Monday, July 13, 2020

Division of Power in Russia Fundamentally Different than That in West and Must Be Gradually Changed, Pastukhov Says


Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 11 – It is often said that there is no division of power in Russia, but that is not strictly true. While there isn’t the division between legislative, executive and judicial authority that is the basis of political arrangements in the West, there is an essential division between the supreme power and the bureaucracy, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            The London-based Russian analyst says that during the recent debates on constitutional reform far too much attention has been devoted to the extension of Vladimir Putin’s time in office and far too little to two other vastly more important aspects of the Russian political system (mbk-news.appspot.com/sences/obnulenie-ili-delenie/).

            On the one hand, most have ignored that the 1993 constitution allowed Putin to achieve what he wanted in fact and that the new changes only bring the document into correspondence with what he is already doing. And on the other, most have failed to recognize that Russia really does need constitutional reform in order to address a fundamental problem in Russian life.

            That problem, Pastukhov argues, is this: What Russia needs is not the annulment of presidential terms but the establishment of the division of powers within the system so that Russia can follow Europe in “demythologizing and demystification” of the supreme ruler and embed him in the political system rather than allowing him to remain above it.

            All efforts to do that have failed because Russian attitudes are different than those which have emerged in Europe.  “If the attitudes a Russian has toward power as a whole for a long time have been utilitarian and rational (even with a clearly expressed anarchist tendency), those the majority of the population has toward the supreme ruler remain almost religious.”

            That ruler, regardless of his title, “is irrationally viewed simultaneously as the embodiment of the entire vertical of Russian power and as a figure separate from it and even opposed to it and thus a separate branch of power consisting of a single person,” the Russian analyst says.

            What that means is that there isn’t a division of powers in Russia like the one in Europe, but there is a separate of powers between the “supreme” ruler and the “ordinary” governmental machine.  For most Russians, “the supreme ruler” is on the one hand “’the boss of all bosses” and on the other their defender against these bosses.

            That in turn menas that “the country has always been ruled by ‘an eternal outsider,’” someone called in to rule to “compensate for the inability of the population to be run by its own “’effective managers.’” That is a major part of what Pastukhov calls “’the Russian matrix,’” and it must be demolished if Russia is to develop.

            But doing so is extremely difficult because the quasi-religious view of the population of their leader is a strong narcotic and weaning the Russian people off of it will inevitably be extremely difficult.  Simply writing a constitution isn’t enough because rulers will exploit this attitude of the population to rule as their predecessors did.

            And that will happen even if, as happened in 1917 and 1991, the old state is destroyed, Pastukhov argues. What is needed is a certain trick or perhaps better a kind of substitute narcotic like methadone to wean Russians off of the heroin-like narcotic of viewing the supreme leader as above the state.

            The London-based analyst says that in his view, perhaps the most useful way to do that is not to smash the state – because in that event whatever is written in the constitution, the old matrix will return – but rather divide the sacredness of the ruler by having two and not one person in charge as a step toward liberating Russia from this unfortunate limitation.

            “’The cult of personality,’ Pastukhov continues, “is not about Stalin and Stalnism but about Russia and ‘the Russian matrix.’ No lengthy and stable rule in Russia up to now has been ab le to do without this cult” because it provides a cushion of security for the ruler and allows him to base his power over the bureaucratic machine on popular attitudes.

            According to the analyst, “the simplest means of doing away with the cult of personality is to take the personality out of politics and leave only institutions” – or rephrasing Stalin, “’no personality and thus no problems with its cult.’” But that ignores the Russian tradition and every time it has been tried, it has failed.

            “The key to success of constitutional reform in Russian conditions is to find such ‘a formula of power’  which on the one hand destroys the basis of ‘the cult of personality’ as the basis of the foundation of Russian autocracy and on the other does not take it away instantly, something that can provoke chaos” which Russians will seek to end with another autocrat.

            Pastukhov says that he sees “only one method” of achieving that, “the cult must be divided in two.” And the place to begin in the search for that outcome is in changing the relationship between the president and the prime minister. Up to now, one has always been the shadow of the other rather than a self-standing center of power.

            The constitutional reform Russia needs must address that, giving each real powers but limiting those powers by the power of the other. “The president must become the guarantor of the Constitution but his role must be limited to this. All operational rule must be concentrated fully in the hands of the prime minister.”

            Russia needs a president not to rule the country but so that “the prime minister will constantly feel that behind his back stands ‘a political watcher’ ready at any moment to fulfill the functions of an arbiter. In general,” Pastukhov says, “the Russian coat of arms will acquire a new and contemporary meaning.”

            Organizing this will be difficult, the London analyst concedes, and he offers one set of suggestions involving elevating the Federation Council to the status of a State Council with the president at its head, giving the president the power of appointment but not of removal, and making the prime minister responsible to a majority in the Duma.

            “One way or another,” Pastukhov continues, “movement in this direction,” one that involves not “’annulling’” term limits but “’dividing’ authority” would make possible “serious progress” toward the kind of government that would ultimately end the sacred nature of power and thus the constant return to authoritarianism.

            But “unfortunately, Putin’s inability and unreadiness to move in this direction … and not his striving to hold on to power for live makes him a brake on historical progress in Russia.” It is quite possible as Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore to rule for life but not get in the way of significant movement forward. 

            What matters is not how long Putin is in office, the Russian analyst says, but what Russia is like when he exits the scene. The Kremlin leader’s choice so far shows that those will be “extremely sad” regardless of how many

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