Tomsk is what people call a university city; I live here while I study in TSU. What struck me about the city as soon as I got a place here - and went on to walk the streets, subsequently, - is that people here are rather active politically, unlike my homecity of Kemerovo. People care about a local channel being closed; people care about the municipal water supply being sold to private hands; and apparently, people care about what political parties of Russia have to say.
Against TUSUR - state university of electronics and control systems - there's a small square with a fountain on an artificial concrete hill. There, I've already seen quite a few groups of people rally for this or that party (was there an election or something?), so that another group gathers there surprised me not.
What bothered me is the slogan under which they rally. If you care about the recently-developed tense situation between Russia and the Western countries, take a seat or risk falling over, since the slogan reads: "Freedom. Motherland. Putin!" and "Let's free Russia! Are you with us? [huge face of Putin near the words] Or with those? [faces of Saakashvili and whom I assume to be Western political and other prominent figures under the words]".
I laughed at first, given how ridiculous it sounded. A few seconds after the thought settled in, and the next time I saw the flags and the improvised stage, I couldn't hold my resentment. It was still ridiculous, but now it became appaling. Disgusting.
The whole idea behind the rally is that Russia is somehow oppressed by the evil people of the West - and of the US in particular - and that we, as Russians, owe it to our country to fight back. I have no idea what is that supposed to mean, and I didn't have it in me to come and talk to those who serviced the rally. It is to the best of my understanding that these people believe: we, the Russia that we make up, are at odds with the West and, being (naturally) right about what we do, we ought to push back to whatever the evil West may unleash upon us, persevere through the adversity and somehow win this whole situation, preferably without giving it a single thought.
Well, by god.
Don't get me wrong. I like Russia - as much as the abused may like the abuser, I suppose. It has its beauties and it has things - and people - to fight for, but what it is, right now, with the putinist regime online, is a fucked-up state with fucked-up people, tortured by the Soviet past still haunting every single one of us through the abusive elderly who reign over the raised-mindless crowd. Most people seem to know very well that Russia is ruled by a member of the Russian mafia (which may or may not be true literally) - and those same people, the absolute most of those, don't care: they just want to slog through another day and take another month's pay, fueling themselves with jealousy, anger and unrealistic fantasies of the wonderful, utopian days to come.
I've recently read on Mark Manson's website the definition of an abusive relationship - and the way most of the middle class lives in Russia fits almost perfectly, both among themselves and with the government. We aren't taught to think for ourselves and criticize the bad ways that exist among us - we're taught to surrender ourselves to the higher power (religion and the government) and let ourselves be controlled by the greedy, selfish, megalomaniac people in charge of those institutions.
It was exactly what I witnessed today, at the square against TUSUR: people mindlessly rallying for their master Putin, like slaves arguing against those who try to free them. It wasn't just that Putin was a prominent figure in the whole affair, like Martin Luther King or John Lennon would be, - he was the instigator of such ideas. Our whole media are filled with the brainwaves of the sort that would make you hate "the West" (meaning mostly the US), and if one spends their evenings lazily imbibing the sounds and the images from the television screen without processing it in any way - as most people tend to here - they're bound to grow such superfluous, shallow ideas in their heads soon enough.
But, to a certain extent, the rally was no surprise. People used to do that when major enough brainwashings happened, and they did it once again. Not that it doesn't bother me - those I'm supposed to be kin with doing crazy shit - but I can't apologize for them nor justify their actions. It saddens me that the relationships between two superpowers - at least, that's what Russia still believes itself to be - got to such a point, and that people are brainwashed rather than educated of the events that are happening.
Shit, even locals recognize how terrible is it to live in Russia today. Yet, from those who leave - to Brighton Beach, for example - most still hold their mother country dear and ask about what happens there at every opportunity. Is it patriotism? Given what partiotism looks like in Russia - or, rather, given that it merely exists in the peaceful, love-fueled form - I can barely tell. That it's jingoism, is for sure. People wave their dicks around far too much for it to not be fueled by some sort of perceived self-inadequacy.