**The Blind Spot of Russia’s Opposition**
For years, the leaders of Russia’s opposition have had a reflexive response to criticism: blame everything on Vladimir Putin. This simplistic approach has become a mantra in Western capitals, echoed by politicians, media outlets, and the general public. But this narrative ignores the vast country that Putin commands, effectively granting millions of Russians spiritual immunity from accountability.
This framing is seductive because it offers a clear target for outrage – Putin, the embodiment of evil – while shielding Russia’s collective responsibility from scrutiny. However, as the old saying goes: “Putin didn’t create Russians; Russians created Putin.” He is a product and manifestation of a society that reveres obedience over citizenship and glorifies state violence over accountability.
**A Different Perspective**
Garry Kasparov, the chess grandmaster and political activist, stands apart from his fellow oppositionists. Unlike them, he refuses to sanitize Russia’s colonial nature or minimize the complicity of ordinary citizens. “This is not Putin’s war. This is Russia’s war,” Kasparov has repeatedly emphasized, challenging the comfortable narratives that shield Russians from confronting their shared responsibility.
Kasparov’s perspective stems from a recognition that genuine transformation requires honest reckoning with painful truths. He understands that a future Russia is unlikely to differ from its present or past if its aggression goes unpunished.
**A Colonial Empire**
What hides in plain sight is a classic colonial empire, not a nation with shared values. Moscow, the center of power, drains blood and treasure from the provinces – “internal colonies” like Sakha Republic, Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, and Buryatia. The legitimacy of this abusive system is perpetually renewed through wars of conquest.
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The Russian opposition’s refusal to confront these crimes signals not a desire for change but a masked yearning for continuity with a bloodstained past. If the country’s best and brightest can’t envision themselves outside the Russian imperial ethos, what exactly are they opposing?
**A Real Alternative**
The worldview of prominent dissidents and self-proclaimed anti-Putinists remains shaped by a sense of undeserved exceptionalism and a refusal to acknowledge societal ills that plagued Russia long before Putin came to power. They instinctively grasp that a unitary Russian state – essentially a Moscow-centered colonial system – is inseparable from the violence that sustains it.
Consider four passages – the words of those hailed as the moral counterweight to Putin. What they offer isn’t a real alternative but a defense of the status quo packaged as dissent: a rebranded empire, a recycled sense of messianic purpose, and a demand to recognize Russia’s “greatness” – an implied right, even duty, to invade neighbors and continue the oppression of internal colonies.
**Decolonizing Russia**
The mental acrobatics of Russia’s opposition are on full display in their attempts to justify the unjustifiable. Genuine transformation requires honest reckoning with painful truths. The time has come to decolonize Russia and confront its dark past, rather than perpetuating a myth of exceptionalism.
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