Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 29 – Vladimir Putin’s
“post-modern” system is “the highest and last stage of post-communist neo-imperialism,”
one that consists of contradictory elements held together only by himself but
like the reign of Nicholas I has the capacity to last far longer than many
think, according to Vladimir Pastukhov.
On the one hand, the St. Antony’s
College historian says, Putin’s “political system has historically exhausted
itself.” But on the other, “in full
correspondence with the laws of dialectics, the flourishing of this system is
at the same time the culmination of the battles of the past and the prologue
for those of the future” (republic.ru/posts/77901).
At
present, Pastukhov continues, these two forces are in balance and maintained
that way by Putin and his actions, but precisely because both are present, the
system may be stable for a lengthy period but is fundamentally unstable in the middle
and longer term, with sharp changes of direction likely after the Kremlin
leader’s time.
According
to the St. Antony’s analyst, Russia in 2016 passed almost unnoticed from one
political era to another, to a time when “nothing historically significant will
occur and in principle should not occur.” Qualitative changes are excluded;
only quantitative ones that will build up pressures over time.
“In
such a state,” he says, “the system may remain for a very long time. In this
sense, indeed, the Putin post-modern world resembles ‘the bad apartment’ in
Bulgarkov’s novel where time stops” and the residents decide not to risk any
change, an arrangement that could last “for several generations” until its
contradictions make its survival impossible.
“If
you like,” Pastukhov continues, “there is no more precise historical analogy
for contemporary Russia than with ‘Nicholaevan Russia,’ meaning of course, that
of Nicholas I and not that of Nicholas II.”
It lasted a long time but then saw its basic features swept away by its
successor.
At
present, he argues, Putin can entirely reasonably repeat the words of Nicholas
I’s Count Benkendorf that “the past of Rsusia was glorious, its present more
than wonderful, and as concerns its future, it will exceed all imagining.”
“The authoritarian political regime established in Russia
is not directly threatened by anything, either from the inside the country or from
the outside.” And for Putin “at the present moment,” there is nothing he cannot
do, from “declaring Russia a monarchy” to invading more countries.
However, Pastukhov continues, there are two trends, the
worsening of the economy and the degradation of the bureaucracy, which mean
that his “prospects become less bright when we shift attention from immediate
threats to indirect and more distant ones” even though neither the one nor the
other can lead to any revolution by themselves.
They simply create “a general negative political background,”
one that is not a threat as long as the Kremlin ignores it. But, Pastukhov
says, “the powers that be are psychologically not ready to take that risk and
are seeking to respond in order to prevent something.” And such responses may “create the greatest
threat to the stability of the regime.”
One can understand this by considering an analogy with
the body’s immune system. If the immune system doesn’t work properly, it is
entirely possible that it will “create more problems for the organism than the
infection itself.” And that is exactly
what appears to be happening in Putin’s Russia.
“The powers that be are now like a fighter who, having
put all his opponents on the floor, in his loneliness struggles with himself.”
As a result, he is like “a two-faced Janus, at one and the same time a
preserver and a revolutionary,” a pattern that shows that “Russia today is living
through a transitional era” in which the old and the new coexist.
It is important to note, Pastukhov continues, that “the
line of the front between the new and the old hardly passes along the dividing
line of ‘the authorities and the opposition (system or extra-systemic). Very
often,” he writes, “both the authorities and the opposition in equal measure
embody the old world, just as Dovlatov’s ‘communists’ and ‘anti-communists’ do.”
Despite what many think, “Putin has more serious ambitions
than the simple desire to remain in power as long as possible … he wants to
make the regime he has created politically immortal, to secure continuity of
policy in the case of his departure from power, and to ensure himself and his clan
from political risks for a long time to come.”
“For that,” Pastukhov says, Putin needs more than the
signing of “the latest political marriage contract with the voters: he needs a
marriage with Russia based on love.” And
that goal means that he has begun “a completely different game.”
In it, Putin wants to use all the advantages he gained
from “the mobilization policy born in the counterrevolution of 2013-2014” and
at the same time escape from “the limitations which the mobilization agenda
imposed on the activity of his administration.”
Thus, Putin “wants to lower the amount of confrontation
with the West to a comfortable level and restore dialogue with the elites. As
before, he intends to completely control society with the help of a most
powerful repressive apparatus, but at the same time, he wants to present
society as his ‘partner’” that backs what he is doing.
In short, his current agenda is to “broaden the social
base of the regime by recovering the loyalty of ‘the educated class.’” This gives his policies an “eclectic”
pattern. On the one hand, he continues to “tighten the screws.” On the other,
he presents the prospect of a thaw in relations between the government and the
population.
For the present, Putin is “the pin” that holds this all
together. His goal is to institutionalize that, and it is going to be some time
before anyone can say whether he will succeed or whether the pieces so tightly “pinned”
together will not come apart when he leaves the scene.
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