When state officials face no consequences for breaking rules, and when there is no predictable process or protections provided within the system, the only organizing principle that remains in the power structure is mutual incrimination. Corruption becomes the grammar of influence, and logic becomes the servant of power instead of reason.
It does not take a great deal of imagination to see how this system works. It is not just one individual who benefits, but a privileged community at the expense of the majority. If Vladimir Putin were to walk away from the presidency before the next election, Russian society would still face tremendous challenges from an entrenched group of clans with overlapping interests who are heavily invested in the country's lawlessness.
This is perhaps the most important aspect for foreigners to understand about the persecution of the Pussy Riot girls -- it does not make sense and the Russian government is not even worried about it making sense. The ruling class reaps significant political benefits (at least domestically) by jailing these women and portraying Putin as a guardian of conservative, religious and nationalist values held by a large part of the rural population. It is a calculated and carefully measured sort of chaos that ultimately supports the regime's aims to maintain the status quo.
Peter Pomerantsev captured this trend in a recent paper, commenting on the seemingly nonsensical variety of charges and convictions the Kremlin is able to push through the courts against its selected opponents. "This absurdity," writes Pomerantsev, "appears to be deliberate. It proves to the public that the Kremlin can re-imagine reality at will, can say ‘black is white' and ‘white is black' with no one able to contradict."
What sort of meaningful opposition can be mounted against such a devastating illusion of power, one that can create its own logic, its own form of justice and, of course, design its own consequences?
Russia's partners in the West -- and indeed foreign investors looking to sink millions into Sochi advertising -- need to come to terms with the fact that Russia is not improving, not modernizing and is far off the democratic path under the current leadership. With state control over the media, a rubberstamp Duma and a politicized judiciary, for the time being Putinism is here to stay, and the more external enemies the leadership is able to manufacture, the more comfortable they shall become to commit to the social, moral and economic decay of the nation.
Supporters of Pussy Riot are hoping and praying that they will be released at the end of their two-year sentence, if not before -- but there always remains the threat of more trials and more bogus verdicts. The only true salvation, however, lies in the challenging task of transforming some of the fundamental notions held by many in Russian society. To achieve progress, the Russian people must unburden themselves from a difficult history, and divorce God and patriotism from the state.
