Russian Officials have Contracted Dangerous Disease of ‘Putin Dependence,’ Popov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, September 8 – Russian officials are increasingly unwilling to risk taking any independent action lest they get in trouble for it, Dmitry Popov says. Instead, they allow small problems to grow into bigger ones that will ultimately attract the attention of Vladimir Putin who will then intervene and solve them.

            This “Putin dependence,” the Moskovsky komsomolets journalist says, is dangerous not because Putin will do the wrong thing but rather because the number of small problems that will grow into large ones will increase and eat up all his time and energy (mk.ru/politics/2019/09/08/v-rossii-sformirovalas-putinozavisimost-chinovniki-razuchilis-deystvovat-samostoyatelno.html).

            With increasing frequency, problems arise which officials can’t or won’t do anything about until Putin personally intervenes, Popov continues, and the population can see what is going on. It is thus no secret that while they may be angry at the president, they are far angrier at the officials who are supposed to be doing their jobs but aren’t.

            On more and more occasions, Russians can see that nothing happens until Putin arrives and says “’See, I will do everything.’’” But in saying this, he is also saying something about those who are not – and this is “a catastrophe in fact” because Putin can’t be everywhere and do everything.  That is what the bureaucracy is supposed to be for.

            But neither Putin nor the bureaucracy is needed for everything, the journalist says. However remarkable it may seem and however much it may be “the exception which proves the rule, in his neighborhood people were able to build a playground for their children without the intervention of either.

            The Russian people are capable of more than that, of course, and they don’t need to wait for either the bureaucracy or Putin to give them permission to “breathe” or do what is necessary for them and their children to do so. They can act on their own, and the Putin dependency of the bureaucracy mean that ever more of them are thinking of doing so.

            That isn’t a form of protest. It is a necessary condition of life itself, now and in the future.