A View from The Duma (2021 Dec. 8th, 9th)

Benedict got back from a quick trip to the supermarket. His face was enveloped in a grim aura.

“You look funny. Everything okay?”

“A bunch of people got into a fight in public. Small cliques - two, three on each side. No idea what caused it - I noticed them arguing earlier when I went inside for groceries. Sounded bitter. When I got out, it had escalated. A single police car was enough to break it up though and the whole thing was over within a second.”

“You should have defused that conflict with your superior deescalation skills. If you can’t stop a fight, don’t try to stop a war.”

“That’s what I’m aiming at. Hearing their voices, seeing the scene — somehow the reality of our human behaviour struck me clearer than we have ever seen in veiled form in the assemblies, cloaked in civil attire as they are.”

“Are you trying to say that now you finally understand that we can’t just put our rage on hold? Have you never felt mad at someone? Never been so consumed with animosity that if that particular individual ever so much as approached, it would mean his certain death? This abominable decrepit human, that constantly thwarts any attempt you make at setting the world straight with his full-fledged crusade against skill, intelligence, goodness, all of which he tries to rip apart with a monkey’s proclivity for wanton destruction.

Your feeling is not just hatred, it is a bodily readiness; we are ready to counterattack with our straightforwardness when attacked with their crookedness. It’s been too much suffering under their lack of ability to run a world.”

Benedict was almost surprised. “Impressive. I assume you have been there before.”

“Many times. Some of us sour when packed together with dissimilar fellow members of the species.

But all the parts are there, you see? An explanation that appears self-evident. Something in the world is utterly broken due to reasons we can understand, but our foe utterly fails to grasp. And for that, we now suffer.”

“Hatred blinds us.”

Maurice gave it a second’s thought. “No. The critique could easily have been objective and rational. But the emotional thrust makes it impossible for us to escape into any other version of reality. Hatred locks us down. Hatred is the beginning of a fight, that — if sufficiently well-orchestrated — could and should end with death. We hate as a preparation to a fight. Our reflexes become faster, our body is on physical high alert. Any attack will be met with an immediate counterattack.

Next phase after internal hatred is bickering, verbal assaults, then small scale violence and skirmishes, then full scale war.

Once fighting gets in the blood, it stays in the blood. Civil wars are hard to stop.”

“So there is no way out?”

“You mean, can we jump off the biochemical train? I don’t know. Clearly not, from what we see. If the body prepares for a fight — and as a biological/cognitive side effect we invent ideologies, political parties, organise rallies and leave a legacy for posterity — I find it hard to see how to stop the body again. You are not fighting a biological reaction anymore. You now fight those ideas instead. They have become imbued with the spirit of the hatred. Any attempt at dismantling the ideas triggers what amounts to a counter attack demonstrating that our organism reacts like it was being attacked directly. If you try to argue for a more balanced view, you are in effect a party to the conflict.”

“Does that really sound like biology? The sociological scale is massive! Biology is purely on an individual basis.”

“Synchronised behaviourism in the anthill. Why not?”

Benedict shrugged. Tea was ready and it seemed like an exercise in futility, that conversation. Benedict was certainly not ready for a world in which violence was necessary.

08.12.2021

http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/node/5741/

“Look here: The Duma maintains a list of which laws were discussed and voted for during the day.”

Having plowed through one entire day, they had by now come to realise that the Duma was bigger than the Rada and they kept a very busy schedule. This time the two friends limited themselves to glancing at each proposal.

“These discussions are pretty technical! Will the use of expert witnesses taken from some other investigative department violate part 2 of article 70 of the Criminal Procedure Code? Well…”

“Yeah, we have to skip most of these. I will mostly look at the headlines.

Pension discussions, more on civilian rights versus police investigations. Programs for vocational training, patent attorneys something or other.”

“I’m getting crosseyed… »This bill was prepared pursuant to the ruling of the Constitutional Court of May 12, 2020. By this ruling, the Constitutional Court recognized clause 5 of Article 123 22 of the Civil Code as unconstitutional to the extent that it excluded the possibility of bringing the owner of the property of a liquidated state institution to subsidiary liability for its obligations arising from a public contract.«”

“Ah, it’s about a legal framework for non-profit associations, education, healthcare, environmental protection, cultural associations that matches those for business entities. So you can’t just make huge transactions without being governed by rules just as businesses are.”

“One about the ability for the state to raise criminal charges against contractors who have somehow cheated. Much debate about the legality. Accepted in a first reading, but they require changes.”

“… Advertising laws, laws on electronic fishing journals (!), gaming.”

“More discussions on criminal charges. It has relevance for e.g. workers who have not been paid and the boss declares himself bankrupt. The Duma seems filled with people acutely aware about social issues. Frankly I fail to see this as a docile assembly in an autocracy. These are hard issues in any country.”

“The next proposal relates to avoiding sham trials raised by people who want to exploit the legal system.”

“Retirement age, pensions and the effect on economy. Aggregate demand versus budget. Considerations like these are typical for members of the Duma:”

MIKHAIL GENNADIEVICH DELYAGIN (A JUST RUSSIA - FOR TRUTH)

I would like to ask about pre-retirement people, that is, about people who had five years of life and 900 thousand rubles stolen in the most cynical form. Many of them are often no longer able to work due to physical wear and tear of the body and find themselves in a situation similar to extermination camps, and those who can work are very often not hired because they cannot be fired legally. That is, they find themselves in a situation where they must die of hunger, deprived of the means of subsistence, as if they care about their health and do not want to conduct medical experiments on themselves. And this is really one of the reasons for the extinction of Russia, the decline in life expectancy and the debt bondage.

“Purely social issues. The government party replies, of course, that there is some other solution in place. But so far nothing about the war approaching.”

“This guy Mikhail was also sanctioned soon after the war started together with a lot of other members.”

“Yeah, when people hear that some individual has been sanctioned, they probably believe he is a criminal. Little do they know that this guy is fighting for the needy during the day.”

“Then this… Western media focusses intensely on our idea about Russian’s yearning back to Soviet times. Mostly of course we equate it with a lust for empire, that is, territorial cravings… The Putin-is-Hitler mentality… But here is one who expresses a sentimentalist attitude, and his lament relates only to the internal experience of social security.”

NECHAEV ALEKSEY GENNADYEVICH (NEW PEOPLE)

[…] In general, it seems to me that… There is utopia, only earlier utopians described the ideal world of the future, but now utopia is often not in the future, but in the past. And the idea that you can return somewhere, restore something, the Russian Empire or the Soviet Union, that you can restore Soviet education, that you can restore Soviet medicine - this is, unfortunately or fortunately, a utopia.

“And yet, the past is the past…”

Our voters and we ourselves are emotional people, but the fact that we “comb through” some emotions together… This happens on a very wide range of issues. We are proud of Gagarin’s flight 60 years ago, we are proud of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War, in the Second World War. We have a lot… Here we discuss: Stalin is bad or Stalin is good - but, it seems to me, no matter how we feel about him, our deeds, they are in today, they are in tomorrow. Therefore, let’s remember less, perhaps, what bad things the communists did 100 years ago or 50 years ago, well, enough, let’s build today. It’s all with us anyway, it’s all ours, we are all the heirs of the Soviet era, and the Romanov Russia, and the pre-Romanov era - these are all our roots, and stop combing through all this, squabbling about it. People want us to move on.

“In the end, they will likely raise the retirement age just like every other country. Sign of the times.”

“Thirty seconds later, Nechaev’s little emotional quip is swallowed in the general fight, of course.”

“And that concludes the day. Sigh.”

09.12.2021

http://transcript.duma.gov.ru/node/5744/

Maurice returned after having stretched his backside on the grass with a few obligatory exercises.

“Drama. You are missing it.”

“Good, I’m glad I taped it.”

“First the Communists make a speech that reeks with Soviet nostalgia. It is abundantly clear that those who really do miss the Soviet era turns out to be the CPRF, not the United Russia. And boy, do they miss their heyday. Sergei Obukhov is going nuts over the events in 1991.

• March 17, 1991 - a referendum through most of the Soviet Union voiced the wish of the majority to remain a union under some form.
• August, 1991 - the August Coup - an ill-organised attempt by CPSU to wrestle control from Gorbachev.
• December 8, 1991 - Belovezha Accords - Yeltsin + Burbulis (Russia), Shushkevich + Kebich (Belarus), Kravchuk + Fokin (Ukraine) signed an agreement that USSR was no longer in existence but was to be replaced with CIS.
• March 15 1996 - A resolution in the Duma by the communists aiming at repairing the damage done by the Belovezha Accords.

He repeats this belief of the Communists that the Union could have been saved.”

SERGEI PAVLOVICH OBUKHOV (CPRF)

The experience of neighboring China at that time showed the possibility of reverse actions, all this was competently done in the neighboring country. In this series there is also a mistake, the unsuccessful attempt of the security forces to preserve the Union in August 1991, as well as the subsequent failure to fulfill the oath by the leadership of the Armed Forces and the KGB, Marshal Shaposhnikov and General Bakatin. (Noise in the hall.)

“The rest of the Duma appears to be not so communist anymore.”

“Zhirinovsky will fire his muskets on behalf of the Liberals in a few minutes. But let CPRF try to reboot communism first. They do touch on something very important: The legality of the process. Could the Union leaders simply decide to dissolve the political architecture just like that? Why shouldn’t the people have been asked? Imagine the MEPs in EU came back one day from a meeting declaring that the EU no longer existed. They had a bad day and decided they didn’t like the other MEPs.”

“We have to read all those damn constitutions to understand that question fully.”

“… Here he argues that the accords were …”

[…] signed by the President […] and the State Secretary […] and not approved by the Congress of People’s Deputies of the RSFSR - […], did not have and does not have legal force in the part relating to the termination of the existence of the USSR."

Thus, this resolution […] denounced the Belovezh Accords and recognized the existence of the Union, even though there is no one in this Union except the Russian Federation yet. All arguments that the Soviet Union does not exist are unconvincing from a legal point of view.

“We have basically taken the position of the CPRF and reapplied them to Putin. This is exactly what we believe Putin wants.”

“In our eagerness to blame everything on ’the guy with the dead eyes’, we have turned everything upside down.”

The CPRF is ready for a nationwide discussion about the post-oligarchic future of Russia. And although UNITED RUSSIA and its satellites, the LDPR and NEW PEOPLE, have already approved a budget for the further degradation of the country for the upcoming 2024 presidential elections, the CPRF will continue to specify its proposals for a development budget. Following Zyuganov’s instructions, the party is starting work on preparing its own draft Constitution based on our 15 key amendments rejected by Putin in 2020.

[…]

Today, Zyuganov’s programmatic article was published […]. Creating a growth economy through the spread of people’s enterprises and the nationalization of oligarchic property instead of a well economy. Modernization without stops, forcing development through high standards and requirements for quality, innovation. Conquering space and solving one of the two most terrible Russian problems - with roads, stitching the sprawling country together with high-speed highways. A country without backwaters and regional injustice. Life according to the truth, justice for all. And the new state project “Union Rus” - the USSR 2.0 from the Slavic republics and all post-Soviet states striving for integration.

Capitalism has outlived itself, there are only two paths ahead: either socialism or fascism. Time demands a new policy. And on the 30th anniversary of the tragedy of the destruction of historical Russia, the CPRF declares: communists are ready to fight for a great and just Russian, Russian socialist future!

Maurice was just as stunned as Benedict was. Then he started thinking. Communism was old by 1991. Old meaning, it was no longer a set of new ideas, but something that started as kind of an objective science carried out by a cadre. Once life in the USSR became the new normal, it spawned a unique cultural identity. Seventy years later it is a culture, something pre-existing that you are born into, like old religion. What if these incarnate old people simply could never find their way into the multiethnic, multicultural mix Russia became in the nineties?

“What’s the reaction to this yearning for the past socialist glory?”

“Zhirinovsky.”

Vladimir Zhirinovsky (LDPR)

December 8, that was, 30 years ago. Why did they do it at night and illegally? They followed the example of the October Revolution, […] all the participants in the Belovezh Accords were members of the CPSU. […] some people from this party commit a crime and follow the example of their older comrades. At night in October 1917, they illegally seize power in Petrograd, at night in Kiev in February 2014, they illegally seize power. Everywhere we must deny, condemn, and censure any seizure of power.

“The West has a very strained relationship with Zhirinovsky. He is a natural born provocateur constantly proposing outlandish ideas - taking back Alaska (reverting the 1867 Alaska Purchase), expand Russia southwards to the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean, employ tactical nuclear weapons against Chechen - but he also opposes the communists. Racist (or at least spewing racist slogans) against almost every conceivable denomination, one gets the feeling it is mostly pure irony or show. He has a genuinely disingenuine quality to him.”

The first sign of illegality is that they act at night. […] During the day, through elections? No!

[…]

Everywhere, everything connected with the left is illegal - and with enormous consequences.

Obukhov cites China as an example, how well China did. Why don’t you remember the hundreds of millions who died? For China to be so good, hundreds of millions are lying in the ground!

[…]

All five Russian revolutions were harmful, none were beneficial.

“It’s a clever setup, that one. Most of the moderate government can focus on business as usual. Whenever the CPRF starts to dream out loud, the LDPR wakes up and snaps them back. Cats and dogs.”

“Next speaker is a former scientist turned politician. Of course also sanctioned due to the war. A climate sceptic?”

ANATOLY ALEKSANDROVICH WASSERMAN (UNITED RUSSIA)

Now I want to draw attention to another crime committed by the Nobel Prize Committee this year: half of the physics prize went to prominent promoters of the greenhouse theory of global warming – I think Nobel is turning over in his grave again.

[…]

In fact, the ozone hole only occurs over Antarctica, and every polar winter: ozone is formed when oxygen absorbs ultraviolet radiation, or electrical discharges, and it decays on its own. So in a few months, there is much less of it over Antarctica, and during the polar summer, a new portion accumulates. Many thousands have already died from explosions of aerosol cans, where now instead of freons they pour all sorts of flammable crap.

[…]

But compared to the greenhouse theory of global warming, the freon theory of ozone holes is an innocent joke. When it is possible to implement measures based on greenhouse theory to combat global energy, and therefore with all global production, the death toll will be in the billions.

[…]

This is completely natural for misanthropy, which is very developed and respected in the Anglo-Saxon civilization. There, it is generally accepted that our planet cannot accommodate more than half a billion, well, at best, a billion people. […]

Meanwhile, the technologies that existed in the last millennium are sufficient to provide 15-20 billion people with the well-being that is customary for the so-called golden billion at least until the middle of the current millennium.

“The climate debate … looking forward to learning all about it.”

“I’m also behind on that one. But from a sociological standpoint, it is interesting to see how disconnected the Duma appears from the Western consensus.”

“I’m not much of a believer in the picture of the politically correct citizen cowed into believing what every other aggressive faction rams down his throat. But the brain do profess to a certain economics. We can’t be experts on every subject matter so we leave a lot to the surroundings, influenced by a coarse sense of the risks involved: If using Freon binds ozone, then perhaps I should do something else, until I have time to do proper research.”

Benedict shrugged, having simply no opinion on the topic. “Next guy is defending an NGO, The Crew Against Torture, as they are now called.”

ANTON OLEGOVICH TKACHEV (NEW PEOPLE)

The Committee Against Torture, which you probably already know, has been fighting torture in Russia for about twenty years, if I’m not mistaken. Its founder, Igor Kalyapin, is also a member of the Human Rights Council. For all the years of work that this committee has been doing, they have received a merit: they have become foreign agents.

“They want the law on foreign agents relaxed.”

The first and most important thing is to respect the presumption of innocence. The Ministry of Justice should not, based on Rosfinmonitoring data, which may also raise questions, declare a person a foreign agent; this should be done by the court.

— First signs: A scent of war —

A shadow went over their faces as they read on. The first signs of an approaching thunderstorm started to show.

“Hey… Nikonov from the majority party, who is up next… seems he is the grandson of the very Molotov which we know from the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. He is referring to his interview on Al Jazeera.”

VYACHESLAV ALEKSEEVICH NIKONOV (UNITED RUSSIA)

[…] And the host’s first question was: “So, did Biden dissuade Putin from attacking Ukraine or not?” This global hysteria has already reached its peak, a global hysteria that has been heard more than once in relation to our country, largely in order to consolidate the North Atlantic bloc, to pull NATO and the United States infrastructure to our borders, to arm Ukraine, to have a ready agenda for the NATO ministerial meeting and a ready agenda for the summit of democracies opening today.

“There is peace in the world, unless Putin disturbs the peace and attacks. That is what he is reacting to here.”

“But he has detected a change in the relations East-West:”

Yesterday, Biden made a statement that the United States does not intend to use force, […] On Friday, Biden is holding a meeting with his NATO allies to discuss Putin’s concerns. Conversations about diplomatic property and the activities of embassies have been unfrozen. It should be noted that if Trump had said something like this, he would have already been impeached. Biden said it and was not eaten, which means that something really serious is happening in Russian-American relations, since the president was able to convey our concerns to the American side. We cannot say now how serious these shifts are, we cannot say whether they are tactical for American domestic political purposes or to sow discord in relations between Russia and China, but it is clear that something has happened, a change is evident - not a turning point.

“The summit he mentions next is probably the US State Departments 2021 Summit for Democracy”

Today, at the summit of so-called democracies, we will hear many interesting things about ourselves, all of us, representatives of all factions of the State Duma. Today, I think, new dividing lines will be drawn in the world, and they will be drawn quite clearly, and they will deepen, unfortunately. At the same time, this is being done by a country that, in my opinion, is not really a democracy in its current form – the United States of America. This will not be a union of democracies, but an alliance of friends of the United States, who themselves are not democracies.

“About returning Russia to the state of the world back in 1991:”

But we cannot be returned to that point: we are already different. And the United States is already different, and we see that they are different.

[…]

This is precisely the lesson of Belovezh: when we split in two, the country found itself plunged into a fratricidal clash.

“We may bark at the idea that Russia is a democracy whereas USA is not. We live in different worlds. But the point is somewhat underscored by the work of the Duma for the rest of the day. Rules and normalisation of the self-governing entities of the Federation.”

“They go over a ton of details ensuring regional rights hash well with federal rights. This is a different democracy, but it is a democracy.”

/PARADOX