this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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Alternative title - nobody in Russia believes revolution is possible. At the beginning of the war literally every person protesting publicly was arrested. Every opposition leader is either dead or in jail.
Revolution doesn't have to occur with polite protesting. When the resistance was happening in France it was done by targeting critical Nazi infrastructure and personnel.
It's never easy, but if you are Russian and you value freedom, then you're at war with your government, and currently your government has you in a choke hold. Your only option is to gouge out your opponents eye, even though you might die trying, because you're never getting out of the choke hold without trying.
That only works while rulers have reservations against outright killing their "fanbase".
It worked against the Nazis. It worked against Americans in Vietnam. What exact scenario are you imagining where insurgency and sabotage doesn't work against an occupying military?
One where 1) there are ~4.5M siloviki per ~140M and lethal force isn't out of question 2) insurgencies in any other city that isn't Moscow wouldn't matter at all past the first week 3) the general populace associates themselves with the country and government way too much, even the dissenting minority and 4) there's no external force for them to rise against; 5) finally, the "elites" never were political actors, not in this century, and the dissidents who consider themselves to be political actors are good media at best, pathetic clowns at worst.
Trust me, I'd love to see that happening and am clinging to the slightest hints of it. There are virtually none, even if one buys into Russian dissident media. My bet is that even freeing all the territories wouldn't spark them. The only ray of hope is the lack of a successor.
Sabotage is powerful in theory, but, as Russia's modus operandi is self-sabotage, it's grown pretty self-sabotage-resilient. My money's rather on sheer incompetence.
Yeah, good luck with that. People in Russia are exactly like you and me, believe it or not. They have families, jobs, cats to feed and watch YouTube. Some want to get rid of Putin as much as you. Not many want to inform the family that they plan to go and die trying.
But nevertheless many actually do, arsons are all over the news. These people are in jail now serving 25y sentences.
And there's also a Belarusian example: people believed that they should just protest longer, but all of it just led to more people suffering at that point
One of the most popular thought leaders of the Belarusian protest was Russian blogger Maxim Katz. He urged Belarusians to protest longer, but to abstain from any kind of violence. This led the protest to failure and the subsequent harsh crackdown on protesters. In contrast, the similar earlier Ukrainian protest, which became violent, succeeded.
Exactly. Peaceful protest only works against a civilized opponent.