Putin’s ‘Consensual Democracy’ Quite Adequate for ‘Totally Passive’ Society, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Dec. 31 – Vladimir Putin was chosen to be Yeltsin’s successor because he shared the disappointment Russian elites had in both democracy and the idea of the rule of law and recognized that he and they could rule the country without the direct participation of the population that commitment to those ideas would require, Vladislav Inozemtsev says.
    At the end of 1999, the Russian commentator continues, “the masters of the country” installed Putin and introduced in place of electoral democracy a “consensual” form (moscowtimes.ru/2024/12/31/soglasitelnaya-demokratiya-ili-glubokoe-ponimanie-rossiiskogo-obschestva-a151736).
    According to Inozemtsev, “consensual democracy is most likely a unique Russian invention, a modernization of the Soviet system in the spirit of the 21st century. In it, a narrow circle of the ruling nomenklatura makes a personnel choice” and then this choice is “confirmed during a national or regional plebiscite.”
    Putting this new system in place took “almost two decades,” the commentator continues; but it moved the country “from the imitation of democratic processes within the framework of a single political course toward an increasingly open rejection of all those who disagree with a policy of terror against ‘enemies of the people,’” just as the Soviet system did.
    But consensual democracy differs from its predecessor in two important ways. On the one hand, it did not involve a complete denial of basic freedoms and rights; and on the other, it “remains a democracy since elections are not eliminated or reduced to voting for a single candidate as was the case in communist times.”
    What matters most, Inozemtsev argues is that consensual democracy is “a form of political regime which is adequate to an absolutely passive society, one fully weighted down by its own problems and not wishing to interfere in political processes.” Russians haven’t acted and won’t act as Belarusians and Ukrainians have to the results of such elections.
    “Of course,” the commentator acknowledges, “such a system is unstable and transient; but it is unstable and transient in exactly the same way that the Soviet system was: it can quickly fall apart but only if the impulse in that direction is given by its creators and beneficiaries” rather than by the population or in any other situation.”
    That justifies the following conclusion, Inozemtsev says. “Those who a quarter of a century ago thought about how to keep a not yet fully privatized country under their stable control found the optimal solution, one based on a fairly deep understanding of the Russian people and how much indifference those in power can count on.”
    This understanding of those who installed Putin was “significantly deeper than that of all the representatives of the Russian opposition … who hoped that the people would rise to their defense.” In fact, as the longevity of the Putin regime shows, “Russian society was and remains only ‘an appendage to power,” something that the responses of Russians to Putin’s war confirms.