This summer, as the Alexei Navalny court case kept unfolding, the writer Peter Pomerantsev likened Russia to their fairy tale forests: even when entering with the best of intentions, one may wind up in a house on chicken legs, their lives not worth a kopeck once that happens.
The parallel still does seem optimistic, implying a measure of logic and pattern in the way things go; serving, perhaps, to understand events happening in Russia. In reality, it’s rather more unpredictable over there: logic and pattern both look to be quite missing – at least for an outside observer trying to view Russia as a land European as their self-portrait prescribes. This year, in its final days, abounds with examples. The Navalny thing being rather emblematic: the man is let loose, the reason for his sudden luck remaining as mysterious as the preceding arrest.
Same with recent release of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the Pussy Riot ladies (fit to tradition, the pardons proved weirdly motivated indeed), as reducing this to a single motive would surely be premature. In international media, at least four causes have come up, the strongest deemed to be the nearing Sochi Olympics threatened to be boycotted by numerous Western heads of state should human rights issues not improve in Russia. The homosexual issues do seem to prevail but these come as part and parcel with human rights violations the way things go.
Surely, Russian seeming irrationality would not mean they are acting at random, short of the slightest reason. Even so, motives remain subject to speculations; Mr Putin, using one hand to give and the other to take away, does occasionally come across as force majeure rather than a rationally calculating player.
There is, however, another aspect to reckon with: a religious one.
This past weekend, the Observer columnist Nick Cohen took to describing actions by Russia as a semi-religious mission where the «Third Rome» sees its vital role as defender of conservative one-truth-based values fighting the genderless, infertile and valueless West. In such a case, Ukraine, homos, Pussy Riot, Khodorkovsky, Navalny and the rest find a common denominator to explain, perhaps, what’s happening. Thus, the lack of logic and patterns in steps taken by Russia may be interpreted as a religious «credo, quia absurdum est» – I believe it because it is absurd.
For Russia’s neighbours, this makes relating to the vast country no easier. Import ban imposed on Estonia’s milk and fish producers, as announced by Russia a couple of days ago, just adding an item to the long weird-things-list.