Masha Lipman - "We Don't Have Sex in Russia"

Search

Loading...

News

Latest News

Apr 18, 2014
by Alex Jackson
Masha Lipman - "We Don't Have Sex in Russia"

Editor and journalist considers the taboos of Russia and their impact on civil society Masha Lipman facilitates a panel discussion at the Russian Civil Society Sym

“We don’t have sex in the Soviet Union,” exclaims Maria “Masha” Lipman, the editor-in-chief of Pro et Contra, a policy journal published by the Carnegie Moscow Centre in Russia. She laughs a little at this sentiment of abstention. Of course, she is not talking in literal terms, but the sentiment is shocking nonetheless. Instead, Lipman, a seasoned contributor to various newspaper columns around the world, is referring to a television Q&A from the 1980s that has become significant not just for its humor, but as a reference point of subjects it is proper to discuss in Russia.

“This whole thing came out of a fairly funny instance from the ‘80s, a time when the Soviet Union was opening up and participating in TV bridges with the US; people were enthusiastic about America, saying we’re human and similar and let’s make friends and reach out. So in one of the television bridges between the Soviet Union and the US, the question of sex was raised and a Soviet lady said ‘We don’t have sex in the Soviet Union.’ And of course this is not true, but what she implied was we don’t talk about it, it is not polite to talk about it and there is this hypocrisy if we don’t touch on these matters, then it something that affects Russia today. The anti-gay sentiments, the traditional values, this is somewhat similar to the Soviet Union.”

Of course, as Lipman hints, the idea has come to bear a much more sinister tone today; certain ideas are not discussed because they are contrary to ideas of what it means to be Russian. While it is tempting to look at the present in terms of the past, Lipman can’t help but see certain similarities in the ways Russian perceptions and preconceptions are still stuck in a mind-set from before the fall of the Soviet Union.

“In many ways the ‘70s relied on residual fear, and in the Soviet Union, there were similarities in the Soviet Union in what we see in Russia today. We’re talking about the Union of the ‘70s – not the ‘50s, the ‘40s, the ‘30s, the ‘70s  this is the time that people like President Putin and those around him arguably draw their inspiration from because this is an environment, a socio-political arrangement that they remember as young people beginning their careers, a time when they matured and it is easy to find similarities.”

But Putin is tightening and combining these strings of past fear and uncertainty with new means of ideological power that were not available in the Soviet era. Expansive media, the internet, the modern school system in Russia are all key players in reinforcing certain elements of Putin’s government. For Lipman, author of Russia 2020: Scenarios for the Future, and Russia 2025, she sees the important distinctions that mean Putin’s regime is one without as central an allegiance as the Soviet Union, but that begs the question of how much resistance to the Russian people have for a government that does not respond to their complaints in any other way than to tighten restrictions.

“These days we are moving from a more open atmosphere and environment, to a less open one and this of course is a big difference.  Another major difference was that the Soviet Union was a heavily ideological system, the whole Cold War was about this existential, ideological struggle and even though this was an ideology that gradually grew hollow and fewer and fewer people actually believed in it, people still pledged allegiance to it, such were the rules of the game. You had to pledge allegiance. There was no way that you would not. So an ideological underpinning and the communist party structures that permeated society from the top down that drove the ideology from the very top where opinions were made and rules compiled and then channeled down the system to every school, enterprise, plant, whatever. We don’t have this at this point, the government permeating the whole society.”

This has not always been the case. When Yeltsin formed his first post-Soviet government in the 1990s, there was a great deal of consideration for freedom of speech, freedom of association and assembly, and freedom of the press. Even when the government was criticized, it did not retaliate with force. While there were moves to restrict such freedom in the early 2000s, a brief sojourn in state control in 2009-2012 meant that people were more empowered, more aware of their rights, if not enough.

“During Medvedev’s presidency, the social milieu was conducive to a rise of civic activism for three reasons. His presidency was associated with verbal freedom and one of his famous phrases was 'Freedom is better than non-freedom'. The language of liberties created a freer, verbal freedom, more than freedom of expression.

“It was an auspicious economic time for Russia, the price of oil was growing after the financial crash. The price of oil quickly popped back up, and growing prosperity gave rise to high constituency [of] employed and post industrial sector and people who shared the view of their Western counterparts, more open-mode set, more global perception of the world, good skills, good professional skills and modern professions. These people developed an attitude typical of Westerners, saying we gained prosperity for ourselves, let’s do something for others.

“The third factor was a fast rise of social networks and internet penetration.

“So all three factors gave rise to civic action which was palpably on the rise in 2009/10/11, and by late 2011 civic activism was converted into political activism as a protest against rigged parliamentary elections of 2011 and the fact of Putin’s comeback which was seen by these categories as a step back, and they were looking to the future for something more global and more European.”

The European alternative was seen as a solution to the increasing infiltration of Soviet-style patriotism, which is not only disseminated and mandated these days, but taken in the stride by conservative members of the public. According to Lipman, this Soviet-style patriotism hinges on “the citizen fallible,” and “whoever doubts it is somehow suspicious and unpatriotic and may be an enemy. Anti-Western perceptions are also something that is similar to the way it used to be in the past," she adds.

“NGOs that were under very tight scrutiny from the government had to face intrusive inspections in 2013. And this environment, this milieu against civil activists – with people being arrested and detained for several days, being taken to the police, being victims of a lawless prosecution because of participating in public rallies – ...has become increasingly inauspicious for activists in Russia.”

The restrictions are the reality; since Putin’s return to power in 2012, there has been an environment of ominous behavior to the free media and progressive ideas that has quickly stunted Russian dissenting opinion. “Russia has become more inauspicious and all kinds of activists, media, those who may be deemed as disloyal to the government, have come under increasing constraints. And this includes the quick succession of a new business of legislation that encroaches on rights and freedoms. This is a campaign of deformation in state-run media, deformation of activists, liberals, gays, Westernizers, various categories of people who are seen and portrayed as undermining Russian traditional values – a common term these days in Russia. There is a significant response to the mass protests that started in late 2011 and lasted through the first half of 2012. The government’s response was to pit the conservative majority against the more modernized minority. The campaign has been fairly successful, I have to say. In the event of Crimea, the government move that gave rise to patriotic euphoria, and hard antagonism and condemnation of anyone who would not join the cause of this patriotic euphoria.”

Now, the question remains of how Putin is going to wield his power on the international and national scene, and how that will determine the future of Russian nationals, whose rights are toyed with for little thought of consequence. As for Putin, who does not trust many people in his inner circle, it seems difficult for Lipman or other commentators to imagine a system where he would relinquish power smoothly, and that only calls to mind the terrorizing years under Stalin’s regime: “The system began to unravel in the late 80s and the environment was already growing freer. The 90s were very uncharacteristic for Russia, where the state was weak. But the weak state did not mean that the society was empowered; it was a case of weak state, weak society.

“And the past decade or so since Vladimir Putin became President, the state has regained its control and advantage and power vis-à-vis the society, and [there will come] a civic moment, converting into political rallies [with] the message from the constitution that they want to make a difference and no longer live with our backs to politics.”    


Maria Lipman was a speaker at Session 531, "Russian Civil Society Symposium: Building Bridges to the Future", sponsored by the Yeltsin Foundation. For more information and interviews with other participants, please visit the session page: www.salzburgglobal.org/go/531