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Notes
1. Justifications for this participation in elections could be the most varied—from the possibility of small deeds and the assistance of specific groups of the population and individual people to gaining experience of participation in electoral campaigns and preparation for real elections some time in the future, when the regime starts to collapse of its own accord. In any case, new ideas or principles were not the backbone of the oppositions’ program statements this time.
2. The absolute majority gained by United Russia in the State Duma means that the present regime is completely prepared to change the Constitution and abolish articles which should have guaranteed the irreversibility of the democratic development of the country, and the impossibility of totalitarianism returning to Russia. Primarily, this concerns two things: prohibiting the establishment of a single state ideology (a necessary but insufficient condition for the development of democracy) and confirmation of the priority of international law in relation to Russian legislation. After this, other important provisions of the constitutional order of the transitional period will be revised concerning intensification of the legal immunity of the existing government. It is clear that the importance of the provisions of the constitution are weakening from year to year as Putinism strengthens, and that after a number of repressive laws were passed (in 2012–2016) they now have an exclusively declarative character, as the law-enforcement practice of the last 25 years has gone far beyond these initial principles. But nevertheless, the status of the law of direct action still had a certain restraining importance, as an albeit symbolic barrier against the current state system from becoming totalitarian.
3. Just like 20 years ago, the leaders of democrats had to battle not with ideological opponents, but with the apathy of supporters. See Yu. Levada, “Political Person: Scene and Roles of the Transitional Period,” in his From Opinions to Understanding (Moscow: MSHPI), 2000), p. 98.
4. Of course, not everyone who is dissatisfied with Putin’s regime can be classified as supporters of democracy, a legal state and liberals. Among anti-Putinists one may find communists (= pensioners), nationalists, and people with completely vague or eclectic political and ideological attitudes.
5. See, for example, the characteristic passages and explanations of losers: “Sergei Zhavoronkov: The first factor is official propaganda and official false sociology, which drove into people’s heads several years ago that Putin’s rating was 86 percent, that the result was decided, and there was no point in going anywhere. But incidentally, the official results of elections, where despite all the Chechnyas United Russia only got 54 percent of the vote show that the stories about 86 percent were false. And second, ‘the party of the couch’ and the completely harmful activity that Alexei Navalny and his allies conducted over the last half year. They consistently attacked Yabloko and PARNAS.” See http://www.svoboda.org/a/28002477.html of 20.10.2016.
6. In 1993 turnout was 54.8 percent, in 1995 it was 64.76 percent, in 1999—61.85 percent. For more detail about the legitimacy of elections see A. Kynev, “Twice a Year,” Vedomosti, December 5, 2016, p. 6. It is interesting that the “Shpilkin” balance of the data received in the November survey of Kurier, conducted by our standard technology (attempt to introduce adjusting coefficients for fraud, proposed by S. Shpilkin at a seminar at Levada Center) either give a complete lack of changes in distribution of opinions, or minimal shifts in respondents’ replies to “political” questions in the questionnaire (by 1–2 percent), which are difficult to interpret, as they are lower than the figure of statistically acceptable fluctuations.
7. In this context we do not have to investigate what these interests or the nature of interestedness are, forms or types of dependence on power, and what the calculations of those voting for the government are.
8. The very questions: why? who is behind this? reveal the rather wide problem zones of understanding and the lack of a satisfactory conceptual or theoretical explanation. There has been no serious analysis (sociological, psychological, psychoanalytic, culturological or any other) of the fascination of the repressive regime or the conventional acceptance of institutional violence and mass opportunism in Russia since 1991. And this intellectual situation here differs from the situation in other countries—the two Germanies, Italy, to a lesser extent Hungary, Romania or Czechia, which experienced totalitarianism.
9. This primarily concerns the radical change in attitude to Putin’s policy in the milieu arbitrarily named the “upper layer of the Russian middle class,” where anti-Putin moods after the Crimea were replaced with a just as pronounced approval. We may talk about the compensatory effect of the demonstration of a national revival or restoration of Russia’s lost status as a great power, extremely important for the beneficiaries of the consumer boom, thus mentally equating themselves with citizens of other “normal countries” (“we already live like you, so why do you despise us so much”), or to advance some other explanations, but so far there is no satisfactory interpretation of the observed changes in the mass consciousness.
10. In the masses, there are no doubts, because of the complete indifference to the means of alternative representation of reality in comparison with the official one, and because of the lack of a need to take part in politics, interest in it, generally—in the activity of civil society, which is regarded as the battle for power. From the former, perestroika interest in politics, only a certain concern remains as to whether the government will fulfill its social promises, and if so, then to what extent.
11. Scandals in which employees of the election commission, governors and other people in leadership were found with enormous sums, arrests of high-ranking officials etc. are perceived precisely as “manifestations of general breakdown and corruption of power” (for example, 64 percent of respondents in November 2016 thought so), and the opinion that these are “isolated cases, atypical phenomena for the higher leadership of the country” is shared by just 27 percent. This becomes clear if one considers that every year around 750–800 reports are received about such events, which are reported by all information channels in the country. This forms a chronic negative background for perception of internal events in the country—growing social inequality, inflation, reduction of income of the population, etc.
12. To the question as to whether the government should be dismissed now (after the scandal with Ulyukaev), only 33 percent agreed with this proposal, 51 percent were opposed and 15 percent did not know.
13. A little more social imagination and analytical abilities among the engaged public would allow it to understand that different members of this “contradiction” play a different functional role in supporting coercive consensus in the mass consciousness: one complex of concepts is designed for the self-identification of this group (not connected with real circumstances of existence), and another for practical behavior in everyday activity of a despotic state.
14. The mass of the Russian population sees the solution of such problems solely in toughening punishment of corrupt figures and officials abusing their position. Force and toughness here simply reproduce the repressive nature of the state itself toward the population. This is not a change in the structure of institutions and organizing of undivided power, but simply the mythologized idea about the nature of power—inverting the vector of violence (the hope for a fair tsar or savior).
15. I’m not going to judge whether he is guilty or innocent, here we are only concerned with the public response caused by the minister’s arrest, which had not yet taken place in post-Soviet practice.
16. This was what the head of the investigate committee A. Bastyrkin said approximately, dissatisfied with publications by a journalist of Novaya Gazeta, who took him into the forest and explained who he was and what he could expect: “You’ll be killed [I’ll kill you], and I’ll investigate this case.” There’s no need to convince people that such threats are not empty words: S. Magnitsky, A. Politkovskaya and B. Nemtsov were killed, A. Navalny was sentenced and his brother was jailed in his place, and show trials are going on concerning the “Bolotnoe case.” Krasnodar ecologists were imprisoned for trying to draw the public’s attention to the abuses of Governor A. Tkachev, etc., not to mention the “preventive” work of the Justice Ministry or Russian Communications Supervisory Board and the FSB toward organizations of “foreign agents” or “undesirable organizations” in general. Many examples of this kind may be given, as the systematic suppression of any protest voices against the regime is underway here.
17. Hence the increasingly frequent announcements of State Duma deputies that criticism of corruption is a method of destroying the Russian state, one of the tactics of “color revolutions” to destabilize the social situation in Russia. “The battle of the Russian authorities with the ‘fifth column’ of the West, with ‘foreign agents’ is completely justified,” 40 percent of Russians surveyed believe (November 2016), 35 percent could not answer this question, and only 25 percent saw it as an attempt by the government to “protect itself from criticism from society,” stating that “there is no fifth column in the country.” Leaders of opposition parties and coordination committees of the protest movement could not achieve agreement in strategy and tactics of further actions, and became bogged down in disputes among each other, losing the trust and support of a considerable number of people dissatisfied with the state of affairs in Russia. The government exploited these disagreements (which they had partially provoked) to discredit the opposition, announcing that they were not politicians concerned with the needs and problems of ordinary people, but simple politicos, demagogues craving power, exploiting ordinary people as a means to achieve their goals (the hidden meaning of this rhetoric was that “they are just like us,” and so what would be the point of exchanging one set of demagogues and crooks; us for others). The projection of mass ideas about the government on to the opposition makes these statements convincing.
18. Which was shamelessly exploited by the regime, convincing society of the threat of “color revolutions” initiated by the West.
19. Reactions of this kind have much in common with infantilism and teenage deviance, for example with demonstrative vandalism of street behavior. This is not just self-satisfaction from breaking accepted norms, a festival of disobedience, it is the symbolic confirmation of oneself, one’s presence in the eyes of the super-important Other—the imagined “West,” the United States, etc.
20. One cannot give stronger arguments in defense of the justified doubts about the existence of the middle class in Russia by critics of official ideology of the time of Medvedev’s presidency. This “middle class,” which Russian sociologists and economists together with Kremlin propaganda declared to be the foundation of stability of the current regime, proved to be utterly lacking in feelings of their own dignity, or capable of giving rise to ideas and values which could show the autonomy or self-sufficiency of this group.
21. It would be more correct to say the “social group,” considering the amorphousness and social friability of these groups.
22. In the scholarly community, there is no approved or generally accepted concept of Putin’s regime. None of the concepts of post-communist regimes circulating in literature (such concepts as authoritarian, hybrid, personalist, plutocratic etc.) is satisfactory in any way for describing the system of rule that arose after the collapse of communism. This situation in itself is a theoretical problem, and no suitable methods have yet been offered to solve it. For more detail on the difficulty of conceptualizing such regimes see B. Madyar, Anatomiia post-kommunisticheskogo mafioznogo gosudartsva. Na primere Vengrii (An Anatomy of a Postcommunist Mafia State. Based on the Example of Hungary) (Moscow: NLO, 2016), pp. 6–20.
23. What is accessible to readers of a German newspaper is not accessible to the understanding of our “professionas”: “The more marginal in the political sense a certain position is, the greater allergy it will have toward the facts” (Alard von Kiilitz, “Wo es keine gemeinsame Faktenlage gibt, wird nur noch űber Wirklichkeitsbilder gestritten. Nicht mehr űber Handlungsoptionen. Die Lüge lӓhmt die Politik,” Die Zeit, August 25, 2016, p. 48 (headline of the article “Where there is no basis of facts, they still argue about images of reality. But not about options for action. Lies paralyze politics.”
24. It is interesting that the position of liberal politicians in this matter fully coincides with mass attitudes toward the media and other sources of information. The statement by V. Milov at the seminar (“Russian Nationalism and Its Political Dimension,” January 21, 2016) at “Memorial” coincides word-for-word with a statement by a female respondent about the media at a focus group held at Levada Center: “I only trust data which coincides with my opinion.”
25. And at the same time, another moment of pressure on Levada began: in 2013 several comprehensive checks of the activity of the center were carried out, with the aim of providing the ordered nature of studies, the mutual connection of foreign financing and manipulation of survey results with political goals. This check was carried out by employees of the prosecutor’s office, the Justice Ministry, the Interior Ministry (section for combatting extremism), and the tax service. For our analysis, we cannot ignore the fact that these phenomena were simultaneous—the crisis of trust of liberals and attempts by the state to destroy the organization.
26. D. Travin, Prosuchestvuet li putinskaia systema do 2042? (Will Putin’s System Last until 2042?) (St. Petersburg: Norma, 2016), p. 308. Italics added.—L.G.
27. Ibid., p. 309.
28. Ibid., pp. 311–312.
29. Ibid., p. 307.
30. On this topic see “From Rationality of the Essence to Subjective Rationality,” in L. Gudkov, Metaphor and Rationality as a Problem of Social Epistemology (Moscow, 1994), pp. 277–350.
31. It is noteworthy that the same type of awareness and logic of justification are also characteristic of representatives of power institutions: arguments similar to Satarov’s are contained in the report on Levada Center by the head of Antimaidan, the then-senator and current State Duma deputy D. Sablin, in the “Act of checking” the activity of Levada Center by the Justice Ministry, which was transferred fully into the text of the court statements, which called Levada Center “an organization carrying out the function of a foreign agent.” The combination “receiving money from foreign organizations” for carrying out research works and “publishing results of social surveys” which contain people’s opinions that are unflattering for the government or deputy body, are intentionally interpreted as political activity carried out in the interests of other countries, and with the aim of undermining the foundations of the constitutional system of Russia. This is no different from the claims of bought pro-Kremlin sociologists. In both cases—in democrats’ attitudes to sociological surveys, and in the demagogy of representatives of law-enforcement bodies (the Justice Ministry, the prosecutor’s office), one rational strategy can be traced: public opinion surveys are intentional manipulation of others, purely instrumental impact on others; this is not the condition of clarifying structures of interaction in society, not “society” itself as such, but the use of another/others as a resource of one’s own action, the realization of one’s own utilitarian interests.
32. L. Gudkov, “The Problem of Mundanity and Searches for an Alternative Theory of Sociology,” in The Federal Republic of Germany through the Eyes of West German Sociology (Moscow, 1989), pp. 296–329.
33. “When a rating of 85 percent or more became commonplace, many people close to us began to announce that they did not accept this. Some accused Levada Center of methodological errors, some that it had sold out, some that this rating was pointless and that there was no sense in measuring it anymore, and some that at least it shouldn’t be published. Employees of Levada Center can understand these reactions. They contain much bitterness and pain, but they are also a sign of reluctance to reject values and ideals with which these people went to protests of many thousands in the distant and recent past. … There is a weakness in refusing to accept these realities (we know that they see our weakness as accepting them). There is certain courage in accepting these social impulses for a given and not turn away from them, which is what Yury Levada set down. But there is also a courage of desperation in trying to preserve one’s convictions if only to deny that these new realities are a reality. We understand: for these people the present is not genuine. This helps them to preserve their belief that a real future will come—the proper one.” A. Levinson, “Sky-High Rating as an Element of Mass Awareness. Historical Fatalism Has Some Foundation in Russian History.” Vedomosti, May 26, 2015, http://www.vedomosti.ru/opinion/columns/2015/05/26/593616-zaoblachnii-reiting-kak-element-konstruktsii-massovogo-soznaniya.
34. See, for example, the discussion: “Can one believe/trust sociology?” held on September 15, 2016 at the Sakharov Center, where these arguments were presented by Ye. Shulman and G. Yudin, http://www.sakharov-center.ru/discussions/?id=2722. On the problem of “trust/distrust” and their features in the USSR and the RF see J. Hosking, Trust. History (Moscow: ROSSPEN, 2016); L. Gudkov, “‘Trust’ in Russia: Meaning, Functions, Structure,” VOM, 2012, no. 2, pp. 8–47. Generated distrust is a historically defined phenomenon, the result or the reaction to the systematic policy of the Kremlin, undermining inter-group ties and communications and suppressing the possibilities of rationalization of the current state of affairs, above all the possibilities of open discussions of politics. The institutional system of power, which has violence as its basis (at least in the form of lies or demagogy with no alternative) inevitably gives rise to structures of negative identity as the basis of society, which in its turn is compensated by symbolism of imperial style, and national state greatness. The large style of the Great Power here is important as a condition for freeing the individual from responsibility for the state of affairs in the spheres which are monopolized by the government, forcing collective identities and symbols. It cannot exist without this.
35. There was some uproar about another failure of sociologists, this time American, after the victory of Trump, which was enthusiastically supported in Russia (again the same authors were seen: G. Yudin, D. Rogozin, and Ye. Shulman), but just as quickly died down, when the final vote count showed that Hilary Clinton had received 2.5 million more votes than her rival, and that sociologists had generally made the right prediction.
36. The accuracy of methods used for organizing mass surveys, the adequacy of wordings of diagnostic questions, hypotheses and other questions, of course, may and should be discussed, and the quality of data received requires systematic disciplinary criticism and examination. The validity of scientific data received is only determined within the framework of according theories, which give the descriptions of what a fact is, how it is produced (i.e., indications of genetic procedures of selection and comparison of existing conceptions), where boundaries of significance of empirical statements pass, accessibility for relativization etc. Evidently, critics of sociology do not suspect this. So in this case only general motives of rejecting sociological knowledge are concerned, which do not concern professional expertise of the quality of sociological surveys. The previous phase of rejecting mass surveys (professionally just as incompetent as the present) was connected with the idea that quantitative methods in sociology of public opinion do not “work,” that “genuine knowledge” can only be gained by qualitative methods—in the course of an in-depth informal interview, participant observation or in the course of group discussions.
37. Here we must emphasize that not everyone dissatisfied with Putin’s regime can be classified in the “middle class.” A particular type of negative attitude to the current regime is observed, for example, among socially deprived groups of the population (pensioners, the poor, especially in the provinces, where residual Soviet or state-paternalist concepts are more widespread).
38. The sociology of knowledge and ideology convincingly shows the mutual connection of intensive production of knowledge and processes of social-functional differentiation of society. The idea of analysis of production of knowledge forms that comes from Marx in direct dependence on certain interests of social groups (classes) proved heuristically very productive for sociological development. So it is accepted not only by followers of Marx, but also by opponents of Marxism—M. Weber, who examined the process of rationalization as a field of interaction of ideas and interests, G. Simmel (in his works on social differentiation, sociology of money and affects), Freud, K. Mannheim (“Ideology and Utopia”) and current sociologists of science, literature, religion, fashion, youth, the elite etc. But the starting point, of course, for early sociology was the quite empirically clear diversity of new forms of human relations, types of people, arising in the late nineteenth–early twentieth century, which researchers attempted to turn into an operational set of social roles, types of authority, which became the basis for entire fields and paradigms in sociology (understanding sociology, symbolic interactionism, phenomenological sociology, sociology of culture, etc.). In Russia, we deal with a reverse process—the consistent primitivizing of views of society, which became noticeable with the establishment of Putinism.
39. Homogenization (the politics of levelling social differences, of achieving social homogeneity) of society leads to the sterilization of resources of group identity, suppression of recognition of the special nature of one’s interests, and accordingly the potential of autonomy and need for representation in the public field of one’s rights and views. See L. Gudkov, “Paradoxes of Social Structure in Russia,” VOM, 2015, no. 1–2, pp. 95–125. Hence the tendency to use natural wholes (in the methodology of science they are called “hypostased”), totalities, which do not have an articulated subject of expression (“the people,” “society in its mass,” the West, Russia etc., and thus there is also no separated or controlled subject of action, as the very universal quantifier—“everything,” “in real life,” “in fact,” etc. close off possibilities of critical questions). Political demagogy is so effective because it works with concepts, the origin of which is intentionally hidden, but following them is logically forbidden (such as the ideologeme “interests of the state” or “national interests”; if one even starts to investigate such constructions, very soon one may discover that they have no content, apart from the interests of those with power, and who aspire to metonymically identify oneself and the according conceptual “totality,” “state,” “nation,” “country,” “history” and “morality”).
40. Our colleague B. Dubin has written extensively about these phenomena.
41. We should follow Pushkin and repeat over and over again: we (structures of self-identity of the educated group) are lazy and incurious. But usually the offensive nature of this statement is neutralized by the fact that this definition applies “to them” and not “to me,” the social game involves moving the barrier or key of significance, in the fact that “I am different, of course, but they are all … ”
42. For our investigation it is important to note two circumstances: the lack of public—scientific or social—discussions lead to total suspicions and a non-appealable nature of accusations; both of these things are connected—the impossibility of discussions and the choice of the most primitive explanation, motivated by the desire to destroy symbolically and discredit the opponent, and not come to a certain consensus in understanding. One can’t help recalling the diagnosis of O. Freidenberg: “Everywhere, in all institutions, in all apartments the air is filled with squabbling, it is the creation of our order of things, a completely new concept and new term, which cannot be translated into any cultured language. It is hard to explain what it is. It is base, petty hostility, mean siding against each other … the flaring up of low passions of one against the other. Extreme tension and moral degradation make one group of people furious toward another group of people, or one person toward another. Squabbling is the natural state of people pitted against one another, helplessly furious. … Squabbling is the alpha and omega of our politics. Squabbling is our methodology.” B. Pasternak, Correspondence with Olga Freidenberg (New York and London, 1981), p. 291.
The totality of these basic attitudes forms the general background of the negative understanding of a person, both among democrats and among representatives of power. It was reflected in the law on foreign agents, when accusers are exempt from the need to prove the basis of their findings, and instead are satisfied with the most general reference to “objective possibility,” not requiring argumentation and confirmation by facts (such as the collective guilt of peoples, classes, ethnic groups etc.), just like the reactions of Kremlin commentators to the inclusion of Levada Center on the register of foreign agents. Have you received money from an American university? Then it goes without saying—“who dances with the girl has her … .”
43. A. and B. Strugatsky, “Monday Starts on Saturday.” Obviously this character is a parody of the Soviet anthropological model of “to each according to his needs.” But we should also pay attention to the fact that this model of the person comes from the idea of the “clean slate,” absolute plasticity and the possibility of doing everything that seems important to a person, based on ideology or the interests of the ruling class (incidentally, it is also present in D. Travin, who absolutizes the influence of the propaganda machine for brain-washing. This is why his statements, devoid of the aggressive demagogy so characteristic of the above-mentioned “professional sociologists,” are so illustrative and interesting). This ideological concept, denying the reality of actual social relations and ties, is conditioned by many factors: the drastic erosion and collapse of traditional class social structure, the social catastrophes of two world wars and a civil war, the Chekist terror and other cataclysms of the Soviet era, consolidating anomie as the mass nihilistic denial of culture. But this type of residuum lies at the basis of Soviet mentality, above all in the consciousness and administrative culture of bureaucracy (and therefore of the intelligentsia as educated officialdom), and is reproduced at present both in administrative political service of the regime, and in the opposition.
44. For a critical analysis of this model, see the articles by Yu. Levada: “Problems of Economic Anthropology of K. Marx” and “The Cultural Context of Economic Action,” both in Yu. Levada, Articles on Sociology (Moscow, 1993), pp. 61–70, 71–87.
45. From 1998, the percentage of economic assets belonging to or controlled by the state grew from 26 percent to 70 percent. The opinion that “the special services carry out a very important role, and their current powers are quite adequate to this role” was shared by 58 percent of respondents in November 2016 (only 23 percent disagreed, and said that “the special services have been given excessive and uncontrollable power,” November 2016).
46. However embarrassing it is to repeat all these sociological rudiments, it can’t be helped, as even young and ambitious university lecturers who criticize the studies of Levada Center (they do not criticize other research institutions, perhaps as an indirect recognition of the importance of our organization’s work), the elementary bases of a professional sociological vision are lacking. Rote learning and feeble imitation, ignorance of foreign languages and an extreme laziness of mind blocks interest in reality, emasculating sociology as a science in Russia. I would call this “endemic theoretical cretinism,” which naturally has not a personal, but a collective origin.
47. Compare the attacks by members of NOD, Antimaidan, Cossacks, “officers of Russia,” Orthodox banner bearers on participants of various protests, on school children competitors at Memorial, on L. Gozman and other such “incidents.”
48. Their status may be called “transcendental,” their regulative significance corresponds to referential values without having the semantics of violence and connections with utilitarianism. As Kant said, they are “uninterested” attitudes and relations.
49. “Significant absence” is recognized only in the system of communications with other societies or information from other countries, which becomes inevitable as “closed society” regimes collapse, since the fall of the USSR, the emergence of the Internet or the growth of general literacy, including a knowledge of foreign languages, emergence of the production of mass or elite culture, if it is not marked as ideologically harmful. This is a sort of “longing” for faith, democracy, utopia of a better life, also embodied in the image of an ideal West.
50. The paradox lies in the fact that in their private lives people live a life that is much more diverse and complex by its motives, nuances of interaction, and wealth of emotional states. But all of this diversity is devoid of certainty, clarity, markedness, structure of acknowledged perception and contemplation. Hence the neurosis of kitsch sentimentality, shown in abundance on television screens, and evidently in high demand from the audience, who experience a lack of models for self-identification and confidence in themselves.
51. The fact that the nature of their realization primarily meets the interests of the country’s leadership is either not recognized, or ignored.
52. It does not matter whether this premise was “objectively correct” or “incorrect.” It is important that its latent consequences were the reproduction of the state-paternalist consciousness of the masses, in this sense, the idea of the non-obligatory participation (and responsibility) of the masses. “The authorities know better than us what is needed and what should be done, we aren’t involved in politics, and if we join in certain rallies and demonstrations, then this is always only with the permission and the sanction of our superiors.” So the policy of reforms was accompanied by the mass awareness that “I cannot influence political decisions,” “I am not capable of changing anything myself,” or in other words, “nothing can be done” (although it is also true in this form: “even if I could, I don’t want to and I wouldn’t”). Compare the intelligentsia position—“I feel loathing toward politics,” “I’m outside it,” “it doesn’t interest me” etc. This is not the elitist-aesthetic position of a person hidden away from everyone in an ivory tower, but mass opportunism that is characteristic of all authoritarian or totalitarian regimes (or base philistine cowardice).
53. It is difficult to resist a comparison with the situation that preceded the Nazi’s coming to power: “Brüning’s regime was the first experience, and so to speak, a model of the kind of rule which has since become common in many countries of Europe: semi-dictatorship under the name of democracy for protection from real dictatorship. Those who take the trouble to study the period of Brüning’s rule in detail will easily discover that examples existed here of all the elements which as a result inevitably make this type of rule the preliminary school for what it should in fact suppress. These elements are the demoralization of its own supporters; the emasculation of its own position, accustoming people to lack of freedom; ideological defenselessness before enemy propaganda; transfer of the initiative to the opponent, and finally capitulation at the moment when everything comes down to the question of power … ” S. Hafner, The Story of One German. A Private Individual Against the Thousand-Year Reich (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Ivana Limbakha. 2016, pp. 98–99). “Far from everyone in Germany who became a Nazi clearly realized that they had in fact become one” (p. 115).
54. S.M. Lipset, Political Man. The Social Bases of Politics (Moscow: Fund “Liberal’naia missiia—Mysl’,” 2015), ch. 4: “Working Class Authoritarianism,” pp. 115–212.