In 1830, another revolution was afoot in France. Talleyrand, on seeing the tricolour raised over Notre Dame, said, “We are triumphing!” He was asked, “Who are we?” “Quiet! Not a word. I will tell you tomorrow,” was the reply.
A sentiment that is not altogether dissimilar has emerged from the Moscow rallies of December, 2011. It is widely felt that the Russian politics face some tectonic changes, but the beneficiaries, and indeed, the nature of those changes are far from clear.
While it is unlikely that the rallies will usher in a new age of democracy and rule of law, the current regime will not be able continue as before. However, to understand at least the vector of changes one needs to understand the background of the current events.
As we have argued in our previous analysis, the personality of the next president of Russian was never at issue. A popular depiction of Dmitry Medvedev as some sort of a rival to Putin that would some day come into his own has always been wishful thinking, divorced from the reality of Russian power politics.
What was at issue during the 2011 (which in retrospect seems like a significant year, when a stage for later events was set), was the personality of the next Prime Minister to take Putin’s spot once he resumes the presidency.
There were three main contenders for the position – Igor Sechin, Alexei Kudrin, and Dmitry Medvedev. Contrary to the tropes of the nouveau Kremlinologists, the contest for the number two position was much more than a clash of personalities lacking a wider significance. The personalities have stood to real policy choices that Putin faced at the beginning of the last year. The choice between Sechin or Kudrin would signify the preference between the twin pillars of Putin’s political constituency – siloviki or technocrats with connection to big business.
The choice would signify not only a preference for one or another oligarchic grouping, but rather a choice of political orientation for the years to come – more emphasis on anti-Western rhetoric and stances, with ever closer snuggling to China, or the opposite policy, renewal of open season against businesses, Yukos-style, or a more orderly, civilized and legal-minded authoritarianism, associated with Anton Ivanov, current Chairman of the Highest Arbitrazh court. But, on the other hand, a more solid internal political basis in virtue of some variant of nationalism, or uncertain prospects of legitimacy based on even less certain integration into Western institutions.
Even if Putin thought that his opting for Medvedev would avoid committing himself to any of the alternatives (and continue the balancing act between the two parts of his political base), he was mistaken.
It did not help that the choice of Medvedev was accompanied by a clumsy humiliation of both camps. In the beginning of the year, Sechin was visibly downgraded as the result of the BP affair. In retrospect, it is abundantly clear that the main architect of the plot was Putin himself. Next came the turn of Kudrin, who was very publicly humiliated and sacked by Medvedev, whom Kudrin clearly had regarded as a non-entity. Thus, far from being perceived as a balancing act, the choice of Medvedev was taken across the Russian political spectrum as an authoritarian power grab by Putin, a self-aggrandizement at the expense of his traditional political constituencies. The perception was confirmed by the manner in which the future presidency of Putin was announced, at a gigantic rally of the United Russia party, esthetically reminiscent of the worst totalitarian political shows of the last century. Even if it is still a rhetorical overkill to seriously liken Putin with the twentieth century dictators, the September rally seemed to demonstrate where his political preferences lie.
Suddenly, apart from the institutional PR professionals, nobody seemed to want Putin to come back. Whispers of his increasing irrationality became a popular and open talk of the Moscow chattering classes.
And then came the crudely falsified Duma elections and the ensuing protests.
However, Putin is far from irrational. His motivation cannot be reduced to issues of venality and a search for personal security, as many, following Stanislav Belkovsky, suggest. His main political project, restoring Russian political (if not necessarily formal legal) control of Kremlin over the territory of the former Soviet Union is not nearly fulfilled. Suddenly, his political future and the pet project seem uncertain. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and regime changes in numerous countries after the beginning of the nineties, no one is under the illusion that political power in Russia is safe in the face of a massive political protest.
Are the protesters significant? Those who assess their influence by numbers or demographic percentages miss the point, a mistake made again and again over the past century of revolutionary upheavals. While the protesters may not constitute the arithmetical majority, they are setting the framework of the national political discourse, while by the hour Putin has been losing his ability to determine the national political agenda. He of course is perfectly aware of this precipitous change of his relative political standing.
So what is Putin’s strategy? Again, his most important steps have been largely ignored by the Western media. Although he has attempted to restore his position with the appointments of loyalists, the previous political configuration may be unattainable.
Big business has already lost faith in the ability of Putin to protect its positions abroad, as exemplified by the recent troubles of Severstal in the USA. On the other hand, internally, Putin has been unwilling or unable to stem the tide of corruption that has become the principle political issue for both the protesters and big Russian businesses, making close allies out of them.
In short, economic elites in Russia now perceive Putin as a significant strategic liability, and would be happy with most of the alternatives.
Thus, Putin moved to recruit the two constituencies for which the all-pervasive corruption is not a priority issue – namely, siloviki and siloviki-related nationalists.
In line with this, Putin moved to upgrade Sergei Ivanov, former Minister of Defence, who stayed loyal despite being demoted within the Russian real power structure before. Obviously, the theory (dubious) is that Ivanov would be seen by siloviki as their new representative, instead of still downgraded Sechin.
Even more significant is the appointment of Dmitry Rogozin, who was called back from Brussels where he has been the Russian Ambassador at NATO, to a highly influential political post, giving him in effect a stranglehold on Russia’s military strategy.
Rogozin is clearly the politician to watch. In contrast to almost all faces of the Putin’s regime, he is a real politician, ambitious, with a clear political agenda, well-known and taken seriously by the West. While it is uncertain the siloviki would see Ivanov as their true delegate, Rogozin certainly has the political capacity of rallying important circles of civilized Russian nationalism around Putin. Of course, it is not clear that he would be willing to expend his political capital for Putin’s cause.
What will come next? It is futile to engage in predictions in the current fluctuating situation where most important players are perhaps still biding their time and have not revealed their hand.
However, it is clear that it is too early to discard Putin. While seemingly catering to his perceived political constituencies, his most significant recent appointments concern promotion of people who are personally loyal. Thus, it is not clear that the important stakeholders in the regime beyond the personal coteries, would not decide that the best option would be to continue maintain the current regime at the expense of getting rid of its creator.
Clearly, Putin has more to fear from his own comrades that from the protesters.
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4 Comments
“Those who assess their influence by numbers or demographic percentages miss the point, a mistake made again and again over the past century of revolutionary upheavals.”
Nope. It’s YOU who miss the point, Robert. It is the majority, not the minority, that determines what happens in elections. And we saw MUCH, MUCH bigger protests propel Boris Yeltsin into power, only to then see Yeltsin bombard his own White House and then name Putin his successor. It’s YOU who does not recall Russian history, which will only repeat itself until the country collapses into rubbish.
Interesting article, Mr. Amsterdam, but there are some loopholes in it. Despite the wave of protesting last year, which was a bit exaggerated by Western media by obvious anti-Putin feelings, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is by far the main political player in Russia. Clearly he and his pals didn´t expect such turmoil on the streets after the parliamentary elections, but I myself got impressed with his cool and demeanor right in the heat of moment. I guess the majority of politicians around the world would simply have given up their positions by sheer lack of capacity and fear to handle appropriately tricky situations like this. Mikhail Gorbachev did exactly that in 1991. Throughout the entire year of 2011 we´ve seen in all countries swept by the so-called Arab Spring, but in Syria so far, their leaders being toppled or even killed. With the beginning of street protests in Russia, Senator John McCain, a man who dislikes Vladimir Putin to say the least, promptly trumped up on his Twitter account that the very same fate was approaching Putin. That´s what I call wishful thinking, or even more derogatory, magical thinking. I never believed the political system created under Putin´s surveillance since 2000 was stable or rigid as a rock as some say – in truth, no political regime at all is perpetual – but what many perceive as a myth, Garry Kasparov among them, is that the approval ratings of Vladimir Putin were, are, and will still be high in Russia for many years to come, despite protesting on the streets, in the Facebook or elsewhere. It´s ironic to see that the very middle class created under Putin´s presidency now decided to turn against him. Winston Churchill received the same “honor” by British people after WWII. Albeit the bad public moment for Putin in December last year, what many in Russia still perceive is that Vladimir Putin brought back to Russia not economic development under political strict rules, but also a sense of pride to belong to such an important country. Such a feeling was badly eroded during Yeltsin years, and Russia in the eyes of Russians was transformed from a global superpower to a mere banana republic living under Western old chanted slogans like “democracy”, “freedom”, this and that. To worsen it all, there was rampant corruption, worse even than current high standards, a bloody separatist war in North Caucasus and social economic chaos all over the country. Putin didn´t reverse it all, but made great strides in all those matters, but corruption. George Kennan used to say that the break-up of the Soviet Union was too fast and what resulted out of the rubble was a pathetic Yeltsin regime. This kind of fast-track democracy implemented under the 90´s clearly had no chance of surviving in such inhospitable environment. Vladimir Putin´s rising to power reminds me of Lenin´s words: one step back in order to jump two forward.
I find it ridiculous you comparing Putin to Churchill. The rise in the Russian middle class is entirely due to record prices for fossil fuels during the last decade. Putin didn’t orchestrate this boom, but he sure as hell benefited from it. After Russia’s economic collapse in 1998 its economy had already started to grow again before Putin became PM a year later, and with the subsequent rise in oil and gas prices lazy journalists attributed Russia’s economic growth to Putin, if anything he benefited from good timing more than anything. It could be argued that the Russian economy grew despite Putin and his brand of corrupt crony capitalism. And one other thing, though I don’t care much for Putin or fellow war-mongerer Churchill, at least WC was a true democratic, not scared to face opposition candidates on a level playing field where elections are concerned. Unlike Churchill who was a master debater, Putin has never sat for a broadcasted debate against a legitimate opposition candidate. I cannot imagine Churchill taking over the BBC (the enemy with—as he once called it) and censoring it to a point where its main function was to portray himself in a perpetual vain light, as is the case with regard to Russia’s network TV channels and their heroic uncritical portrayal of dictator Putin.
In Russia nowadays, the only overarching concen of all siloviki and the bureaucratic super-class is the ability to keep the money they made/stole while keeping their freedom. They all want to plunder in Russia but live and spend outside of it. This is the defining feature of the system created by Putin. Mr Belkovsky has a legitimate point which you downplay, and that is bureaucrats and Putin himself are too far in to be able to get out safely. Their chief cooncern, apart from the desire for continued power/enrichment, is personal safety. There can be no safety without power in Russia. Putin will cling on as long as it is possible. While he is still the most popular politician in Russia today, it is nevertheless all downhill from here. You cannot give people middle claSs living in exchange for political freedom and expect them to not expect more.
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[...] Robert Amsterdam recently wrote a very good post along these lines: Are the protesters significant? Those who assess their influence by numbers or demographic percentages miss the point, a mistake made again and again over the past century of revolutionary upheavals. While the protesters may not constitute the arithmetical majority, they are setting the framework of the national political discourse, while by the hour Putin has been losing his ability to determine the national political agenda. He of course is perfectly aware of this precipitous change of his relative political standing. [...]