Paul Goble
Staunton,
July 7 – No Russian elite has ever privatized the state into its own hands as
much as the current one which combines power, property, and the repressive apparatus,
depends on Vladimir Putin to hold things together, and wants to transfer this “property”
to its children, Lidiya Shevtsova says.
That
problem isn’t immediate, the Russian analyst says. Most of this elite is still
young enough that it can run things for another decade or more. But another problem
is: “Where is the guarantee that Putin will be able to remain leader for eight
to ten more years? There is no such guarantee” (echo.msk.ru/blog/shevtsova/2235796-echo/).
“The people are beginning
to rapidly tire of him,” and that creates a serious: how to select and impose “a
new Putin” to ensure that the “privatized” state can be handed on to the heirs
of the current rulers. That is the kind
of challenge that has sunk other authoritarian countries and could do the same
to Russia.
According to Shevtsova, “the ruling
corporation has every reason for being concerned. Our owners of the state are
coming to see a bitter truth: the system which they have raised up cannot have an
heir who could guarantee the transmission of ‘power and property,’” she says.
Even Putin who was given power did not save status of any but a narrow group of
the family.
Instead, he “created his own ruling ‘vertical,’”
something dictated by “the logic of personal power.” He was able to do this
without bloodshed not only because of the cowardice of the political class but
also by the superfluity of resources and technological means at his dispose for
“the strengthening of a new unified power.”
Today, “the situation has changed,”
Shevtsova argues. The same resources
aren’t there anymore. And that means this: whoever comes after Putin “will seek
legitimation of his power by placing all the blame for what is bad on his predecessor”
and “the more he will be involved in the old corporative elites, the more he
will do so to show is lack of debts before the past.”
That is how Khrushchev, Brezhnev,
Andropov, and Gorbachev all behaved. That is the logic of power: what can you
do?” But, she continues, “this logic forces one to doubt in the firmness of the
system of the repressive oligarchy which today has made the Russian state its
personal property.”
Here is the irony, she says. “The reproduction
of an autocracy with a new leader at its head is still possible – but only via
the destruction of the present regime along with all its pillars,” the very
people who want to continue to be the owners of the state and who have no interest
in being destroyed.
After Stalin, this process went
relatively peacefully because “the Soviet elite learned to gain legitimacy
without cruelty toward the families of the previous rulers. Today a different
situation has arisen: taboos and ‘red lines’ have been destroyed.” Those in
power one day may be in prison the next.
But the use of repression in this
way has a “boomerang” effect because it means that those who may be victims are
more ready to victimize their opponents when it becomes possible. “A peaceful
transfer of power requires from the ruling elite an understanding that it is
not necessary to set itself in concrete and try to extend itself forever.”
Indeed, Shevtsova argues, “the
Kremlin, cementing itself in power forgets that concrete has to be blown up,
and the explosion may blow apart not only the power arrangements but even the state
itself.” The efforts of the state corporation
to extend its life through its children shows the way it hopes to work, but the
logic of the situation is against it.
What should the children of the
elite do? Shevtsova asks rhetorically. In her view, they should “run” as soon
as possible and “better change their last names as well.”
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