Tag Archives: Russia

Ex Convicts Running in Elections?

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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/ex-convicts-regain-right-to-run-in-elections/487696.htm

Today I found this interesting article in the Moscow Times.  Apparently, on Thursday, Russia’s Constitutional Court ruled that ex-convicts have the right to fun for offices, including the office of president. This ruling was a direct response to the ban Vladimir Putin placed last year on ex-convicts running for office (which just happened to outlaw the leader of the opposition party from running in the future).

According to the new law, only people who are sentenced to a life in prison are banned from running for office.

I wasn’t sure what America’s policy on criminals running for office was, so I did some research. Most of the information I came across merely said candidates had to 1) be born in the US 2) be at least 35 and 3) have lived in the US for 14 years.

The only other information I could find was on Wikipedia (so I’m not guaranteeing accuracy). Wikipedia had the first three qualifications, as well as these other three: 1) cannot have already served 2 presidential terms 2) if impeached from office, the Senate can decide whether they are eligible to run 3) cannot have previously turned their back on their country after swearing an oath of allegiance (but this ban can be lifted from a Congressional vote).  So yes, Charles Manson can run for US president, but not my best friend who was adopted from Russia but lived her life as a US citizen.

I’m not sure which is scarier, that Charles Manson can legally run for US president, or that I think Russia has the right idea of banning those sentenced to a life in prison from running for office.

 

Pussy Riot

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Much has been made of the arrest of the Pussy Riot band member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and her hunger strike in prison. She was convicted of “religious hatred inspired hooliganism” in August of 2012 after performing at the Cathedral of Christ the Savior in Moscow and sentenced to 2 years at a women’s penal colony.

Most recently, Tolokonnikova was in the news during her nine-day hunger strike. While she was hospitalized on the tenth day and given a food IV drip, a letter that she wrote appeared online on September 23rd explaining the inhospitable conditions that led to her hunger strike. She described the food as having very little nutritional value and the 16 hour work days to be exhausting. Shortly thereafter, the Commission of the Human Rights Council visited to inspect the colony. In a report released by the HRC a year after she was jailed noted the improvement in the plumbing services in the prison but still recommended that Tolokonnikova  be moved to another unit with less work and medically examined.

Now it appears as though this hunger strike was organized from the outside by members of the HRC and Tolokonnikova’s husband,  Pyotr Verzilov. According to members of the HRC, not only was the hunger strike organized not by Tolokonnikova, but the visit to the penal colony by the HRC was also planned. These members argue that Verzilov and other organizers of the hunger strike treated Tolokonnikova. While the details are hazy, hopefully more will be forthcoming. In the meantime, we can wonder: is it ethical to organize a prison hunger strike if one is not participating in the strike itself? Did the organizers and more importantly, Tolokonnikova’s husband, know the conditions Tolokonnikova was enduring before they planned the strike?

Brain Slave to the Machine

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I found this reading to be invaluable insight into both the zeitgeist of the Soviet Union in the 1930’s and human psychology. Being born in the United States in 1993, I found this article to be both very fascinating and disturbing. Part of what I have been taught growing up is that it takes until somewhere in early adulthood to obtain a grasp of what you’re identity is as a person, and many never understand. I see the journey to understanding ones self as a fluid part of life, shapeless and easily distorted by pressure, but ultimately liberating. My conscience has been heavily influenced by a type of social revolution of cultural, religious, ethnic, and sexual acceptance brought about closely before the second millennium, and through my education I have been taught to transcend observed boundaries. Podlubnyi’s world is one which is hard to imagine myself in.

The first thing that surprised me was that Podlubnyi truly believes that he has been tainted with some sort of kulak blood, as if it were an inescapable genetic trait or a physiological, psychological defect. Podlubnyi spent his life as a prisoner of his own conscience, desperately digging an escape route from his kulak past to be identified as a worker of the state. The state truly owned him through what I would assume he would perceive as a somewhat transparent label which had been given to his father. Podlubnyi continued to lose sleep even when the state validated him as “working class”, as he continued to look towards guidelines for his thoughts and behaviors in order to be “free”.

The fact that suicide was brought about by a self-perceived uselessness towards the state also shocked me. Suicide to me comes about after extreme personal failure, but it is usually because of severe psychological depression or a severe implosion of ones life, causing one to see no purpose to continue. Although these may have been the thoughts and emotions of Podlubnyi, they were a product of the state’s influence on him rather than what I would perceive to be as a more personal affair. But perhaps the state was more personal to him than love or friendship would be to me, it is impossible to know.

Fashioning a Fashionable Soul

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Hellbeck’s interpretation of Podlubni’s diaries depict a man trying to conform to the morals of his state. He goes through many organizations and practices so as to become the ideal Soviet citizen. Each attempt is recorded in Podlubni’s diary. But, at a point in the piece, Hellbeck argues that this private journal may not reflect Podlubni’s true thoughts, but his desired thoughts. He introduces the idea that the diary could be Podlubni’s tool of turning himself, of influencing his own nature.

Has diary writing survived? Is there something comparable now?

As technology has sped up society, and physical writing has fallen out of fashion, many of the younger generation have turned to electronic styles of diaries, favoring short and typed passages over the traditional form. Today’s most consistent source of social records, it could be argued, would be social networks. Any incident out of the ordinary, and many too that are ordinary, will end up here. But, the public nature of these sites lacks the privacy of Podlubini’s diaries and, therefore, may color the style of ‘reporting’.

Does this influence the blogger any differently than Podlubini is in his diaries?

In his writing, Podlubini attempts to instill and record a set of Soviet morals — a strong will, a good work ethic, patriotic intentions. He records his successes and chides himself at his ideological shortcomings.

“30.12.1933 […] With full confidence I can say that this year I have received nothing. Studied at the FZU— with bad results. Began to study in middle school— also with bad results. I am neglecting my classes horribly, lagging behind in all subjects. I don’t have enough willpower to control myself. Right now I have a big, huge, horrible weakness of will. This is the cause of all my troubles, this is my biggest deficiency.”

Fitzpatrick, Sheila. Stalinism : New Directions.
Florence, KY: Routledge, 1999. p 100.

Podlubni knew that his diaries, like many private possessions at the time, may be confiscated by the State on any grounds and at any time. This is one of Hellbeck’s arguments to caution us away from the complete truthfulness of Podlubni’s records.

So, were these diaries entirely private?

Social Media Logotype BackgroundConsider them in the context of popular social networks. Imagine the most cautious user — only friends can see their posts, does not use an accurate identifying picture, and only accepts requests from close, close, friends. Their records can be obtained by any determined individual, similar to the Stalinist state. But, our user runs this risk. On such sites, our user hopes to associate and connect with like-minded individuals. Is this not what Podlubni hopes to accomplish? A connection with the other members of his State through the fashioning of his personality, of his “Stalinist soul”.

But, if this is to be an accepted analogy, what of the many users that ‘over-post’ or flood the site with over dramatized postings? Are they just asking for attention, taking advantage of the publicity of the networks? Does this disprove the connection to private diaries?

No. The basis of social sites is to establish oneself on the web. It is a defining of self. While this may be fabricated and unlike the true self, it is often an expression of a self the users want to become. They fabricate an ideal “public self”, similar to Podlubni’s fabrication of a real “Stalinist soul” — a strong individual and a strong worker.

Given the entries we see online today, what morals can be in our souls?

Mobility in Class & Current News with Adoption

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Today, History 254 discussed the mobility of classes and ascription of identity. What does ascribing entail in this context? In this context, it is the government ascribing an identity of nationality to citizens in hopes of creating a more united society. Although this plan backfired, the tactic is important in relation to today’s discussion. When the government assigned identity, they also created a reformed class structure in some ways. A question discussed today was, is there mobility between classes? The concluding answer was yes, there was, and the peasantry class had the most mobility. The peasants were encouraged to get an education for the working force. The government was trying to wipe out the existing middle class and fill that gap with the rising peasantry.

On an unrelated subject, I have a bit of current news. As I was scrolling through the Moscow Times, I came across a headline predicting Russian adoptions to double. This subject peaked my interest when Russia banned U.S. adoptions of Russian children on January 1, 2013. Russia claimed that there had been too many recent cases of abuse of Russian adoptees in the U.S., commencing the ban of U.S. adoptions. I think this ban was largely political considering that children abuse occurs in many other areas to a much more extreme degree. Due to the face that the U.S. accounted for over 60,000 of Russian adoptees over the past two years, numbers of children kept in orphanages was expected to rise. However, this article says that the Russians have begun adopting these orphans. Within the first six months after the U.S. ban, the number of children in these orphanages dropped from 118,000 to 110,000. This rapid increase in domestic adoptions is excepted to sustain. The government predicts that 15,000 Russian children will be adopted by the end of 2013.

A classic struggle of “us against them”

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In her article “Us Against Them” in Fitzpatrick’s Stalinism: New Directions, Sarah Davies describes a society in the Soviet Union that is fraught with discontent. In the mid to late 1930’s the elite party leaders were attempting to reconstruct a class system–albeit a different one than before–and the people were growing weary.

The long-term goal of the revolutionaries was to abolish the class system and bring to fruition a country ruled by the working class, but it was a goal that proved to be nearly impossible. If the ideology of the party was based on a hatred for the Bourgeoisie and the belief that the workers ought to rule, eliminating all class structures and identification made it more difficult for the party to differentiate between its allies and enemies. Consequently, some new system had to be constructed to distinguish friend from foe. 

In hindsight it is easy for us to see the flaws in the plan, but at the time it seemed the logical solution to a party-made problem. Elite party members became a new “class,” with workers, peasants, and other social groups like Jews classified at lower statuses. What resulted was in essence a new Bourgeoisie (the Party), with the lower working class remaining in the same old social stratum.

The workers had been “liberated” by the revolution and been given the hope that someday in the near future they would rule the Soviet Union, yet here they were less than two decades later being governed yet again by a class of elites–this time by members of the same revolutionary movement that deplored class distinctions. The grand strategists of this plan created an “us against them” environment that was counterproductive to its overall goals. Additionally, history shows that this dichotomy is a powerful motivating force–just look at the Russian revolutions.

The Communist Party may not have successfully abolished all class distinctions with their revolution, but they did instill a new mentality in the Proletariat. It was this new mentality that sparked discontent towards the new “classes” in the 1930’s, and ultimately eroded the revolutionary foundations of the Soviet Union.