Russian Ruling Clique Wants to Become ‘a New Nobility’ and Pass Power and Property to Its Children, Eidman Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, January 8 – “The current criminal clique which is now in power will try not only to preserve the current powers for decades but try to transfer it by inheritance to its children,” Igor Eidman says; but its members face serious obstacles in doing so, not least of which is that the entire project is dependent on how long Vladimir Putin remains alive.

            Twenty years ago, the Russian sociologist and commentator says, the main task of the ruling oligarchy was to ensure that it would continue to retain its property.  Putin was brought in as a guard, but not surprisingly, he and those he relied on to guard the property of others increasingly took it for themselves (rusmonitor.com/igor-ejdman-okruzhenie-putina-stroit-proekt-novogo-dvoryanstva-no-u-nih-nichego-ne-poluchitsya-v-dolgosrochnoj-perspektive.html).

            “Now,” Eidman continues, “a new task has risen: these ‘protectors’ and in part those who remain alive from the Yeltsin oligarchy need to transfer as an estate to their children not only property but power as well. They want to be the new nobility and almost don’t both to conceal this.” 

            But such a project depends on Putin staying alive: “the project of this ‘new nobility’ will not be able to survive him.” It will disintegrate “the day after his funeral” or possibly sooner if he gets Russia involved in a long and costly war or if the world falls into another economic crisis like the one Russia suffered in the 1990s.

            How long Putin survives politically, of course, is a question of offense and defense, of how strong the opposition is and how strong Putin’s defenses are. At present, there are “two Russias,” the young and vigorous one that a nation needs to survive who indicate their dislikes of Putin’s speeches and the older more passive one who tell pollsters they back the Kremlin leader. 

            If the former grows and the latter splits, then there could be a revolution; but at present, it appears that while the former is growing, divisions within the forces on which the regime relies to maintain itself are still minimal. In short, the police will still likely obey orders to disperse crowds.

If that changes, then the situation changes fundamentally. But until it does, the regime will be in a position to maintain itself for a long time to come, even if ever more people go into the streets and indicate their dislike of it, especially given the lack of an organized opposition that could challenge the regime. 

            According to Eidman, there is only a single extra-systemic political force: Navalny and his organization. Only he is able to organize mass demonstrations in several places at once. “This is a sign of the reality of opposition: what is an opposition if it cannot call into the streets tends of thousands of people?”

            But to really mobilize the young, he continues, the leader of the opposition has to offer some utopian goal. Navalny doesn’t, and therefore he has not captured the minds of the rising young. It is possible that a libertarianism of the left will arise, but who might be the leader of that is unclear.

            Such a leader might propose that individuals keep all that they earn but that they each gain a portion of the nation’s wealth rather than having it privatized into the hands of the few as at present, Eidman suggests. Norway and the US state of Alaska provide models for what that might look like.