Window on Eurasia: Russians Divided on How and How Much Putin has Mattered

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 7 – When Boris Yeltsin named Vladimir Putin his successor almost 13 years ago, the question in many minds in Russia and the West was “Who is Mr. Putin?” Now, as the incumbent president celebrates his 60^th birthday, most of them are trying to define his place in history by asking “What if Putin had not existed?”

            St. Petersburg’s Neva 24 portal asked that question of a number of well-known people and reports today that while they were divided, most of these people say that “the personality of Vladimir Vladimirovich had not played a large role. But nonetheless he had turned out better than a complete idiot” (www.neva24.ru/a/2012/10/07/chto_bi_bilo_esli_bi_ne_b/).

            Mikhail Borzykin, head of the Televizor Group, gave “an extremely negative” assessment of Putin’s role, the news service said.  “We had a chance at the beginning of the 2000s to move progressively toward the civilized world, but we missed it and instead mounted a horse which has carried usat a gallup” toward “a neo-Soviet reality.”

            That doesn’t surprise him, Borzukin added. “From the very beginning it seemed to me that to appoint to the presidence a KGB officer, a spy who is essentially a destroyer rather than a builder was dangerous. That’s how it has turned out.”

            Andrey Stolyarov, a futurologist, gave a more neutral evaluation, the portal continued.  “However strange it may sound,” he suggested, “any other literate man would have coped in [Putin’s place] more or less the same.  Of course, it a complete idiot had come, it would have been much worse.”  But almost anyone “would have achieved approximately the same results.”

            That is because, Stolyarov argued, that by the early 2000s, the impact of earlier reforms had become obvious and because rising oil prices provided Russia with “a golden rain.”  “In such a situation, it wasn’t necessary to do anything. The main thing was not to commit an obvious stupidity.”

            Boris Kagarlitsky, the head of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements, gave a similar response. “People make history but within circumstances that are objectively given. If there hadn’t been Putin, a lot would have been different. But he did not create the situation and the social-political order” within which Russia existed and he worked.

            “On the contrary,” Kagarlitsky said, “this order found Putin.”

            Ilya Stogov, a writer, went even further. “The absence of Putin in Russian history wouldn’t have changed anything.” That is something that his opponents don’t understand and instead stupidly make as their only program “’Putin Must Go,’” instead of recognizing that the system must be changed.

            “In 1999-2000, an epoch changed. The Yeltin decade had to end somehow. If Stapashin had come, it would have ended as well but it would have been still more ridiculous because Stepashing is an idiot. If it had been Kiriyenko, it would also have been the same but with a far eastern accent because he is a kendo master.”

            Aleksandr Dugin, the Eurasian theorist, told Neva24 that “the savior of Russia in fact was not Vladimir Vladimirovich but his predecessor” because Yeltsin chose Putin. Had he chosen almost anyone else from “the liberal camp … then Russia would have disintegrated.” The North Caucasus would be gone and “probably the Middle Volga as well.”

            But “having fulfilled” the task of ending the disintegration of Russia “during the first two years” of his presidency, Dugn argued, “Putin stopped and the last ten years of his administration became a new period of stagnation. If Putin had not been there in those years, we would have returned to the 1990s.

            “With Putin, the existence of Russia was guaranteed,” Dugin added, “But what kind of existence is another question.  Today Putin is the synonym for the existence of Russia. But he is not the synonym of our historical existence.” Only if he can find a way to that end will be pass into history as “a great Russian ruler.”

            Interfax provides comments about Putin and Russia by two other Russian political analysts who supplement the comments just given, Gleb Pavlovsky, the president of the Effective Politics Foundation, and Igor Yurgens, director of the Institute of Contemporary Development (www.interfax.ru/politics/txt.asp?id=269540).

            Like many of those Neva24 surveyed, Pavlovsky suggested that Putin is often given credit for simply using the income from high oil prices to win support, although mor than many of them he gives the president full credit for bringing peace to the Caucasus and getting Russia out of a war there.

            During his first two terms and during the Medvedev presidency when Putin ran things as prime minister, Pavlovsky continues, Putin had many achievements. But now, the situation is changing, and Putin must change Russia in order to be successful.He must end “the deformation of Russian business” and end the rentier nature of the wealthy.

            It is not clear that Putin understands these challenges or has a program or the personnel to deal with them, Pavlovsky argues. “a half year after the elections, he doesn’t know on whom to rely. He doesn’t know what program to propose.” He is moving slowly or not at all, “and dragging out this pause is very dangerous.”

            Yurgens, for his part, suggests that on this birthday, Putin is “under strong pressure from groups” who want Russia to move backward toward the 19^th century.  Whether they will succeed is not clear, but the pressure for “Orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality” is today very, very strong.”

            Putin can change course but where he will go next is unclear. He has gone through four different incarnations, Yurgens suggests. In the first years he presented himself as a European liberal. Then, from 2004 to 2008, he was a statist. After 2008, he “took a pause for himself and the country.” Now, he is again under pressure to manifest his conservatism and traditionalism.”

            “The stability which Putin chose at one time now is illusory,” Yurgen says. “The president must choose his goals and strategy.”  He can be “a leader of progress, or he can maintain the so-called stability or he can become the leader of regression.” If the latter, “the final result [for him and for Russia] is predetermined.”

           

Window on Eurasia: Russia Needs More Skilled Immigrants Because 1990s Generation is So Small, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 5 – The Russian generation born after the demise of the USSR is so small that Russia will need to attract more highly skilled personnel from abroad over the next decade and not just unskilled laborers as has been largely the case over the last decade, Moscow employment experts say.

            That will spark competition not only within Russia but also between it and its neighbors, a competition in which the migrants Moscow wants to attract will have comparable skills and salary expectations to their Russian colleagues, according to Gleb Lebedev, research director at Moscow’s HeadHunter Firm (www.rosbalt.ru/business/2012/10/04/1042459.html).

            But that is only one of the changes the entrance of the new Russian generation will face and produce writes Vladislav Kuzmichev of the Rosbalt.ru news agency.  They will  confront a situation in which the Russian economy has lost more than eight million jobs over the last six years and one in which immigrants are already sending home 10 billion US dollars a year.

            The careers of these new workforce entrants, Vladislav Zhukovsky, an analyst at Rikom-Trust, adds, will thus depend critically on their training and choice of specialization. Employment in most sectors is down, “and only in the system of government administration, financial speculation and trade has there been a growth in new work places.”

                Between 2002 and 2011, the Russian GDP grew 51.7 percent, while the value added by the financial sector grew 371.5 percent, agriculture only 16.9 percent and the processing industry 34.6 percent.  All this, Zhukovsky says, “demonstrate the failure of the ideas of modernization and the development of the scientific-technical potential” of the country.

            “With the exception of a number of specialities,” he adds, “the new generation of graduates born between 1990 and 2000 may repeat the fate of their predecessors.” But perhaps even more than the latter, they will have to adapt to “the realities of [Russia’s] ‘pipeline economy,’” which needs only 25 to 30 million workers, not the 80 million currently there.

             But because that “pipeline economy’” needs more skilled than unskilled workers, Lebedev suggests,  the generation born in the 1990s will have some advantages – greater computer literacy, knowledge of foreign languages, and a desire to succeed quickly – but other disadvantages given their number if they lag in those skills relative to potential immigrants.

            Most of the ethnic conflicts in Russian cities over the last 20 years have arisen because of the influx of often unskilled workers from Central Asia and the Caucasus.  But the small size of the generation of new Russian entrants to the workforce could spark a very different kind of ethnic conflict, one not among workers but among skilled professionals.

           

            Such a new pattern of ethnic conflict almost certainly would have three consequences, each of which might be far more difficult for Moscow to deal with than the so-called “everyday” clashes now.  First, it could trigger more ethno-nationalism among educated Russian elites, prompting Russian leaders to play the nationalist card even more than they do at present.

            Second, it could exacerbate relations between Moscow and its neighbors. Just as service in the Soviet and Russian military did not integrate people of different ethnic groups as many expected but rather triggered greater ethnic hostility, so too highly skilled immigrants might quickly return home with a very different message that Moscow would like.  

            And third, this pattern could mean that the often leaderless non-Russian immigrant workers of today could come to see the educated immigrants as their allies against ethnic Russian hostility, a combination that could lead to more intense ethnic and class conflicts in Russian cities in the future.

Window on Eurasia: Administrative Borders inside Russian Federation Create Problems for Residents

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 5 – Since the end of the USSR, many analysts have focused on how administrative borders when transformed into international ones have created problems for those who live alongside them. But they have ignored the way in which administrative borders within the Russian Federation and any change in them create problems as well.

            In most cases, these problems involve little more than confusion in the minds of the population about which officials they must appeal to, but particularly when borders – oblast, municipal or other – are changed or when it involves local officials in negotiations with Moscow bureaucracies, the situation has the potential to become more problematic.

            Writing on the “Krestyanskiye vedomosti” portal today, Anatoly Yershov, a Nizhny Novgorod journalist, suggests that a regional law passed by his oblast’s legislative assembly concerning border changes within that region and between it and Vladimir call attention to those risks (agronews.ru/news/detail/122265/).

            The regional legistive at, he said, might seem simply a “routine” action, “but in fact over the course of a lengthy period it has complicated the vital interests of the local population” which lives in several settlements whose territory is divided by the administrative line between Nizhny Novgorod and Vladimir oblasts.

            One of several such settlements, Yershov continues, is Tsentralny, a place where most of the people live in Nizhny Novgorod oblast but whose essential services technically belong to the Gorovetky municipal district of Vladimir oblast “where are situated military units of the Russian Federation Military of Defense.”

            N. Perkaleva, the deputy head of the department of  the Nizhny Novgorod government office for legal affairs, told the “Krestyanskiye vedomosti” journalist that “this problem arose many years ago when on the territories of these two neighboring oblasts were transferred lands for military units and military settlements.”

            Over the last several decades, she continued, “much has changed: the military settlements have been broken up and combined with local settlements and villages [and] certain military units shifted their baing or were transferred to other territories entirely.” But to date, local legislators have not managed to bring the borders into line with the realities on the ground.

            “Of course,” Yershov observes, the residents do receive “from the local power that be the entire range of social services, but not infrequently create a certain confusion for local residents,” who do not know where to turn to get a particular service.  And that in turn means that “administrative barriers up to do mean many serious difficulties” for them.

            And the journalist somewhat humorously that what is taking place on the border between two oblasts in the Russian Federation “recalls an old foreign film in which the action is entirely connected with the fact that the border between France and Italy passes directly through a particular house.”

            If the Nizhny Novogorod legislators give final approval to the border law, that will only be the first step, the journalist ponts out, because under Russian law “borders between subjects of the Russian Federation can be changed [only] on the basis of joint agreement.” Consequently, for thngs to be resolved, Vladimir oblast must adopt a corresponding law.

            This requirement means that bring precision to borders between “two neighboring [and predominantly ethnic Russian] oblasts is far from simple and requires a long period of time,” a situation that is even more complicated when the neighboring federal subjects are dominated by different ethnic groups (On that see today’s report in www.kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/213642/).

            Similar border problems exist within oblasts as well, Yershov points out.  Not long ago, he reports, the authorities in the city of Nizhny Novgorod found their ability to build new housing checkmated by the existence of old administrative lines drawn by the defense ministry in Soviet times.

            Now the military facilities those lines were drawn to support are gone, and the land is in fact vacant. But that has not eased the situation. And Yershov notes that “negotiations” between the military authorities in Moscow and Nizhny Novgorod about this “have been going on during the course of the last year and a half” with no resolution in sight.

            In rural parts of the oblast, the journalist notes, the issue of return of territories given over to the military but now vacant is much worse: There are many more such locations, and Moscow has shown little willingness to redraw the borders for the benefit of the local authorities and the local population.

Window on Eurasia: Moscow Patriarchate’s Pretensions Generating Anti-Clericalism in Russia, Experts Say

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 4 – The Russian Orthodox Church’s efforts to claim a pre-eminent role in that country’s political system is not only raising questions among many observers about whether Russia is on the way to becoming a clerical state but also generating anti-clerical attitudes among the broader population, a trend likely to affect Russian politics in the future.

            Indeed, Ekaterina Elbakyan, the editor of the Russian-language “Encyclopedia of Religions,” tells Lidiya Orlova, a writer for “NG-Religii,” “the more intensive the clericalization [of Russian institutions], the stronger is anti-clericalism among Russians (religion.ng.ru/politic/2012-10-03/1_power.html).

            Elbakyan adds that “clericalism has passed the limits of the permissible, and clericalization has begun.” The former is something typical of all religious organizations. “But when the further combinatioin of religious institutions and society and the state take place, when religion goes beyond limits of its institutions, clericalizatioin begins.”

            Modernization in Russia as in other countries, she says, “historically presupposes a certain secularization,” that is a limit to the impact of religion on “non-religious parts of life of society,” Elbakyan continues.  In Russia today, the growth of religious influence, not in itself bad, “becomes abnormal when its niche is broadened” to include the entire society.

            And that is what is taking place. “The Church has moved beyond the framework which is guaranteed to it by the Constitution” and sought to impose itself on everyone.  That is breeding a response in many sectors: in education, for example, parents are chosing to have their children attend religiously-neutral courses rather than religiously-defined ones.

            That, Elbakyan stresses, is a clear response and not one the Church or its supporters within the state are looking for because “clericalization gives birth to anti-clericalism,” an attitude that in many countries has led to the rise of more radically secular parties and even to public hostility to religion as such.

            Another example of where the Patriarchate’s efforts are proving counterproductive concerns its claims that “the majority of the population of Russia consists of Orthodox believers. But in fact, the majority of the population has a secular consciousness, and they call themselves Orthodox only as a form of self-identification.”

            But the Moscow Patriarchate and its allies in the state show no sign of backing down, as the recent Pussy Riot case showed, the editor says. That was “a typical example of the clericalization of a state court, when even the terms used in court documents were purely theological” rather than legal.

            One need not be a support of Pussy Riot’s tactics – and Elbakyan makes clear she is not – to believe that such behavior should not be subject to criminal penalties imposed by state courts and carried out by the government.

             And Elbakyan concludes that “the real and positive influence of a religious organization on society can occur only if it is a model of morality” rather than an ambitious political institution. Not only does the latter approach undercut its religious message but it guarantees rising hostility to the church and to religion as such.

            Other experts with whom the “NG-Religii” journalist spoke are just as damning about what the Moscow Patriarchate is doing.  Aleksey Malashenko of the Moscow Carnegie Center says that it is “obvious that the position of the Church and that of Patriarch Kirill today are promoting a split in society rather and not strengthening the authority of the Church.”

            Nikolay Shaburov, the head of the Center for the Study of Religions at the Russian State Humanitarian University, says that the Church’s actions and the willingness of politicians to go along with them is dangerous as the recent adoption of a new law imposing criminal penalties for offending religious feeling.

            “Why should one speak about offending religions and not about offending other highly valued things?” he asks rhetorically.  And he concludes that “when the powers that be demonstrate a special relationship to any religious organization, this is a sufficiently dangerous symptom” of a society and polity in trouble.