After defending the rights of the opposition at
Triumfalnaya Square, Moscow, Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin refused
to present his annual report on human rights to the Russian
parliament
As a rule, It is not the places that grace the men, but men
the places. And sometimes it makes a man to lose his personality,
and he begins looking like all other bureaucrats around him.
To give a person an official post has been the best way to
neutralise an oppositional politician, turn him into a bureaucrat
and make his career finish like at a bureaucratic post. Receiving
a favourable position in power a bright politician becomes
colorless, an honest one turns into an temporizer, a Samaritan
becomes a bribe-taker and a dissenting person – a conformist.
However, this did not happen to Vladimir Lukin, whose name
is immortalized by letter L in the name of the YABLOKO party
and who received the post of Ombudsman from the ex-president,
who is simply a national leader now - Vladimir Putin. It is
quite another matter that the post of ombudsman is not very
influential in the Russian establishment, and indeed this
man should deal with social rather than political rights.
But in our case all the social things have been smoothly turning
into political and vice versa.
Mr. Lukin as Ombudsman is an experiment: a democrat of 1960s
(Ed. The famous period of liberalisation in the Soviet Union)
in the state structure of the Putin’s period. Will he survive
or not? Will he bend or not? Will he merge with the surroundings
or not? He survived, did not bend and did not merge.
The reason is that the experience of Soviet life with ban
on employment one would like to engage in for a few years
if not decades. The ability to look for compromises with the
state, even where they are impossible. The art to remain a
decent person, maintaining the “pro-state” ideology.
There is nothing sly in saying that brutal breaking of demonstrators
is unlawful, and adoption in first reading of a draft law
on the Federal Security Service, which will receive the right
to issue warnings to citizens and organisations, will discredit
this institution of public security. This a pro-state approach
implying detection of damage to the state where it rocks its
boat. There is nothing of reckless liberalism and brassbound
commitment to democracy - only the pro-state common sense.
However, the present state has an anti-state in nature. (To
say nothing of the damage it makes to society and its citizens.)
If arranging their PR campaign against Lukin the “comrades”
from the Staraya Ploschad (Ed. The office of the Central Committee
of the Communist Party of the USSR was located there and at
present the office of Presidential Administration is located
there) believe that they are acting in the interests of the
state, then they are wrong here. They act in the interests
of their power clan. They confuse their “wool” with that of
the state, as it was diagnosed in a movie 45 years ago. And
the interests of the state and society are represented exactly
by Lukin.
Vladimir Petrovich is not Andrei Sakharov or Dmitry Likhachyov.
He does not claim to be a moral authority of a national importance,
by the way this "vacancy" does not exist at present
– the society does not need a moral guide, such as needed
in the perestroika period. (That is actually the society needs
such people, but is not capable of forming a "request",
to identify the demand for such a person, it is satisfied
at present with a "national leader".) But he unexpectedly
presented an example of an honest politician in dishonest
circumstances. There even emerged such an unconventional concept
in politics as a conscience.
And this is an awesome power. They all are afraid of that
old honest man.
See also:
Human
Rights
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