By the time you read this exclusive translation, the original article will probably have been pulled from the net by censors. We found this remarkable posting in the "Forum" section of the official website of the MVD RF - the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation - the siloviki agency responsible for, among other things, the country's police force. The author is apparently a policeman himself, addressing his colleagues. He posted his message on Friday evening, quite likely because, as one of the many people who have already commented on the article explains, "there usually aren't moderators on the site weekends." By the way, the overwhelming majority of the incredible number of readers who have left comments have chosen to remain anonymous, while the bulk of those who do provide a name give a pseudonym and don't provide their email address, no doubt in the naïve belief that this will make it less likely their true identity can be traced by the organs.
Subject: WE ARE THE REGIME'S DOGS ON A CHAIN
Author:
Date: 19.12.2008 20:48Dear colleagues. Russia is found at a critical boundary. Economic catastrophe is drawing near. Hundreds of thousands of our compatriots, our fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters will be thrown out on the street. This crisis has opened the eyes of the people, has shown who is who in our country. The soap bubble of the stabilization fund has burst and has not brought us benefit. Billions of petrodollars flowed as a river to us, but our rulers did not even think of putting this money into the development of the economy, science, agriculture, many sectors. And now they are rendering assistance to bankers, allocating them 5 trillion rubles at 5 percent, so those would give out loans to our enterprises at 20 percent per year.
What else awaits us? A mass reduction in military service personnel looms, 85 percent of military colleges will be abolished. They're finishing off the army. More and more in Russia are taking place protest actions. The patience of the people is coming to an end. But the explosion of people's wrath is still ahead! Take a look at what is going on in Vladivostok! One of the slogans: «Oil -to the pEDROsans, vaseline -to the people. The Rat and the Little Bear.» (There is a photo on the net).
[Our exclusive translator requests a time out for explanation here. The photo will hardly help non-Russian-speakers (and many a Russian speaker as well!) figure out what this enigmatic slogan is supposed to mean. A wild guess at its meaning follows: 1) "pEDROsans": "EDRO" is short for "UNited RUssia", the "party of power". Placing the "p" before it suggests an allusion to the word "pederast", which doesn't mean "pederast" at all in Russian, but is rather a deeply insulting term for a male homosexual (indeed, the mere concept of homosexuality is already deeply insulting to Russians). So, the first sentence could mean something like "Those faggots from United Russia get all the oil." 2) The second sentence probably implies that the people are generously given a small dab of this oil in the form of petroleum jelly to slightly help alleviate the pain of what the above-mentioned recipients of the oil do to them on a regular basis. 3) "Little Bear" could refer to president Dmitry Medvedev, since his surname is derived from the Russian word for "bear" - "medved" - and he himself is of short stature. This would then suggest that the "Rat" may be his shifty-eyed and long-nosed mentor. All in all, this slogan is so obtuse it would hardly serve as a rallying cry for an insurrection! And now back to the letter...]
The power knows that actions of people's protest are possible, and that the consequences could be unpredictable.
A question. On whom is the power relying? Who can save it from the people's wrath? Who will help hold on to what has been pillaged? That would be you and me, colleagues. The Russian police. We are going to disperse the protesters, like we did on 1 May of 1993 and in October of that same year, like we dispersed the Russian March in 2008. So, in everything that has taken place with our Motherland since the year 1993, there is our guilt. And we will not now cry about how we have a small salary. And a pension awaits us that is even lower -4 200 rubles, which is the size of the subsistence minimum as of today.
A question. Are we going to be the dogs-on-a-chain of this regime? For a piece of bone tearing those at whom they show? In Vladivostok the police refused to disperse rallyers because it knew that the power had deprived their kin too of means of existence. And what will we do?Guys, somebody save this message. Because I know that the moderator will delete it, and will block me. Sitikhanter, give support.
As mentioned above, there is a remarkably large number of comments to this posting, which has barely been up a day and a half. Some are in the form of poetry, while others are excruciatingly long and esoteric essays (complete with mathematical formulas) on ways to "save" Russia, or lists of outrageous demands that nobody will every listen to - all of these being very typically Russian phenomena. Most of the comments come from policemen, and are full of spelling and punctuation errors. Also, it is largely the policemen who choose to remain anonymous, whether they agree with the poster or not. Very few comments address the main question raised by the original posting - will Russia's policemen allow themselves to be nothing but dogs-on-a-chain doing all the power's dirty work?
Although some commenters express disgust at the scenes shown on Russian television of policemen gleefully beating old men and women at demonstrations, many more state that bashing the heads of "democrap" [дермократы] and "oppassitioneers" [жоппозиционнеры] is a sacred duty they would perform with relish. One commenter expresses the desire to murder Anatoly Chubais. Yet another explains that policemen are always paid well in democratic states because the people there are willing to pay to have their rights protected, while in authoritarian regimes police have low salaries, so that they get sucked into corruption and bribery and therefore develop a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. There is a comment with a citation from the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., while another cites John F. Kennedy. Several commenters go off on distant tangents, discussing the price of gasoline in Ukraine, for example.
An unexpected comment comes from National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov, urging the "comrades policemen" not to go bashing the heads of Russian citizens if ordered to do so, to which another commenter immediately alleges in very colorful language that Limonov is a homosexual onanist, and (confusingly!) a pro-Kremlin one at that. Finally, many commenters question the authenticity of the author of the original posting, suggesting in no uncertain terms that he is a provocateur in the pay of evil Washingtonian interests (strangely, they don't level this accusation at their colleagues who quoted King and Kennedy).
As you predicted, the page is now down. In future, I'd advise you to capture a screenshot of such web pages and post it here so that it can be examined in perpetuity. Otherwise, many Russians will simply refuse to believe it was ever there.
I think there may be another layer of cultural reference in that slogan.
There is a comedy show on Russian TV that has distinguished itself not just by its tacky, lowbrow humor, but also by well-publicized cases of plagiarism from other comedy shows. Its, umm, lead comedian's name is Evgeniy Petrosyan (which pEDROsans sounds close to), and he has been pretty popular with the less educated crowd but has often been ridiculed by the slightly more cultured viewers.
So the show's steadily high rating that goes against the "humor vacuum" on the show probably leads some to draw parallels between it and Putin's regime.
So maybe there is this an additional shade of meaning to the slogan: the regime is not just doing you know what to the people with the help of some trickle-down vaseline, but also laughs at the people cruelly as it continues its rape of the nation. Or something like that, you figure it out from here.