Source: Day
Russia’s Prime Minister Vladimir Putin published a “programing” article in the Moscow-based Izvestia daily. “Russia Is Concentrating: Challenges that We Must Meet,” reads the headline. In this material Putin expounds his merits to the country without false modesty, and dwells on his vision of Russia’s prospects. It is worth mentioning that December protests on Sakharov Avenue and Bolotnaya Square, which attracted crowds of Russian citizens, have left an impact on this vision. To this testifies not only Putin’s article, but also the draft law on resuming the practice of electing governors, which was sent to the Duma. Yet the prime minister’s article is essentially paradoxical. On the one hand, Russia’s PM appeals to 30 percent of the population with new, democratic mentality. And at the same time he continues to complain about the collapse of the USSR (“In the 1990s, the country experienced a true shock of disintegration and degradation, huge social expenditure and losses. The total debilitation of statehood under such circumstances was just unavoidable,” writes Putin). This paradoxicality should catch the eye of Ukraine, in the first place. While Russia launches new gas pipelines and settles its interior problems (the methods are a subject for a separate discussion), in the meantime interfering in global processes and pondering global challenges, Ukraine’s leadership has a very faint idea of such categories. Our government is still bogged in the major problems of statehood development. And whereas Russia proclaims 2012 the Year of History, Ukraine is too shy to mark the 1,160th anniversary of its statehood. It’s easier to be a 20-year-old.
The Day asked Lilia Shevtsova, Russian political scientist and leading expert at the Carnegie Moscow Center, to comment on Putin’s article.
“I am one of those people who try to interpret what they read. My first impression from Putin’s so-called programing article was that I felt insulted. I sensed utter disregard for the reading public, humiliation of common sense and of the Russian audience’s intellectual level. Putin is trying to prove to his readers that he is the savior of Russia. He says that he has secured Russian citizens’ well-being, created the middle class, freed the country from terrorism, and at last he is creating a society of free people. All these arguments, indeed, sound either as mockery, lies, or insult. The ‘well-being’ is confined to oil process. As for the middle class, it was it that rallied on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg and demonstrated its attitude towards Putin. As for the system of education, Russia’s universities have long dropped out from the world’s top hundred. And as far as free people go, he must have his own, special understanding of freedom. Speaking of terrorism, under Yeltsin it was virtually absent from Russian life. Meanwhile, under Putin the number of terror attacks is classified, that’s for one. Secondly, judging by the available information, the terror figures have long surpassed several hundred per year. The impression is that Putin is either not quite in his right mind, and perceives his achievement totally outside the real context, or believes us to be out of our minds and incapable of assessing the lives we have. Or perhaps Putin does not care at all for the impression his article will make on me, my colleagues, and the reading audience, since he is convinced that the results of his election are already determined. If so, he need not prove anything at all. This article is mere electioneering demagogy, which is seen as an indispensable element of the campaign.”
Has Russia’s prime minister drawn any conclusions from the December protests?
“Yes, he has made two conclusions. First: the so-called election with a pre-determined result should be launched after certain demonstrative steps have been taken, and a certain etiquette must be followed. The notion of etiquette comprises acquainting the society with a certain program which consists of paragraphs and theses. He used to do without certain steps before. There was a kind of Putin’s plan of 2007. In previous years, his program was merely a continuation of the Kremlin activities. Now he felt that it was necessary to address the nation, albeit as a mere formality.
“However, this doesn’t mean that this is his last program, and that it is his. He had published a different program on his personal site. When it was ridiculed, he gave it up. It is not yet clear if he is going to acknowledge this article as his own. This is Putin’s reaction to the changing situation.
“And secondly, in his article he was made to argue that both stagnation and revolution are dangerous and Russia does not need either, and the only thing it needs is evolution. This exactly is his reaction to the wave of December protests, Sakharov Avenue and Bolotnaya Square. He realized that something had been going on in society, which did not happen before. Putin realizes that society has snapped out of its lethargy and is on the verge of boiling. Therefore, in a very primitive form he tried to argue that a path of evolution is what we need. Yet in Putin’s interpretation, this boils down to the following: ‘Don’t you dare touch us, we won’t move out of our perch. We will remain in place, that’s our right!’ According to Putin, evolution means a mere preservation of what has existed hitherto. But then, where is the progress? If he acknowledges the threat of stagnation, who is responsible for it, if it is Putin who has been in power for 12 years? Thus, this article testifies to a certain anxiety, to the awareness that the situation has changed, and at the same time, to Putin’s (and his team’s) incapability of crossing the boundaries of obsolete ideas and realizing that they are living in a different country, with a different society.”
In Putin’s opinion, “Russia’s growth in the decade to come is the expansion of each individual’s space of freedom. It is utterly impossible to be handed down well-being. In the 21st century, well-being is merely impossible without accountability for one’s own decisions.” But is this space going to grow in Russia if he wins his third presidential election?
“From what Putin has been doing all these 12 years, I doubt that he would be able to ‘open the window’ a bit, even if he should want to let some fresh air in the stuffy Russian closet. The evolution of similar regimes in other present-day countries suggests that Putin has already become, regardless of what he thinks or dreams about, hostage to his own necrotic, corrupt, rotten base (state democracy) and to his own regime and its logic. The logic of Putin’s regime is as follows: we must keep entrenching. We must not allow anyone take a break. We must now allow even a slightest sign of competition, opposition on television, since it can undermine our monopoly.
“Thus, judging from what he is doing now (allows for certain easing in the election legislation or in the procedure of party registration), I think that Putin’s team is set to keep playing two pianos at a time. On one piano they will play a merry tune for the cooptation of various intellectuals and other strata into all manner of projects which do not change anything: they will allow to create political parties after having collected a mere 500 signatures. This is just another way to discredit democracy. A million parties can emerge, which nevertheless will never be able to appear on social television, and who will not have the funds to get through the sieve of the Russian election commission which effectively limits competition. The imitation will continue.
“The logic of Putin’s regime is simple: the more intense the protests, the more promises Putin will make. But he will never be able to open that window. He clearly understands that should he take just one step towards freedom, and he will lose the grip on power. Meanwhile, neither Putin nor his team is prepared to commit a political hara-kiri. Thus, they are going to play brisk marches on the other piano. Thirty-three percent of Russia’s budget for 2012-14 is going to meet the needs of the defense of Russia, ‘the great state,’ its repressive apparatus, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and ‘the astronauts’ (riot police and secret police). At the same time, education, culture, national economy and health service will remain undernourished. Via his budget, Putin is effectively sending across this message; ‘I’m going to fight back, I’ll defend the twig I’m sitting on, and I’m not moving out.’”
At the same time Putin says in his article that “a broad dialog is required. It should contain discussions about the future, priorities, the long-term choice, national development, and national prospects. This article is an invitation to such a dialog.” Do you think that a dialog between Russia’s government and opposition is possible under current conditions?
“Looking at the present situation we can see that there are the supporters of the dialog with the government among both the representatives of the opposition and some representatives of the government, for example, Aleksei Kudrin [Russia’s former minister of finance. – Author]. At this stage, while the protest movement is not properly organized, any kind of dialog that will cause the closer relations between the opposition and the government, will be used by the latter as the means of self-preservation. This is what Kudrin and other liberals are offering: let Putin get elected, he is the only leader that is capable of ruling Russia, there are no others. And instead we will ask for some changes in the ‘rules of the game,’ like resuming governor elections or creating public television. If this happens, the dialog will not help to put an end to autocracy. It will only legitimize the image of the president in Russia and in the world in general. It is just going to be one more clownery, which Putin might as well accept if he wants to keep on ruling without offhand falsifications. Another version of the dialog is possible, a kind that was present during the velvet revolutions in Eastern Europe and promoted the peaceful transition from authoritarianism to democracy. This kind of dialog is only possible if the opposition and the protest movement itself is consolidated by serious ideas. If as many people come out into the Red Square as came out into Maidan once; if they have a solid platform; if they pin their hopes not on a new leader, but on clear rules of the game; if we draw our own conclusions from your Maidan, only then the idea of a dialog might be useful and rational. And this idea will consist in creating the conditions for the present government to leave peacefully, new elections to be held, and a new constitution to be adopted. The idea of negotiations and dialog is possible only when it is done for the good of society, but not the government.”
Nevertheless, Putin says that he knows the direction of future development: “My vision of our future agenda is that we should eliminate everything that lies in the way of the national development.” What do you think of this statement?
“During his first two terms in office as president, Putin had this motto: everyone gets an equal share. He tried to appeal, especially during his first term, from 2000 to 2004. And at the beginning he was quite good at it. He appealed to moderate liberals, nationalists, imperialists, left-wingers, socialists, and to both post-communist Russia and to Soviet Russia. At a certain stage he succeeded in it. He was the one to create a ‘Putin’s consensus,’ built on comparison between Putin and Yeltsin, on oil prices, and on a hope that Russia will prosper with Putin as its president. This tactics of appealing to different social classes is not new, it is quite traditional. And while the resources and propaganda tricks are limited, it is one of the most popular tools of Putin’s appeal to the nation. The number of people who have faith in such ideas and populist rhetoric is constantly decreasing. At least in November 2011, 47 percent of Russians thought that Russia was following a wrong political line. I suppose Putin’s rhetoric can influence a very dense, thick ‘core of Putin’s basis,’ which cannot rely on more than 35 percent of the population. This is an intimidated, obedient, unenlightened, miserable part of society that is completely dependent on state and has no prospects abroad. These masses are used to obeying and looking for a savior, and at this time the role is Putin’s. However, it seems to me that this core will crack soon. Putin makes a lot of promises, but in two years it will turn out that the state does not have the resources to support the pension fund, increase salaries, and that oil production is shrinking. That is when Putin will have to reduce the government expenditures for bribing people, and the 35 percent, the core of Putin’s electorate, is going to crumble. And that is when he and his regime will face a threat of not just another protest wave organized by intellectuals, like the one that took place in December last year. It is going to be a real political tsunami, which will consume that part of Russians that is dependent on state budget.”
Have you found any references towards Ukraine in the article? Does it cover any problems of relations between Russia and post-Soviet countries?
“In general, Putin shapes the image of a ‘different’ Russia, the one that is free from shocks and stresses that can be seen all over the West and the rest of the world. The West has entered the turbulence zone, ‘but we keep on following our Russian civilization model formed by our great history, geography, and the cultural genome.’ So, it is quite unclear what exactly makes Russia different from the rest of the world, because now we are in the turbulence zone as well. The December events are good evidence to that. What is the special feature of the Russian civilization model? Autocracy. Before this Putin kept insisting that we are a democratic country, we are like the West. Now he is saying that we are different. He does not give an explanation in what way exactly we are different. Now Putin is playing with the anti-Western sentiment. It is not about Russia’s neighbours, but about the entire approach to Russia’s role as of a unique civilization. You can get glimpses of the attitude towards Ukraine, the partner that we are in the most strained relations with right now. If Russia, as Putin sees it, keeps on being a special model, a civilization, it is going to preserve all of its past genomes: autocracy, the desire to have areas of influence, the ability to mistreat its neighbours, the intention to impose its will upon others. The hard times are coming, and they are unavoidable. Perhaps, those at the top do understand it.”