Sanctions as a Colonial Practice 

MA «cultural studies», activist, publicist 

This piece was actually written in March-2022 and observes the context of that period of time. It was translated to Spanish and published in the leftist Latin American newspaper La Izquierda Diario and also was released in Merce -- the only leftist magazine in Hungary.

This text is not for people who are being bombed, but at the same time, it does not mean that this text does not have the right to be written. 

On February 24th we woke up in a new reality: the government did what they had planned from the moment when Ukraine overthrew a pro-Russian President and started to build a new society. The “educational” gesture of the Crimea has only strengthened Ukraine’s self-identity. That’s probably why our denial of any possibility of what is now expected to be referred to as a “special operation” was a manifestation of blindness.

However, all those cries “we never thought this could be possible in 2022” are also a manifestation of blindness as there are still countries and communities that have been living in a state of war, but since these are mostly remote countries and communities located somewhere in the Middle East, what is going on there has never been acknowledged as something significant and shocking either by western countries or by the Russians. This topic is extremely important as well and is worth a separate article, whilst the text below is about something else.

So, we woke up in a world where it is possible to bomb towns, the citizens of which many of us have been in touch with all the time; the cityscapes of which were so familiar to us – this is why there is no easy way of shunning what is going on, it re-emerges right in front of our eyes and gets under our skin, causing a permanent gnawing pain.

That’s the reason why many of us Russians, those who still have a conscience, find it easy to believe that it is us who is to blame for everything, because we, as a society and as each individual member of it, have not done enough to prevent this. This is exactly what we hear coming at us left, right and centre, which makes it easier for us to think like that. Moreover, what we keep hearing is not even that we haven’t done enough but rather that we have done nothing at all, that we have simply been approving everything in silence and for that reason we are to be held directly accountable for this situation. And should be punished for that.

Since Soviet times, the oppositional protest has always been targeted at the Western World. This protest was expressed through texts, slogans, and music, as well as through a consumption dream (all things ‘import’, as they used to say back then, were considered of better quality and more valuable, which is hard to disprove, although it is not always true). The Western experience was held in high regard, and “European values” (or “American democracy”) became not just synonyms, but actual definitions of striving for freedom, of highest moral principles, everything the most human, ethical, honest.

The representatives of the liberally biased part of society got used to identifying themselves through the idea of “European Values” and opposed themselves to some “other” Russians, who comprise the majority and who, compared to them, are ‘backward’, “uneducated” and hindering Russia’s seeking for the bright western path. More often than not this image would be constructed by liberals themselves, because it was a nice background to stand out against and to feel a ‘more better person’. As an example, we can quote Levada Center survey, which were extremely popular in the liberal media: those surveys aimed to define the attitudes of Russian citizens to LGBTQ or Jewish people, while it never occurred to the Levada sociologists that LGBTQ and Jewish people are Russian citizens too, which has a lot to say about the sociologists themselves. This is the reason that liberally biased people can think that the sanctions that target Russian citizens can be perceived as are well deserved and legitimate: many people are used to perceiving the West which is exercising this punishment as wiser, more honest and knows better what is the right way to build democracy and stop a military aggression.

The fact that western countries also take part in wars is often left “behind the scene”. And here is why: many philosophers, sociologists, and political analysts, including those in western countries, critique west-centered mentality as a colonial mentality. In some cases, this means that they think all societies are built in the same way – according to the western model (even though there co-exist different systems and models in the western world), which leads to the perception of societies that are somehow different (more often than not, this difference is based on geographical principles, no matter what way you look at it) as sick and wrong. This also justifies the above-mentioned conviction that citizens (in particular those citizens who represent big business and politics) of those countries know all about freedom and democracy and can ‘cure’ those incorrect societies. The citizens of those countries share the same opinion as well (which of us, prior to Ukrainian events, have not heard those questions, arrogantly asked by expatriates and western colleagues: why don’t you protest?).

The methods of ‘treatment’ very often go beyond the fundamental principles of human rights, which the so called Western World seems to represent. We can mention the bombing of Bagdad, performed by the US or what Israel is doing on the western side, covering themselves under self-proclaimed title of “the island of democracy in the Middle East). But those methods are considered “necessary” and in compliance with democratic principles.

In case of Russia those “methods” are a rash and disorganized process called “sanctions”. The statement “sanctions are necessary” became “doxa” (a term invented by sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, which means something obvious which does not need to be questioned). Nobody wonders how the sanctions can bring peace and changes Russian internal situation. 

This obviously never been researched. Nevertheless, the western world is specifically focused on those sanctions.

 Former US Ambassador in Russia Michael McFall posts in his Twitter account that he “spent the majority of his time trying to integrate Russia into the world” and also threatens that “Russians will live in isolation from the other world if you don’t stop this war”. He also says that Russians will have to spend their vacation in Teheran and Tskhinvali, as if it was something bad, and also scares us with lack of foreign equipment, cars and cell phones. Also, his peacemaking efforts are focused on creating a list of companies that are still operating in Russia, so he can force them to stop. 

In other words, we are “punished” by being excluded from the “western world” and refusing us to consume as western people. At the same time, with taking this “western human status” from us, they refuse us in being considered as humans in general. Yale’s Professor of Economy Jeffrey Sonnenfeld in his interview to “Meduza” says calmly and confidently that “very soon Russia will have no technology, no drugs, no chocolate for kids”. He also says that many Russians will be homeless soon, as if it was a normal and adequate measure. A Bioethics (!) Professor from Yale, Dr. Arthur Kaplan mentions in a reputable medical magazine (which means the article was peer-reviewed) that pharmaceutical companies should stop their operation in Putin’s Russia. He also says that medications should not be sold as Russians should be deprived of access not only to McDonald’s but also to products they use for their well-being.

Psychological Associations stop their cooperation with Russian psychologists, scientific magazines stop publishing Russian scientists, Visa, MasterCard, PayPal turned Russians off from SWIFT. This sanction cut many non-profit workers, activists that ran from a regime to overseas from any source of income.

As for blocking websites, in this case it became impossible to identify what was blocked by the regime and what was blocked by the owners of social media, while  social media is, above everything else, is a means for protesters to consolidate effort and is a most important way to get information and news free from propaganda.

The sanctions are also ruthless towards Russian women: for example, to mothers (as if pressuring mothers could lead to group effort which could result in a political change). 

As if it were not enough that, due to having kids, mothers are particularly vulnerable before the regime (kids can be used for blackmail), as well as before the economic turmoil, this double vulnerability will now be coupled with being deprived of basic necessities (all this in the situation of no support whatsoever on the part of the state and governmental systems).

The problem of ‘menstural poverty’ (including the lack of access to personal hygiene products making it impossible to continue work and studies) is widely discussed on a global scale; tampons and sanitary pads are included into lists of goods supplied as humanitarian aid to poorer countries, whilst producers of such goods are leaving the Russian market en masse, and the price of a pack of ‘Always’ pads has already reached 500 roubles.

At the same time, it is easy to note that Putin himself and the officials closest to him have disappeared from the ‘sanction’ rhetoric; what remains as part of this rhetoric is Russians transformed/minted into a unanimous Russian people united by the same attitudes and positions – the process of minting us into this mass followed the same track/route that is used by the state propaganda, which is viewed as one of the pillars and is therefore globally recognised as undemocratic and dangerous.

But then why do the ‘pillars of democracy’ act just like this very regime? Similarly to the regime, they ignore protests within Russia as an inconvenience, and they also continue what the regime has started, i.e. the project of lowering the living standard of the population and depriving the population of the access to basic needs and information (aren’t there enough hospitals shut down by our authorities, isn’t there enough ‘optimisation’ of the work of media professionals on the part of the authorities; isn’t there enough restrictions on import of medicine, enough pressure on teachers, enough cracking down on media, enough persecution of journalists?).

This convenient rhetoric is repeated by those Russians who have fled the country where they enjoyed quite a few privileges: thus, a former Yandex employee who spent 10 years in the company, an ex-editor of the ‘Afisha’ media outlet, Il’ya Krasil’shchik, published in the New York Times (as well as in the Russian ‘Kholod’) a column where he speaks for the whole Russian people and states that we have failed as a nation.

It is also worth mentioning that social Darwinism has reached its peak on the national level not only with regard to Russia: Lithuania refused to supply COVID-19 vaccine to Bangladesh because of the Bangladeshi government’s position during the UNO vote on Russia, which is difficult to interpret as other than a crime against humanity.

I mean, yet again, societies which are far from prosperous are blamed for the decisions of those who deprived them of prosperity in the first place, and as a result are punished further through more poverty and deprivation.

Looking back in history: do we blame the atrocities of the Third Reich on the armless activists of the ‘White Rose’ who supported peaceful protest? Do we condemn Spanish people who spent 36 years of their life under Franco’s regime because the regime ended only when the dictator’s life did? The list can go on, but we can get a hint by asking ‘Are we really to blame for being arrested on the grounds of a Tweet?” By the way, did the British fail as a nation because the Apartheid policy in the RSA continued until 1994?

Since the dynamic of colonial power relations only allows for ‘humanistic values’ to be ‘imposed’, introduced, imprinted, implemented, it is very convenient to declare, as many foreign social media users do when they are watching Russian protests, that this is all a result of the sanctions which awakened the political conscience of Russian people. Politics of exclusion works in such a way that those excluded start to believe that they are capable of nothing and never did anything, that they themselves are to blame for the violence that is being committed against them.

However, I categorically declare that the in case of Russian society this is all simply not true.

Moreover, I claim that throughout these 22 years Russian men and women have been practically the only ones who did fight while the others (by which I mean the countries of the so-called ‘West’) courted this regime, received resources from it, came to attend the Olympics, world cups and economic summits – after the 2014 events too – and have woken up only now (and not really woken up – unlike the exponentially growing sanctions targeted at Russian society, the process of banning oil and gas exports from Russia has been negotiated by the EU as a smooth step-by-step one) – just to accuse these very Russian men and women of their own wrongdoing: it is supposedly Russians who woke up only when the almighty West threatened to deprive us of the Ikea meatballs.

But all this time Russian men and women have been protesting against every inhuman initiative – from the ‘gay propaganda law’ to the ‘Dima Iakovlev law’; they have been protesting against Russia’s aggression in Georgia and in the Crimea; they have been taking to the streets to support protests in Belarus and Kazakhstan; they have been holding antifascist protests in memory of assassinated antifascist activists Markelov and Baburova (also Russians, by the way); Russian men and women have been creating various NGOs and support groups, have been disseminating information on HIV, have been monitoring elections and have been informing the public of the offences committed, have been working in the media despite the censorship, murders of journalists and civil rights activists, despite political persecution as part of the ‘Bolotnaia case’, ‘Moscow case’, the ‘case of Penza antifascists’, despite the information about tortures in prisons and police stations, despite having cats, children and elderly parents to look after.

Russian long-haul truck drivers have been on strike; the mothers of Beslan have not been silent. It is the ‘ordinary’ Russians who put out Siberian forest fires and who rushed from all parts of the country to volunteer in Krymsk after the flooding, while the governor of the region could not be bothered with it. There were cases when protests and other activities made a difference: oppositional journalist Ivan Golunov, who was charged with possession so that he would stop inconveniencing the authorities, was released; the joint effort of feminist lawyers resulted in Dmitry Grachev, who had cut off his ex-wife Margarita’s hands with an axe, getting a 14-year imprisonment.

Of course, yellow-and-blue T-shirts at the Balenciaga fashion show look much more impressive than a picket with a plain clean white sheet, but if a clean white sheet means that an arrest will follow, which gesture requires more courage? To be honest, it is us who can teach Western activists how to survive, how to consolidate effort and to continue being politically active in the circumstances of censorship and political persecution. And if there was any chance for this regime to be destroyed from within, bottom-up, it would have been destroyed ages ago.

Naturally, it would have been naïve and not quite honest to state that there are no Russians who support the government and its actions or that there is only a handful of them – there are different Russians as there are different forms of protest, and this is exactly the point.

Hanna Arendt in her ‘Banality of Evil’ voices an idea which is quite difficult to comprehend: that in the Third Reich evil lost its primary attribute – the ability to be tempting; on the contrary, what was seen as a temptation were such choices as not to kill, not to report on your neighbours, not to betray (in the end, she sarcastically highlights that Germans learnt to resist the temptation masterfully). 

The peaceful protest of Russian men and women which is universally condemned, this mass manifestation of discontent, this frequently silent statement is evidence of the fact that, despite the current authorities trying to do a similar trick to our conscience, we so far have managed to resist precisely this temptation to make evil a foundation of our everyday thinking.

The other day, for the first time I saw a parked car with the letter Z on its windscreen and all other sorts of paraphernalia; I’ve seen an endless multitude of anti-war graffiti and stickers. Perhaps it is time for some Russians to stop constructing some homogenous ‘wild’ majority comprised of other Russians but to ask themselves if this majority might actually be in the same room with us. And for the heads of corporations and for the politicians of the western world – to realise that the strategies which they defined as democratic can be essentially not only anti-democratic but also inhuman.

English translation by dr. Olga Andreevskih and Olga Pokrovskaya.

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