Putin Regime is a ‘Decomposing Plebiscitary State,’ Yudin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 2 – “Russia has a plebiscitary state,” Grigory Yudin, a sociologist at the Moscow Higher School of Social and Economic Sciences, says; and it is now “at the sage of decomposition” both for reasons that are common to all such states and for those which are specific to the Putin regime.

            “The common problem of all regimes of a plebiscitary type is that they are constructed on the idea that it is necessary too appoint someone at their head and that further, the entire apparatus, including the parliament, any legislative organs and all organs of operational administration will be subordinate to him” (echo.msk.ru/programs/personalno/2455735-echo/).

            All these organs will “simply work as a bureaucracy,” the sociologist continues, an idea that “sounds very attractive but that ends in one and the same way, with the quality of this bureaucracy falling very sharply. And people begin to look in a different way at the top man who really has all the power and think only about this.”

            Over time, the top man becomes trapped by the bureaucracy he has created and that sends him laws and decrees which he might not have issued on his own but which he increasingly has no option but to agree to lest by rejecting what those below him are doing he call not only them but also himself into question.  Putin now faces that dilemma, Yudin says.

            Another factor is at work as well, the sociologist continues. “Russia is a depoliticized country” in which ever more people do not care what the regime is doing and live apart from it, something that constitutes “the murder of public policy” because all real decisions are made not with input from the population but behind the scenes in the presidential administration.”

            Such a situation can last only so long, Yudin suggests. Over time, people will want a voice and they will use whatever means they can to express it and reestablish a kind of public politics. That is what is happening in the city of Moscow now, where “a unified democratic opposition” has emerged.

            “Not all the people can agree with one another,” the sociologist observes. “But this in the present case now is in general not important. What is important is that it had taken shape. It has declared itself as an independent political subject.” And that represents a challenge not just in these elections but to the system as a whole.

            And that impact may occur faster than anyone expects because “not only Putin himself but all of his elite are in the nature of things not fitted to speak normally with people.” Russians can see this and that too is accelerating the decomposition of the plebiscitary state that the Kremlin leader put in place believing it could last at least through his lifetime.