Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 12 – For the last
month, Muscovites have been taking part in growing protests against the illegal
actions of the authorities to prevent opposition candidates from being
registered. This rising tide of demonstrations in the Russian capital, Lilya
Shevtsova says, has undermined” the Kremlin’s self-defense mechanisms.
In a 3500-word interview with Znak
journalist Yevgeny Senshin, the Russian political analyst says that the Kremlin
is scrambling to find a new means of maintaining power in the face of this
challenge, while the opposition considers what steps it needs to take (znak.com/2019-08-12/mesyac_s_nachala_protestnyh_akciy_v_moskve_chto_budet_dalshe_intervyu).
What
matters, Shevtsova says, is not the growing size of the protests but the fact
that people are so angry that they are willing to come out even in the face of increasing
repression. “Each action today confirms
the new quality of the protests,” ones with more younger people and more from
the regions taking part.
According to the
Russian analyst, “the Moscow city council elections were never important.” The authorities
didn’t want the opposition to gain a victory and the Kremlin will never allow Navalny
and his immediate entourage to gain a foothold in legislative structures. But
in opposing the population, she says, “the Moscow authorities committed a
systemic error.”
They would have been far better off
with a few opposition figures in a legislative body that doesn’t matter than
with what they have provoked – “a massive political conflict” – one that
highlights the fact that “the autocracy has already for a long time already
been in a state of agony.”
“The collapse of the USSR,” Shevtsova
continues, “in peace time and in the absence of threats confirms that this
system does not have any prospects. But the agony of such constructions can
extend for decades. Now there are
already signs not of a crisis of the system but of its degradation and rotting.”
“Up until now,” she says, “the Kremlin
has balanced the interests of the siloviki and other oligarch corporations.” It
is unlikely that the former have passed out of its control: the problem of the
siloviki is in who controls them and how they are used. Fighting against them
is “the best present for those who want an escalation of state terror.”
“The authorities are moving toward a
dictatorship, possibly not a personal but a group one. The Kremlin has been preparing
itself for existence in a situation of limited resources and a rising tide of
dissatisfaction. We are seeing the consolidation
of a system which restructured itself after the annexation of Crimea and the
beginning of Western sanctions.”
The regime is turning to force because
its other means are “running out” and because the ruling class cannot continue
to exist if it remains within the boundaries of the law. “All this changes the former mechanism of
survival which included imitation and personal integration of the ruling class ‘in
the West.’”
The Kremlin doesn’t want any repetition of
any of Gorbachev’s reforms. Instead, it “is attempting to use ‘the summer of
protest’ to form a new defense mechanism,” one that is based on increased repression
justified by suggestions that those protesting against it are foreign agents,
an echo of accusations about Russian interference in elections in the West.
It is extremely difficult for the Putin
regime to acknowledge that “people have gone into the streets on their own
because they are dissatisfied. This must never be admitted. It is necessary to
find an external enemy who has tempted our simple-minded citizens! In short, we see an effort to replace ‘Crimea
is Ours’ with a new mobilization mechanism.”
The Putin regime is doing this, Shevtsova
continues, “because in Russia there is no chance either for a lengthy mass
terror like Stalin’s or for a stable dictatorship. There are no ideas which
would justify force of that kind and the dictatorial authority of the leader.” Neither
elites nor the siloviki will support that.
“We already live in a different country,”
and so the Kremlin is seeking yet again another way to legitimize itself and
retain power. But here is the crux of the current problem: “the system is
falling apart more rapidly than an alternative is taking shape,” a pattern that
allows the regime to remain in place and prevents the opposition from moving to
replace it.
The result of this conflict “will depend
on two factors: the presence in society of an organized alternative and the
readiness of part of the elite for dialogue with the opposition in the name of
national salvation,” Shevtsova argues. The
absence of clarity is sparking fear and concern among many.
But one thing is certain: the preservation
of the autocracy unchanged and forever is impossible. The system must be changed.
There must be an end to the super-presidentialist system in which the incumbent
has “greater powers than did the general secretaries of the communist party of
the Soviet Union.”
“But as Ukraine shows, escaping from an
authoritarian-oligarchic system is much more difficult than doing the same
thing from communism.” How to break the ties between power and property and how
to restore confidence in institutions are questions for which no one currently
has an answer.
Unfortunately, the West isn’t helping. It
has its own problems. According to Shevtsova, it “could influence Russia only
by one means, the cleaning out of its own stables and the blocking of the export
of corruption from counties like Russia.” At present, there is little interest
among Western elites in taking those steps.
And in conclusion, Shevtsova makes one
final point. “Concentrating on the fate of Vladimir Putin and ‘the Putinization’
of the conversation and of our politics prevents the discussion of more important
problems connected with the logic of a system which already does not depend on
the leader alone.”
All the babble “about ‘transition,’” she
says, “represents a failure to talk about current challenges and how people
should respond to them.”
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