Russia’s ‘Silent Majority’ Doesn’t Share Putin’s Traditional Values – OpEd

A new survey says that “fewer than one percent” of Russians believe women should be restricted to the role of wife and mother while “more than 90 percent” believe women should be able to serve at any level of economic and political life, a finding that suggests Russia’s “silent majority” doesn’t share Putin’s much-ballyhooed “traditional values.”

That is the judgment of Anatoly Nesmiyan who blogs under the screen name El Murid who argues further that only about five percent of the Russian people share the values the Kremlin leader calls traditional and that the other 95 percent aren’t prepared to accept them (t.me/anatoly_nesmiyan/20832 reposted at kasparov.ru/material.php?id=66FCF0ECCBC05).

What that means, El Murid continues, is that as soon as the power of the state is removed from behind the promotion of these values, they will return to the marginal status they occupied in the past and the more tolerant and egalitarian values that Russians displayed in Soviet times and in post-Soviet times before Putin will return to dominate the scene.

El Murid may be overly optimistic in that regard, but he makes an important point not only for Russia but elsewhere. Many who defer to political leaders who are prepared to use forceful measures to impose beliefs from the past aren’t so much committed to those values as they are willing to go along as long as the powers that be insist.

Once these leaders pass from the scene, there is a good chance that the people will return to the values they had followed

And once those officials pass from the scene, the population may return to what had become their real “traditions,” the more liberal and tolerant values that they used to manifest and support.