June 30, 2021

Russia: nihilism in the age of a pandemic

topic:	Democracy
located:	Russia
editor:	Andrew Getto

Russian society is notoriously complacent about state oppression. 

Corrupt leadership has been in power for 21 years? That’s fine. Anti-gay legislation? Persecution of journalists? Can’t be bothered. But when news broke out that the COVID-19 vaccination will be mandatory, a strong rebuke followed right away, and the government has done everything to make people distrust the vaccine and see it as a violation of their rights.

In the first couple of months of the pandemic, the Russian government had a clear message: coronavirus is nothing to be scared of. Dr. Alexander Myasnikov, a TV personality who is now running for parliament, has been assuring the audience that Russians have “zero chance of getting coronavirus”, and if they die, that’s because “it’s written in the Book of fates.” Pro-government media has been competing in disinformation attempts, distributing all sorts of conspiracy theories about the origins of the virus and effects of vaccines.

This approach started to shift last August. The authorities announced that their flagship “Sputnik V” vaccine was ready, well before any other shot in the world. Other manufacturers haven’t rushed to declare their vaccines ready before the end of the trials, but apparently someone in Russia thought that national pride was worth it. Still, the first wave of deep public distrust had started to unfold.

A stunning 66 percent of medics surveyed said they were not planning to get the shot. Most of them were not impressed with the pace of development and questioned the vaccine’s safety and efficiency. 

“Sputnik” received recognition from the scientific community later on, but the society wasn’t sold on it. Today, only 11.8 percent of the population are fully vaccinated, compared to 46.8 percent in the United States and 48.9 percent in the United Kingdom. 

With figures like that, it comes as no surprise that the Delta variant has hit Russia hard. President Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has cited “nihilism” as the reason for low interest in vaccination. Let’s talk about nihilism.

Russians en masse are not big on pandemic precautions. The first thing you’ll notice upon arrival in Russia is that not too many people wear a mask properly, or even wear it at all. Social distancing is a practically non-existing concept. The authorities have banned opposition rallies, citing safety, but events that are held by the government are a different story. 

St Petersburg, Europe’s fourth-biggest city, hosted three huge, mostly unmasked events in a month. First, it was the annual economic forum, where pro-government figures struggled to explain to investors how attractive the Russian economy is. The city has also been holding seven matches of the Euro 2020 football tournament, with thousands of fans coming in. Finally, the authorities found no reason to cancel the Scarlet Sails, an annual fireworks show for dozens of thousands of school graduates.

Despite such optimism in corridors of power, the situation is getting worse, with a 7-day average of more than 19,000 new cases per day. An obvious reaction would be a new lockdown, but the state tries to avoid it, and instead has opted for something unprecedented: a mass campaign of mandatory vaccination in a quarter of the country’s regions. 

The Moscow city government maintains that 60 percent of the workforce in the service sector (not officials, though) must be vaccinated by mid-August, and placed the responsibility for that on employers. It’s also unclear what would happen if employers don’t comply; legally it’s a very grey area.

In the meantime, the anti-vax movement has gone full mainstream. Actor Yegor Beroyev appears on TV with a Nazi-era yellow badge on, comparing the perceived division of society into those who are vaccinated and those who aren’t to the Holocaust. The head of a tourism agency in Krasnoyarsk openly boasted on Instagram about helping clients with a positive coronavirus test board the plane to Egypt. And, according to my own sources, you can easily get a vaccine certificate without getting the shot for little more than $100.

So, are many Russian being nihilistic by refusing to  get vaccinated and comply with other safety measures, citing their rights? Absolutely. But they’re definitely not more nihilistic than those in power, who act frantically and disregard their own policies whenever they can.

Image: Antoine K. 

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