Start of Transition Exacerbates Divisions among Five Groups within Putin Elite, Stanovaya Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – The Putin elite may appear completely unified if one considers it from afar, but in reality and as the transition period starts, Tatyana Stanovaya says, it “is becoming ever more fragmented and conflict ridden.” In a 10,000-word essay, she lists five groups within that elite and how they are likely to interact.

            The first of these groups is Putin’s “suite,” his personal secretariat and guards who work with him on a daily basis. Some of them will undoubtedly continue to do so if he shifts to a new position say as head of the State Council. Others he will leave behind in order to ensure his influence and power (carnegie.ru/2020/02/27/ru-pub-81158).

            The second consists of “friends and comrades in arms,” who constitute the personal support group for Putin and a major source of cadres.  It consists of three sub-groups, the state oligarchs, the government managers, and private businessmen who inevitably work closely with the Kremlin leader.

            The third group includes “the political technocrats” who carry out state policy. “These are the main ‘workhorses’ and stabilizers of the system,” Stanovaya argues. They include such people as Sergey Kiriyenko, Sergey Shoygu, Sergey Lavrov, Anton Siluanov, and Elvira Nabiullina. They have been around for a long time but none of them in principle is irreplaceable.

            The fourth group is made up of “the preservers,” those who are distinct from the siloviki with whom they are sometimes confused because not all of them control force structures and unlike other siloviki, they are the articulators of “a force ideology.” That indeed is their principle task and the one that defines how they deal with others.

            And the fifth group includes the executors, “the cogs of the system,” who make sure that the trains run on time. Stanovaya devotes most of her article to a detailed description of what each of these groups most wants and why that puts them at odds with others, especially as the regime enters a period of transition.

            Often analysts suggest that the conflict is over access or property, she says. But in fact, much of the conflict is “ideological” -- and “this is a very serious challenge for Putin because he is the one who led the regime to a situation when the most active members of the elite are more radical than he is.”

            Stanovaya suggests that the divisions and fragmentation within the elite means that  no coalitions have been formed and that “each player acts on the bass of his own corporate or political priorities,” which in the nature of things are different and often lead to ambiguous outcomes or conflicts.

            “’The preservers’ are a special category, the expansion and ideological domination of which, especially given Putin’s well-known phrase about the liberal idea having exhausted itself, frighten practically all groups of influence.” And this means that the chief divide or split is ever more between the technocratic part of the elite which has been forced to remain politically neutral and “the preservers.”

            This conflict “between conservation and progress, repression and liberalization, pressure and dialogue, aggression and relaxation” is something the regime will have to deal with ever more frequently as the transition proceeds, Stanovaya says.  And she further argues that what is going on in foreign affairs will play “an important role” in the domestic changes in Russia.

            “The more conflict ridden the foreign milieu is and the worse relations with the West, the more advantages the preservers will get along with the moral right to demand a harshening of the regime and a struggle with foreign and domestic threats. At the same time, even in the hypothetical case of improved relations with the West, one shouldn’t count on a domestic thaw.”

            A lessening of international tensions won’t change “the vector toward conservation and the harshening of the regime although they may slow this process.”  According to Stanovaya, “Russia is entering a phase when political inertia can be violated only if there are internal cataclysms” caused by mistakes, the ignoring of real problems and alienation between the regime and the population.

            “But precisely such conflicts,” she concludes, “will inevitably lead to the formation of an initially weakly expressed but gradually ever more clearly formed non-Putin elite, the source of which most probably will be that very class of technocratic modernizers who are disappointed with the current course.”