Lately I talked to Victor Shenderovich, a Russian writer and publicist, about the presidential election in theRussian Federationon March 4 at the P.S. TV show through Skype. You can see the video of that conversation for the first time on A1+ at 3:20 pm, today. Certainly, besides other questions, it was interesting to know about the candidates. Shenderovich, as I understood it, was not excited about anyone: Zyuganov and Zhirinovsky “have been working as opposition” for a long time and it is a beneficial job; Prokhorov is obviously Putin’s project; Mironov is not worth mentioning at all. And therefore, I inquired what he advised to the Russian voters. The advice was the following – to think and organize themselves, not bothering about the mentioned candidates.
The situation inArmeniais like it, but it differs from it at the same time. In particular, Zyuganov has been saying “bandit regime” for 20 years, here the Armenian National Congress (ANC) has been saying that only for 5 years. So, there are still 15 years left for ours to bore the people with the repeating rhetoric. Both here and inRussiathere is a big inactive mass that will vote for the “nachalstvo” (bosses), however it is called, in any case without any pressure. In our two countries, the mechanism of election fraud is ready and waiting, moreover, inArmeniamany of architects and engineers of it are among the ANC. The broadcasting TV channels both inArmeniaand inRussiaare under establishment’s supervision, and my impression is that inRussia, that supervision over the so-called “federal” TV channels is more solid, than in our country. However, in both cases the internet has already become a serious alternative to TV broadcasting.
The most essential resemblance is that citizens of our two, as well as many other countries, don’t see the cause-effect relation between freedom, democracy, independent courts, fair elections on one hand and their welfare on the other. I think self-organization Shenderovich talks about is first of all a step taken to reach that perception.
InRussia, people who have perceived that and have taken to the streets are called “non-systemic” opposition, as opposed to the “systemic” one, on which they don’t generally pin hopes. The term isn’t accurate – new systems are created thanks to the “non-systemic” opposition.
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ARAM ABRAHAMYAN
