Paul
Goble
Staunton, May 22 – The Kremlin has
long been “a certain board of directors of Russia Inc.,” political analyst Gleb
Pavlovsky says; but Vladimir Putin’s role has now changed. Earlier, he was the
all-powerful “executive director.” Now,
he is “more the honorary chairman of the board.”
In an interview with Fontanka’s
Irina Tomakova, Pavlovsky argues that “honorary chairmen of corporations as a rule
do not take decisions.” Instead, they serve as the public face of the unity of
the company. This is the role Putin plays: He is the portrait over the entrance
to the administration” (m.fontanka.ru/2017/05/19/154/).
What is important to understand, he
continues, is that Putin has not been replaced by anyone as “executive
director.” Instead, “the functions of
the executive director have been split up and distributed among several groups.”
Putin still sets the tone but others are making many of the decisions,
Pavlovsky suggests.
On various issues, different groups
are involved. “They unite in coalitions”
which vary widely in terms of power. But “a single system of taking decisions
has ceased to exist.” And because Russian officials are far from being
apolitical. They therefore take their
signals from those who make the decisions given that they come from “the
closest circle of the president.”
In Pavlovsky’s opinion, this is good
news because it shows that Russia is “moving toward the side of a normal
society because politicization is a normal thing. What was abnormal was the
many years of moving toward depoliticization.”
And that in turn is all coming out into the open, something that leads
to the spread of politicization.
“For us,” the commentator says, “this
will become the norm,” and Russians will discuss the variety of views on offer
from the various groups. These various
groups will attack one another even more than they are doing now, and that too
is something that means that Russia is moving in a “normal” direction.
In a comment on Pavlovsky’s remarks,
Valery Savelyev accepts most of the former’s arguments and agrees that “the
system of power in Russia is changing in a significant way and that Putin is no
longer a dictator” but rather something much less powerful (publizist.ru/blogs/4796/18646/-).
To the extent this is true, Savelyev
says, “2017 is very important for us.” It represent the final crystallization of
the power-political “construction which has been formed over the last 30 years
since 1987.” And in the coming decades, he says, “there will not be any
fundamental and radical changes in the construction of the system.”
Pavlovsky, the commentator says, “wants
an active, powerful and capable ‘executive director.”” But Savelyev says that “there won’t be any
such director anymore.” Instead, Russia
will become a more normal country with no one person making all the decisions
but rather decisions reflecting the struggle of interest groups with each
other, sometimes behind the scenes and sometimes competing for public support.
Russia “has had enough one-man
rulers,” Savelyev says. “It is time to get accustomed to a situation in which
power will take into account various opinions and interests.” There will always
be a place “not only for Putin” but for many others, even someone like Aleksey
Navalny and others not yet known.
Russia will no longer be a place
where one person makes all the decisions and everyone else obeys, even though
it is likely to remain true for some time that the authorities will not trust
the citizens and the citizens “will not believe the authorities.” Nonetheless,
Savelyev suggests, “a dialogue [between them] nonetheless will occur.”
“Putin today is not a dictator … and
there will not be dictators in Russia in the next decades,” the commentator
says. “We now have a different system of power, one that we must being to learn
how to use and realize all its possibilities.” And to the extent that such a chance
now exists, it is “an occasion for optimism.”
No comments:
Post a Comment