Continuing our discussion about a nation’s political dissent funded by foreign money, the question ought to be redirected to the funders themselves: Would you like your own opposition groups to be funded by your foreign adversaries? What is good (or bad!) for the goose is likewise for the gander! The same old story of a double standard plays out in this case, too.
Let us be specific here, with certain examples from history. During America’s War of Independence, foreign money from the enemies of Great Britain was pouring in to the American Patriots, but that was indeed a war for national liberation from the colonial rule. The Patriots were treated as traitors by the British authorities, but their cause was honorable and well-defined, and history was naturally on their side.
In 1917, while Russia was at war with Germany during World War I, Lenin and dozens of Bolsheviks with him received money and other substantial support from the German Kaiser, for which he was denounced as a traitor by the Russian Provisional Government, and had to run for his life. Was he a traitor? Technically, yes, but there were mitigating circumstances. The war had been initiated by the Tsarist Government, which had since abdicated power, and the new provisional authority had little or no legitimacy in Russia. Besides, the war was terribly unpopular, and the Bolshevik pledge to end it by signing a peace treaty with Germany could be judged as more in tune with Russia’s national interest than the senseless prolongation of hostilities re-endorsed by the Provisional Government. If that is not enough, the nation was in turmoil and ready for the Revolution, which was about to break out any time. In other words, Lenin had a historical justification to accept the Kaiser’s help.
Our next obvious example would be the nations of occupied and Nazi-controlled Europe during World War II. The French Résistance and other resistance movements in Europe, and also in Germany and in Italy, were receiving “aid and comfort” from the enemies of Nazism and Fascism, and such aid was obviously properly justified. The German patriots fighting against Hitler’s regime inside Germany were certainly well-justified in conspiring with the enemies of the Third Reich, and could be considered as acting in Germany’s national interest...
So far, so trivial, or almost trivial. But I have a good reason to engage in triviality. It is manifestly proper to fight for national independence or liberation from foreign occupation. It is obviously proper to fight against a brutal dictatorship, such as Hitler’s, or against an incompetent government incapable of governing, as was the case in Russia in 1917 following the fall of the Romanov monarchy. This is exactly what Hobbes has in mind when he enumerates the cases when the citizens are justified in rising against their sovereign, and we all know that Hobbes was not some hotheaded revolutionary, but a very sensible, almost conservative man.
Generally speaking, and paraphrasing a certain US Supreme Court Justice, I know legitimate protest when I see it. There are basically two forms of protest. One, like in every example given above, presupposes a state of intense mutual hostility between the established authority and the opposition, with the clear intent of both sides to destroy the opponent. In such a case, everything goes, including receiving maximum support from the enemy of your enemy.
There is however a different, non-violent form of protest, in which case the objective of the protester is not the overthrow of the existing power, but a reasonable accommodation, in which the powerful are persuaded into a compromise with the opposition, eventually giving in to some or all of its demands, and thus diffusing the conflict.
The latter case presupposes a strong grassroots support of the opposition, with a sufficient domestic funding to make the effort successful. The last thing the opposition would want in such a case would be the slightest appearance of impropriety. Receiving money from an adversarial foreign power, or any foreign power, for that matter, must be an absolute taboo, the surest way for the opposition to incriminate itself and effectively defeat the very goals it allegedly strives to promote.
So, now we come to the most puzzling and concrete question of the Russian political opposition accepting generous financial assistance from the United States, that selfsame country which ever since the end of the Second World War has been Russia’s Main Adversary, as recently confirmed by the Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney, referring to Russia as America’s current “number one geopolitical foe,” with all that this implies.
...What are they thinking, and who are they, the so-called Russian opposition, I wonder? America’s stooges? Hooligans and shameless opportunists with an eye on a comfortable post-dissident life in the United States? Or perhaps agents of the Russian security services, milking the West for whatever it is worth, while in the process utterly discrediting the legitimate Russian opposition, and giving the very word “dissent” the worst possible name, in the Russian context?
This will be the biggest question for Part III of this discussion, which will follow next.
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