Amendments Make United Russia Party as Permanent as Putin, Milin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, July 10 – Everyone recognizes that the package of amendments approved on July 1 make Vladimir Putin ruler for life; but what is less widely recognized, commentator Dmitry Milin says, is that these same amendments have made his United Russia Party a permanency as well, thus making it ever more like the CPSU in Soviet times.

            That creates a serious problem, he argues, because any party that remains in power for a long time without any experience of being in opposition or even seriously challenged will attract careerists and the corrupt and become ever less useful as a party whatever its utility as a management tool (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5F06DBEC7F76E).

            Or to use Viktor Chernomyrdin’s lapidary expression, which Milin does, “Whatever party you create in Russia, it will turn out like the CPSU,” and suffer from all the shortcomings of that institution. According to the commentator, this is a systemic problem and deeper than the issue of whether Putin will remain in power or not.

            Neither parties which are always in power nor parties which are always in opposition are in fact anything more than simulacra of political parties elsewhere. The first become a collection of officials who have power but no sense of responsibility; the second of people who are good at criticizing but lack experience with ruling and often aren’t ready to assume office.

            For United Russia to avoid that, a situation must be created in which it will lose power and go into opposition to a government organized by any other party, Milin says. Then, its careerists will fall away, seeking preferment from those who have power and the party will learn to be responsive and responsible to the population.

            That won’t be easy to arrange because those who have power now won’t want to give it up for any period of time and those who might come to power would not have a deep enough bench of their own supporters capable of filling key positions.

            If such an opposition did come to power, in fact, and chose loyalists over competent people, then “we would obtain the reproduction of Putinism, of ‘a party of friends’” who might end by behaving in an even more grotesque form than United Russia has in recent years, the commentator suggests.

            Consider for a minute whom Navalny or someone else might make prime minister or the ministers of internal affairs, foreign affairs, defense of finances. “If for example he made the head of Rosneft or Gazprom one of his close allies, “can you be certain that such an individual would take less and work better than Miller or Sechin?”

            “I am afraid,” Milin concludes, “that our problem is not who will replace Putin.” Rather it is how Russia will escape from being ruled by a party of “’the friends of power.” As far as one can tell, “we as a country are still not prepared to do that.”