Paul
Goble
Staunton, January 24 – Russian
realities are changing more quickly than the understanding of them is, Vladimir
Pastukhov says; and nowhere is this phenomenon occurring more quickly than with
regard to the role of “the friends” of Vladimir Putin at the top of the
political pyramid.
Over the last several years, the St.
Antony’s College Russian expert says, “the political role of the so-called
close circle” of Putin’s friends “has fallen continuously” even as the role of
key parts of the bureaucracy has grown, a development that has not made the
Russian regime “more progressive but rather just the reverse” (republic.ru/posts/89091).
That
is because, Pastukhov argues, “the growth of the influence of the bureaucracy
has led to a situation where the drivers of the political development of Russia
are the mistakes of the majority rather than the egoistic interests of the minority.” In this, “Russia [again] has made two steps
back without making one forward” and become “a hostage of archaic appeals.”
In
short, he continues, “the Russia of the beginning of the Putin administration
and the Russia at the concluding phase of it (in the constitutional sense) are
two different countries,” a reflection of the fact that the Kremlin leader has
been able to put in place “a mechanism for the realization of his personal power
… by returning [the country] to its traditional course.”
When
Putin unexpectedly became president, “the bureaucratic environment in which he
found himself was predominantly hostile … Had Putin not taken extraordinary
measures to strengthen his personal power, in the best case he would have remained
up to now a puppet in the hands of several financial clans.”
But
Putin wasn’t willing to agree to that, and to escape that fate, Pastukhov says,
he “acted in the manner traditional for Russia: he created a parallel system of
power from people personally devoted to him and on whom he relied for the
resolution of any issues.” That is how
Russian rulers have always acted.
In
such a system, “the state bureaucracy doesn’t disappear, but it is reduced to a
secondary and technical role, [while] the political and control functions are
concentrated in the hands of a narrow circle of those close to the chief of
state.” That builds the power of the
ruler, but it has “its own shortcomings.”
Most
importantly, the St. Antony’s scholar says, it can mean that the ruler remains
for a long time only “first among equals” rather than his own man and thus is
forced to put up with many things from this clique he would prefer not to. And that has led Putin to seek a way out both
by forming “a union” with the people and by putting his own stamp on the bureaucracy.
“This is a [death] sentence” for
those in the inner circle, Pastukhov continues.
He doesn’t need them as he did earlier but can use the bureaucracy
against them to reinforce his power and weaken theirs. That doesn’t make his entourage irrelevant,
but it increasingly it means that they will keep their wealth but be excluded
from politics.
The new arrangement means that “the
Russian power will become more regular” and that “the spontaneous autocracy is
being replaced by an organized one.”
That shift has long-term consequences, but they won’t “always be positive
and progressive” because “the mentality of the Russian bureaucracy can be no
less odious and dangerous” than that of the nouveau
riche.
As a result, two apparently
contradictory trends are likely: Putin will be able to make decisions without
the constraints he has been operating under, but he will be affected if not reined
in by the bureaucracy than he has been, and especially the military and
security portions of it.
“Putin as has been the case and even
more than before will decide everything,” Pastukhov says. “But the defining influence on his decisions
will gradually begin to be exerted not so much by informal advice and
recommendations of the members of his inner circle … than by the formal
position of the numerous ministries … and other bureaucratic institutions.”
According to this analyst, “that
means that the decisions of the president to a significant degree will depend
not so much or at least not only on the personal struggle of various groups of
his comrades on arms as on the institutional competition within the
bureaucratic apparatus” of the Russian state, especially between the force
structures and the civilian bureaucracies.
For Russia historically, the former
have been more important than the latter; and that is again true with Putin. (“The political role of the civilian
bureaucracy is manifested only in periods of crisis when the system requires reconstruction.”) But the siloviki are divided too between the
army and the police in the broad sense.
Consequently, Pastukhov suggests, “a
choice in favor of this or that political strategy often depends on which of
the two force blocks turns out to be politically dominant at any given time.” Before the Crimean Anschluss, the military
had moved into this role, “and they were able to convince” Putin that the
security of the country required that action.
Putin’s friends and the police certainly
did not see Crimea as an unqualified victory, but the military did because they
could see that they would “only win” if Putin moved in that direction. “Their
influence would begin to grow at unprecedented rates,” the military industrial
complex would expand, and they would gain the upper hand over Putin’s inner
circle.
“The growing role of the bureaucracy
in general and the military bureaucracy in particular with a high degree of
probability will lead not to liberalization but to the further growh of
isolationism, monopolization in the economy, the tightening of the screws in
politics, a lack of balance in social policy … and to the further
militarization of public consciousness.”
That will be the case, Pastukhov
says, because “the military bureaucracy in Russia is the bearer of one of the most
stable archetypes of Russian reactionary thought. From generation to generation, it has
reproduced the archaic view” of security as based on “the defense of the perimeter”
rather than anything else.
The centerpiece of this conception
is “an understanding of security as the defense of the external border” and the
related notion that the further out the border is pushed away from Moscow, the
more secure Russia is. “Such a
conception is one of the causes” that Russia has and continues to seek to
expand “in all directions.”
“The revival of the political role
of the Russian bureaucracy and above all of the military bureaucracy recreates
a situation in which the country is again under the sway of its former
misconceptions and prejudices,” Pastukhov says.
And that conception is now dominating Putin’s calculations.
The departure of Putin won’t put an
end to this by itself. “A new Russia
will begin … with new thinking” on this point. Gorbachev tried but failed in
carrying this out. But “in order to survive, Russia must rethink its place in the
world, reject pretensions to exceptionalism, find a new non-imperial format,
rely on allies other than the army and fleet, and fit itself into a worldwide
division of labor.”
“All this will require much greater effort
than the struggle with Putinism,” Pastukhov says. “Sooner of later Putin will
leave: nature will take care of that.” But if the conception he reflects now
isn’t changed, “if his successor begins again to defend ‘the perimeter,’” it
won’t matter if he is a committed “democrat and liberal.”
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