Putin May Use Pandemic Crisis to Launch a Purge Just as Stalin Used Kirov’s Murder, Gallyamov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 1 – Compared to other personalist leaders, Vladimir Putin has not launched the purges that most such figures use to maintain themselves in power, Abbas Gallyamov says. But conditions are changing rapidly and the crisis arising from the pandemic may very well be the occasion for a Putin purge just as Kirov’s murder was for Stalin’s.

            Putin’s popularity has fallen in recent months, although the pandemic has led some to rally round him. That reversal of fortune is unlikely to last, however, once the disease passes and Russians are confronted with the hard economic times ahead, the political analyst says (mk.ru/politics/2020/04/30/gryadushhie-putinskie-chistki-kakimi-oni-budut.html).

            As any student of politics will tell you, Gallyamov continues, a leader’s power “depends on two things: the attitude of the mass voter to him and his status among the elites.” These two things are related and a decline in one can be compensated for by steps that boost the leader’s position with the other.

            But unpopularity with the population won’t become a threat unless there are divisions in the elites and some of the members of the latter are willing to make common cause against the leader.  Putin understands this, and he has benefitted from the fact that his high status among the elites is “connected not so much with his own achievements as with the history of his ascent.”

            Yeltsin made him president, Gallyamov says; and none of those in the current elite can aspire to the position of kingmaker in his case.  But Putin is also well aware of Russian history and what happened to Nikita Khrushchev, who was ousted when his popularity fell and elites felt that he had become a threat to them.

            “In general,” the analyst continues, “when indicators of public love fall, one must be concerned not only about mass protests but about conspiracies in one’s own entourage.”  With regard to Putin, it is still “difficult to imagine a classic putsch.” But what that means is that he needs to use a purge not so much to stop conspirators but “for other reasons.”

            According to Gallyamov, “gradually, step by step, the figure of Putin is being de-sacralized.” That opens the way to his becoming unpopular among the population and subject to challenges from within the elites especially if they feel threatened in some existential way. Putin has done this by his conflict with the West given that the elites prefer to live there.

            Those feelings could become the basis for a challenge to Putin’s power, but there is “yet another argument” for a purge, “last but by no means least,” the political analyst says.  The strategies Putin has used to generate support for himself are “close to exhaustion.”  People have had enough of his “foreign policy and patriotic rhetoric.”

            As a result, to reinsure his power, Putin is likely going to be driven to set the boyars against one another with a purge, attacking first those with any independent power base but not limiting himself to that. Such moves will be popular. And the end, “the consolidation of power is not so much about positive actions to strengthen one’s one influence as about the destruction of alternatives” especially among those nominally close to him as Brezhnev was to Khrushchev.

            Of course, “there needs to be an occasion for purges.” Stalin used the murder of Kirov. The coronavirus may present the same for Putin, and “the people will approve” if he moves against those who have taken unpopular decisions be they at the center or in the federal subjects far from Moscow.

            “In general, personalist regimes are characterized by a heightened level of rotation of elites.” Putin hasn’t done this. Instead, he has allowed the elites to remain in place with only rare exceptions. But “nevertheless, everything changes.” And there are signs now that he may be ready to launch a big purge.

            Among them: “the Mishustin cabinet is the first in one in which there is not a single one of Putin’s old friends.  That means there is no personal attachment, and that means there will not be any pity” about getting rid of its members or others as well.