STANISLAV MARKELOV - Patriotism as a diagnosis
When a nation is filled with strife, then do patriots flourish:
Lao-Tzu, Chinese Philosopher (601-531 BC)
This is the last article written by Russian activist lawyer Stanislav Markelov before he was shot dead in central Moscow a decade ago. On 19 January 2009, as Markelov and Baburova walked through central Moscow, they were gunned down by Nikita Tikhonov, a Russian neo-Nazi. This murder sent shocks through human rights, media and activist communities in Russia, and later exposed the neo-Nazi terror cell run by Tikhonov and several others. As was revealed at trial, the group’s organiser Ilya Goryachev was using his connections to people inside Russia’s Presidential Administration and law enforcement to lobby for a new umbrella party that would preside over Russia neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists. Alexander Litoy writes about this trial (and how he wound up on one of Goryachev’s lists) in detail here.
Lao-Tzu, Chinese Philosopher (601-531 BC)
This is the last article written by Russian activist lawyer Stanislav Markelov before he was shot dead in central Moscow a decade ago. On 19 January 2009, as Markelov and Baburova walked through central Moscow, they were gunned down by Nikita Tikhonov, a Russian neo-Nazi. This murder sent shocks through human rights, media and activist communities in Russia, and later exposed the neo-Nazi terror cell run by Tikhonov and several others. As was revealed at trial, the group’s organiser Ilya Goryachev was using his connections to people inside Russia’s Presidential Administration and law enforcement to lobby for a new umbrella party that would preside over Russia neo-Nazis and extreme nationalists. Alexander Litoy writes about this trial (and how he wound up on one of Goryachev’s lists) in detail here.
Born in 1974, Markelov led an active life. He was involved in the
Russian Social Democratic Party during the early 1990s, joined the Maximillian
Voloshin brigade, a left-wing medics' group, during the events of October 1993
in Moscow, travelled to Ingushetia with Memorial as a human rights observer,
and helped lead the radical left Russian Student Union in 1994-1995. In the late
1990s, he was involved in the Defenders of the Rainbow anarchist ecological
movement, as well as writing extensively about the authoritarian surge in
Belarus.
In the early 2000s, Markelov represented the interests of striking
workers at a Vyborg paper mill, people illegally evicted from Moscow
dormitories and activists from an independent railway union. In 2002, he
defended the interests of Elza Kungayeva, who was murdered by
corporal Yuri Budanov.
In 2006, Markelov founded and headed the Institute of the Rule of Law,
where he focused on defending activists, journalists and others in high-profile
legal proceedings, such as Anna Politkov-skaya and Mikhail Beketov, who led the
campaign for the defence of Khimki forest outside of Moscow.
This country has got hooked on patriotism like a drug. Any politician,
before lying, will swear by his patriotism. Any toady, before wheedling money
from the authorities, will boast of his love for the state. Any thief licking
his lips at the sight of his stolen goods will describe how he loves his
country and how much more he would steal for the sake of this love. Today in Russia it is impossible to occupy a senior position unless,
bowing and scraping, you declare your patriotism. It’s impossible to become a
politician (whether pro-government or pro-opposition) until you have licked the
backside of the two-headed eagle and sworn your love to other imperial symbols.
Patriotism has become the state’s criteria of eligibility towards its
citizens. If you aren’t a patriot, then you’re a pariah and the state’s
repressive apparatus will soon do everything to choke the life out of you.
Nowadays, people make nothing of it, but making your feelings public is thought
of as bad taste, as is declaring your love for the whole country — almost like
parading your underwear in the street, the traces of your last solitary passion
still fresh. No-one gives it a second thought that, to all intents and
purposes, patriotism is foolish!
Personal emotions are fine as long as they remain private. If we love
our country’s native soil, our ancestors and our traditions that’s admirable,
but what kind of idiot would force people to flaunt their private emotions?
Indeed, this love can only be sincere precisely insofar as it remains personal
and doesn’t lapse into the category of public-patriotic masturbation. Imagine declaring love for one’s parents as a national idea. People
would take you for a complete idiot. Why should we see this attempt to thrust
patriotism down our throats in any other way? There’s no need to crawl into our
minds to check how much we love our motherland. People can work out who and how
they should love all by themselves.
On the contrary, public adoration is never sincere. Unctuous love
towards household gods will soon arouse adverse feelings of revulsion and give
birth to a generation who hate this love of the fatherland that’s been rammed
down their throats. Just the same as Soviet power gave birth to a hatred of
everything Soviet, constantly stuffing us full of their cretinous slogans. But
nowadays we are not even promised communism, we are simply told that we must
blindly love the Motherland oblivious to everything else and then everything
will be fine. Fine for the authorities, for the oligarchs and the mafias.
Because patriotism is cowardice!
Rather than establishing who lined their pockets during the poverty and
lawlessness, who grabbed all public property in the mafia-style 1990s, who
should answer for the privatisation of our future, for the overnight plunder of
all the goods built up by the hellish labour of many generations, they propose
instead that we should love the state unrequitedly. Civic patriotism is not
love of one’s Motherland, rather it is love of the state. It is advantageous
for the ruling circles that we, mouths open wide in amazement and agog with
joy, gaze upon our latest state flag, even if the Vlasov traitors
fought against their own people or the Black Hundreds organised
pogroms under it.
According to the patriots, we should express joy at the successes of
the regime and lay down our future for the oligarchs or other fat cats munching
on that which was stripped from us and our parents. You call this love of the motherland? Any motherland would soon perish
from such love, and the more we sink into the abyss of patriotism, the more
inequality we see in our society, the more arrogant the power of the rich
starts to look. If you doesn’t see this, you’ve consciously chosen to go blind. If you
see this, but continues to shout about your patriotism, you’re a coward
sheltering under a cliché imposed by the state. Everyday, the media rams it
down our throats that we must become patriots. Thus there’s nothing left for
the state to do but demand patriotism from us, otherwise we would insist that
it account for all its actions. Because the people and the authorities were
never together, the latter always grew fat through the powerlessness and the
poverty of the former...
read more:
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