About a week ago, in Brussels, within the walls of the European Parliament, the Forum of Free Peoples of Post-Russia took place. During the forum, various national and regional movements, in the presence of several members of the European Parliament and Western experts, condemned Russian imperialism and discussed their vision of an independent future after the collapse of the Putin regime.
Objectively, this event, despite its ambitious goals, was not the most representative. However, Russian propaganda gave it such negative publicity that it became one of the main news stories on the Russian public agenda for almost a week. Interestingly, this time the Russian opposition also attacked it, portraying it as a gathering of marginal figures, freaks, clowns, extremists, and so on. Two derisive reports about it were published in «Novaya Gazeta» and «Meduza».
Vladimir Milov, Alexei Navalny’s associate, made a long video about how Russia cannot disintegrate, and dozens of liberal opposition figures decided to express themselves in the same way. Arguments of varying degrees of validity were put forward, ranging from the need for states to have access to the sea in order to be independent, to the fact that most of Russia’s regions receive subsidies and their people will immediately clash if there is no «older brother» to mediate. And the main idea was that there is no need to scatter in different directions if you can just build a beautiful Russia of the future, without Putin, war, repression and so on. Just build…
Of course, one could make a bitter joke about it, but the fact is that there have been so many attempts to build this beautiful Russia, even under the most enticing slogans for its people, that it is becoming increasingly difficult to find those who are willing to step on these rakes for the second or third time. That is why we are witnessing processes in which even representatives of such movements as the Ingush, who until recently advocated federalism, have begun to raise the question of full independence from Russia. Not to mention non-Russian peoples — supporters of their independence from Moscow are now appearing even in purely Russian regions like Pskov, and they were also present at this event, causing anger among Russian liberals.
All this only shows that Russian liberals have understood nothing and learned nothing. And they cannot be an alternative to the Russian power, either because they lack the will to fight against this power, or because they are not fundamentally different from it. If it were otherwise, many years ago they would have actively sought to involve the various peoples and communities of this multi-ethnic and multi-confessional country in a common cause and a common project that would grow out of the diverse components of their affairs and projects, as we, for example, proposed. Instead, we saw from them an arrogant attitude towards the problems and specificities of these communities and, moreover, an attempt to impose their own agenda on them, as the liberals have done in recent years with regard to the Caucasus.
As a result, it turned out that these communities no longer need them to fight for their rights, just like Russia as a whole, which is not associated with anything good in any of its forms — neither white, nor red, nor Putin’s, nor liberal. This certainly does not mean that the possible path of all these peoples, communities and territories towards a post-Russian future will be paved with rose petals. It may indeed be full of thorns, and we need to understand and prepare for that in advance. But it is obvious that staying in Russia today means walking on a minefield, and tomorrow those whose arguments for living in one state essentially amount to «where will you go without us» can hardly become an alternative to it.