Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 14 – Many who ask
what Vladimir Putin will do in his next term act as if he is all-powerful, Gleb
Pavlovsky says; but in fact, the system of power he has constructed, one based
on “a symbiosis of three classes of political elements,” simultaneously ensures
continued struggles in the Kremlin and imposes restrictions on what Putin can
seek and achieve.
Responding to a New Times request
for comment on Putin’s future course of action, the Moscow commentator says that
the question arises from a view that “Putin is an irresistible natural
phenomenon like the fall of a meteorite or the eruption of a volcano on Bali” (newtimes.ru/articles/detail/134445).
“If I were
dictator,” Pavlovsky continues, “I couldn’t dream about a more pleasant way of
having such questions asked” because put in this way, they assume that what
happens is a reflection of “the personal will of one single individual in the
Kremlin.” But in fact what will occur
reflects the nature of the Kremlin and not simply the individual who arranged
it so far.
“The Kremlin,” he says, “is a
symbiosis of three classes of political elements” both mutually supportive and
competitive, including the so-called siloviki, senior officials of the
government and presidential administration, and, the most important point of
this “triangle,” “the friends of the president, the nucleus of his closest
circle.”
Yes, it is possible to imagine that Putin
can try to do something that would bypass all of these groups, “but for this he
would have every time to engage in a complex palace intrigue” and his authority
“long ago passed into the hands of those against whom he would be carrying out
such intrigues.”
Theoretically,
Pavlovsky says, Putin could do many things. He could fire the prime minister
and install himself in his place. But every
such move would generate opposition from one or more parts of the triangle and
such opposition would have to be dealt with by the leader, sometimes with
success and sometimes not.
Increasingly it is becoming the case
that “Putin simply will not be able to undertake anything which hurts the interests
of one of the palace classes. He won’t order anything that the palace would not
begin to sabotage. He is not even able to seriously change the balance within
the court.”
That “balance,” Piontkovsky says, is
in reality “the carcass of forces which support the president, surround him,
and act in his name without allowing things to go beyond well-known limits.”
And Putin personally even though he created this system is now constrained by
it because to move against it is to threaten the instability he and it most
fear.
Of course, he will make certain
reforms. Some of them may succeed, but most will fail because they will
challenge the interests of one of the groups or even individuals within the
power triangle. And if he goes too far,
Putin will only undermine himself and bring the end of his system ever closer.
Changes in foreign policy are “inevitable,”
Pavlovsky continues, because “international reaction to the excesses of his
third term go according to the law of the compass. The aggressive phase of
Moscow policy will be replaced by a defensive one and therefore initiative will
pass to the opponents” of what was done earlier.
Domestically, many groups need
liberalization; “but on the whole the rapidly politicizing Russia needs only a
more open politics.” Putin will likely be one of the players in this process,
but he is one among many rather than the only one who matters. Consequently, “don’t expect ‘stagnation.’”
Rather, Pavlovsky concludes, “fasten
your seatbelts if you want to remain spectators” of the Kremlin games.
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