Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 17 – When
Vladimir Putin first appeared on the Russian political Olympus, people asked
“Who is Mr. Putin?” In the years since
that time, they have continued to ask because the Kremlin leader has changed
fundamentally at least three times, a reflection of the situation he has found
himself in and his own agendas.
Now, in the wake of the Crimean
Anschluss, he has changed again, Tatyana Stanovaya says, and it is important to
consider who “Putin 3.1” is, especially since this latest version represents a radical
departure from the inertial moves “toward oligarchic state capitalism of an
authoritarian type” (ng.ru/ng_politics/2015-09-15/14_putin31.html).
To make her point, the head of the
Moscow Center for Political Technologies analysis department traces Putin’s
evolution up to now, an evolution which shows him to be “a very flexible
individual” and one that has presented to the world “three ‘editions’ of Putin
and his policies,” editions, she points out, that have “not always corresponded
with his terms in office.”
Putin 1.0 existed only from 2000 to
the beginning of 2003, she says. It was a time when Putin’s hands were tied,
when everyone was waiting to see what would happen, and of small conflicts with
Berezovsky and others. It was also time
when Putin “adapted himself to his new political and human mission.”
He and Russia had great hopes
nationally and internationally, for major changes at home and for
Russian-American friendship and full membership in the G7. But this idyl was
ended in 2003 both at home, as a result of the YUKOS case, and abroad, because
of the Iraq war. And a new and very
different Putin emerged.
“It is difficult to say which was
primary: the transformation of the Putin regime into a
conservative-monocentric” one or “blows to the regime including disappointment
in the US and challenges from Khodorkovsky.” But “one thing is clear: after
2003,” Russia was headed in a very different direction under Putin 2.0.
This version of
Putin reduced the liberals to a marginal position, liquidated the oligarchs as
a class, constructed the power vertical, sharply simplified the party system,
and marginalized all of Putin’s major opponents, Stanovaya says. As such, it was a time of political institution
building even if the new buildings were being put up over others that were
destroyed.
During this period, Putin gradually
“concentrated in his hands the real levers of influence and administration,”
often without an apparent road map but reflecting his preferences in response
to evolving circumstances. One can say
that his 2.0 agenda “bore in large measure an inertial character.”
Real reforms were clearly needed at
this point, Stanovaya says, “but the political will [to choose and implement
them] became ever less.” As a result,
decisions were increasingly “reactive,” that is, those who were most impressive
in Putin’s eyes were the ones who won at any particular point.
Then there was a three year break in
this process of Putin’s evolution. Nominally, Dmitry Medvedev was president
from 2008 to 2012, but in fact, the successor was really in office only “until
September 2011.” And that period,
Stanovaya argues, “was one of the most interesting periods of contemporary
Russian history.”
Within its parameters, there was a
thaw, new life in the elites, a struggle with corruption, and an agenda that
was clear and understandable. “But now four years after September 2011, who
remembers this?” Instead, people view it as “the anti-matter of the Putin
regime,” and it might have become that: a second Medvedev term might have
turned Russia in a new direction.
“Perhaps,” the Moscow analyst says,
“that is why Putin returned.” But when he did, he came back as Putin 3.0,
something “the country understood immediately,” leading to the wave of protests
of the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012.
Putin 3.0 presents a mystery in one
sense: His agenda was anything but clear because “the declared goals and
programs did not correspond with the collection of political and administrative
tasks dictated by life itself,” and at the same time, they weren’t simply about
restoration but about insuring the regime against any challenges to its
position.
Under
Putin 3.0, a new political establishment was formed whose main goal was to
“occupy positions and distribute resources. The conservative wave became the
political result and inevitable condition of this establishment,” and it was
something Putin was in harmony with, especially as he came to view the West not
as a partner but as a threat to his Russia.
The latent cold war “broke out with new force touching
not only issues of competition on the post-Soviet space or the problems of
strategic security but provoking a conflict over values,” no longer about human
rights in Russia but about civilizational “degradation of the West itself.”
“The real ‘historic task’ of the system
under Putin 3.0,” Stanovaya says, “was the rehabilitation of the regime after
the Medvedev experiments but in a harsher and more defensive form.” No one can
say “how long this process might have lasted had it not been for the Ukrainian
crisis of 2014.”
That crisis and the use of force it
involved led to the birth of “a new Putin, Putin 3.1,” she argues. It wasn’t necessarily Putin’s choice but his
response to Russia’s loss of status in the G8 and to the loss of resources for
the complete construction of a corporate state.
Putin thus found himself in a new position.
He turned out to be “at the head of
a state without resources sufficient for the inertial continuation of its
former movement and a leader who has practically no remaining foreign policy
partners with which the country can feel comfortable.”
“However paradoxical it may seem,”
Stanovaya says, “the historical situation today is pushing Russia toward a
[new] 2008. Only the president is Putin, and the reformers have been driven
underground.” Thus, no one should be surprised by “the rehabilitation of
Medvedev. The times require it.”
The Crimean Anschluss thus was “an
all-embracing process of the destruction of the old model of political
engineering” and one that involved “an outburst of Russian nationalism,
isolationist trends, [and] the neutralization of the extra-systemic liberal
opposition.” And in that environment, Putin 3.1 is taking shape.
A key aspect of this Putin is that
politics is directed “not at the achievement of tasks but at avoiding critical
points,” not at changing the economy but at lifting or at least preventing new
sanctions, and to do so in order to avoid any revolution, something that has
led to an ever greyer political scene.
One important aspect of this,
Stanovaya says, is that the current system is distinguished “from previous
anti-orange lines” by the fact that “there is no understanding of what the
vertical should be or how the political architecture should be arranged under
conditions of political turbulence and social and political risks.”
As a result, many of the
institutional arrangements are degrading and splitting into various parts. But
somehow, the Russian people “remain on the side of all this. The people is
swallowed up by television but ever more often looks at the emptying shelves of
the refrigerator … Of course, the Americans are guilty of all this.” The people
accept this for now.
“The mistake of many observers is
that they are waiting for the time when the people will fall out of love with
Putin and become disappointed in him. But this will happen only later. First
will be anger toward the boyars, the corrupt, and the bureaucrats. And the
bourgeoisie, for social solidarity is indivisible from corporatism.”
When that happens, Stanovaya
concludes, Putin 3.0 will have to choose between the elite and the people; and
on that choice will depend more than the regime. It could lead to a repetition
of “’the greatest catastrophe of the century,’ if the authorities do not find
in themselves the political will for a modernized agenda.”
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