Paul
Goble
Staunton, April 25 – Vladimir Putin’s
power vertical is based on the idea that those in it invariably care more about
those above them than about those below them and do what those above want even
if those below object. Centralizing appointments
and doing away with genuine elections are intended to ensure it continues without
problems.
In almost all cases, this
arrangement is holding. But two developments in Arkhangelsk suggest that the
power vertical there is not nearly as strong as it was and that officials
caught between the orders from above and demands from below are beginning to
pay far more attention to the latter than they did.
In response to the spreading protests
about Moscow’s plans to dispose of the capital’s trash in the northern parts of
the country, a court in Arkhangelsk has given approval to a group of citizens
who have been seeking to hold a referendum on this plan, thus overruling
official objections (activatica.org/blogs/view/id/6782/title/arhangelskiy-sud-dal-dobro-na-referendum).
And in what may be an even more important
response, officials at the local level have joined the population in protesting
the center’s plans to dump trash in their home areas without the approval of the
locals (vedomosti.ru/economics/articles/2019/04/23/800002-vivoza-musora-moskvi).
These are relatively small cracks.
The center can impede the referendum and ignore local officials, and it still
has unchallenged control over the police in the northern oblast, something it
demonstrated by deploying them against those demonstrating against the construction
of dumps in the north (mbk-news.appspot.com/region/siloviki-nachali-razgonyat-aktivistov-na-shiese/).
But even these small cracks are
worth noting because they represent something new and unexpected and may sooner
or later spread or become the occasion for emulation elsewhere in the Russian
Federation, thus presenting a challenge to the center against which it will
have ever fewer levers to use.
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