Paul Goble
Staunton, July 1 – One of the useful qualities of Vladimir Putin’s Direct Line programs was the way he used them to present himself as an all-knowing defender of the people against the depradations of the bureaucracy and thus establish an almost magical link between himself and the Russian people, Tatyana Stanovaya says.
But this time around, the Moscow analyst says, the reverse happened. Putin didn’t denounce the bureaucracy but counted on its members to solve the country’s problems, and as a result, he “transformed himself into a faceless collective Putin,” something that threatens his hitherto unique popularity (carnegie.ru/commentary/84882).
By standing above the bureaucracy as he did in the past, Putin could play to the longstanding Russian trope of “the good tsar and the bad boyars.” But now, by allying himself with the bureaucrats, he risks becoming one of them as far as the people are concerned and thus now their friend but their enemy.
The stage was set even before Putin began taking questions when the organizers announced that some 500,000 appeals from the population had already been dealt with by the bureaucracy. But it was intensified when Putin did not give clear answers to people’s questions or lash out at officials about whom they were complaining.
Instead, Putin this time around retreated into saying that “we’ll see,” as if he couldn’t make the instant and magical decisions he made earlier and instead of coming down hard on bureaucrats limited himself to reassigning them and making them rather than himself responsible for decisions on issues like vaccination.
By avoiding direct responsibility and hiding behind the bureaucracy, the Kremlin leader clearly hoped to escape criticism. He may have succeeded in that, Stanovaya conceded. But he lost far more because he now is no longer the unique center of decision but part of the bureaucratic machine, a much reduced role.
Putin behaved in a more accustomed way when speaking about foreign policy or about his own personal interests, but neither of these things matter as much to ordinary Russians as they did earlier and the contrast between how he dealt with them and how he dealt with things which matter to them was all the stronger because of that, the Russian analyst says.
But in addition to this shift in Putin’s role as shown in the Direct Line program, he did deliver three important pieces of news. First, in talking about himself and the regime, the Kremlin leader made it clear that he is thinking more and more about leaving the political scene even if he has no date for doing so.
Second, he showed that he identifies not only with the bureaucracy but with United Russia and the Duma, declaring that he was the founder of the first and has complete confidence in what the legislature has been doing. Putin sees no need for change in either, and that sets the terms for the upcoming Duma elections.
And third, Putin talked about putting deputy prime ministers in charge of some regions or federal districts, an arrangement that would appear to make the existing presidential plenipotentiaries irrelevant (to the extent that they are not simply given deputy prime ministerial titles) and possibly lead to new attempts at the amalgamation of regions.
“There is nothing surprising that with the passing of time, any ruler loses his connection with society and becomes ever more alienated from it and more dependent on his own entourage,” Stanovaya continues. Thus, “Putin in this natural way is ceasing to be a genuinely popular leader as was the case in his first terms and right after Crimea.”
That means that Direct Line programs are ever more difficult to organize and aren’t playing the role they did earlier. “Formulations turn out to be unsuccessful; emotions, insincere; and jokes equivocal or worse.” But this loss of a link between the ruler and the ruled is “the most serious danger for the regime,” but it doesn’t appear the regime understands this yet.
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