With the Pussy Riot show trial, Putin meant to issue a warning to protestors, but he didn’t mean for it to become the signature action of his third presidential term. That is what is has become, though, particularly after the conviction and two-year prison sentence announced today. Politics is not a controllable process, and though the fabricated charges and harsh sentence might quiet a certain kind of political discussion in Russia, the Pussy Riot trial has had the opposite effect. The trial itself has become the focal point of the discussion. It is a discussion that reveals a cultural breakdown in Russia.
The show trial reveals Putin as a tyrant, and his government as a Russian version of the Chinese approach to government, in which the country is ruled, and the economy dragged down, by corrupt and aging bureaucrats who are removed only when they die. This, then, is where a generational disconnect occurs. Older employed workers, over about 50 years of age, are far more likely to accept the government’s account of the trial. They tend to believe that the convicted musicians must have done something violent. They tend to think that the trial is not of any great significance. They are, that is, identifying and aligning themselves with the nihilism and inertia of their corrupt government.
This is almost the opposite of the view of everyone else. And if tyranny and repression just lead to a bigger explosion later, as many are reminding us today, then when that transition arrives, the older contingent of Russians who see themselves as part of the old corrupt system may fare poorly.
This culture gap between generations is not limited to Russia. Broadly similar demographic divisions may be seen in other countries with institutional failings and economic stress: Spain, to be sure, but also Iran, the United States, Egypt, and elsewhere. Science fiction has showed us how revolution can be a worldwide event. Now for the first time in real life, we can start to see how such an event might take place.
