Fifty Shades of Gray: If Your Game Doesn’t Have a Safeword, Someone Could Get Hurt

(Moscow News – themoscownews.com – Anna Arutunyan – March 4, 2013)

Anna Arutunyan is the politics editor of The Moscow News

In Russia, there were a thousand shades of gray before Vladislav Surkov, the so-called “gray cardinal” behind Vladimir Putin’s first 12 years in power, was replaced in late 2011. Now, one year into Putin’s third term as president, there are only 50 ­ and that was a really boring book.

On Saturday, some 12,000 members of the United Russia party and other groups that supported the government’s American adoption ban, marched through Moscow chanting, “Russia without orphans!” This was probably the first time since the start of the nowdwindling protest movement in late 2011 that a top-down, pro-Kremlin march outnumbered and overshadowed a concurrent oppositionist rally. The government seems to have tapped into something populist: anywhere from 50 percent to 76 percent approve of the adoption ban, based on two recent polls. Socialite turned protest leader Ksenia Sobchak tweeted that with Surkov gone, “the shades of gray have turned into a circus.”

Legend has it that Surkov once remarked that he had a hard time picking out a suit because there were 375 shades of gray. That quote was readily applied to Surkov’s style of administration as first deputy chief of staff, the Kremlin’s de facto ideologue. Surkov’s exquisite, Byzantine political theatrics created the illusion that even winter was orchestrated from his office.

Sobchak was comparing Saturday’s protest to thousands-strong marches of the now all-but-defunct Nashi youth group, ostensibly organized by Surkov during Putin’s second term as president. But while she called those early marches far more dangerous than Saturday’s rally, I prefer theatrics to the real thing. What’s happening now is no illusion ­ and all the more out of control.

Nashi members were rambunctious, but lacked ideology. Or, rather, their ideology was a haphazard quilt of 375 shades of statism, with antifascism thrown in for good measure. They could get violent at times, but their shtick was too confusing to rally mass support. Youngsters told me they joined up for the career prospects, not ideology.

Fast forward to Sunday, March 3. The Sakharov Center was staging “The Moscow Trials” ­ a documentary play that recreated recent legal proceedings involving the church, including the Pussy Riot trial.

First, the play was disrupted by a sudden visit from the Federal Migration Service, accompanied by a camera crew from the state-controlled NTV channel.

Then, a group of about 20 uniformed Cossacks tried to raid the building, shouting obscenities about how the center was “smearing Russia,” as a unit of riot police silently looked on. The Cossacks are a centuries-old, deeply religious military community that Russia’s tsars often recruited to fight their wars and suppress rebellions. That is, when the Cossacks weren’t staging rebellions themselves.

Cossacks are only one element in an Orthodox, traditionalist force that the Kremlin seems to be courting in a bid to recreate a national ideology amid waning legitimacy. The Cossack regiment that spontaneously showed up at the doors of the Sakharov Center was led by Kirill Frolov, a firebrand Orthodox ideologue who has not always been aligned with the Kremlin.

The problem is that Putin’s government never had an ideology. It’s as eclectic and multifaceted as Surkov’s theatrics. If there ever was a unifying idea, it centered around enrichment ­ for the elites and, through some magic trickle-down effect, for the masses. That’s precisely the reason why the government’s current attempt at de-offshorization ­ banning officials from holding assets oversees ­ is backfiring so miserably, as last month’s debacle over the resignation of State Duma deputy Vladimir Pekhtin showed.

Surkov’s mystifications worked, up to a point, precisely because they created the illusion that everything was orchestrated. But by trying to channel a genuine force, the Kremlin is playing with fire. Eventually, it is likely to turn against the hand that feeds it.