Window on Eurasia: Like North Korea, Putin’s Russia ‘Destroying Itself from Within,’ Akhmetov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 31 – In the 1950s, North Korea was developing rapidly and South Korea was extremely poor, but over the succeeding decades, North Korea cut itself off from the world, became ever more authoritarian, and bankrupted itself with massive military spending. South Korea did just the reverse and is now the economic power house on the peninsula.

            Putin’s Russia is on the same path as North Korea and is currently on the same path as that isolated and increasingly impoverished regime that can take pride only in its army and nuclear weapons, while Ukraine has a chance to emerge from its current poverty because it is democratic and open to the world.

            That suggestive comparison is offered by Rashit Akhmetov, the editor of Kazan’s “Zvezda Povolzhya,” in a lead article in the current issue of his newspaper (no. 19 (699), May 29-June 4, 2014, p. 1). 

            “It has become a commonplace in Russia to write about Ukraine as “a non-existing state,” to point to its divisions and its poverty, to suggest that it has no future and to suggest that Russia is a successful one, the independent editor writes.  But such commentaries are wrong on at least two grounds.

            On the one hand, claims that Ukrainian “cannot create their own state is an openly racist thesis,” one based on the assumption that some peoples can build a state while others cannot.  And on the other, the jury is still very much out on whether Ukraine with all its troubles will fail and equally on whether the Russian Federation will succeed.

                For many reasons, Russia’s prospects despite the successes it has had so far and despite its impressive military seem as bleak as those of North Korea given Pyongyang’s choices while Ukraine’s prospects despite its economic and political problems seem more like those of South Korea of a half century ago

                       

            What Russia should be doing to avoid that fate, Akhmetov says, is to focus on “the development of its internal space and to Europeanize the European part of Russia. Instead, Akhmetov says, Kremlin policies are leading to the withering away of Central Russia and the flow of money and people out of most of the country to Moscow. As a result, the Moscow urban agglomeration is set to grow from 25 million to 40 million over the next 30 years with incomes there ten times that of the rest of the country.

            The Russian state “is destroying itself from within and not because of foreign threats,” he argues.  Expensive shows like the Sochi Olympics which no one remembers only a few months afterwards take money from the kind of social and infrastructure spending that the population of the Russian Federation needs.

            And if Putin follows the Anschluss of Crimea with the annexation of Donetsk, the militarization and isolation of the country are likely to be “just as destructive for Russia as was the introduction of forces into Czechoslovakia in the times of the USSR.”

            Rulers often think that “politics is outside of morality and that the end justifies the means, but this is not so,” Akhmetov says.  Amoral or immoral actions may win short-term benefits, but they almost always will become self-destructive, contributing to more and more errors and ultimate defeats.

            If Russia continues on its militarist course and builds up its enormous military as Vladimir Putin has promised, it may be able to intimidate some of its neighbors and others as well, but it will do so only at the cost of destroying the moral basis of society.  Russia’s current leaders should remember that the USSR could not save itself despite all its military power.

            “The North Korean model of development will lead Russia to analogous destructive consequences,” he says. China is too integrated with the American market to want or be able to save Russia. Instead, Beijing almost certainly and within 20 years will take Siberia, citing “the Crimean precedent” Putin has created.

            The Ukrainian crisis is not only isolating Russia from the world but, by creating the sense of Russia as “a besieged fortress,” also destroying what is left of federalism by promoting a “hyper-centralized economy” which will become ever less capable of promoting development and by sparking witch hunts which will undermine any chance of democracy.

            Akhmetov concludes that the situation Putin has led Russia into cannot last long: there are just too many forces that will undermine him and the kind of country he wants.  But, the Kazan editor asks rhetorically, does Russia really need “a new 1917?”

            That can be avoided in Moscow changes course, if it decentralizes, democratizes, and addresses its domestic problems rather than dreaming about being a great power.  A real “great power” today, Akhmetov says, is a country like Sweden which hasn’t fought a war for 200 years even though in the 18^th century it has “the strongest army in the world.”

           

Window on Eurasia: Ukraine’s Counter-Terrorism Effort in East Far More Effective and Less Horrific than Russia’s in the North Caucasus

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – Now that the Chechens have become involved as foot soldiers in Vladimir Putin’s campaign to destabilize and potentially occupy portions of Ukraine, it is worth comparing Moscow’s “counter-terrorist” campaign in the North Caucasus with what Kyiv is doing in its eastern oblasts.

            Such a comparison is especially useful now because it calls attention not only to the very different metrics many in the West are using to evaluate what Ukrainian forces are doing compared to those they have long employed for describing Moscow’s efforts in the North Caucasus but also to thee remarkable success of Kyiv compared to Moscow.

            A full comparison of the two conflicts is obviously beyond the scope of a single essay, but three points immediately attract attention.  First, Moscow has been engaged in its campaign for two decades without having been able to pacify the region, but almost no one has suggested that Russia was a failed state because of that.

            Kyiv in contrast has been fighting for only a few weeks, but it has become a Moscow mantra widely picked up in the West that the Ukrainian government’s effort or even the need it has to make it and enforce its sovereignty shows that it isn’t an “effective” or even a “real” state and thus requires outside supervision or control.

            Second, Moscow in the North Caucasus has not been confronted by the effort of any state to annex part of its territory, something that international law specifies is the basis for the use of military force and not just police action. But Kyiv has been faced with exactly that kind of violation and thus is fully within its rights to use available force against the insurgents.

            What is sad, even despicable, is that many of those who are now attacking Ukraine for living within the law have in the past defended Russian actions which violate that law, and they are calling for Ukraine to stop using force even though they never issued similar demands to Moscow.

            Third, in the North Caucasus, Moscow has faced opposition from the indigenous populations not from armed units introduced by a neighboring state. The militants in many cases enjoy support or at least sympathy from the population. Kyiv’s situation is different in both these regards.

           

            On the one hand, as ever more evidence shows, Moscow is sending forces into Ukrainian territory to seize Crimea and to destabilize what it calls “Novorossiya,” something that because of Russia’s resources means that Ukraine faces a far better armed and organized force than Moscow ever has in the North Caucasus.

            But on the other hand, the Russian subversive forces enjoy far less support in the population than do the militants in the North Caucasus. Polls not conducted under the barrel of Russian guns show that majorities and in some cases overwhelming majorities of ethnic Russian or Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens want to be part of Ukraine not Russia.

            Fourth, Russian forces in the North Caucasus have engaged in torture and other crimes against humanity and in many cases seem more interested in profiting from a continuation of the war than in establishing peace.  Ukrainian forces have not, and Ukrainian leaders have consistently said that they want to use the minimum amount of force possible.

            Not surprisingly, given everything else, all too many in the West act as if the situation were just the reverse.

            And fifth, unlike the Russian Federation, Ukraine is a functioning democracy where elections are not all predictable in advance. In the North Caucasus, Moscow has taken steps that have exacerbated conditions there; in eastern Ukraine, including Crimea, Kyiv has done just the reverse.

            This list could easily be expanded, but even these five differences should be sufficient to call into question the arguments of those in Moscow and elsewhere about Ukraine, given what the Russian Federation has done in the North Caucasus.

Window on Eurasia: Putin Electorate Reflects Underlying Continuities in Russian Society Sociologist Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 – Despite the rise of a Russian middle class and the rapid turnover in that country’s leaders and regimes, Vladimir Putin draws his support from the fact that Russian society remains tied to its peasant past, with most people not more than a generation or so removed from the culture of the village, according to a Moscow sociologist.

            That underlying reality, Natalya Tikhonova, a researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, says, is often lost sight of because of interest in the urban middle class and the ways that Russian scholars define that group, ways very different from those used elsewhere (gazeta.ru/comments/2014/05/28_a_6051009.shtml).

                Tikhonova, one the co-authors of a new study, “The Middle Class in Contemprary Russia: 10 Years Later,” points out that most investigations of the middle class in the West define that group in terms of its professional activity and level of education and view it as a group which receives income on its human capital.

            “In Russia,” the sociologist says, “the situationis different and what is more about what it was ten years ago. Therefore, we have had to introduce  two additional blocking criteria” for working with the middle class: “One of these is the level of well-being,and the other is the self-conscious feeling of where one is in the social system.”

            The minimum income level for inclusion in the middle class is 20,000 rubles (600 US dollars) per person per month, although there are important regional variations, she says.  But the problems of definition of the Russian middle class are not about that but rather about its structure, employment patterns, and assumptions.

            The share of state employees in the Russian middle class is much higher than in the middle classes of Western countries but mostly because many functions that in the latter are performed by the private sector are part of the state in Russia rather than having any broader meaning that is sometimes extracted from this.

            More fundamental, Tikhonova continues, is that the share of Russians working in the quartenary segment of the economy – finance, programming, marketing, journalism, and science – is much lower than is the case of Western countries, a pattern that reflects the differences in the stage of development in the two.

            While Western countries are moving toward post-industrial societies, she says, Russia is only approaching “the stage of the transition to post-industrial society.” And that calls attention to something else: members of the Russian middle class do approximately the same things members of the middle classes in Western countries, but they do so under conditions of a very different form of property arrangements.

            That helps to explain, she says, why the Russian middle class made up more heavily of government employees is so “comfortable” with the regime and why the regime does not feel threatened by it – although Tikhonova insists as well that no middle class anywhere has been a political force on its own.

            But there is a deeper stratum in Russian life that matters even more, the sociologist says.  “The Putin electorate is above all the relatively poor strata which form about half of the population of the country.” They have been relative winners over the last few years, and “a significant part of them has been able to escape poverty.”

            “In Russia,” she says, “political regimes and leaders change ... but the type of society has been preserved.” Changing that society from one which is still closely linked to the peasantry is very hard and will take a long time.

            Even though a majority of Russians now live in cities, very few of them are hereditary city dwelllers with two or three of the preceding generations having been city residents as well. Today, the share of people who grew up in cities of at least 200,000 and having at least one parent with a higher education is only about 10 percent of the population.

            As difficult as it is for many to accept this, she says, it is the case, and because it is, the regime “”completely corresponds to this dominant type of the population.”  That means that the powers that be won’t be under pressure from this direction for some time.

            Tikhonova pointed to another trend that may slow this process down even more.  Compared to a decade ago, those in the middle class who are investing in education are now less numerous than they were because the return on such investments has fallen dramatically in Russia.

            That is “a very poor sign,” the sociologist says, because “it means that we are losing the opportunity for further development” and that making a breakthrough will be ever more difficult.  At the same time, Tikhonova says she won’t “demonize” the regime because its leaders understand this, have tried to do the right thing, but have been “sabotaged” from below.

            Until elites recognize that they must promote development rather than simply line their own pockets, an attitude that is unlikely to take place until more are “hereditary” members of the middle class, however, Tikhonova concludes, achieving progress in Russia will remain extremely difficult.

           

Window on Eurasia: Putin’s Repressive Policies Prompting Regions, Some Post-Soviet States to Overfulfill the Plan

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 30 –Putin’s repressive policies in Crimea and in Moscow have distracted attention from two other disturbing developments: the tendency of regional leaders to curry favor by going beyond what the center has required and attempts by some post-Soviet regimes to use Moscow’s actions as a guide or cover for crackdowns of their own.

            Both these patterns recall what happened in Soviet times. As Robert Conquest documented in “The Great Terror” and as Victor Serge showed in “The Case of Comrade Tulayev,” regional leaders not only took their orders from Moscow but cues as well – and often went far beyond what the center had required as a means of demonstrating loyalty.

            And as various historians and writers on Eastern Europe have demonstrated, when Stalin launched a new wave of repression, most of the leaders of the Soviet bloc countries followed suit, sometimes because Moscow had given them specific orders but often because they had their own scores to settle and/or wanted to show they were enthusiastic followers.

            The situation now is somewhat different, of course, but an understanding of the ways in which Putin’s system is mestasticizing is critical. On the hand, it underscores how important it is to be very clear in public about how wrong Putin’s actions are. And on the other, it highlights the need to track what is going on beyond the ring road and beyond the Russian Federation border.

            The size of this problem is large and growing. In the course of the last 48 hours alone, in addition to the always useful monitoring of groups like SOVA, there have been major surveys of how bad the situation in Karelia (rufabula.com/articles/2014/05/27/freedom-of-speech).and in Aygeya (/kavpolit.com/articles/v_adygee_sistemnoe_podavlenie_inakomyslija-5177/).

            In each case, it appears, local officials like their Stalinist predececessors have taken Moscow’s demands not as an order that must be fulfilled exactly as stated but as an occasion for local initiative, with the powers that be deciding that as long as they do what Moscow asks, they can exceed them,  thus serving their own ends and currying favor in the center.

            This is an especially unfortunate development because it effectively destroys the “common legal space” Moscow has claimed it has securedin the Russian Federation and because many regional leaders are confident that they can act with little risk to themselves given that there are fewer independent journalists, humanrights activists, and western diplomats in their regions to report on what they are doing.

            But as tragic as these developments are for Russian citizens, the spead of Putin’s method of governance with its routine repression and violation of human rights to neighboring countries may be even more so.  Many of these countries have had not a good record in the past, but now their rulers seem convinced that given what Putin is doing, they too can act with impunity.

            The number of such cases in what the Kremlin is pleased to call “the near abroad” is if anything greater than in the regions and republics of the Russian Federation. And such abuses have increased either because the regimes involved are allying themselves with Moscow or because they believe the West will restrain criticism out of geopolitical considerations.

            One such case involves rights activist Leyla Yunus in Azerbaijan.  Yesterday, she sent the following appeal to human rights groups in  the West:

“An accusation is brought against the leaders of NGOs, regularly cooperating with European and American sponsors.  Today on May 29th at 10:05 in the morning I received a call on mobile phone from investigator of High Crimes of General Office of Public Prosecutor Ibragim Lemberanski.  He told me: “You need to come to us to the Office of Public Prosecutor today”. To what I answered: “Return our illegally taken away passports, and after that I will come to the questioning”. He pretended that he did not hear anything and again repeated that he is waiting for me after two hours on the questioning.
I replied to him, if after an hour he or anyone else from the Office of Public Prosecutor will bring to our house our illegally taken away passports, then after two hours, I shall come to Office of Public Prosecutor. In case if the passports won’t be brought and returned to us, then they can send even numerous numbers of policemen to attack my apartment, still I won’t go anywhere. And I hung up.

“Big request to all of my friends, like-minded persons:  -Spread this information everywhere. -Be ready the possible police attack to our apartment at address Narminan Narimanov ave. 125 (I hope that I will manage to call Turan and others), come and be the witnesses to the next lawlessness practices of our law-enforcement authorities.

“No step backwards!  The enemy won’t pass!

 
“Dr. Leyla Yunus
Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour, Winner of the International Theodor-Haecker-Prize and
Director of the Institute for Peace and Democracy”

                It is easy to see why many would see this as “just another case and that we can’t get involved in all of them.” But there are three reasons why that is not so. First, here as elsewhere, the Azerbaijani authorities copying a measure that the Putin regime pioneered: using any foreign ties as a justification for a crackdown.

            Second, Leyla Yunus is seeking to stay within boundaries of the legal system to defend herself. She is only asking for international attention so that she and others like her will have that opportunity and be able to make use of the rights enshrined in the Azerbaijani constitution and laws rather than having those rights ignored as the Putin government is doing. 

            And third, Yunus’ efforts  are about keeping Azerbaijan from sliding into the kind of system Putin supports so that Azerbaijanis will be able to live in freedom. If the past few months have taught us anything, it should be that it is difficult if not impossible for the West to have a stable partnership for long with regimes that don’t share those values, however compelling geopolitical or geo-economic arguments may appear.