14 November 2024
by Sergei Davidis
Source: Facebook
Lev Shlosberg’s recent statements have made me want to react. But my good sense has me agreeing with those who write that he is essentially a hostage, which makes discussion virtually impossible. Of course, a hostage would do better to keep quiet sometimes, but we don’t know all the circumstances compelling him to speak. Maybe at the price of these repulsive statements Shlosberg is buying his freedom and the possibility of staying in Russia and doing something useful.
Rather, one can object to the position stated. There’s no point arguing with the absurd thesis that, by starting to resist aggression, Ukraine lost its status as victim—due to the thesis’s utter absurdity. Demagoguery concerning the “party of the blood of other people” has been thoroughly exposed many times. Yes, human life, especially in wartime conditions, is not an absolute value. Yes, it is foolish and amoral to equate an aggressor and a victim of aggression, an occupier and a victim of occupation. No, this is not about calls for Ukrainians to fight to the very last but about the rejection of the call for them to surrender and about defending their right to decide for themselves which sacrifices to bear for the sake of their country and freedom.
One other significant theme of Lev Markovich’s frankly obnoxious rhetoric was his attack on those who have left and his rejection of their right to be Russian politicians, writers, journalists, and so on. This thesis is fairly absurd in and of itself; its main foundation is the speaker’s arbitrary decision not to consider those who left “Russians,” in the sense not of ethnicity but of national identity. To hell with him. Naturally, anyone has the right to think and say anything at all, but in this case that has nothing to do with the reality. It’s not Shlosberg who is going to decide who is and isn’t a Russian politician but the people in Russia both now and especially later, in democratic elections, when that becomes possible.
Actually, a little before this Lev Markovich was still trying to ground his thesis regarding politicians in historical and moral arguments. When to his words about how there cannot be a Russian politician in emigration Abbas Galyamov cited the examples of Lenin, Khomeini, and Sun Yat-sen, Shlosberg admitted that politicians in emigration are possible and indicated that all three men mentioned were “revolutionaries, adepts at violence and supporters of dictatorship,” and revolution is an evil, therefore we should not look to these examples.
However, Lev Shlosberg’s arguments can scarcely be considered entirely correct.
First of all, the very idea that a politician is only someone who fights not hopelessly for supreme power in his country is incorrect. At least, in this sense, neither Yabloko nor Shlosberg personally is a politician. It’s more accurate to speak of politicians as people who use political methods to fight for certain values and interests.
Secondly, if we take the examples under discussion, then Lenin definitely and, as far as I understand it, Khomeini and Sun Yat-sen also, being revolutionaries, were not the direct “authors” of the revolutions that allowed them to return to their countries and later lead them. The overthrow of the previous regimes was carried out not by them, but they were able to harness the popular movement and squeeze the maximum out of the unstable situation that came about after the seizure of power. You can be an opponent of revolution all you like, but revolutions usually do not follow anyone’s plan. And although a revolution in Russia seems highly unlikely, if it does occur regardless of the efforts and desire of Shlosberg and the émigrés, then it will create opportunities for everyone. In this regard, the question of one’s attitude toward revolution gives no grounds whatsoever for assessing the possibility of those who left being Russian politicians.
Thirdly, the historical examples are hardly limited to the three mentioned. After the fall of Nazism in Germany and the dictatorships in Spain and Greece in the twentieth century, I think, quite a few political émigrés were able to return and play a significant role in the political process. In Russia, too, it was far from only Bolsheviks who returned to politics in 1917.
And fourthly, working specifically from the fact that politics is not only or so much about the struggle for dictatorial power but in the case of modern Russia about establishing democracy, the means and methods of actions of the Russian democratic opposition are certainly not the same as Lenin and Khomeini had. And there are no fundamental obstacles of any kind for public figures in an open world who are outside the country’s borders to have an impact on society, that is, to be politicians.
Translated by Marian Schwartz
