Russian Politics, like Russian Climate, has Long Winters and Short Growing Seasons, Prokhorov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 11 – The history of Russia mirrors the Russian climate: it has long winters of forced inactivity followed by short springs and summers of intense work and change, economist Aleksandr Prokhorov says, in arguing that the current repressive winter will inevitably yield to a new “anti-authoritarian” spring.

              The economist who attracted attention more than 15 years ago with his book, The Russian Model of Administration, says that the intervening period has only reconfirmed his view that Russia proceeds in that way and left him optimistic about the future (znak.com/2019-10-10/na_smenu_putinskomu_zastoyu_idut_peremeny_intervyu_avtora_russkoy_modeli_upravleniya).

            “Russians live as it were in two dimensions, and to the extent the Russian system has remained vital over the course of a thousand years, this means that it is competitive. However, the latest period of stability is ending directly in front of our eyes, and this time around, the Russian model of administration is being subjected to serious reprogramming.”

            Ever fewer Russians are affected by the pendulum swings of the agricultural world; but culturally, most still shift from periods of activity to periods of passivity with striking regularity.  The changes of the 1980s and 1990s have inevitably led back to a period of passivity given that absorbing a market economy and parliamentary democracy so quickly was impossible.

            The Putin “’stability,’” Prokhorov says, is coming to an end and Russia is shifting into a new period of instability. Evidence of that is all around: declining standards of living, income inequality, demands for change, and growing competition in politics. “We still are only seeing the first sprouts of this,” but as Gorbachev observed, “the process has begun.”

            In the past, Russians’ desire for ensuring that everyone was equal served as the major driver for change, but not that principle of action is “being violated as never before in Russian history.” And what is more, Russians are largely acceptant of that new reality, a reflection of growing education and declining numbers of blue-collar workers.

            “Now, according to the Higher School of Economics,” the economist says, “88 percent of school graduates go on to higher education. All who are not in jail or the army are students. In school, they aren’t exploited, and in higher educational institutions, they aren’t either” and they go to work in offices not in plants or on the farm.

            If the traditional Russian desire for equal incomes still operated, he continues, “social cataclysms would already have occurred. But for the majority of young people, this principle has a theoretical character but practically doesn’t operate.”  And related to that, there is no longer the old basis for social solidarity, something that reduces the role of popular activism in change.

            Another reason for the current passivity, Prokhorov says, is that “the stomach has a long memory” and those who benefited from the dramatic increase in incomes under the first decade of Putin’s rule remember and are prepared to forgive far more than those without such memories or experiences.  The number of the latter is growing, making the end “inevitable.”

            At the same time, he continues, it isn’t required that such independent people make the revolution. It may be made by those who are part of the state structure as happened in 1991.  One thing, however, will remain true: Russians will still want to “catch up and surpass” Europe and the West.

            However, thanks to the Internet and travel, there has been a change in this too. “No one idealizes the West … everyone understands that to live in the Western way one must study more seriously and work better. But the West with its incorruptible powers, transparent elections, independent courts, and non-sadistic police is considered the norm.” 

            The biggest change ahead, however, is that the way in which the Russian state has produced change must itself be changed. What is required now is not for the state to organize everything but for the state to get out of the way so that others can act.  That change will be difficult for many to make.

            Thus, Prokhorov continues, the changes will be fundamental, but “the amplitude of our shifts will gradually be reduced. The last, Gorbachev-Yeltsin modernization was comparable to the previous ones but occurred in a vegetarian way without big blood. And the Putin stagnation has taken place so softly that many do not feel any stagnation.”

            The coming upsurge and succeeding stagnation will be less dramatic than in the past, “in the first instance under the influence of globalization and world experience.”  And consequently, Prokhorov concludes with optimism, “we have the conditions for the establishment of a society of the Western type” for the first time.