Discourse of the Political Violence in the Non-Western Political World (Russian Case)

The paper offers a concise map of fundamental similarities and differences between Western and non-Western political worlds within the framework of the essence and limits of political violence. It is depicted that Western political person can “withdraw” himself out the world if the latter ceases to correspond with the already set (by him or by God) order and undertake those actions that can have a great impact on the world and can even change it afterwards. This is how special Western discourse of violence - discourse of intervention - is revealed. At the same time, a non-Western political person appeals not to external, event-trigger manifestation of order, but on the contrary to their inner essence and its determinants. Hence, the discourse of political violence of the non-Western world is based on the phenomenon of “insensitivity to injury”, long suffering, fear of a politician's word, a weak hope of success. The idea is interpreted on a concrete empirical material - the dynamics of the growth of political violence in situational political activism in Russia - youth, informal, civil, and religious. While carrying out the research particular features of such kind of violence, as well as its relation to the political violence of the state were also taken into consideration. After all, political violence which appears as a result of individual or collective social activity, with rare exceptions, can be opposed by nothing but another kind of violence. The notion of “counterevil” is considered separately as a driver of a specific Russian phenomenon of political violence. The counterevil is determined as something that causes unmotivated, unjustified suffering to those who, as it has already been known or is only supposed, have caused the suffering to the activists themselves. The key questions of the research: To what extent does the phenomenology of political violence in Russia reflect the specificity of a non-Western perception of the essence of the political? Can the disorganized political violence of Russian activist groups become coordinated and under what circumstances? Is there any chance for a “revolutionary situation” in Russia which may emerge as a result of political activists and authorities’ collision?