Russian Society will Continue to Degrade Even after Putin Leaves the Scene, Gudkov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Dec. 15 – Despite the hopes and even expectations of many that Russia will fundamentally change directions after Putin’s departure from power, Lev Gudkov argues that the degradation that Russian society has experienced under him will almost certainly continue long into the future.

            The senior sociologist at the Levada Center argues that there are two reasons for that. On the one hand, given the disappointments Russians have suffered from the failure of reforms in the 1990s, they do not see any real alternative to the authoritarianism they defer to (mostmedia.org/ru/posts/kak-vygljadit-rossyskoe-budushee-posle-putina-otvechaet-nauchnyi-rukovoditel-levada-centra-lev-gudkov).

            And on the other, Gudkov continues, “all preceding culture which we have had was a hypocritical adaption to the existing order and to a repressive state.” That state weakened somewhat in the 1990s, “but our people then wanted not freedom but an increase in consumption and wanted to live as in Western countries.”

            Even then, only a few organizations largely supported by grants from abroad wanted democracy; and as a result, “the main institutions of a totalitarian society, that is, the army, the KGB and the judicial system” remained in place even if they were renamed And the Russian population accepted that “as a given” rather seeing this as something that must be changed. 

            The Putin regime has done everything it can to encourage such attitudes, the sociologist says; and consequently, any change in the bureaucracy or the population is unlikely anytime soon. There is a chance, of course, “but it is weak” – and expecting that it will happen without some cataclysmic event is almost certainly an illusion.

            Indeed, he continues, Levada Center polls show that “80 to 85 percent of Russians do not want to take part in politics viewing it as ‘a dirty business’ or something for which they don’t have time.” Consequently, they are unlikely to mobilize and put pressure on the state for real change and will continue to defer to it, something Putin’s successors will exploit as he has.

            Given that, Gudkov concludes, “the most likely scenario is a gradual decline of Russia to the status of a regional power, weak and corrupt, a type of pariah state dependent on more powerful countries like China. In response, democratic countries will erect some kind of fence, a barrier, to isolate this disaster zone.”