Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 31 – The sudden
incapacitation or death of Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov has sparked three
kinds of speculation, one about who will succeed him, a second about what any
transition will mean for Uzbekistan and Central Asia, and a third about what
similar successions in other post-Soviet dictatorships will bring.
The third kind of speculation, one
not focused on the murky world of Tashkent politics, is likely to prove the most
interesting and instructive, as evidenced by a commentary offered by Ilya
Milshtein about what Russia and the world might expect when Vladimir Putin
passes from the scene (graniru.org/opinion/milshtein/m.254172.html).
“Russia without Putin is an
unthinkable country, a house without a master, a city condemned,” the Moscow
commentator says because in the minds of a majority of Russians, “without Putin
there is no Russia;” and so it is “strange even to imagine” what the country once
was and will be at some point again “without Putin”
Karimov’s
sudden demise, Milshtein suggests, has prompted many Russians to think the
unthinkable and led some like blogger Mitya Aleshkovsky to suggest that contemplation
of such a future is “terrifying” (twitter.com/aleshru/status/770350376151289857).
Not
surprisingly, this has highlighted the existence of two Russias, a minority
that looks forward to that day and a majority that fears it, and forced each to
consider the existence of the other.
Indeed, Milshtein says, the
discussion about a Russia without Putin has meant that “almost everyone immediately
and forever has forgotten about the Uzbeks and Karimov,” often forgetting that
what happens will depend not only on how Putin departs the scene but also on
the nature of the population that will be left behind.
Will Putin leave “in the Karimov way
or like Stalin, according to Avtorkhanov, or as a result of a softer palace
coup, or simply be pensioned off, freeing up the throne for some final
successor and begin to act in the manner of Deng Xiaoping?” These are very different scenarios and they
will have very different outcomes.
One reason Russians are focusing on
the Karimov precedent is that they cannot imagine any other outcome. At some
point, Putin will die; and only then will there be “a Russian Federation
without VVP.” But the existence of the
other variants needs to be considered by those expressing either hopes or
fears.
How the elite left behind reacts
will matter a lot, Milshtein says. After
Stalin, those left behind wanted to guarantee that they wouldn’t ever again
have to live under a Stalin. After Brezhnev, the elites having aged alongside
him simply waited to die – or in a few cases, they thought about the radical transformation
of the country.
“After Putin will remain a mixed group
of elites who in an extremely conditional manner can be divided between the
party of money and the party of blood,” although that schema “does not explain
anything by itself” because no one knows at a time of universal lies and
distrust who is a “secret” liberal and who is not.
Only one thing seems clear: “all of
them will want to live as they did under Vladimir Vladimirovich, but they are
hardly likely going to be able to agree on how to do that.” The liberals don’t
have the forces on their side and may attract siloviki by corrupt means, while
the siloviki may use their own resources to win out.
“This conflict threatens Russia with
the kind of shocks that even Stolypin did not guess about,” the commentator
says.
And that means that the question of
the foreign policy course of a post-Putin Russia remains completely beyond
anyone’s ability now to predict. It
simply isn’t the case that the liberals will always be for peace and the siloviki
for war. Some liberals will undoubtedly want a liberal empire, and some
siloviki won’t want to risk destruction in a nuclear war.
But it is not only the elites that matter in
this case, Milshtein suggests, given that “after Putin the vaunted ‘Putin
majority’ will remain.” And they may prove to be the basis for the kind of
fascist state that Aleshkovsky says could happen. This majority created by
Putin may end up determining Russia’s fate even more than he has.
“In the final analysis,” the
commentator continues, “a besieged fortress is not a metaphor but a condition
of the soul, one that exists independently of what an individual thinks about
the Kremlin, Crimea, Ukraine, Europe and America.” And that provides the basis for thinking a
post-Putin Russia may be truly horrific.
But however that may be, a
post-Putin Russia will eventually happen just as a post-Karimov Uzbekistan now
appears to be beginning. It is useful to think about it, Milshtein says, as
long as one is not distracted from the far more important if depressing tasks
of thinking about “what to do today and tomorrow.”
