Last Political Institution Left Standing in Russia – Putin’s ‘Direct Line’ TV Show – Increasingly Ineffective, Martynov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, June 30 – Vladimir Putin has systematically destroyed all the normal institutions of government, leaving him and the Russian people with only one of his own invention, Kirill Martynov says. That is the annual direct line program, but with the passage of time, that institution too is increasingly ineffective in legitimizing his rule.

            “Now between the president and the people is nothing besides the Direct Line program and the scorched earth of Russian politics,” the political editor of Novaya gazeta says. But Putin likes the idea of ruling the country “without intermediaries and institutions” that he favors having governors organize similar programs (novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/06/30/liniia-v-nikuda).

            What all this means, Martynov continues, is that Russians must be “ready to become the first country in the world where public policy and administration is conducted exclusively in the regime of television shows,” ones in which Putin and his appointees will be able to talk about things they want to and seek to avoid responsibility for things they don’t.

            Putin used this year’s show to talk about all kinds of things, like why war wouldn’t break out if Russia sank a NATO ship, why plans to travel abroad are sending up prices for vacations at home, and which climate change may leave the earth as uninhabitable as Venus. But when it came to immediate issues of concern, he was less forthcoming.

            The Kremlin leader avoided taking responsibility for the pandemic and refused to say whether there would be more restrictions. If there are, he continued, these will be the fault of the governors who have failed to solve the problem any other way. That these officials are his appointees went unmentioned.

            But much of the time of this year’s show was not directed at cosmic issues or at avoiding immediate political ones but rather to talk about such critical ones as whether there will be a successor – of course, eventually there will be – and what Putin will do in retirement. He said he’d do nothing but “sit on the stove.”

            The program did send two important messages, although it isn’t entirely clear whether they were intended. On the one hand, it showed that “the president does not have any more public opponents or people to talk to besides the Russian people as a metaphysical essence” concerned only with being one with their leader, himself.

            And on the other, it highlighted the fundamental reality of Russian political life now, Martynov says. Putin “no longer promises anything or makes plans. It seems that in his eyes, we already live in the best of all possible worlds” -- and nothing more is needed but more of the same.