Paul Goble
Staunton,
November 30 – The collapse in the approval ratings Vladimir Putin enjoys among
Russians has attracted widespread attention, but one aspect of that has not –
and now a Levada Center poll has highlighted what may be the most dangerous
aspect of this for the Putin system: Russians no longer approve Putin more than
they do their governors.
As
long as Putin’s rating was higher than other federal officials or the heads of
the federal subjects, its fall was of relatively little significance. Putin
might be becoming less popular, but compared to all other officials and political
leaders, he still had a large lead and thus could claim a kind of comparative
advantage.
Now that has
changed. Today the Levada Center reported and various news outlets noted that “the
level of approval for Putin has fallen to the level of that of governors” (levada.ru/2018/11/29/odobrenie-institutov-vlasti-7/
and politsovet.ru/61105-uroven-odobreniya-putina-upal-do-gubernatorskogo.html).
That development
is all the more fateful because while Putin’s rating has fallen, the support by
the Russian population for their governors has increased, a shift that means
many Russians may not be more inclined to look to the heads of the federal
subjects rather than to the Kremlin leader as the most effective people in the
political system.
That has at
least two consequences, either of which could prove very serious to the future
of the Putin system. On the one hand, at
least some governors are likely to view this as providing the basis for a more
aggressive stance toward the center, something that the Kremlin now has a
smaller margin of error to counter.
And on the other
hand, it is not beyond anyone’s imagination that some federal politician or a
major regional one for that matter may decide to try to organize a regional fronde against Putin, something a few
commentators have speculated about but that now has a far stronger basis than
ever before.
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