Edit: I didn’t post the following quotes to say he’s a communist. He’s pivoting to centre-left positions with his rhetoric and 6 year plan. He called for reducing poverty by 2% in 6 years and for progressive taxation on the rich.
The true elite are all those serving Russia. Workers and soldiers, reliable, trustable, who have proven their devotion to Russia, the worthy people.
“The very word ‘elite’ has largely been discredited by those who, having no merit to society, consider themselves to be some kind of a caste with special rights and privileges. I specifically mean those who, in previous years, filled their pockets through all sorts of processes in the economy of the 1990s. Those are definitely not the elite,” the president said.
Eh this is just him coopting populist rhetoric.
He doesn’t believe this shit obviously.
My point is that we must be careful not to represent Putin as some sort of pro worker revolutionary, despite his antagonistic relationship to western imperialism he’s still just a reactionary revanchist.
Calling him a revanchist is falling entirely for western lies. Reactionary, yes (being a lib, and his “conservative” politics), but even then it’s rather dishonest to group him in with the typical racists, revanchists, imperialists, ultranationalists, warmongering neocons, and economic neolibs.
Anyone with sense can see that if anything- his hand was forced in Ukraine, after repeated naive attempts at peace and trying to negotiate semi-autonomy and basic rights for the ethnic, indigenous Russians in the region. That’s not revanchism- if anything, the opposite.
I have generally found your comments as a great contribution, however I would contest any statement that indicates Indigenous peoples in Russia enjoy a generative relationship with the state. It’s possible you only meant “Russians” by your statement, but then that is potentially seen as a nationalist statement that erases Indigenous peoples and prioritizes a specific group of Russian peoples.
As far as I’ve seen- indigenous people do seem to have a generative relationship with the Russian state, though. The history of Russia ultimately derives from imperial Russia (though even then their methods of managing indigenous peoples tended to differ considerably from that of the west Europeans and Anglo-colonials), yes, but the relations with indigenous peoples in the present day are inherited from the Soviet Union instead, with the state organized as a federation with various constituent republics and other entities- and to my understanding, similarly to China, the indigenous semi-autonomy that these entities receive is substantial, and incomparable to the treatment of indigenous peoples and most ethnic minorities in any Anglo or western country.
Modern Russia has many issues, but to my awareness its treatment of indigenous peoples is not one of them (FWIW I’m not Russian and have never been to Russia, though- I only know what I’ve heard or read online to go on). Even the various marginal Siberian tribes have their own republics and oblasts and seem to have considerable leeway in determining their own domestic policies. The Chechen republic in particular is notorious for their reactionary Islamic governance and extremely homophobic policies (I’m not sure to what extent the claims of concentration camps for gay men are true, but let’s just say that things are bad- and no, it’s obvious on the other hand the rest of Russia is not remotely similar), and even have their own military/paramilitary units who are presently involved in Ukraine.
That said- my statement wasn’t referring to the indigenous peoples of Russia- not out of neglect, but simply because they weren’t the subject of discussion at the moment. My description of “ethnic, indigenous Russians in the region (Ukraine, and/or former eastern Ukraine)” was in regards to Putin’s attempts at negotiating protections and semi-autonomy for Russo-Ukranians in the Minsk accords and the 2022 peace deal made in Istanbul- specifically, I was calling those Russian minorities “ethnic, indigenous Russians” because they are literally, undeniably indigenous to much of the territory within the borders of modern Ukraine (as are the Ukranians- and the Tatars, Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, and many other groups), and the persecutions and suppression they were facing as such was the persecution of an indigenous people.
I mean he definitely sees Ukraine as part of Russia, and I didn’t mean that in the way you assume I did but in the very literal sense. I meant that part as a neutral statement, national boundries and border lines shifting outside my control really doesn’t concern me.
If Putin had wanted the Donbass part of Ukraine, he wouldn’t have given them back to Ukraine via Minsk and stupidly waited 8 years to realize that the Ukrainian fascists had no intention of honoring Minsk at all.
Giving back Crimea is out of the question for any Russian leader, left or right, but Putin clearly didn’t want to deal with the shit happening in Donbass. It was the communists who continued to materially aid the Donbass militias and citizens throughout the entire truce period.
The Ukrainian fascist coup regime refused to honor Minsk because it explicitly forbade them from committing ethnic cleansing in the region. Apart from that, they were not going to lose anything apart from Crimea. It was an exceedingly generous peace terms from Russia.
By refusing to honor Minsk and continuing the genocide, they literally forced Russia to intervene militarily. I guarantee you that if Russia had been run by socialists, they would have taken actions against Ukraine far sooner than Putin would have.
I agree with all of that I was just saying that putin is no champion of the workers that his rhetoric in this story implies…
This I agree with you.
Calling him a revanchist is falling entirely for western lies
I think it’s not accurate, but to be fair I think it’s also falling for Putin’s own lies, since he loves revanchist rhetoric
^ He’s somewhat becoming a socdem tho, that’s all.
This isn’t even socdem. This is typical populism and liberal posturing. Where is the legislation? Where are the labour unions?
This is empty rhetoric.
For the first time he named the priorities for 2030, planning 6 years in advance, he bought up the point for progressive taxation of the rich, a social democratic policy and outlined the money he’d spend on housing and education. Reducing poverty by 2% in 6 years.
He nationalized foreign businesses in 2023 and starting from 1999 he took back the power Yeltsin had given the oligarchy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjrlTMvirVo
While he’s known for his United Russia endorsement, he’s also endorsed by the 21st century socialist party/ social democratic party (A just Russia - For Truth) and has helped them pass their policies which wouldn’t be passed otherwise.
lol Putin is more leftwing than “the squad”.
Tbf, not a tough hurdle to clear.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Putin is a liberal.
Social democracy is objectively the left wing of fascism
Objectively strengthens Russia as well.
ok Gorbachev
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Putin is a christo-fascist. The wholesale criminalization of queer folk alone should be enough for that label.
The claim is wrong. Queer folk aren’t criminalized, this isn’t Saudi Arabia.
Putin says LGBTQ people are party of society albeit he has conservative takes, his only request is that minors aren’t targeted. Adults can do whatever.
https://www.rt.com/russia/587507-putin-unexpected-lgbtq-thing/
When he was asked by about his gay propaganda law (This only concerns homosexual material from being given to minors) and the role of the church. He reiterated being gay would not be banned and that there’s a seperation between Church and State in Russia. There are many rabid Russian Orthodox Christians who want gays out, Putin isn’t one of them.
Russia is more tolerant than most of the global south. LGBT organizations aren’t allowed since they tend to be aligned with the west but no one is sent to prison for simply for being queer. The government even updated their documents to make it easier for trans people.
In Saudi Arabia and other global south countries, you don’t need to be showing homosexual material to minors to be in trouble.
This only concerns homosexual material from being given to minor
Come on buddy, you can’t be that dumb.
If you can back up your claim then go ahead. Gays have never been persecuted in Russia for simply being gay as a policy under Putin.
i think you misunderstand criminalization of queer media as being totally separate from the persecution of queer people in general. banning queer media to “protect the kids” is part of the process of removing queer people from public life entirely.
I was gonna say, I have no reason to take American conservatives at their word when they say they just want to “protect the children” and their counterparts abroad don’t seem much different in that regard.
Say that ground gets ceded to them — do they stop there? No, no they don’t. They just move the goalposts and try to ratchet down on us harder. If you can’t get your real goal immediately, nudge slowly until you can go in for the kill. That’s not even a gay rights thing, that’s just how political movements in general operate.
my logic to here is that the desire to attack the former implies the desire to attack the latter.
So far as I care, any attack on the movement - any attempt to draw lines for us at all for any reason - is an attack on me personally.
He’s made it clear the latter won’t happen. He’s said that queer people should be represented in society. Albeit with conservative rehtoric.
https://www.rt.com/russia/587507-putin-unexpected-lgbtq-thing/
his only request is that minors aren’t targeted. Adults can do whatever.
The mechanism for changing gender marker in the documents was removed last year. Trans people cannot change it anymore, and by extention cannot get surgeries or hormones. Whatever, yes.
At the start of this year, “LGBT movement” was deemed to be “extremist” and forbidden. IIRC, an org that was providing legal assistance to LGBT people (including with the cases when people were denied changing gender marker when it was still available) was shut down, others had changed their processes to make it less risky (stricter control of who enters chats, for example). Wearing something like a pride pin can be considered as “supporting LGBT movement” => “supporting extremism” => repeat offences are a felony.
He reiterated being gay would not be banned
As in “as long as they do not peek out of their closets”.
there’s a seperation between Church and State in Russia
wwwwww
State-controlled organisations (Russian Cinema Fund, state-controlled TV channels that I am unwillingly listening to every day) promote orthodox christianity HARD, and the church promotes state’s decisions and all of reactionary shit about us, about “traditional values”, about “духовные скрепы”, and more, which, again, I am hearing on state-controlled TV channels. Separated, yes.
no one is sent to prison for simply for being queer
Again, as long as they do not even peek out of their closets.
The government even updated their documents to make it easier for trans people.
ор выше гор блять, НЕТУ 087/у БОЛЬШЕ, КАКОЙ БЛЯТЬ ЛЕГЧЕ
I am not sure but it might be possible but unfortunately not easily accessible.
Currently, those hoping to change their gender marker and seek gender-affirming surgeries and treatments must first undergo a challenging process involving a specialized medical commission only available in major cities like Moscow.
I will repeat it: THE PROCEDURE DOES NOT EXIST ANYMORE. It does not. There is no way to do it. 087/u, the document that proves that a person has legally changed their gender, does not have any power. I don’t remember exactly, but I think f64 does not provide the ability to get HRT and is only useful in other countries to get HRT there, if that is needed.
Here, the third page of the bill that was accepted in summer of 2023: http://publication.pravo.gov.ru/document/0001202307240059?index=3
It is written that “medical intervention that is focused on changing a person’s gender is prohibited, including HRT and surgeries”. Giving 087/u is a medical intervention, and so it does not have any power now.
Page 4, the “fact of gender change” is replaced with a long string that amounts to “the official comission checks that the genitals match the given gender”. I am too lazy now to check where that change is, but you can see that the procedure of changing the gender marker is no longer recognised there.
Feed it into an OCR, ask any RU person to digest it to you if you do not trust me.
The cases where gender marker was changed after the procedure removal were only because the people applied for it before the ban and got a “we won’t do it because the procedure will dissappear soon” from the place where they went (МФЦ or МВД), and that still required going to a court because the request rejection should not have happened on the “it’ll be impossible soon” premise.
IIRC there’s special procedure for intersex infants, but I, and other people, are not intersex nor infants.
Please, please make sure your knowledge is up-to-date. It’s infuriating, being told “actually it’s possible” after I have witnessed the entire thing, from its proposition, when people were like “they will probably require doing surgeries”, to its first appearance in the gosduma, when we got to read the bill and scream, to all three (IIRC, they could have done all three readings in one day, there’s no one to stop them from doing so, this time they were separate) readings, to its acceptance there, to its acceptance in “Совет федерации”, to it being signed by the pres. and published, which is when it came into power.
I’m tired and angry.
P.S: I remember that head of Minzdrav (ministry of health) was harshly talked down by the entire gosduma when they tried to oppose the bill. And, as a fun fact, nearly the entire gosduma, several hundred people, are listed as authors of the bill (again, IIRC). This is to say that there are no factions, it is a monolith.
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So we went from “wholesale criminalization of queer folk” to “It’s the same thing”.
Here’s the difference: Conservatives in America want LGBT to be banned because they say they are pedos targetting children.
Whereas Putin is conservative in regards to wanting children to make the choice when they grow up. It’s like freedom of religion in China, you have to be over 18.
There’s still a massive difference between those societies that actually criminalize homosexuality and Russia which decriminalized it, you refuse to see that. And I have seen that you call Russia imperialist like the other western social-chauvinists. It’s quite clear you don’t want to discuss or learn, so here’s your ban.
Except being queer isn’t a choice you make when you’re an adult. There are plenty of queer kids who discovered their gender or sexuality early enough to know. They’ve banned anything even remotely educational that isn’t just cisheteronormative, how is that beneficial to kids?
I never implied it was beneficial, I just said that that is as far as his conservatism goes.
It was in reply to someone saying that Putin was criminalizing being queer wholesale, which is false.
I may or may not make a separate post about discussing this video, but this stream by Garland Nixon just ended (relistening from the start to gather what I missed, now- I entered the stream probably 20-30 minutes in) and covers a great deal regarding this speech.
Here’s it timestamped, specifically where they started talking about Putin’s speech- https://www.youtube.com/live/lRRwnHUi7Uc?si=uJY71CjE5MawuEf4&t=1785
I’ve been watching quite a few YTers/analysts/etc out of personal interest, to see how the war is going, and to see the economic and political changes coming from it- and I feel that from a socialist perspective, it covers the topic of this speech and how it relates to the changes currently underway in Russia particularly well.
Is Putin a communist? Of course not- and it would be wholly incorrect to see Russia’s present system as similar to China’s “socialist market economy”- there is no dictatorship of the proletariat, as far as I know (I wouldn’t know, though I’m open to learning) what organization of labor existed evaporated after the Soviet dissolution, and while Putin has curbed the excesses of the “oligarch era” and shock therapy, the oligarchs (Putin included to my understanding- though I’m no scholar) retain significant influence (albeit somewhat neutered in comparison to the state in recent years due to the western sanctions, funnily enough) and the society at large remains liberal- if retaining some solid foundations from the Soviet era, for instance in regards to the state of public housing, education, healthcare, etc.
But seeing this speech just dismissed altogether in this thread left a bad taste in my mouth- because while talk is cheap, and this is primarily talk, what I’ve seen mentioned and described in blips here and there in channels I watch- not all socialist or even leftist- (the Duran, the New Atlas, Danny Haiphong, Sean Foo, Dialogue Works, Neutrality Studies, Gita Wirjawan, Geopolitical Economy Report etc. come to mind) did seem to combine together to describe some very meaningful, and distinctive changes underway. Not due to ideological reasons on Putin and Russia’s part- but due to pragmatic reasons.
It has been in Russia’s state interests (frankly, like it would be anywhere else) to curtail the influence of the oligarchs, for instance- and that is presently underway. It has been in Russia’s interests to keep its indigenous arms industry under state control, similarly- and this is why they are outproducing the entire west. As western capital and goods have receded from Russia in the wake of sanctions and worse- naturally, there has been a revitalization- with state backing- of the industries that existed in Russia prior to shock therapy and which had been neglected under neoliberal looting. As a state now under siege from the global imperialist order, it has also been in Russia’s interests to rally the people around the flag through providing tangible material benefits, from infrastructural development, social welfare programs (as announced also in this speech), etc… these are not the actions of a socialist state, perhaps, but they are the actions of a capitalist (or perhaps more accurately- nationalist capitalist- rather than comprador capitalist) society reverting to the imitation of tried-and-true Soviet methods of surviving, prospering, industrializing (or re-industrializing), and building a healthy, unified, anti-imperialist foundation for the population.
None of this is insignificant, though I expect that, with no proletarian rule, the necessity of revolution still exists and will rear its head sooner or later. And of course, I believe that we should wholeheartedly support these changes, for anti-imperialism’s sake and the development of multipolarity and revitalization of another economic core from which peaceful Eurasian economic integration will bloom.
The point that a nation can only really resist imperialism with all its people together is very true. Putin isn’t some converted socialist, he’s just a very pragmatic leader and is changing things a bit to make sure they stay the same.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
ah yes, the “true elite” will be hardworking patriotic troops and cops, not the decadent rootless cosmopolitans. such worker, very proletariat.
Even calling this “socdem” is rube shit. this is totally standard socially conservative liberalism. Recognizing the progressive role Russia plays in the current imperial world system shouldn’t excuse wishful thinking about the administration’s domestic politics. Nobody would credit Mitt Romney with a “center left pivot” for saying he prefers a “fair and simple” tax system in which “higher-income individuals pay a higher rate than lower-income individuals”.
Officers doesn’t mean cops, military officers. 1M Patriotic Russians participated in the SMO, a lot of whom are ordinary workers with simple lives before the war.
This was also the system in the Soviet Union where front line soilders occupied key managment positions after the great patriotic war.
The Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. This is ordinary bourgeois nationalism from the leader of a committed liberal anticommunist party. An insistence on reading secret revolutionary character into ordinary conservative rhetoric comes across as fantastical at best. “Nation, troops, family, flag!” doesn’t mean something different here than it does coming out of Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, or any other head of state since the advent of liberal democracy.
Lying
I just want to make it clear that if anybody thinks Putin will put Russia “on the road to communism” you are a reformist and to be consistent you should push Biden left and vote Blue.
It’s a ridiculous idea. The ruling class does not suddenly have a change of heart. They give concessions to stay in power.
i think the perspective is that putin, and thus russia, has been forced to cede more power to the left wing to placate them as the power of the far right is curbed.
What about the growing power and thus popularity of China in Russia?
What is the purpose of this comm if complete BS propaganda is posted here?
People can reply and point out how and why it’s BS and others can learn and not fall for it again.
I suppose we shouldn’t talk about anything fucking ever, then.
Bad comment.
Not sure the difference between propaganda and BS propaganda, but I would hope my comrades could post anything here because we should be able to critically analyze any propaganda from any source.
What’s the point of this community if we blindly parrot anti-russia talking points that everyone to the right of us already says?
@FamousPlan101@lemmygrad.ml, thank you for editing your post to add context/analysis. Without it, I worry people coming here from other Lemmy instances might get the wrong idea.
