Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 5 – Those at the top of the Russian political
pyramid are not interested in modernizing the country but only in ensuring that
the 2024 transition be smooth and secure for themselves, Denis Volkov and
Andrey Kolesnikov say; and they find equally acceptable both the scenario in
which Putin remains and the one in which he leaves but a successor is put in
place.
In a study published by the Moscow
Carnegie Center, the deputy director of the Levada Center and the head of
programs at Carnegie report the results of their interviews with those near the
top elite, others involved in training elite cadres, as well as people working
in business (carnegie.ru/2019/10/03/ru-pub-79975;
summarized at newtimes.ru/articles/detail/185972?fcc).
Those with whom Volkov and
Kolesnikov were unanimous in declaring that “changes for the better are
impossible.” They report that “none of our interlocutors had any illusions
about the readiness of senior people in the government for democratization of
the political system, liberalization of the economy and the modernization of
the state and society.”
At the same time, the two analysts
report, none of those with whom they spoke offered “apocalyptic scenarios of
revolution or the collapse of the country as a result of the ineffectiveness of
the system of state capitalism and political autocracy build over the last 20
years.”
There was complete agreement among
their interlocutors as well that to secure “’stability’” in the course of this
process of transition, “absolute loyalty” is more important than effectiveness
and that “all appointments will be agreed upon by the force structures,” Volkov
and Kolesnikov continue.
Loyalty is viewed as so important
because so many areas have to be managed directly rather than according to set
rules and also because of “the negative view of state bureaucrats by the
population, the fear of losing a high positiona nd reputation as a result of
unpredictable assessments, limitations on property, and incomes and pay lower
than those in business.”
“But ‘loyalty,’ in the opinion of
respondents, is creating a problem: bureaucrats feel responsible only to the
federal bosses and not to the citizens.”
To try to prevent this from becoming a source of popular anger, those in
the hierarchy resort to using statistics of various kinds to suggest they are
focusing on the population’s needs.
According to the two analysts, “the
Putin system seeks to preserve the social and political balance until the end
of the political cycle and beyond.” That system is based “on the presumption of
the all-knowing and all-powerful state and its bureaucracy and on the absolutization
of state control.”
It represents a kind of “’imagined’”
or collective Putin, one in which Putin himself makes only “a small percentage
of all decisions taken in the country” but others make the decisions that he
would if he were to address himself to their issues. Thus, Putin’s departure depends
on whether he can find someone who will continue his system and do nothing to
threaten him.
In short, “for the transition of power,
it is important for Putin to find by “2024 the very same kind of figure that he
himself was for Boris Yeltsin. But the problem for the elite is to arrange
things so that power and property will remain tied together and that they can
leave both to their children.
And they conclude, “the present
Russian political regime has assumed an identity: conservative values, imperial
consciousness, militarization, anti-Westernism, a special path on the basis of
mythologized ideas about history, and memory about the Great Fatherland War as
the basic idea of the nation and the method of legitimization of the
authorities.”
None of that is likely to change
either.
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