosecutor's office to include everything on earth has already occurred in our history. In fact, during the years whose ideology the authorities are beginning to resort to in their quest for new tools.
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>In the face of the tough tests that the Russian government has had to go through at the beginning of 2005, ministers and administrators, deputies and bureaucrats have not been fazed, have not become discouraged, but have summoned their strength to repel the attack. Its name is already known in
>the Kremlin, at the White House, and on Okhotnyy Ryad. According to great-power thinking, the fact that pensioners are coming out onto the street throughout the country, the fact that the residents of Beslan blocked the federal highway from Rostov to Baku, is not to be blamed on the
>responsible persons who botched the substitution of cash for benefits or on the members of the parliamentary commission investigating the terrorist attack who are concealing information. It is "provocateurs" who are to
>blame for everything.
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>"I regard today's action by the residents of Beslan as a provocation. It has nothing to do with the commission's work," declared Arkadiy Baskayev, a member of Aleksandr Torshin's commission. This basically coincides with the
>view that has taken root in the corridors of power to the effect that there are "certain political forces" behind the pensioners who are protesting the substitution of cash for benefits. Sometimes the person who organized the revolt in what yesterday was still such a happy country is even identified, though not yet publicly. Of course, it is Boris Berezovskiy, who thanks to official propaganda is gradually taking on the features of Goldstein in Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four," since he is, in essence, the same kind of mythical figure.
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>There is nothing surprising about the fact that the direct-action demonstrations that have swept the country were considered the product of a cunning conspiracy.
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>The increased staffing of governmental bodies with people from the law-enforcement agencies, and above all the FSB, could not help but result in an extensive proliferation of the special-service way of thinking and the corresponding terminology.
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>The declarations about provocations are yet more evidence that quantity has changed into quality. It does not even occur to these people the protests could be spontaneous. It is simpler and more a matter of habit to call the rallies provocations. Find an enemy, rename the phenomenon, thereby
>distorting its essence.
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>Actually, it is not very interesting to know WHY the government takes this attitude toward protesters. It's that kind of government, and for now there is nothing that can be done about it. The problem is that the assessment of
>the situation inevitably entails the corresponding actions.
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>By calling those who go onto the street provocateurs, the authorities, in effect, reserve the right to stop the provocations by all means available to them.
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>Including outright force. The special-service way of thinking, after all,influences not only terminology but also the choice of tools for solving the problem.
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>Nobody should think that residents of Beslan and disgruntled pensioners arethe only ones who should fear a punitive hand. Since talk of provocateurs has started, one should assume that this term can be applied to any citizen
>of Russia who decides to make a protest about anything. By using just one term extracted from a moldy trunk, the authorities have effectively removed from the realm of law anyone who is disgruntled today and anyone who could
>become disgruntled tomorrow. Accordingly, any attempt to organize a direct-action demonstration that is not devoted to glorifying the authorities could entail any administrative conclusions.
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>The experience is there -- the trunk whose services the authorities often resort to contains not only terms but more effective tools as well. It is up to society to make a countermove. By recognizing the government's right to regard everyone who is not for it as enemies and provocateurs, citizens grant it the full right once and for all to do anything with them that it sees fit. That is, in theory, also a solution, but it does not guarantee a tranquil future. Because the old recipes in this area are good only for the cooks. For their customers, they practically guarantee a long bout of indigestion.
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