Russia Profile

RUSSIAPROFILE .
Org
ISSUE 2 VOLUME IX SprIng / 12
special report: the state of the state
choosing a future
taking stock getting along making it big having fun
Never Look Back Not Broken? Dont Fix It! Unspoken Rules
1 10 16 41
Cathartic Humor
chief eDitor Andrei Zolotov, Jr. eXecutive eDitor Anna Arutiunova staff Writers Dan peleschuk, Tai Adelaja, Andrew roth contributing Writer Dmitry Babich Web site eDitor Svetlana Kryukova Designer Alexander Vasilyev cover Varvara polyakova russia profile international aDvisorY boarD leon aron Senior Fellow, American Enterprise Institute Yuri fokine Adviser to the rector, Diplomatic Academy of the russian Foreign Ministry charles grant, Director, Centre for European reform konstantin kosachev Chairman, International Affairs Committee, State Duma of the russian Federation svetlana mironYuk Chief Editor, rIA novosti elena nemirovskaYa Founder and Director, Moscow School of political Studies vlaDimir poZner president, russian Television Academy aleXanDer rahr Director of the Berthold Beitz Center for russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Central Asia, a Berlin-based think tank angela stent Director of the Center for Eurasian, russian and East European Studies, georgetown University mikhail ZaDornov president, Vneshtorgbank 24 nikolai Zlobin Director of russian and Eurasian programs, World Security Institute publisheD bY russian news & information agency ria novosti www.rian.ru please contact us at 4 Zubovsky Boulevard, Moscow 119021, russia Editorial +7 (495) 645-6486, +7 (495) 637-3071 (fax) Advertising +7 (495) 645-6403 E-mail: info@russiaprofile.org russia profile, 2012 rIA novosti, 2012 The comments in this magazine reflect the opinions of the sources and not necessarily those of the editors or publishers. registration number: 77-18138 Andrei Zolotov, Jr. Chief Editor
Dear Readers, On May 8 Vladimir Putin will be inaugurated as Russias next president. Because he is returning to the Kremlin after President Dmitry Medvedevs term (while many believe Putin never even left the number one post in the country), it is hard to put a number on this presidencywhether it is the third, the fourth, or something else. But despite the protests this winter on behalf of many disillusioned with Putin rule, despite the dire prospect of the same rule for another 12 years, Russia will largely remain the same, and the leadership will face the same if not a growing number of systemic problems. In this Russia Profile Special Report we attempt to take inventory of these problems and do something we never have beforeask the experts, who are our sources and writers, to come up with recommendations for President Vladimir Putin. In a way, we were inspired by a series of articles published in Russias newspapers ahead of the elections as a part of Putins presidential campaign. We looked at the state of the Russian political systemthe presidency itself and political parties, as well as economics, foreign policy, social policy and even sports, since many of Putins attempts to reclaim national pride hinge on major sporting events. There is an article in this Special Report dedicated to each of these aspects of modern Russia. I dont know if this testifies to the spirit of our authors or to the real situation in the country, but the state of the Russian state according to these articles is pretty grim, though not entirely hopeless. Were there is a will to do something in each of these spheres, there are ways to markedly improve the situation, if not altogether correct it. But the question remains whether President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedevs new Cabinet will indeed have the will to take up these issues. In all of their public pronouncements, they say they do. But the degree of skepticism among both the experts and the educated class is high. This means the people whose professional skills and creative potential would be needed to carry out the reforms in all fields of the states activity have largely demonstrated that their trust in the ruling tandem has expired. On the other hand, Putins campaign has also done much to further alienate the independently thinkingand thus opposition-mindedlayer of the population. Thus the next several years will be an enormous test for Russia. The ruling elite will either realize that it needs to work for ends other than perpetuating its own power, and in that case it would need to attempt courageous reforms and mobilize its political opponents. Or we are indeed facing stagnation, further deterioration and malfunctioning of the state and probably much greater protests by the time of the next electoral cycle, with unknown results. Strangely enough, the opposition must keep organizing and pressuring the government in order for the first scenario to succeed.
With thanks, Andrei Zolotov, Jr. Chief Editor
RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12
CONTENTS
Issue 2 Volume IX Spring /12
3
the state of the state
5 putinomics 2.0
By Tai Adelaja Putins Economic Reforms Will Be Merely Cosmetic. But perhaps as long as Russians are impressed by Putins economic successes they may be willing to overlook the rampant corruption and the ubiquitous bureaucracy that characterize his rule.
special report
the hopeless presiDent
By Andrew roth
26
Memories of Medvedevs Presidency Are Fading Fast. The legacy of four years of Medvedevs rule is greater public distrust of politicians rather than any long-lasting, meaningful reform.
Who is a presiDent?
By Andrei Zolotov, Jr.
Dealing With the outsiDe WorlD

By Simon Saradzhyan and nabi Abdullaev
29
What Does It Mean to Be the President of Russia? Since Putins rise to power 12 years ago and thanks to the impending job swap in the ruling tandem, power in Russia has become so personalized that the institution of the presidency has lost its significance.
the frienDship of nations

By Dan peleschuk
10
No Tectonic Shifts in Foreign Policy Will Take Place Under Putin. Russias new old president is largely expected to perpetuate the foreign policy course Russia has been pursuing under his leadership.
putinomics abroaD
By Tai Adelaja
31
Once Again, Putin Faces a Multiculturaland Problematic Russia. The president-elect seems to have no clear vision of Russias future nationality policy, but experts agree that preserving the status quo may be the best strategy going forward.
DiviDe et impera
By nikolay petrov
13
Many of Russias Economic Integration Initiatives Have Flopped in the Past. But Putins continuous drive to integrate the economies of former Soviet states with Russias is motivated by political, rather than economic considerations.
There Is No Alternative to Federalism in Russia. The federal center must delegate more powers to local governments so that real power in the regions stems from the local people.
as Weak as the Weakest link

By rosemary griffin
34
cant beat the sistema

By Dan peleschuk Informal Politics and Patron-Client Networks Continue to Plague Russia. Putins new administration should focus on reforming informal politics to work in the interest ofand not despitethe Russian state.
16
The State Is Unkind Toward Russias Vulnerable Citizens. After eight years of Putins presidency and four more years of his rule as prime minister, are Russias homeless better cared for, its children any safer, or its troubled more likely to receive help?
russians as an eXpense
By Dmitry Babich
37
rebuilD not reform

By Alexander Sharavin
19
Opposition Candidates Made Unrealistic Promises. Of all Russian presidential candidates, Vladimir Putin had the most reasonable social policy program, but the main hurdle on the way toward implementing it is Putin 1.0.
Russias Military, Police and Security Services Are Beyond Reform. A new democratic state cannot possibly be built on the foundations of old power structures.
putin the competitor

By David nowak
38
faDing shaDes of White

By Andrew roth
21
The Future of Russias Opposition Movement Is Nebulous. Following the presidential elections that catapulted Vladimir Putin back to the presidency, Russian political activists seem to be at a loss for direction and strategy.
Can Russia Fulfill the Promises It Made to the International Sports Community? From the initial bid to the final delivery, the commitment to produce an Olympics arcs far wider than a single presidency, but in Russias case it hinges on a single man.
put in, never off

By Dmitry Babich
41
partY time in russian politics

By Alexander Morozov
24
The Latest Party Law Reform Preserves United Russias Dominance. Professional associations, rather than numerous political parties, will be the catalysts of democratic developments in Russia.
Russians Like to Joke About Elections. From the times of Ivan the Terrible to the most recent opposition rallies, Russians have found solace in making fun of the contemporary electoral system.
comments
trust noboDY
comment by Alexei Varlamov
43
SpECial rEpOrT
photo: Alexey Kudenko, rIA novosti
choosing a future
What Does Putins New Term Hold for Russia?
Having experienced an unprecedented social, economic and, to some extent, political renaissance in the past decade, the sacred dream of many russians is perhaps to live in an open, democratic and prosperous country. But even while shedding tears after obtaining a mandate for another stint in the Kremlin, president-elect Vladimir putin has changed neither his strategy, nor his tactics, nor even his message. The entire coterie of advisors and publicists that surrounded him during his first two terms is expected to be back with a vengeance, reviving concerns that corruption, nepotism and cronyism may also flourish with renewed vigor. As long as the Kremlin remains stuck in the old mindset, it may as well decide to spend the next six years undoing the modicum of democratic reforms and modernization put in place by putins protg. Despite a semblance of democratic reforms, putins top-down power vertical may yet get a new lease on life. If the Kremlins global ambitions soar with surging oil prices, both its U.S. and European partners should expect a cold shoulder from a government that still perceives russia as the target of constant pressure from the West.
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the hopeless president

By Andrew roth RUSSIA PROFILE
Memories of Medvedevs Presidency Are Fading Fast.
Opposition politician Vladimir Ryzhkov claimed that Medvedev was trying to end his presidential term on a positive note, but is it too late for Russians to believe in Medvedev again?
On December 22, 2011 President Dmitry Medvedev gave his last State of the Union address to the Russian Federation Council. In a little over an hour, he recounted his administrations successes over the previous four years: Russia emerged from a dangerous economic crisis practically unscathed, made unprecedented steps forward in stemming a demographic crisis, and is already enjoying the first fruits of Medvedevs modernization programs, the keystone of his presidency. We are obligated to continue what weve started, to carry on the revival of the Russian state and Russian society as a whole, he said. Yet at the end of his first term, Medvedev himself was essentially jumping shipalready a lame duck president, this was his own farewell speech. Throughout his time as Russias president, Medvedev maintained a reputation for constantly disappointing expectationswhether in achieving the lofty goals of modernization and liberalization that he prescribed for the Russian system or in achieving his own goals as an independent politician. The key moment, of course, was September 24, 2011, when Medvedev told a United Russia party congress that he would step aside for Vladimir Putin to return to the presidency. In one day, Medvedev went from the presumptive winner of the next presidential election to a likely prime minister under Putin. Since then his stock has fellen even further: Medvedev could be quickYet internally Medvedevs initiatives began to stall. Despite ly forced out of his place as Russias prime minister, or passing a wide reaching anti-corruption legislation bill in Ocpassed over for the job entirely. tober of his first year as president, the Council of Europes Yet despite his lame duck status and the mere weeks Group of States Against Corruption (GRECO), of which Rusleft until Putins return, Medvedev is now suddenly pushing forward with his most ambitious political re- sia is a member, noted that fewer than half of the recommendations for Russia had been met as of this year. Grandiose plans forms to date. Since mass protests broke out in Mosto stem corruption had been drawn up, but the implementacow over the countrys parliamentary election, Medtion was lacking. Laws to prevent public officials from receivvedev has held unprecedented meetings with Russias non-systemic opposition and introduced a bold three- ing cash donations are in place, but there are no restrictions on gifts. Gaping loopholes remain in a law designed to strip part legislative project that would ease requirements for establishing political parties, restore direct guber- public officials of immunity from corruption charges. Tellingly, Russia has adopted laws showing that elected officials need to natorial elections without a presidential filter and publish their income but failed to ratify section 20 of the UNs possibly reestablish political blocs in the State Duma.
a promising start Despite being hand picked for the presidency from relative obscurity by Putin, Medvedev, a young, 42 year-old technocrat struck liberal chords in his early speeches, and was seen as a reformer. Freedom is better than nonfreedom, Medvedev told Siberian businessmen in February of 2008, less than a month before he won Russias presidential elections. These words are the quintessence of human experience. In the same speech he showed a capacity for self-criticism lacking during the previous administration: It is necessary to change radically the ideology of administrative procedures dealing with starting and holding a businessto give realistic chances for the development of small businesses, which are drowning today in a swamp of official indifference and bribes, he said. In foreign policy, Medvedev had a mixed record. Though Russia signaled it would maintain a pronounced role in the post-Soviet sphere during the war with Georgia in 2008, Medvedev and Barack Obama found common ground through the reset policy, eventually signing a landmark nuclear arms treaty and easing tensions that had built up during Putins and George Bushs terms as heads of state.
Throughout his time as president, Medvdev constantly disappointed expectations.
Special Report
convention on corruption, stipulating that public officials must modernization initiatives was being cut savagely. From the disclose their expenses, ultimately leaving the regulations rel- 71 billion rubles ($ 2.3 billion) allotted to modernization proatively toothless. grams in 2012, only 27.8 billion ($ 927 million) are set aside Corruption is not the only sphere where long-needed reforms in 2013, and less in following years. Financing for Skolkovo, have been carried out, but only in a cursory manner. The veMedvedevs pet project, would be cut from 22 billion ($ 73 milneer of one of Medvedevs largest reforms, the creation of a lion) to 17 billion rubles ($ 56 million) per year, and support modern police force in Russia, has been dispelled by scandals for RosNano is to be cut as well. Other key reforms, like a bill involving pre-trial detention deaths and cases of torture by po- to protect businesses from rampant tax probes designed to lice. Gleb Pavlovsky, the head of the Foundation for Effective elicit bribes, have also come under attack in the Duma. Politics, noted that despite the fact that all police officers were Olga Mefodyeva, an analyst at the Moscow-based Center for retested and a new code of conduct was issued, the reforms Political Technologies, said that Medvedevs proposed reforms were essentially superficial. The ruined institution was rewere held back primarily by inertia in the ranks of govforming itself, said Pavlovsky. Any reform carried out withernment bureaucrats. Bureaucrats are a priori interested in out public control cannot improve the situation. The reforms maintaining the status quo, said Mefodyeva. Its possible for yielded a commercial profit and made the situation absolutely bureaucrats to also establish strong barriers against the realhopeless, he added. ization of anything that might violate that. And the inertia that Medvedev does not bear the sole responsibility for these fail- results from that was the key problem for Medvedev, because uresrather, they are evidence that Russian institutions are far some of Medvedevs initiatives could have introduced risk to too ossified to be transformed in such a short period of time. the political system as it exists. But when Medvedev announced his departure from the presBeyond inertia, however, Medvedev and his allies faced opidency this year, that same system began to quickly erase his position from a rival clan of officials close to Putin. While legacy of modernization initiatives. By October 2011, the Min- flare-ups between Medvedev and Putin were rare, tensions beistry of Finance budget showed that funding for Medvedevs came evident during a foreign policy spat over a UN resolu-
On December 22 of last year Dmitry Medvedev made his last address to russias Federation Council as president boasting of his numerous achievements, from weathering the global economic crisis to promoting modernization and improving russias demographic situation.
photo: Vladimir rodionov, rIA novosti
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tion on Libya this spring. Competition was also fierce at the cabinet and institutional levels: the Investigative Committee, a project headed by Putins former classmate, fell into a turf war with the Prosecutor Generals Office over a Moscow gambling ring, exhibiting the high levels of dysfunction inside the government. By the time Medvedev fired Putin ally and liberal Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who was credited with helping Russia survive the 2008 financial crisis, the situation looked to be unraveling quickly for the president. Yuri Korgunyuk, an analyst at the Indem think tank, argues that the only chance Medvedev had to truly become the master of his own political destiny was to fire Putin from the job of the prime minister. Medvedev had a chance to prove himself as a true president. He fired various political heavyweights, [Moscow Mayor] Yuri Luzhkov, for example. But theres one other person that he had to fire in order to become the true president. If he had fired Putin, that would have been possible, he said. Stephen Sestanovich, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, likewise believes that Putin was key in undermining Medvedevs tenure as president and his future as an independent politician. Could he have done more? Could he have played his hand better? wrote Sestanovich in Foreign Affairs magazine. Throughout his tenure, opponents of the regime kept urging him to fire Putin. Its obvious now that this thought never crossed his mind. Medvedevs only real route to becoming an independent politicianand a second-term presidentwas to make himself more popular than Putin, and the only way to do that would have been to create a string of successes that resonated with the public. Putin was not going to let that happen. That was how Medvedev explained his decision when the press came knocking after his September 24 bombshell. Prime minister Putin is definitely the most authoritative politician in our country and his rating is somewhat higher [than my own], Medvedev admitted on national television. Many Russians have always thought that Medvedev was just a placeholder for Putin, while others simply did not want to believe that Medvedev could be so spineless. Yet his statement betrayed a simple truthdue to the systems rigidity and Medvedevs inability to come into his own as a politician, he did not have the political capital to take on Putin by the time of the United Russia Party congress last fall.
Interestingly, Medvedev acknowledged that he has changed his views on what political system is best suited for Russia, Ryzhkov, the co-chair of the unregistered Republican Party, wrote in The Moscow Times after meeting with Medvedev. Only two or three years ago he had not considered it necessary to implement the changes that he is now making. The reasons behind the shift are the new political activism among Russians, the widespread use of the Internet as a forum for political selfexpression and the protest movement that has sprung up in the last three months. Having failed to carry out most of his liberal reform programs during his four years in office, Medvedev still hopes to end his term on a positive note. Analysts sensed a trap in the proposed reforms, arguing that passing the bill easing party registration requirements could spell considerable trouble for the opposition despite the legislations seemingly liberal overtones. When United Russia could hold an absolute majority in the Duma, it served the function that the Putin administration needed, said Korgunyuk. But at this point United Russia can no longer count on a majority. So the clear plan is to dilute everyones stake, and split the opposition vote among small parties with this legislation. Konstantin Merzlikin, the head of PARNAS political section, told Kommersant that the Kremlin was hesitant to discuss the question of allowing voting blocs in the Duma, further raising concerns over a strategy to split the opposition vote.
The only chance Medvedev had to become the master of his own political destiny was to fire Putin from the job of prime minister.
Andrei Piontkovsky, a liberal political analyst close to the opposition, shares similar misgivings about the reform package, but said that Medvedev may make some token gestures toward the opposition in his final days in office. All the same hes a living person, and perhaps he wants to prove something to himself, to show that in the end he did change something, said Piontkovsky. We may see him release several political prisoners, although neither [Mikhail] Khodorkovsky nor [Platon] Lebedev can be on that list. Whatever Medvedev may do now, he has lost the trust of the liberals who supported him against all odds and hoped he would contest Putin and make a run for the Russian presidency, said Mefodyeva. Rather than lasting reforms as his strongest legacy, Medvedev leaves behind an even stronger culture of distrust and a jaded view of politicians. This was the president of hope, said Mefodyeva. People were truly disappointed [under Putin] and they believed in Medvedev, and he spit on them and decided not to run [for president]. When a hope like that is violated, it triggers a deep frustration, which grew into a source of the current protests.
maDe to be broken Only as a lame duck did Medvedev begin to push for serious liberal reforms that could significantly redefine the Russian political scene before the next elections. As he recounted his achievements to the Federal Assembly, Medvedev also announced his intention to reinstitute the direct elections of governors (with no mention of a presidential filter, which Putin had insisted upon) and to ease requirements for registering political parties and nominating candidates for elections.
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Who is a president?
By Andrei Zolotov, Jr. RUSSIA PROFILE
What Does It Mean to Be the President of Russia?
the Constitution to allow for his third consecutive term. He remained loyal to the Constitution and left office. Back then many lauded the first constitutional transfer of power at the end of a presidential term, which was meant to strengthen the presidency. It should also be noted that ever since Boris Yeltsins time, On September 24, 2011 President Dmitry Medvedev though many lamented Russian political institutions underand Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appeared on the development, the super-strong presidency was often singled podium of a Moscow stadium, where the congress of out as a relatively more developed one. Yes, it was always emthe ruling United Russia Party was being held, to anphasized that the presidency is better off because of the longnounce that they would be swapping places. I would standing, authoritarian tradition. But it was still seen as more like to say directly that the agreement on what to do, developed than, say, the Parliament, political parties or the juhow to work in the future, had been reached between diciary. At first [in 2007 to 2008] we saw that the presidency us long ago, several years ago, Putin told the apcould be seen differently from an absolute monarchy, that the plauding crowd of supporters as television and Web institution has its limitations, said Mikhail Remizov, the presbroadcasters showed live coverage. ident of the Moscow-based Institute of National Strategy think That very same minute a wave of expletives rattled tank. One could have confirmed this trend if Medvedev had through Facebook and other social networks as mem- run for a second term. But it didnt work out that way. bers of the new urban middle class expressed their Timothy Colton, a Russia specialist and chairman of the dediscontent with Putins imminent return to the Krem- partment of government at Harvard University, also believes lin, possibly for another 12 years. The way the news that Medvedev had the choice of pushing Putin or challengwas presented to the public, as a fait accompli, reining him for office, as is normal in modern political systems, but forced the anticlimax. That moment of disillusionment declined to do either. Yet it turned out that from the outset, spurred first widespread talk of emigration, and then, the tandem setup and Medvedevs weakness have served to deafter the additional insult of broadly demonstrated value the presidency. The swap has to be seen in the context electoral fraud in the December parliamentary elecof the systematic devaluation of the presidency as such, begintions, a series of protests that reinstated public politics ning in 2008. It continued the trend toward personalization of in the fabric of Russian life, at least for some time. supreme power in Russia, Colton said. Now that the majority of Russians have expressed Andrei Zubov, a professor of history at the Moscow State Intheir support for Putin, against the will of those who stitute of International Relations and a member of the Russian came to be known, in former chief ideologist Vladislav Orthodox Churchs Interconciliar Assembly, said that the deSurkovs words, angry urbanites, Putin is to be inau- cision to swap has undermined the authority of both the presgurated on May 8 as Russias fourth (or third? or secident and the prime minister. Medvedevs political weight, ond again?) president. Meanwhile, the question ariswhich had not been big to begin with, has been reduced to es of what the Putin-Medvedev swap means for the nearly zero, while Putin as a leader is no longer satisfactory for Russian presidency in the long-term. Does it make it a large segment of the population, Zubov said. It is shamestronger or weaker? And how is Russias most powerful, both for people who go to rallies for him and against him, ful institution likely to develop? to see the circus he is putting up, shedding tears in the Manezh Square. Zubov referred to Putins appearance before a crowd tWo sWaps is one too manY of cheering supporters on the night of the presidential election Experts agree on one thing: the decision announced with tears in his eyes. Putin later said the tears were caused by on September 24, 2011 and confirmed on March the wind. 4, 2012 can only be observed in the context of the a relic of a job 2007 decision to nominate Dmitry Medvedev for the Others see the swap as naturally bringing the real center of countrys top post. By all accounts, at the time Putin power back where it belongsthe Kremlinand argue that could have remained in the Kremlin had he wanted neither installing a successor in 2008 nor the swap of 2012 to, while influential voices called for amendments to
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had any effect on the presidency as such, since Russians recognize the man in power, and not the institution. Having left the Kremlin [in 2008], Vladimir Putin failed to convince the Russian population that the center of power remained in the Kremlin, said Alexei Mukhin, the director of the Center for Political Information. Now the center of power returned home. Mukhin does not reject the election process as such, but argues that Russians make their selection in a mystical way, and the elections procedure together with its official results is of secondary importance. Boris Yeltsin retained his post in 1996, but did not become president of Russia again, he said, referring to the first presidents controversial reelection. Vladimir Putin left in 2008, but Russians never accepted his departure. Other analysts also tend to speak about supreme power rather than the presidency as such. There is no institution of the presidency in Russia, but there is a notion of supreme power, said Nikolay Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. The supreme power, whether it is called Tsars or national leaders, has always been very important for our people, and it remains so, said Zubov. The job remains, but its performers have become inadequate. That gradually leads to the realization that something needs to be done about the job itself.
WaYs to rectifY the problem photo: Alexey Druzhinin, rIA novosti Zubov was referring to an inchoate discussion, so far limited to a small circle guing that the Constitution should be amended or even reof constitutional lawyers and political scientists and to the written to curb the presidents powers. Krasnov has published pages of the oppositionist Novaya Gazeta newspaper, about other articles to this effect, and runs a seminar at the Higher the need to abandon Russias super-presidency and switch to a School of Economics in which he discusses ways of transitionpresidential-parliamentary or a parliamentary republic form of ing to a parliamentary republic. With the powers the current government. Many see a contradiction between the constituhead of state has according to the Constitution, his policy will tional status of the Russian president as the guarantor of the not be a result of a compromise of various political forces and Constitution, who thus has to remain outside the separation the constituencies they represent, but a monopoly party poliof powers and be non-partisan, and the trend of presidents be- cy determined by the reference groups surrounding the presiing de facto party politicians. dent, i.e. the top bureaucracy, the Novaya Gazeta article said. On January 11 one of the authors of Russian Constitution, It also cited Krasnovs research on the ever-expanding presithe Head of the Constitutional Law Department at the Highdential powers to appoint officials and make other undisputer School of Economics Mikhail Krasnov, together with Liled decisions. ia Shevtsova, a political scientist with the Carnegie Moscow Since 1993, when the current Constitution was adopted folCenter and the Vice President of the Liberal Mission Foundalowing a quarrel between President Boris Yeltsin and the Sution Igor Klyamkin, published an article in Novaya Gazeta, ar- preme Soviet (the Parliament at the time), three presidents
The September mistake is a term widely used to describe United russias fateful 12th party Congress, when Dmitry Medvedev announced he would stand aside to let Vladimir putin reclaim the presidency.
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10
have received 502 new powers, Krasnov found (the 1993 Contial terms, at least by scrapping the words in a row where the stitution was tailored especially for Yeltsin as the perceived Constitution speaks of a two-term limit for the president. driving force of Russian reform). One hundred and sixty five But whatever the reform proposal, the very possibility of new powers were added by Yeltsin, 226 by Putin, and 111 by amending the Constitution and carrying out such sweeping Medvedev. Today, the president not only de facto appoints gov- government reform under the current administration is highernors, but also the presidents of Moscow and St. Petersburg ly problematic. That is why today most of the discussion is cenState Universities, to name a few. Monopolistic power, stiptered around three draft laws in the Constitutional Assembly, ulated by the fundamental law, tends to expand uncontrolwhich should in theory be able to adopt a new Constitution. lably, Klyamkin, Krasnov and Shevtsova wrote. At the same time, they warned that today a shift to a parliamentary repub- the ironY in institutionaliZation As far as president-elect Putin himself is concerned, he is sendlic would destabilize the Russian state. The authors suggest reform that would strengthen the pres- ing signals that he favors the American political system, in which there are two competing political parties and a president idents role as a guarantor of the Constitution and limit his who heads the executive. But such a president has to be a party policy-making functionsfor example, to strip him of the power to determine the main directions of foreign and domes- politician. Most recently, Putin spoke about this at a meeting with political scientists on February 6. Remizov said that tic policy and coordinate the branches of power, while giving in the current situation, we are most likely returning to the him the sole power to appoint the prosecutor general and the middle of the past decade, when the presidency was above the human rights ombudsman. They also proposed making the president the commander of the interior troops, which should separation of powers and the president served as an arbiter in conflicts between political groups. be transformed into a national guard. The Cabinet, on the Colton argued that it is impossible to institutionalize the other hand, should be formed by the State Duma, and should presidency without consolidating the Russian political system report to it. The Duma should nominate the prime minister in general. So long as it is constrained more by informal unfor presidential appointment, and not the other way around, derstandings rather than binding rules, nothing will be truly as is now the case. The president should be stripped of the institutionalized, he said. Hence the ironyinstitutionalizaright to fire the Cabinet at will, while Parliament should be able to do it by passing a vote of no confidence (now the Pres- tion of the presidency can be accomplished only by limiting the power of the individual who holds the presidency, including, ident has the power to fire the cabinet or to dissolve Parliamost likely, the imposition of a clear term limit. Putin is intelmenta situation in which a no confidence vote is virtually ligent enough to realize this in principle, but past experience impossible.) suggests that he will not act on it. Still, the possibility of progAbove all, Putins return to the Kremlin spurred talk of the ress does exist. need to introduce a clearer limit on the number of presiden-
the friendship of nations

By Dan peleschuk RUSSIA PROFILE
Once Again, Putin Faces a Multicultural and ProblematicRussia.

In one of his many pre-election newspaper articles, President-elect Vladimir Putin outlined his vision for the future of Russias nationality question. The melting pot of assimilation is highly volatile, he wrote, pushed to its limits by an ever-increasing flow of migration. His rhetoric, mostly vague and hyperbolic, rejected both the American melting pot model as well as the multicultural European nation-state, yet offered little in the way of concrete proposals. Politi-
cal analysts were left scratching their heads, claiming Putins treatise left more questions than answers. For example, Putin criticizes the European policy of multiculturalism, political expert Ilya Konstantinov told the Kommersant daily shortly after Putins article was published. He says that Russia has its own way, but what is it? Its not clear. He says there should be neither assimilation nor [ethnic] enclaves. But what should there be? Putin is putting forward a lot of fairly controversial ideas, but there remains no clear vision of how he sees the future of Russias nationality policy. But it is this very logic that has colored Russias post-Soviet experience with the national question: ambiguity, uncertainty and a lack of clear-cut policy. Modern Russia, experts say, is stuck with two often-problematic legacies: the imperial and the
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There may be plenty of ethnic tension in russia, but its army speaks to the fact that people of various ethnicities can get alongit is one of the countrys most diverse institutions, where conscripts hailing from all of russias numerous republics have served together for years.
photo: Vladimir Vyatkin, rIA novosti
Soviet. The former incorporated vast, non-Russian territories into the state, and the latter institutionalized them and their indigenous peoples. Outside Russian borders, meanwhile, are millions of former Soviet citizens looking to their former master for economic opportunities and a better life. Today, as Russia grapples with nationalism, as countless migrants continue to pour through its vast borders and as the countrys Muslim population enjoys meteoric growth, a 21st century Russia will be faced with dilemmas, long in the making, with which the government has never quite had to deal. Yet experts note that because of its unique and damning array of tough problems, Russia may be left with no other choice than to stick to its status quo of ethnic ambiguity.
living With the past Amidst the revolutions, bloodshed and destructive wars that have plagued Russias recent past, there is a complicated and deep-seated collective identity crisis: does Russia today remain an empire, or has it become a nation state? The question has arisen time and again, yet has been left perpetually unanswered. A small handful of post-Soviet Russian leaders have, in their own ways, attempted to tackle the issue, but all have been faced with perhaps the most daunting obstacle of all: history.
The Soviet Union, and before it the Russian Empire, spread across the Eurasian landmass to claim scores of territories home to peoples far different from the Slavs themselves. Yet with Russia as the anchor of both imperial manifestations, experts said the Russian identity itself has been formed by the experience of being the rulers rather than the ruled. We live with the imperial legacy in the sense that feeling like a great power is very important for the majority of the population, said Alexei Miller, a historian at the Central European University in Budapest. In its time, the Soviet Union engineered a human experiment that advanced the ethnic self-awareness of the many non-Russians living on Russian territory, establishing compact territories to which indigenous nationalities would be entitled. By providing opportunities for education and employment, cultural advancement and relative self-rule, the Bolsheviks inadvertently empowered classes of people who would, after the collapse, demand the same opportunities they enjoyed under the Soviet leadership. A similar thing happened in 14 other Soviet republics, where citizens of republics as far-flung as Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan were free to build their own states, but always with an eye toward Moscow as the nerve center. After the collapse, with
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both the former Soviet republics and the Russian regions reeling, pointing to Tishkovs insistence that the Russian language ing from an economic downturn, many non-Russians flocked and culture should help form the core of the Rossiyanin idento major Russian urban centers in hope of seeking better ecotity. Whats more, she added, was the distinction between nomic opportunities. The non-Russians in Russia, meanwhile, Russians and Slavs, the latter of which include Ukrainians found themselves citizens of a new state whose ostensible core and Belarusians, but which some claim are rooted in a comnation was not their own. mon Russian identity. On the one hand, you could say the disThis is why, according to Miller, there is no possible way to tinction is about citizenship and loyalty to the state as opposed construct or identify Russia today as a nation-state: The nato ethnicity, but once you start digging deeper, both of these tion-state model assumes that there is one big group that mobecome a bit more problematic: ethnicity because of the Rusbilizes a nation politically, and maybe some few minorities, sia-Ukrainian-Belarusian issue, and citizenship because Roswhile a different model is based on the recognition that there siyanin seems to have an ethnic Russian core, at least accordare two or more politically mobilized groups that perceive ing to the proponents of the idea, said Shevel, a professor at themselves as nations within the state, he said. And the prob- Tufts University in Boston. lem is how you make these identities complementary: like Catalan and Spanish, or Russian and Tatar. In this respect, it is ab- enter the state Things began to change when Vladimir Putin became presisolutely clear that we have the legacy of an empire. dent in 2000. Seeking to reconsolidate a disgruntled and civic or ethnic? wounded country after the tumultuous 1990s, Putin embarked Russia came hobbling out of the Soviet Unions collapse with on a new campaign of nation building. According to nationnot only a bruised ego, but also a fundamental confusion about alism expert Peter Rutland, he took steps that reflected a its new identity. If the Soviet Union was a multinational empire convincing turn toward ethnic rather than civic nationalism: anchored by the Sovietsky narod (the Soviet people), then in his speeches, he referred to the Russky rather than Roswhat was post-Soviet Russia, which was left with a similarly siyanin, he began paying regular visits to Orthodox churches multicultural character but without any defined ideology to and resurrected other elements of the Tsarist era. bind its peoples together, 80 percent of whom were Russian but In the process of his consolidation Putin also constructed the resta broad array of nationalities? what has become one of the defining elements of his political Boris Yeltsin, the first Russian president, set out to address system: the power vertical. Targeted largely at the 21 ethnic rethe dilemma. According to his model, Russia would be a large- publics, such as Tatarstan and Bashkortostan, the system was ly civic-oriented state, held together less by a common ethmeant to reign in Russias autonomous regions and bring them nic identity than by a shared claim to a common land. In 1990, under federal control. Yet once Putin had managed to either shortly before the Soviet collapse and at the height of his coninstall local loyalists or convince ethnic leaders of the need for flict with a weakened Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin famously de- fealty to the ruling regime, Rutland said, he largely backed off clared to the non-Russian ethnic republics to grab all the sov- and allowed them free reign in exchange for political support. ereignty you can. What followed was the implementation of Russias newly centralized federal system, in fact, seemed a heavily decentralized federal system, not unlike the Unitto de facto revert toward Yeltsins decentralized model, and it ed States, in which each autonomous republic would be largely highlights the inescapable truth behind Russias great, complex free to govern itself through the institutional structures inher- quilt of non-Russian nationalities. This is the only way you ited from the Soviet Union. can rule Russia. You couldnt assimilate those 20 percent of the population that are not ethnic Russians, you cant force them to stop being Tatar or Mari or Chechen, said Rutland, a professor at Wesleyan University. Even though Putins article in January did claim that Russia wasnt multicultural, that multiculturalism is a mistake, and the fact that he tried to use other words such as poly-ethnicit is a form of multiculturalism, and this is one of the contradictions. This sparked a wholly new idea, based upon the presence of What has changed, however, is the Kremlins apparent tolermany non-Russian ethnic groups that remained within Russian ance for the risingand potentially dangeroustide of Rusborders. Talk arose of a new kind of categorization: Russky sian nationalism. Particularly in the past few years, with an inversus Rossiyanin, the former noting ethnic Russianness and flux of internal and external migrants from the Caucasus and the latter describing Russian citizenship. This, in a country Central Asia to Moscow, the authorities have trumpeted the whose constitution declares We, the multinational people of Russian ethnic card more than once. In its sponsorship of prothe Russian Federation, seemed only logical, and was champi- Kremlin youth groups such as Nashi, which holds an annuoned by Yeltsins nationalities advisor Valery Tishkov. al summer camp at Lake Seliger, during which participants are Yet according to Oxana Shevel, an expert on citizenship and encouraged to conceive offspring in tents set up especially for nation-building, the term has grown to be potentially mislead- the occasion to offset the plummeting ethnic Russian popula-
Todays Russia cant be called a nation-state.
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tion, the Kremlin sends the message that its the Russky who tensions with the non-Russian groups in Russia; a Eurasianist is more important. policy, which would extend Russian nationhood throughout Whats more, media reports have detailed extensive ties bethe former Soviet Union, would clearly fuel regional tensions. tween ultranationalist movements and several pro-Kremlin Instead, Shevel noted, the best bet is to retain the current youth groups, as well as intimate relations between some far policy, which although inherently contradictory, has thus far right hate groups and members of the Russian military, police largely avoided exacerbating tensions. Ambiguity may be the and the Federal Security Service (FSB). Putin has to a large solution because its a very difficult and explosive situation extent tried to co-opt the xenophobic variety of nationalism, or otherwise there are going to be groups that will be angry both at least he would tolerate them, said Pl Kolst, a post-Soviinside and outside of Russia, she said. By keeping it vague, et specialist at the University of Oslo. It seems like he would the Russian state gives itself freedom to maneuver. rather have them on the inside pissing out than on the outside Rutland agreed, claiming that the current messy balance in pissing in. Russia between Russian and non-Russian groups still works, There are very few signs of the tension abating, especially citing the relative ethnic peace enjoyed on a national level. Yet given the worrying migration statistics: according to the Fedhe also highlights the Kremlins unwillingness to truly tackeral Migration Service, 2011 alone saw more than 13 million le the issue in any meaningful way, either out of fear of inflammigrants pour through Russias borders, most of them from ing tensions or hemorrhaging central authority. While in the former Soviet republics. Kolst added that they have become grand scheme the Kremlin has largely avoided the violent conknown as the new others, responsible for fueling much of the flicts that plagued so many post-Soviet states, it should nevexplosion of lower- and middle class resentment toward the ertheless focus its efforts on the individual rights of Russias authorities lately. myriad national groups, he said. They dont want to go the route of recognizing the complexity of their ethnic map. The a question of management? multicultural rights are really confined to the ethnic repubCuriously, experts note that the smartest move for the Kremlin licsif youre a Muslim in Moscow, you have trouble finding a would be to preserve the status quo. According to Shevel, Rus- mosque because theyre not being built, and you find Muslims sia faces several policy options, yet all are likely to alienate one praying in the street on the holy days, he said. If Russia had group or another. For instance, she said, a civic policy would a more consistent policy, they would fix that problem by givexclude ethnic Russians outside the borders who are citizens ing rights to ethnic and religious minorities outside their ethof other former-Soviet states; an ethnic policy would inflame nic republics.
divide et impera
By nikolay petrov Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
There Is No Alternative to Federalism in Russia.

The regions and their relations with the federal center are of primary importance for Russia, the biggest country and a federation with the largest number of jurisdictions in the world. Journalists sought to capture the cultural, historical and socio-economic diversity of the Soviet Union by describing it as extending from Finland to Afghanistan. Now the country does not include the Baltic Republics or Central Asia, but the contrasts between Karelia and Kalmykia or Tuva in present-day Russia are still striking. The natural and socio-cultural diversity of Russias 83 regions is so enormous that effective administra-
tion from the federal center is impossible. There are no universal solutions that will work equally well for Chechnya and Chukotka, Kaliningrad and Kamchatka. Meanwhile, centralization and unitarization have been taking place steadily since the year 2000. In a natural progression, the federal-regional pendulum, which swung too far toward the regions in the 1990s, would inevitably return to a more balanced position. However, starting with the adoption of the 2004 Beslan package of political reforms, which ended direct elections of governors and greatly weakened regional representation in both chambers of the Federal Assembly, the pendulum swung further toward the federal side. However, it seems that Russia has already passed the peak of centralism and unitarism, and the pendulum has been swinging backward since mid-2011. It is extremely important for Russia not to repeat the mistakes of the 1990s and to reduce the amplitude of the pendulum swing to avoid hitting the extremes on both sides.
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DraWing bounDaries Vladimir Putins first major project, announced the day after his initial inauguration, was federal reform. Anti-federalist in nature, the reform was aimed at creating a new venueunder Putins complete controlfor greater supervision over the main elements of the state machine, both at the regional and federal levels. It is no accident that military generals were appointed as the first envoys to the seven federal districts established in 2000 (the South Caucasus Federal District, formerly part of the South Federal District, was later added as a separate entity). In the regions, Putins new vertical power structure rested on chief federal inspectors. Their main function was to coordinate the activities of all regional federal agency offices except the Federal Security Agency (FSB). The envoys received a status akin to deputy prime ministers and were included in the Security Council. The president charged his envoys with a growing number of specific tasks. At one time, they had to tailor regional legislation to the federal legislation, select candidates for the position of governor and others, support small and medium businesses, elaborate development strategies and even prepare the regions for winter. The transition from functions of overseeing regional officials and ensuring compliance with the decisions made at the top to elaborating and implementing economic development strategies was reflected, among other things, in the replacement of generals as envoys with successful managers from among the ranks of governors and mayors. During the 12 years of their existence the federal districts have become part and parcel of Putins systema new floor between the regional and federal levels. There is no reason to expect the system to be dismantled; it will most likely be adjusted to meet new challenges as they arise. nomaDic management The ratio of federal officials to regional ones in the regions is two to one. The employees of numerous federal departments in territorial divisions (numbering about 60 to 70 per region) and their counterparts from the financial departments of the regional administrations are on the federal payroll. Although formally, the entire army of federal officials in the regions is subordinate to the relevant federal ministries and departments, in reality all of them, including the executives, have long since become part of the regional establishment controlled by the governors. By the beginning of 2000, when Putin became president, there was only one federal agencythe FSBthat had not fallen under full or partial control of the regional political elite. In light of this, Putin chose acting presidential envoys from among regional FSB executives. The main reason these executives were loyal to Moscow was the system of horizontal rotation that was introduced during Stalins rule. The purpose of the system was to prevent executives from remaining in the same region for too long, for fear that they would become too involved with the locals and lose loyalty to the central government. These executives were sup-
posed to be rotated from one region to another every four to five years. This is the system that Moscow began to gradually restore for regional prosecutors, Ministry of Interior executives, judges and eventually governors. The latter are not yet transferred en masse horizontally from one region to another, but there is a precedent for this (Oleg Kozhemyako, the current governor of the Amur Region, was in charge of the Koryak Autonomous Region for some time). The transformation of the regional elite is largely determined by the conversion of the regions from closed into open systems in the 2000s. The elites also became more mobileboth between the regions and Moscow (in both directions). Relatively autonomous and established figures in the regional political elite have been consistently replaced with Moscow appointees. The destruction of autarchy and active blending are typical of the regional elite. This is largely due to outsiders being appointed as governors, followed by whole teams of alien managers. The infusion of Moscow blood has become an active practice. Big groups of Muscovites working on rotation turn up at regional administrations, especially in their political blocs. In many cases the regional elites gain the upper hand they unite against the outsiders if the latter are weak and align with them if they are strong. A serious problem is that administrators working on rotation have the mentality of temporary workers because they have no ties to a particular region and have a different planning horizon by definition. The horizontal rotation of federal generals in the regions has one major drawback. The vertical hierarchies of different departments lack coordination and fire regional bosses from time to time. Such replacements enhance loyalty at the regional level, but usually at the expense of efficiency. However, when several regional generals are replaced in one go and new arrivals have no solid knowledge of the region they were sent to, the effect may be the oppositeinstead of enhancing its control over the region, the center loses it completely.
poWer to the locals There is no alternative to federalism if Russia wants to preserve its territorial integrity without sliding into authoritarian rule. Some aspects of federalism must be restored, and others created from scratch. The first thing to do is to considerably redistribute functions between different levels of government on the basis of the subsidiarity principle, i.e. delegating functions from top to bottom and then executing each function at the lowest level, closest to the people as the source of power. It is also possible to use the principle of competitive federalism with some overlap among zones of responsibility at various levels, which gives people additional room for maneuver. This primarily applies to the subjects of joint administration as defined by the Constitution. Consistent de-federalization in the last few years has significantly evened out the statuses of the regions, minimizing the differences between ethnic republics and Russian regions. This makes it possible to renounce ethnic federalism with its so-
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phisticated hierarchy of ethnic groups introduced by Stalin, and to build a normal federation of regions in the future. Ideally, the asymmetry in the statuses of regions should be reduced to two typesfully-fledged regions of the federation that are capable of performing all functions independently, and federal territories that receive considerable financial aid from the center, thereby delegating part of their rights to the top. It is not quite clear what to do about federal districts, although it is probably possible to create a structure whereby a large portion of territorial outposts of federal bodies will be transferred to the district level, whereas the regional authorities will remain in the regions for the most part. The territorial networks used by federal bodies, including administrative courts, should be divorced from the regional networks as much as possible in order to unite both whole regions and their parts. The disparity between the borders of different territorial administrative networks facilitates the cohesion of the country and removes the dictate of regional borders. It is necessary to restore direct elections of governors and mayors, especially mayors of regional capitals, whose role in the territorial and regional government structures is extremely important. In exceptional cases, to prevent ethnic tensions in the regions with a complicated ethnic makeup and to alleviate the threat of ethnic confrontation, direct elections may be replaced with more complicated schemes involving electors, as was the case in Dagestan. The conversion of the Federation Council into a body representing regional interests could be achieved in different ways. It is hardly sensible to restore direct elections of senators, which was the norm in 1993 to 1995 when the party system had not yet taken shape. It is possible to adopt a version
of the German model, whereby the regions are entitled to send different specialists to the meetings of the upper chamber as their representatives depending on the problems discussed. It is also possible to endow the biggest regions, which carry the brunt of the financial burden in implementing the chambers decisions, with more influence in the decision-making process. They could be given additional votes for this purpose. It is essential to return overall authority to the local government by providing it with the necessary tax base for financial self-sufficiency. This applies to both capitals where the municipal level is subordinate to the regional one. It is also possible to restore the congress of municipal entities as a structure representing the interests of a local government at the federal level. The formation of representative bodies of government at the municipal level should be even less unified than in the regions. In any case, it should not be closely linked with federal parties. It is necessary to do everything to develop elements of direct democracy, such as gatherings and local referendums and to encourage initiatives on self-taxation for resolving local issues by allocating additional federal funds to the collected revenues. The implementation of these proposals is not easy for several reasons: the redistribution of powers between government levels cannot go smoothly, and the country may face unexpected problems. Moreover, some federal officials believe that giving more power to the regions may put the countrys territorial integrity at risk. These apprehensions are justified to some extent, but the ineffective and clumsy actions of the center pose a much bigger threat.
nikolay petrov is the chair of the Carnegie Moscow Centers Society and regions program.
photo: Vitaliy Belousov, rIA novosti
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cant beat the sistema

By Dan peleschuk RUSSIA PROFILE
Informal Politics and Patron-Client Networks Continue to Plague Russia.

Since Prime Minister Vladimir Putins second term as president, a spate of strange and terrifying incidents have stunned Russian society. First, crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya was shot and killed in October of 2006, most likely for her hard-hitting coverage of war crimes and corruption in Chechnya. Then, a month later, former Federal Security Service (FSB) agent Alexander Litvinenko was poisoned for what critics say was his outspoken criticism of the Putin regime. Finally, human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov was gunned down in public in early 2009, allegedly by ultranationalists, over his work in defending ethnic minorities. Taken together, these events point to one indisputable, though perhaps counterintuitive, fact: politics in Russia remain dominated not necessarily by one man, but by a system of informal arrangements and unspoken rules. It is bound by the whims of a political elite who ostensibly serve at the behest of Vladimir Putin himself, yet in fact merely serve their own ends. The phenomenon has taken on various names: informal politics, patronage networks, sistema, as well as others. Yet all these definitions serve to highlight how Russia is governed less by formal institutions and the rule of law than by verbal commands, personal acquaintances and a system of unwritten laws that, although long part of Soviet and Russian politics, have formed a wholly new political culture under Putin. And with the prime minister preparing to take office in May for the third time since 2000, experts say his system is as deeply ingrained into the political fabric of post-Soviet Russia as ever. However, many also say the system, like its Soviet predecessor, cannot survive very long under the extreme duress of widespread corruption, heavy-handed rule, and the toxic mixture of impunity and a do-it-yourself approach to solving problems. Rather, experts say, the new administration should focus on reforming informal politics to work in the interest ofand not despitethe Russian state.
business as usual Informal politics are new neither to Russia nor to many other modern countries. A certain degree of informality and personal networks have played an important role in even the most prosperous, highly-advanced democratic societies in the worldits just that many have either abandoned the practice in favor of more advanced democratic practices or tailored them to function within legal bounds. In Russia, however, the practice remains commonplace. So what sets it apart? Experts point to Russias traumatic post-Soviet transition from single-party rule and command-economics. First, the experience produced a legacy of relying on informal networks to circumvent the daunting bureaucracy of the Soviet system. Second, as the Soviet collapse gave way to a severely weakened state, networks were similarly used when functioning institutions were absent. Any time formal institutions are not clear-cut or do not really work throughout history or become set in a working mode, informal mechanisms come in to compensate for the defects of the formal structures, said noted sociologist Alena Ledeneva. In Russia, she added, the formal institutions are very crisscrossing and overlapping, and in a way this situation of overregulation and under-regulation of the formal rules creates fantastic niches for informal instruments to come into play. The practical manifestations of this behavior are many. They can range from the simple Soviet practice of employing personal connections to procure certain goods or arrange certain services, to the higher-level act of offering political support, or patronage, in exchange for certain privileges and freedoms. In fact, the inherent complexity of the phenomenon, experts also say, makes it hard to define. Indeed, the notion of informal politics is perhaps an umbrella term that unites an array of other practicespatronage politics, informal networks, or simply corruptionand only vaguely defines the way orders are issued and resources acquired in todays Russia. Political scientist Henry Hale, a professor at the George Washington University in Washington, DC, noted that the system is marked less by particular practices than by a common understanding of expected behavior. When people expect that its the normal way to get things done, it makes sense to engage in that very same behavior, even if you yourself might actually not like it or might think its wrong, he said. If youre the only one to abide by a formal rule and everybody else is behaving by informal rules, the only result might be that you wind up not having any resources, or not being able to get anything done.
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informal living Under Putin, the system of informal politics has taken on a life of its own. While corruption and patron-client networks were rife under first Russian President Boris Yeltsin, they seemed centered around the business interests of several key oligarchs who maintained intimate contacts with the Kremlin, with others involved in organized crime. But with Putins ascension to the presidency, the ex-KGB spy built a vertical of power meant to ensure the consolidation of power within the hands of several key players. This power vertical has come to represent Putins neo-Soviet, command-style governance, in which decisions are handed down from the highest echelons of power to the lowest and from the administrative center to regional loyalists. But experts say this system has also served to institutionalize an unprecedented level of corruption throughout official ranks. A recent report by the London-based think tank Chatham House, entitled Putin Again: Implications for Russia and the West, spells out one of the more fundamental aspects of the Putin system: The lesson for those who have made spectacular fortunes under Putin and with his endorsement is that if you know the right person, you can prosper, but that no court will protect you if you fall out of favor with the regime. Ledeneva, meanwhile, calls it the sistema. As the name implies, it is a widespread, systemic culture in which bureaucrats in Putins Russia abide by a certain code dictated less by a party line than by private interests. Although elements of Putins power vertical remain at play, the sistema also simultaneously features networks and constraints, she said, which sometimes undermine the functioning of the power vertical. She points to the strange difficulties Swedish furniture retailer IKEA faced while opening its branch in Samara, originally detailed in early 2010 by Russian journalist Andrei Loshak, as an example of the inherent absurdity in Putins sistema.
After its ill-fated experience with a Moscow store, in which local authorities cut off the power to ruffle a few feathers, the company came stocked with power generators for its new Samara location. Yet IKEA had apparently overpaid by about $ 200 million for its back-up plan: as it turned out, those who sold the generators to the Swedes were taking kickbacks from the leasing company, which grossly inflated the cost. In the end, IKEA tore up its contract with the Samara leasing firm only to be fined more than $ 6 million by a Russian court for breach of contract. They created all these weird things that are inexplicable unless you understand those tricky and ambivalent ways of sistema, in which officials serve themselves they dont serve the country or the people, said Ledeneva, a researcher at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies at the University College London. Theyre not at all interested in businesses developing in the regionits absurd.
laYers of poWer Yet perhaps there are more ways to envision the system of informal politics that has flourished under Putin than through a largely monolithic system of top-down rule. Political expert Richard Sakwa notes that Putins Russia is in fact morphing into a triple state, in which an uncontrollable third layer, given to massive crime and self-interest, is emerging alongside the other two layers, formal institutions and Putins administrative-command system, and are escaping the bounds of the latter two. A prime example is the spate of high-profile killings that galvanized Western and domestic critics of the Putin regime over official impunity. Far from ordered directly by Putin himself, the murders of such figures as Litvinenko, Politkovskaya and Markelov, according to Sakwa, reflect a growing trend of elite factionalism rather than a rigid power vertical. Putins controversial jailing of ex-tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was what signaled to elites lower down in the hierarchy that tapping into personal networks to achieve personal ends was fair game, he said. These corrupt networks are beginning to escape not just the control of the constitutional statethat is, parties, the law, the media and so on theyre also beginning to escape the administrative regime under Putin and his elite group, said Sakwa, a professor at the University of Kent. In the past, we always ascribed this to the machinations and the evil intentions of Vladimir Putin, and that he personally ordered the murder of Litvinenko and Politkovskaya and so on, which is of course absolute nonsense. Ramzan Kadyrovs Chechnya might be another example of the tolerated yet perhaps due to its unwillingness to play by the informal rules of the systema, Swedish furniture maker uncontrolled style of do-it-yourself IKEA has encountered strange problems opening a retail store in Samara. photo: Anton Denisov, rIA novosti rule that has run rampant under Pu-
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tin. Granted free reign over the republic by Putin in exchange for unfailing political support, Kadyrov has been implicated in an array of crimes, ranging from corruption to egregious human rights abuses and murders. His own highly personalized rule has kept Chechnya largely on lockdown since his ascension to power in 2007, and has seen much of the power concentrated in the hands of a narrow elite, most hailing from Kadyrovs native clan. Yet these extra layers of power also function at times with rhyme and reason. Hale said various autonomous elite factions licensed under Putin typically vary their more brazen activities according to their perceptions of the central authorities. When people dont think the leadership is willing or able to effectively punish, then theyre more likely to go their own way, he said. But when they do think the leader is firmly in power and determined and able to punish, then theyre going to be much less likely to behave autonomously and risk angering the person in power.
report, Russia analyst Lilia Shevtsova argues that the growing protest movement might force the authorities to reconsider the rapidly decaying system of personalized, corrupt rule. Yet, she added, the process of change involves not only the removal of Putin as the guarantor of such a system, but of the system itselfan admittedly long and arduous process. The end of the regime does not mean the end of the system of personalized powera change at the top could give the system some strength to continue for some time, she wrote. The demise of the model of personalized power that has been suffocating Russia for centuries can be expected to be painful and to have both hostages and victims. Others similarly note that the deeper problem lay in peoples perceptions of informal politics and patron-client networks as a means to entirely bypass functionalalbeit weakenedstate institutions. According to Ledeneva, informal networks may always remain a key part of Russian socio-political life, but the key is to modernize them and clarify the public-private division in peoples minds. We have to reduce the niches for doureformeD netWorking ble-standards and double-think, the traditionally Soviet type of But how does one escape this deeply engrained sense of ofmentality, and the idea that we can all jump the queue, she said. ficial informality in a land whose rulers and bureaucrats have This is really about combating the principle of exceptionalism in so thoroughly embraced such methods? In the Chatham House oneself and not trying to do things over other peoples heads.
rebuild not reform

By Alexander Sharavin Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
Russias Military, Police and Security Services Are Beyond Reform.

During a recent address to an expanded board meeting of the Ministry of Defense, President Dmitry Medvedev essentially encapsulated his four-year-long tenure as Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces of Russia. Prior to that, he participated in the expanded board meeting of the Federal Security Service and the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Indeed, the president had something to say. In recent years, there were big sometimes radicalchanges taking place across the power ministries in Russia.
in name onlY The Ministry of Internal Affairs (MVD) underwent a major personnel shake-up, together with an overall restructuring and a name change. The number of police officers was reduced by almost 20 percent, and there are now fewer generals. At the same time, the
quality of their social benefits package has been improved, especially in the area of housing. Even a new federal law On police was adopted, as well as a law on the social guarantees for the police force, which provided for the long-awaited multiple increases in allowances. Two months ago, president Medvedev summed up the achievements: The ministry has changed in recent years. The formation of the police force was completed, [and] other divisions of the ministry are being reformed. The movement toward change is obvious, and I regard everything that we accomplished together over the past several years to be generally positive. Was the mission accomplished? Two and a half years ago, the president said: Renaming the militsia the police is meaningful. Its a transition from the Soviet system to a modern one. With these words he quite clearly and explicitly indicated the starting point of the reform: the Soviet militsia. It has become obvious, not only to ordinary citizens, but also to the authorities, that the organization created at the dawn of Soviet power to deal with speculators, social parasites, money changers and other anti-class elements will never protect the rights, safety and the private property of a free citizen. On the contrary, the Soviet militsia with its old mentality was a serious threat to society. Unfortunately, the cosmetic measures put forward did
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Heres the main conclusion of the supreme commander: On the whole, as a result of the transformations, we have a new army. They are much more up to date and able to respond to potential threats directed at us. Its now a matter of re-equipping them with modern weapons and equipment. Yet, it is difficult to agree with this conclusion, and not just because of problems with equipment or the obsolete weaponry, and not even because commanders and supervisors at all levels still need time to learn to operate in the new organizational structure. Russias armed forces have surely been given a facelift, but the essence has not changed. The man in uniform is not a full-fledged citizen now just as he had no civil rights in the Soviet army. Regardless of his rank and position, he is still a dumb and powerless cog in the war machine of the state. It is more difficult to correct this situation than it is to give the army and the navy a facelift.
a verY special service It is no longer fashionable to speak out openly about the security services. There are now only periodic reports on the prevention of terrorist attacks, captured Despite new uniforms and even a name change, the russian police force remains an heir to the Soviet spies and extremists, as well as exposed militsia, which wasnt meant to protect the rights, safety and private property of a free citizen. photo: Alexey Filippov, rIA novosti evil designs by foreign countries to undermine our constitutional system. But it not change the essence. The latest cases of inhuman torture would be unfair to place more demands on the current security in police departments in Kazan, Moscow and Novokuznetsk services than what is already being asked of them. They were are the clearest indication of this. There is no positive trend in inherited from another state and have been created for other sight so far. purposes and objectives, and they are doing as much as they The armed forces have been put through an even more secan. It is one thing to catch terrorists in a totalitarian state vere transformation. In the words of the president, the rewhere each and every typewriter and copier was registered, form of the armed forces is almost complete. Most of the units and quite another to look for a hidden enemy in the age of the are ready to carry out combat missions as soon as possible. Internet and democracy. The composition of the joint operation forces has been optiThe special services that exist today were not established to mized and, thanks to the new district structure, the efficienfunction in a democracy. The trouble is that over the past 20 cy of planning and control over their actions have increased. years, practically nothing was done to create new special serStrategic nuclear forces have been strengthened. A unified sys- vices in Russia. The only exception were attempts to form the tem of space defense has been created, combining air and mis- Presidential Security Service in the summer of 1996, when it sile defense systems as well as missile early warning and space consisted of 20,000 specially selected officers and generals. control systems. From 2008 to 2011, the troops were mostHowever, subjective factors played a sinister role, and this serly supplied with modern armaments and military equipment. vice was eliminated. There are no other examples except perTheir share of military supplies increased from ten to 16 perhaps the creation of the Financial Monitoring Service, but its cent. The intensity of combat and operational training tripled capabilities are very limited since it cannot rely on other existover the same period. Military pay and allowances almost tri- ing power structures within the old coordinated system. pled, while the social security for army personnel was qualiThus, the need to build new institutions of power in todays tatively improved. Real steps were taken to make the military Russia is no less urgent than it was ten or 20 years agothat is service more humane. building, and not reforming. Reform is just the transformation
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or reorganization of certain aspects of social life or institutions while keeping the foundations of the existing system intact. Today, the majority of Russians understand that there can be no talk of restoring the Soviet Union, or recreating the Russian Empire. We have been trying to build a new democratic state for more than two decades, but without much success. Many, including in the ruling class, do not grasp the essential point: that the former Soviet stateeven with radical reformscannot be transformed into a new state; and that when the heirs of the Soviet Union remain in power, they can only lead the country toward stagnation and collapse. Modern Russia needs no hasty stopgap measures or patchworks, as that will be stretching the limits. There should be a painstaking and consistent creation of parallel institutions that will gradually replace current institutionspower-ministries, foreign policy, education and all other systems. This is the only possible method, and others simply do not exist. The latest case of police brutality in Kazan, where Almaz Vasylov and four other officers were accused of In the early 1990s a serious mistake was torturing and killing a suspect, demonstrates that russias Interior Ministry reform was merely cosmetic. photo: Maxim Bogodvid, rIA novosti made: we asked the old Soviet security forces to create law enforcement institutions for the new democratic Russia. In short, we acted as if the On the other hand, many laid-off employees of the Interior Bolsheviks would have entrusted the creation of the Cheka (se- Ministry might realize themselves in the new army as contract soldiers. cret police) to the gendarmerie and not to Felix Dzerzhinsky, Sure, the creation of a new army, navy, police and securiand the creation of the Red Army to the General Staff and the ty services is a very daunting task, but it is doable if there is a Emperor rather than to Leo Trotsky and Mikhail Frunze. The absurdity of such actions is obvious, and the consequences are thoughtful plan. All objective conditions exist to guarantee tragic. The recurrent and multiple job cuts, the reorganization, success: for the first time in many years, the country is able to fund this ambitious project, and the military-political situation recertification, renaming and the changing of the uniforms on its borders suggests that the country has several years to which are often called security forces reformhave nothing implement it. It must be emphasized here again that we are not to do with the actual creation of new Russian security institutalking about destroying the existing structures to the ground, tions. The failure of these reforms has led to frustration and apathy in society, and the wreckage of the Soviet security forc- and then building new ones from the scratch. The creation of es, corroded by corruption, has turned into an insurmountable new security institutions must go hand in hand with the gradual replacement of current structures. obstacle to economic and political progress in our country. In a little over a month, Vladimir Putin will assume office as fresh blooD the new Russian president. One should not forget that he not The question often asked is: where do we get new people for the only has extensive experience in public service, but that he newly-created law enforcement institutions? With a systemic also wore epaulettes for many years. Its easier for him than approach, one can find an answer to this question. One must for his predecessor to understand the problems of the security not forget, for instance, that there are already serious reducforces. Putin will inevitably have to make a serious choice: eitions in the armed forces. Two hundred thousand officers were ther to proceed with the creation of new state security services laid offmen who were well prepared physically, with one or and thereby give the country a chance to win the race for globtwo higher educations, and who could, with a little training, al leadership, or to leave everything as is, limiting himself to become a base for building a new police force. These people repeating cosmetic treatments and then watching Russia lose should not be part of the old vicious system, but should work its potential for development. under new conditions that allow them to honestly serve by Alexander Sharavin is the head of the Institute for political and Military Analysis. really protecting our lives, health, law, liberty and property.
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fading shades of White

By Andrew roth RUSSIA PROFILE
The Future of Russias Opposition Movement Is Nebulous.
Kholos, part of a mobile elections monitoring group for Moscows Nizhegorodsky District, was joined by Elena Khamak, a Stavropol-educated lawyer born in Pyatigorsk. Russian opposition parties like the Communist Party, Just Russia, and even Yabloko, whose leader Grigory Yavlinsky was disqualified from the elections, sent out thousands of similar Monday March 5 marked a milestone for Russias monitoring groups on March 4. At a training session for elecunlikely opposition movement. Three months eartion monitors at Yabloko Party headquarters on March 3, the lier to the day, on December 5, 2011, an unpreceinstructions for mobile groups were laid out in simple terms: dented number of Russians5,000turned up at an When you receive an SMS, you drive to the polling station. impromptu rally at Moscows scenic Chistiye PruThe reporter establishes the violation, the lawyer handles the di park to protest alleged fraud in the parliamentapaperwork. ry elections. Standing in rows that stretched endEighty-six thousand people in Moscow aloneand 130,000 lessly across the cobblestones and muddy flowerbeds across the countrycame out on March 4 to undertake the to the back of the park, many were stunned not by contentious, mind-numbing task of monitoring elections that the number that turned out, but by who they saw: many said would be cooked to spirit Putin in to power for annot the scruffy leftists and nationalists who usualother six years. The unprecedented spike in the number of inly occupied the square for an hour or two before they dependent election monitors begged the question of what were run off by riot police, but a class of young, urwould convince a lawyer and an IT specialist to dedicate 20 ban professionals who had suddenly joined the polit- hours to this task in a country where political scientists have ical scene. long claimed that civil society does not exist. A colleague of In just three months, political life in Moscow has mine, a long-time friend, quit our company recently and said undergone incredible change. Voter fraud turned the hes moving to the [United] States. His father had cancer, he December parliamentary elections from a nonstory, ended up in a hospital and the doctors there were corrupt, they hidden below the fold in Western broadsheets, into had no idea what they were doingthey killed him in that hosa firestorm of criticism and anger at the ruling Unitpital, Kholos explained. I dont want to move away, this is my ed Russia Party and at President-elect Vladimir Puhome. But I dont want my son to grow up in a corrupt countin. Many boldly prophesied the fall of the Vladitry either. mir Putin-Dmitry Medvedev tandem in the coming presidential elections. Yet the regime held out in the March presidential elections, and now the opposition must search for direction: can it maintain the momentum that surfaced in the recent months? Will it radicalize and erect tent cities like opposition darling and anti-corrpution crusader Alexei Navalny has suggestNeither Alexei nor Elena had been to any of the mass protests ed? Or will Russia once again slip into its pre-election that have rocked Moscow in the recent monthsthey hate Pusomnolence? tin, they said, but they arent drawn to any of his opposition. citiZen Wrath Theyre all useless, said Elena from the back seat of the ReOn March 4 Russia went to the polls. At seven a.m. nault, flipping through the blanks for voting infractions. Ive Alexei Kholos parked his Renault Logan on Ryzansky seen the same faces on television for years. Prospekt in eastern Moscow and lit a cigarette on the Leadership is probably the biggest problem right now, adside of the road. Commuter buses sped by in the premitted Ilya Ponomaryov, a State Duma deputy from the Just dawn hours before the polling stations opened and Russia Party and a leader of the Left Front. It takes time to local elections commissions counted the ballots that cultivate new leaders and theyre already starting to emerge. would give Putin 45,513,001 votes, a 63.64 percent On March 5 Ponomaryov had been standing in a fountain majority in this years elections. in Pushkin Square, yelling at police tossing protesters into
Will Russia slip into its preelection somnolence?
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Navalny, emerging from a Moscow jail after hundreds were detained and a young reporter had her arm broken, told journalists that the latest step was an experiment designed to test the will of the local protesters. We will certainly hold more demonstrations, and tens of thousands will go out on the streets in Moscow and in other cities and refuse to leave, he told journalists. Paradoxically, the same evening Navalny also said that the opposition had overestimated its strength and needed to slow down: Starting tomorrow, we will create a universal propaganda machine which will be stronger than [the state-owned] Channel One, he told supporters at the rally.
Following the March 4 presidential election, the question on everyones mind is whether the opposition can maintain the momentum it built up during various protests over the course of the past few months.
photo: ramil Sitdikov, rIA novosti
waiting vans. What you are doing is illegal! You will be fired! You will be prosecuted! Thousands of protesters turned out that evening to declare the presidential elections illegitimate. When the official demonstration ended, several hundred holdouts led by firebrand Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov occupied a fountain in the center of the square and refused to leave. Ponomaryov rushed to the scene and claimed the demonstration was an official meeting between a parliamentary deputy and his constituents, which is officially protected by law, but OMON riot police ignored him and made hundreds of arrests. The impromptu second act of that evenings protest turned a story on the protests declineonly 18,000 people showed up to protest the presidential electionsinto a wash. That night police got to call the protesters radicals, although they have attended sanctioned rallies and calmly discussed politics while they ignored speeches by politicians. Protest leaders in turn described a scene of police brutality and ascribed it to Putins sclerotic regime on the eve of his coronation. From the very beginning they wanted to portray us as extremists who wanted to march on the Kremlin or some other nonsense. It was not true. We wanted to show that everything is being done on a very legal basis, said Ponomaryov. Analysts saw the standoff that followed the March 5 demonstration just as the Kremlin portrayed it: a provocation. Political analyst Valery Khomyakov noted that the second, unsanctioned rally was designed to provoke an unmeasured reaction from the government troops: I dont understand why they had to ruin the barrel of honey with a spoon of tar. The meeting went well, regular, good people came, but I dont understand why they had to organize an unsanctioned meeting at the end, he said. I thought that they wanted to do this for PR. I thought that more serious people were organizing the meetings.
an unlikelY alliance Navalnys own divergent strategiesthe need for measured development of the opposition movement against a call for something like an Orange Revolution in Russiareflects the growing divide in the opposition movement itself. Does the protest movement still need a wide base willing to come out to sanctioned rallies but fearful of clashing with police and the government? Or a smaller contingent of die-hards who are not afraid to take a stand and get knocked around by riot robocops in space-age helmets? Or is there a middle road? The protest movements organizing committee, or orgkomitet in Russian, decided to distance itself from Udaltsov, the leader of the radical protesters at Pushkin Square. Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the founders of the PARNAS party and a member of the organizing committee, said that the organization has no relation to what happens outside of the rallies it organizes, referring to arrests at the rallies on both March 5 and later on March 10 as well. RIA Novosti reported that Sergei Mitrokhin, the head of the Yabloko opposition party, went even further by saying that Udaltsov was undermining the oppositionist cause: these absurd meetingswill just scare people away from taking part in the demonstrations. But the mass demonstrations have run out of steam, too. By March 10, the euphoria of mass rallies had abated somewhatpolice said only 10,000 people came out, while opposition leaders insisted the number was above 25,000. Leonid Polyakov, a Higher School of Economics professor and a political commentator, noted that the opposition was going through a period of inertia. What we saw between December and February on Bolotnaya [Square], Sakharov Avenue and Yakimanka didnt happen [on March 5] and cant happen again. Those who took part in these rallies for the first time have made their point: some were satisfied, others were disappointed. What the opposition was searching forand didnt findin the elections was a flashpoint to reenergize its supporters. One
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of the key reasons that vote monitors turned out in force was that following the December Duma elections, when videotapes and records of falsifications were at fever peak, there was a sense that the presidential elections would be stolen as well. Civil activism was in voguenew memes popped up daily on social networks, the rallies quickly became a hopping scene, and even socialite Ksenia Sobchak of the Dom-2 reality TV show suddenly turned critic, producing a scandalous political talk show that was mysteriously cancelled on Russian MTV. Then the election results came inmost expected a Putin victory, but few expected the margin to be so large. There have been clear examples of vote falsifications in the electionsballot stuffing, repeat voters, cooked booksbut there was a sense that there were fewer falsifications in this election than in the last. Ultimately, even groups organized to back the elections admitted a Putin victory: Golos, an election monitoring organization that the Russian government has hounded as a Trojan horse for foreign interests, said that Putin most likely won a majority of the votes in the first round, thereby avoiding an embarrassing runoff vote. The League of Voters, a grassroots monitoring hub, announced that Putin likely garnered 53 percent of the vote.
no such thing as free lunch At Putins headquarters on election night, the message wasnt simply that the favorite had won, but that Putin had scored a rout in what his campaign head, Stanislav Govorukhin, called the cleanest elections in the history of Russia. Putin, who famously teared up that night either from the cold, the emotion of a difficult campaign or in a carefully planned PR stunt, emphasized the fairness of the vote. We won in a fair and open fight! he told more than 100,000 supportersmany of whom were rumored to have been bused in by the authorities in a rally in downtown Moscow. I told you we would win and we won! Champagne flowed freely at the headquarters, where grey-suited bureaucrats mingled with pop stars and film producers (For their crime [of supporting Putin], the muses will refuse to visit them in the future, quipped Boris Kagarlitsky, the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies). Many were happy to give their opinion of the future of the burgeoning protest movement. Sergei Markov, an outspoken former United Russia deputy, said that the opposition should brace itself for Putins wrath. This country needs Putin to come in and swiftly restore his particular way of ruling the country in order to establish social order again, he said. But others paid lip-service to the would-be revolutionaries. Fyodor Bondarchuk, a pro-Putin film director who nonetheless sparked a scandal at a United Russia convention when he told party leaders to stop congratulating themselves, said that the opposition represented a positive step in the political
process. Ive gotten so tired of seeing the same faces on television. [Gennady] Zyuganov. [Vladimir] Zhirinovsky. Finally, were seeing real people on the streets and real civil societyI hope that it continues, he said. It was a consistent strategy of the Putin campaign to show that it was answering protesters voices while steadily robbing the opposition of any flashpoints to organize around. The authorities have tried to undermine opposition criticism by touting limited political reforms and setting up video cameras at all of Russias polling stations. Yet those efforts had a darker side as well: on election day, Election Commissions were rumored to have been warned to keep violations to a minimum in Moscow, where the greatest mobilization of election monitors had taken place. The strategy has paid off and the opposition is back to the drawing board. Boris Akunin, a popular Russian author and a leader of the opposition movement, told journalists at a press conference days earlier that the opposition would have to rethink its approach: I think people have understood that they cant charge the OMON with white balloons and ribbons, Foreign Policy quoted Akunin as saying. Civil society will begin to develop along a different trajectory, along a trajectory of self-organization and fighting for victory in local elections. In the coming months, the opposition will have to come off the street and into the government. It isnt glamorous, but there are signs of change. Several young, upstart politicians won local elections in Moscow City Districts, putting them in the vast minority of the municipal councils, the lowest rung in Russian politics. On the larger stage, newly independent political figures like Mikhail Prokhorov and Alexei Kudrin have said they want to create independent political parties. While Ponomaryov maintained that Putin cant stay in power for
Putins strategy has been to show that he answers the protesters voices while robbing them of flashpoints to organize around.
long with the ground crumbling beneath his feet, most are waiting for Putins reactionwill promised political reforms actually make it into law, or will there be hell to pay for the last three months? Just like for the thousands of protesters who massed on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue in recent months, for many election monitors the day of reckoning never came. Kholos drove around for more than 12 hours, later joining a young vote monitor named Ira at a polling station to argue over a discrepancy of a dozen votes collected in door-to-door polling for elderly voters. Other than that, he said, all seemed quiet in the district. Its a shame, he said later, sipping a coffee in a McDonalds parking lot next to his Renault. I was so ready for a fight.
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party time in russian politics

By Alexander Morozov Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
The Latest Party Law Reform Preserves United Russias Dominance.
The Kremlin has lifted restrictions on the creation of new parties that were imposed seven years ago. This does not add up to a concession to society after the mass protests over the December 2011 State Duma elections; more likely, it is a result of efforts by various think tanks, including the Institute of Contemporary Development (INSOR), the Center for Strategic Research and others. In 2008 and 2009 these think tanks began drafting scenarios for a smooth transition from soft authoritarianism to expanded political competition in Russia. The Belanovsky-Dmitriyev Report and a number of sociological surveys highlighted ebbing public confidence in the state system created by Vladimir Putin. In 2009 and 2010, various grassroots civil groups, a free-for-all including environmentalist, charitable and historical heritage protection groups began asserting them- At the same time, the Central Election Commission said it had received requests from 68 interest groups to establish new selves nationwide. The new lower middle class acparties. Virtually all leftist, rightist, liberal and nationalist quired a new self-consciousness, which manifested groups have stated their intention to set up parties, together itself during the 2008 to 2009 Kaliningrad protest, the movement to protect the Khimki Forest out- with some new pro-Kremlin parties: Vasily Yakemenko said in side Moscow and in the mutual assistance people gave an interview that he planned to transform his Nashi movement into a party, while Sergei Kurginyan, an organizer of rallies each other in the course of devastating wildfires in in support of Vladimir Putin, might turn his Essence of Time 2010. movement into another party. The Rodina Party might also This increased civil activism prompted tens of thousands of volunteer observers to monitor the December be reinstated under the patronage of Deputy Prime Minister 2011 State Duma elections. There was mass public op- Dmitry Rogozin. At least six other noticeable democratic initiatives have been voiced by the likes of Mikhail Kasyanov (Peoposition to the pro-Kremlin United Russia Party, and ples Freedom Party), Vladimir Ryzhkov (Republican Party), broad segments of the urban population began perVladimir Milov (Democratic Choice), Mikhail Prokhorov (an ceiving United Russia as a party of bureaucracy and unspecified party), Grigory Yavlinsky and Sergei Mitrokhin corruption. (Yabloko), and the Young Libertarians. Nevertheless, the Kremlin was in no mood to overThe Left Front headed by Sergei Udaltsov, who became quite haul the party / political system prior to the State popular after the December 2011 protests, and Ilya PonomaryDuma elections. Although Kremlin officials also discussed the need to elect liberals to the Parliament, the ov, who claims that there is a need for a new mass social democratic party, has been trying to register for a long time, and its State Duma elections were held in line with an inerprospects look good. Christian Democratic initiatives are also tial scenario and involved four parliamentary paron the table. The National Democratic Party held its organizaties. Vladimir Ryzhkov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Mikhail tional meeting in March. Prokhorov, who made a good showProkhorov, Mikhail Kasyanov and their respecing in the recent presidential election, is drawing the most tive parties were prevented from partaking in the attention with his efforts to establish a new party he took secelections.
On the other hand, rapidly growing moderate nationalist groups were also barred from participating. Many got the impression that Putin himself was no longer casting his lot with United Russia. He did not initiate any renewal of the party prior to the elections and virtually doomed it to failure in the parliamentary elections. United Russia received 54 percent of the vote, compared to the 64 percent it garnered in the previous elections. A public relations campaign, conducted by blogger Alexei Navalny, played a major role in damping United Russias ratings: the party was unable to effectively change its image and to counter Navalnys label of the party of crooks and thieves. It appears that the Kremlin still lacks a clear scenario for United Russias transformation, but actually there are three potential ways it could go. Firstly, United Russia could be seen as a rightist leaders party, facilitating Putins third presidential term. Secondly, its image could be ameliorated by expelling bureaucrats and members of the administration and bringing in new, popular faces. Thirdly the party could be divided in two.
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The new law on party registration, which has so far allowed 68 different interest groups, including Sergei Udaltsovs and Ilya ponomaryovs Left Front, to apply for an official status, is more likely to further divide the already fragmented opposition than to unite political forces for the sake of effecting meaningful change.
photo: Valeriy Melnikov, rIA novosti
professional allies Where should the energy that opposition protest groups showed in December through March be channeled? The experience of other countries transition from soft authorithe partY behemoth tarianism to open access systems, in the words of economist Yet the process of establishing new parties will make little Douglass North, shows that new professional associations play sense as long as the Kremlin perpetuates the so-called party of a major role during such transitions. Professional associations power, which can also be called a centrist party. Even if all the comprise representatives of post-industrial urban professions, crooks and thieves are expelled from this party and even if including media workers, designers, IT specialists, jurists, the newly recruited members are mostly actors and musicians lawyers, private practice doctors, university professors and engaged in charitable projects, its huge gravitational force others. These associations carry much greater weight than tends to force all other parties to the sidelines, and it does not parties. Society believes that politics is dirty business and the matter whether any of these parties wins three percent or 19 image of political parties is tarnished by this conviction. On percent of the total vote. It make sense to establish new parthe other hand, professional associations unite those whose ties only if the Kremlin assumes a revolutionary stance and professionalism urban communities respect, and this idea has disbands the centrist party that serves to perpetuate an archaic already struck a chord with the protesters. Their power lies in political system where power doesnt change hands. This, how- the fact that the government cannot ignore the public stance of ever, is unlikely to happen because Putin has repeatedly stated the most competent and energetic professionals working in the his opposition to that parliamentary quagmire. most advanced sectors. These people lack any other resources If the dominant party werent being so feverishly kept alive, except their own professionalism, but economic modernizaRussias political system would rapidly take the direction of a tion would grind to a halt without them. The experience of parliamentary republic. However, the matured Russian society other countries shows that a political alliance involving such does not want Putin to rule with the help of one party enjoyassociations proves decisive during the transition from soft ing a monopoly on power, because it a priori deprives all other authoritarianism to an open society. And they possess far more parties of a chance to win anytime soon. Putin did not risk alimpressive potential to mobilize than numerous small parties. lowing United Russia to lose its parliamentary majority in DeDmitry Medvedevs current party reform is meant to preserve cember 2011, though some of the Kremlins political advisUnited Russias dominance, ruling out the possibility of state ers believed that it would still be possible to control the system power changing hands as a result of free elections. In some even if the State Duma were ruled by a coalition. Putin can no countries, political systems with dominant parties lasted for longer be called a democrat or a follower of Anatoly Sobchak 30 to 40 years. In Russia this system, which evolved on the babecause he has clearly opted for a power vertical in the State sis of the Our Home Is Russia Party, is about 15 years old, but Duma to the detriment of expanded public politics and parit is already showing cracks. Likely it will not last for anothty / political representation. Hence the skeptical reaction from er 15 years. Russias politicians to the Kremlins plans to overhaul the parAlexander Morozov is the editor in chief of the russian Journal. ty / political representation system.
ond place after Putin in major cities. Many people would like to see the development of a party initiative advanced by moderate nationalists led by Konstantin Krylov and Vladimir Tor.
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putinomics 2.0
By Tai Adelaja RUSSIA PROFILE
Putins Economic Reforms Will Be Merely Cosmetic.

At first glance, only a small dose of goodwill is needed to give President-elect Vladimir Putin all the credit for Russias economic renaissance. When Putin became president on New Years Eve 1999, Russias GDP was a paltry $ 200 billion in dollars indexed to the present day. This year, it will hit $ 1.5 trillion. The country has enjoyed solid economic growth averaging 7.2 percent a year over that period. Real disposable household incomes increased by more than ten percent a year. Consumer spending skyrocketed, while unemployment fell from 12 to six percent. By all accounts, poverty declined from 41 percent to 14 percent. There was a palpable sense of social justice in the air; Russians have never been richer. Public opinion polls show that this economic growth, following a decade of recession, makes Russians feel better off than they did in the Boris Yeltsin era. High on the list of Putins economic achievements, and one that has perhaps touched the most people, is his tax reform of 2001, which largely improved incentives to work and decreased tax evasion by introducing a flat 13 percent income tax. His conservative macroeconomic policy and financial sector reform have also lowered interest rates and fueled an investment and consumption boom. By liberalizing the procedures for corporate registration and licensing and limiting inspections, Putin has considerably improved the climate for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Russian companies are now investing abroad. The middle class is buying foreign cars, vacationing abroad, and dining at sushi restaurants, and surveys show that life satisfaction has increased across the board, Sergei Guriev, the rector of the New Economic School, and Aleh Tsyvinski, an economics professor at Harvard University, said of Putins eight-yearlong presidency. Until 2007, Russia has pursued an admirably conservative macroeconomic policy, running up huge budget and current account surpluses, wrote Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Foreign reserves
stood at 30 percent of the gross domestic product and are the third highest in the world in absolute terms. Russia has paid off its foreign debt and built up foreign currency reserves of $ 450 billion, said Aslund, a relentless critic of Putinomics a wide range of policies put in place by Putin between 1999 and 2008.
the oil curse Yet many observers, among them eminent economists and political scientists, have argued that Russias economic recovery took off not because of, but in spite of Putins leadership. Russias economic turnaround came after a financial meltdown in August of 1998 that finally forced the Russian government to pursue prudent fiscal policies and a more rational exchange rate policy, including a major devaluation, said Michael McFaul, U. S. President Barack Obamas former top Russia strategist and now U. S. ambassador to Russia. As a result of these painful but necessary reforms, Russias economy finally began to grow a year before Putin came to power. Granted that Putins government implemented some key reforms and established a stabilization fund to ensure that the windfall revenues would not be spent frivolously or in an inflationary manner, the main drivers of Russias economic rebirth have been world commodity prices, not Putins leadership, said Aslund. Russias economic growth is still driven by the sound market reforms undertaken in the 1990s and Putins first term, together with high oil and gas prices. But while growth is not likely to stop any time soon, Russias economic success increasingly hinges not only on high, but also on rising oil and gas prices. The main question about Russias economic policy in Vladimir Putins third term is how fast it will deteriorate, Aslund said. That deterioration may come sooner rather than later. Russias economy used to grow at eight percent a year between 1998 and 2008 before the global financial crisis happened, and then there was a contraction. Since then its economic record has been between 3.5 and four percenteven with oil prices going from $ 30 a barrel in 2009 to well above $ 100 now, Nouriel Roubini, the chairman of Roubini Global Economics, told Foreign Policy magazine in a recent interview. And the problem with Russia is that unless you do structural reforms by reducing the role of the government in the economy and state-owned enterprises and developing the private sector moreunless you do a variety of market-oriented structural reformsRussias potential growth rate may not be much higher than four percent.
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national champions Perhaps the most telling evidence of Putins personal impact on Russian growth is the states suffocating role in the economy, his critics say. Putins chief project has been to develop huge, unmanageable state-owned mastodons, considered national champions, Aslund said. They have stalemated large parts of the economy through their inertia and corruption while impeding diversification. In addition, they have financed themselves with foreign loans rather than equity, and this has aggravated the countrys currency risks. In terms of economic policies, Aslund characterized Putin as anti-Yeltsin. Yeltsin believed in private enterprise. He has been criticized for privatizing the Russian economy in the only way that was possible, rather than leaving a larger share in the hands of the state. Putin has undertaken the greatest re-nationalization the world has ever seen, he said. To the credit of his critics, rather than serve as a springboard for national economic development Putins re-nationalization has put immense pressure on entrepreneurs and tightened the governments tight grip on the economy. Even after 12 years as Russias paramount leader, Putin never sees purely economic issues as devoid of politics. He has justified the existence of massive state-owned corporations and specifically recom-
mends continued sponsorship of their monopoly positions in certain industries. Are we ready to risk Russias future for the sake of pure economic theory? Putin asked ominously in his 5,000 word economic treatise published in Vedomosti in January. He added: I think it will be possible to reduce the level of state involvement in some commodity companies by 2016 and to complete the withdrawal from the capital of major non-commodity companies that are not connected to the natural monopolies or the defense sector. For Putin, maintaining a tight grip on the economy is not simply a question of economics or national pride. It is also about Russias enemies who want to cut from us a tasty piece of pie, and about the others who are helping them. Among those others are Western business interests and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose Yukos oil company was bankrupted and its assets absorbed by government-owned companies. The artificially created image of a threatening West, and United States in particular, is now becoming the sole ideological justification for the Putin model of a corporate state, said veteran political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky. In Putins narrative, this may just be pandering to his base, but economists say his policies are breeding corruption on a massive scale. I can understand that in some countries in-
Freedom is better than nonfreedom, Dmitry Medvedev told russians shortly before he became president in 2008, but this statement doesnt seem to apply to the governments role in the economy, especially when it comes to protecting that economy from enemies such as jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
photo: Andrey Stenin, rIA novosti
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novation can be driven by state corporations, but not in Russia, obligations. Ahead of the December parliamentary elections, Puwhen the government is corrupt and state corporations are filled tin all but asserted that he was prepared to continue the looswith the friends and relatives of officials, said Sergei Aleksashened monetary policy involving populist moves, such as channelenko, a former deputy finance minister and first deputy Central ing large sums of money into pensions and other social welfare Bank chairman who is now director of macroeconomic research transfers. Putins willingness to mollify an increasingly restive at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. population is also reflected in measures like informal price conIn Putins Russia, it is immaterial whether corrupt practictrols on gasoline and food, and generous bailouts to one-industry es have bred inequality, or the other way round. Such finantowns. But such policies have been self-destructive at best. Aside cial inequality, engendered by corruption, is so despised by from the relatively small middle class and the even smaller busimany Russians that it led to a general acquiescence in Khodor- ness and intellectual elite, most Russians neither take risks to bekovskys trial and his eventual imprisonment. According to come entrepreneurs nor favor economic and political liberalizaForbes magazine, at the end of Putins second term in 2008 tion, said Sergei Guriev, the rector of Moscows New Economic there were 87 Russian billionaires with a combined wealth School. According to a recent survey, the majority of Russians of $ 471 billion, a figure second only to the United States. Yet believe that acquiring wealth requires criminal activity and potheir net worth accounts for roughly 30 percent of Russias litical connections. Only 20 percent believe that talent matters. gross domestic product, whereas Americas 469 billionaires are These beliefs are self-fulfilling prophecies, Guriev said. worth only about ten percent of U. S. GDP. Perhaps more irksome to the Russians is the perception that most of the countrys billionaires are the so-called oligarchs. Many Russians despise Russias oligarchs since the latter made fortunes in tightly arranged selloffs of Soviet-era mines and energy deposits that made billionaires out of a select group of Kremlin insiders. Putin made an uneasy truce with the tycoons after winning the presidency for the first time in The thinking behind Putins economic policies seems to be 2000 and then by promising not to investigate their past dealthat as long as people are wowed by his economic successes, ings if they followed new rules set by the state. He then moved they will also accommodate both the rampant corruption and to re-nationalize some of their holdings and eventually created the ubiquitous bureaucracy that characterized his rule. Una top state oil company out of assets owned by Yukos following like in other emerging markets, however, a culture of corrupthe imprisonment of its chief Mikhail Khodorkovsky. tion has festered in Russia for so long that people have started to ask questions. Although Russia is the 46th richest country courting corruption in the world in per capita terms, Transparency International Perhaps nothing so riles the Russians as the endemic corruption ranks it 154th out of 176 countries on its Corruption Percepthat festered under Putins economic tutelage. To many Rustions Index, behind Yemen and the Central African Republic. sians Putins policies have come to epitomize the scale of corrup- Only Equatorial Guinea is both richer and more corrupt than tion under his rule, corruption so thorough as to pose a threat Russia. One reason for sustained corruption is that Russias to national development. The states continuously expanding powerful bureaucracy stands to lose too much from econominvolvement in business under Putin has been closely linked to ic liberalization, said Guriev. Perhaps more importantly, it is high levels of corruption pervasive in government and society. hard to fight corruption without political reform, media freeCorruption has always been a problem in Russia, but what you dom, and a vibrant civil society. call Putinomics has given it firm roots and offshoots as well, The wider problem of corruption and abuse of power in Pusaid Kirill Kabanov, the head of the nongovernmental National tins Russia appears to have galvanized massive street protests. Anti-Corruption Committee. By getting deeply involved in the What has really brought the protesters out into the streets is economy, the government has boosted the role of bureaucrats as not a lack of economic diversification, but rather pervasive economic levers. The more money the government pumps into corruption, Pavel Ivlev, an ex-Yukos official now living in the the economy, the higher the level of corruption, because bureau- United States wrote recently in a column for CNN. But reforms, crats can only feed at the public trough. Kabanov, who is also a which many of the protesters are demanding, may be ways off. member of the Kremlins Human Rights Council, said corrupYes, now theres a movement especially in Moscow and in the tion and bribery are systemic problems in Russia. Corruption middle classes that is resisting him. But Putin won, Roubiand bribery are woven into the fabric of our economic culture. ni said. Well see how much that is a reflection of the majority The reason why corruption is all-pervasive here compared to the vote as opposed to ballot rigging. He may be slightly weakened West is that while Western nations rely on the people to run the compared to what he was a year ago, and he might be nudging government, the Russian government is completely run by well- a little more to the center and offering slightly more reforms entrenched bureaucrats. than he would have otherwise done, but in my view reforms There is a paternal component to Putinomics too, which comin Russia are going to occur at a suboptimal pace relative to pels the state to spend lavishly to support a wide range of social whats desirable. Theyll be cosmetic rather than radical.
Putins policies epitomize the scale of corruption in Russia.
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dealing With the outside World

By Simon Saradzhyan and nabi Abdullaev Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
No Tectonic Shifts in Foreign Policy Will Take Place Under Putin.

Few leaders volunteer to significantly alter policies late in their rule, and Vladimir Putinwho has just won the presidential electionhardly wants to be an exception. Putin has had a significant say on most major issues during the presidency of his protg Dmitry Medvedev, and hence is unlikely to order any tectonic shifts in Russias foreign policy when he returns to the Kremlin in May. We will see continuity in foreign policy, and this can easily be explained: Russias foreign policy is largely based on the protection of our national interests, and our national interests have not changed, Konstantin Kosachev, the outgoing first deputy chairman of the State Duma, told Interfax on March 3.
reset the reset Russias Foreign Ministry sought to assure the United States of continuity in Moscows policy vis--vis Washington even before the official results of the March 4 presidential election were released. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told RIA Novosti on March 6: We have no doubts about preserving continuity in our relations with the United States. Everything that has been achieved in recent yearshas been achieved through consensus. Moscow unequivocally reaffirms its commitment to this work; there will be no reevaluation of values that would be at odds with the countrys interests, Ryabkov said. Putin himself appears to be optimistic about the future of his countrys relations with the United States during his rule. In 2009 russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pushed the In general, we are prepared to reset button to mark a new era in U.S.-russian relations, but three years later that era is all but over. photo: rIA novosti make great strides in our rela-
tions with the United States, to achieve a qualitative breakthrough, but on the condition that the Americans are guided by the principles of equal and mutually respectful partnership, Putin wrote in his February 27 op-ed Russia and the Changing World published in the Moskovskiye Novosti newspaper. If we had managed to achieve a breakthrough on missile defense, this would have opened the floodgates for building a qualitatively new model of cooperation, similar to an alliance, in many other sensitive areas, he wrote. The Barack Obama administration also expects continuity in Russias U. S. policy under Putin. A senior Obama administration official quoted by The New York Times on March 6 said: Privately they have said to us at the highest levels that the change in president will not mean a change in their policy toward the United States. Now we get to test that proposition. One fundamental problem with the U. S.-Russian reset, however, is that both sides have already picked all of the lowhanging fruit. Therefore, while there is hope that Moscow and Washington will eventually work out a deal on missile defence if President Barack Obama remains in office, reductions of non-strategic weapons, a new round of substantive UN Security Council sanctions on Iran or any other significant advances in the bilateral relationship would be much more difficult to attain.
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Putin has already made it clear that Obama should not exsaid. Does Russia have to do anything? Yes, it should scare its pect presents from him similar to Russias support for the UN neighbours less; it should work to rid itself of this imperial imSecurity Council resolution on Libya last year, when Moscow age that prevents even Europe from cooperating with us. abstained from a vote that effectively led to the military intermanage the miDDle east vention in the North African country. He also seems to have little appetite for Obamas foreign policy priorities such as fur- While pursuing closer ties with Europe, Putin should also be expected to stay the course in the greater Middle East. ther bilateral nuclear reductions. As for further steps in nuUnder Putin, Russia will hardly want to support greater inclear disarmament, those steps should be comprehensive in naternational pressure on Iran, even though it is in Russias vital ture, and all nuclear powers should participate in the process. interest to prevent an expansion of the nuclear club. Putin reWe cannot disarm while other nuclear powers are building up their arms, Putin told a handpicked group of Russian defense alizes that Russia has little leverage vis--vis Iran, which can easily choose another trading partner, such as China, while the experts in the Sarov nuclear research facility on February 24. Bushehr nuclear power plant has already been completed. Putin also realizes that Iran has formidable potential to act as a spoiler vis--vis Russia in the South Caucasus, the Caspian Region and Central Asia, as well as in Russias North Caucasus, where Islamists continue to run a campaign of insurgency and terrorism. Putin has already made it clear that Russia will continue to Should Obama be voted out of office, there will be a greatoppose regime change in either Iran, Syria or elsewhere in the er probability that U. S.-Russian relations may sour, given that region stirred by the Arab Spring. Americans speak about all leading Republican contenders advocate a tougher stance preventing proliferation, but in reality they mean a change of on issues of importance to Russia, including missile defence. political regime in Iran, Putin told defense experts on FebruThe absence of an economic foundation under the reset also ary 24. No one should be allowed to use the Libyan scenario bodes ill for the bilateral relationship, regardless of who sits in in Syria, he warned in the February 27 op-ed that outlined his the White House and the Kremlin. Russia ranks 24th among vision for Russias foreign policy. U. S. trading partners and 25th on the list of direct investors In that op-ed Putin also indicated that he is prepared to drop in America. The United States is Russias 11th largest tradRussias long-standing policy of opposing inclusion of the Taling partner and 10th largest source of foreign direct investiban in power-sharing schemes in Afghanistan. We do not obment, according to a recent report put out by the Harvard Uni- ject to the process of national reconciliation being joined by versitys Belfer Center and the Center for National Interest in participants of the armed opposition, including the Taliban, on Washington. condition that they renounce violence, recognize the countrys Constitution and sever ties with al-Qaeda and other terrorist love europe groups, he wrote. As for the European Union, Putins Russia should be expected respect thY neighbors to seek deepening economic, educational and cultural coopPutin should also be expected to continue cautious cooperaeration with Russias largest trading partner, pushing for a tion with China, which the International Monetary Fund visa-free regime while at the same time focusing on bilateral expects to overtake the United States as the biggest economy cooperation with individual European powerhouses, such as in purchasing power parity terms in 2016. In his Moskovskiye Germany and France. When building relations with the EU, Novosti article, Putin praised Chinas economic growth, dethe new / old Russian leadership will also need to take into account the fact that Russian political and business elites have scribing it as a chance to get Chinese wind in the sails of the personally invested in Western European assets and have fam- Russian economy. He stressed that Russia and China share attitudes toward many issues of global and regional politics ily members living in the West. A protracted economic crisis and the general vision of the global order in which states enjoy may make Russia more inclined to seek cooperation with the equal rights. EU, which accounted for almost half of Russias foreign trade However, Putin is perfectly aware of the risks that the rise last year, if only to attract know-how and investment to modof China creates for Russia, even when he is publicly praising ernize the Russian economy. Putin has already indicated that he wishes to deepen ties with Russias eastern neighbor, which tops the list of Russias largest trading partner countries, accounting for ten percent of the rest of Europe. For instance, while lashing out at the UnitRussias foreign trade last year. China already has a populaed States during his annual live call-in show on December 15, tion of 1.32 billion and its GDP totalled $ 5.926 billion in 2010, Putin was much more accommodating when speaking about figures from the World Bank show. Russias population totals Europe, acknowledging that there are steps that Russia itsome 140 million and its GDP totalled $ 1.479 billion in 2010, self needs to take to integrate into Europe. I still believe that according to the same source. The population density on the it is inevitable. Life itself demands integration in Europe, he
Putin made it clear that Obama shouldnt expect presents.
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Chinese side of the border is 62 times greater than on the Rus- tions with the EU and the United States have recently become sian side, Robert Kaplan wrote in a May 2010 article in Forstrained, while keeping pressure on Georgia. eign Affairs. There seems to be a major geopolitical tradeoff in While essentially staying the foreign policy course, Putin the making between Moscow and Beijing, and it is likely that who has displayed a proclivity for lashing out at the Westhas Putin will not seek to revise it given that Russia has few inharsher words for Western powers than his predecessor, espestruments to ward off Chinas dynamic growth, other than alcially if the latter voice concerns over domestic affairs of Ruslowing it to tap into Russias vast natural, primarily energy re- sia and its allies. When human rights are defended from the sources, in return for which the Russian government secures outside on a selective basis and in the process of this defense economic and political stability at home. the very same rights of many people, including the most basic Apart from bilateral disparities the Russian leadership is well and sacred of themthe right to lifeare trampled upon, then aware of the fact that China is gradually moving to replace were not talking about a noble cause, but about elementary Russia in Central Asia as a political patron for the local govdemagoguery, Putin wrote in the Moskovskiye Novosti op-ed. ernments, and has already become the key economic partner of Naturally, being the worlds super power, the United States is the post-Soviet states there. the main target of Putins diatribes. Whether attacking WashBut while conceding to incremental expansion of Chinas inington for supporting the Arab Spring or U. S. missile defluence in Central Asia, Putin should be expected to put great- fense plans in Europe, Putin is never at a loss for words. But er effort into advancing Russias own integration projects in the prime target audience for Putins criticism of the United the post-Soviet neighborhood, such as the Collective SecuStates is often his domestic constituency. rity Treaty Organization, the Eurasian Economic CommuThe past parliamentary and presidential elections have demnity and, to a lesser extent, the Commonwealth of Indepenonstrated that Putins domestic power base is shrinking, espedent States. The latter is the second largest of Russias regional cially in large cities where many voters question the results of trading partners, accounting for 14 percent of Russias foreign the polls and the legitimacy of Putins return to the Kremlin. trade in 2011. Under Putin these organizations will continue To shore up support at home Putin could be expected to projto serve as Moscows instruments in advancing Russias interect himself as a more fervent guardian of Russias interests and est in friendly and stable neighbors and in dominating energy its allies vis--vis the West than Medvedev while making sure flows in Eurasia. And, while Putin may be largely content with his rethoric does not cross any lines that may cause substantial Russias bilateral relationship with Central Asian states, Ardamage to the benefits that Russia derives from improved remenia, Azerbaijan and Belarus, he may need to make a greatlations with both the United States and the EU achieved by his er effort than his predecessor to anchor Ukraine, whose relapredecessor.
putinomics abroad
By Tai Adelaja RUSSIA PROFILE
Many of Russias Economic Integration Initiatives Have Flopped in the Past.

When Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin floated the idea of forming a Eurasian Union of former Soviet states in October of last year, pundits were quick to chalk up his idea to a bid to rebuild the Soviet Union. In his characteristic way, Putin had left a lot of room for speculation. He attempted to preemptively deflect claims of wanting to recreate the Soviet Union even as he claimed that the new union would be similar to the European Union. The goal, he said, would be to create real conditions to change the geopolitical and geoeconomic configuration of the entire continent that
would have an undoubtedly positive global effect. But many of the nations Putin wanted to see integrated were already headed in that direction. Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan have signed on to EU-like economic integration and are set to introduce unified market rules and regulations at the start of 2012. Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan are also expected to join. There is no talk about rebuilding the Soviet Union in one way or another, Putin wrote in an article in Izvestia in October. However, the new alliance, Putin wrote, could compete for influence with the United States, the EU and Asia as one of the poles of the modern world, serving as an efficient link between Europe and the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. This was not Putins first foray into regional economies, much to the befuddlement of his critics. In January of 2007, then-president Putin sent chills through Western Europe when he discussed the possibility of forming a gas-producers association with coun-
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Interstate Council in late December. There has been significant growth in bilateral trade: with Russia, we are approaching $ 20 billion, the current increase is 40 percent, and trade with Belarus is also increasing. Buoyed by this success, president Nazarbayev said the Customs Union could gain prominent positions in the global energy and grain markets, with the three countries together holding 90 billion barrels of oil reserves and accounting for 17 percent of global wheat exports. On December 9, 2011, the presidents of Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan took further steps toward integration, forming the so-called the Single Economic Space (SES) with a stroke of the pen. The three economies that formed the SES boast a combined population of 170 million and account for over 80 percent of the former Soviet Unions economic potential. The SES builds on a new single Customs Code, which has been in force for Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia since July 6, 2010. But the SES is also expected to be a precursor of a grander, supranational Eurasian Economic Commission modeled on the European Commission, which could start its work in 2015. At first glance, it all seems like a colossal achievement for rea mini-soviet union gional Putinomics. But beneath the veneer of this success and Proponents of tighter integration with Russia have claimed economic harmony are layers of contradictions and ambiguthat the Customs Union, which kicked off in January 2010, ity. Russias investment climate has steadily worsened amid a was a huge success. Transport and customs control has already significant rise in crony capitalism, and this, analysts say, has moved from national borders to the Customs Union borders. caused underinvestment in Russia. Some businesses are likely According to official reports, Kazakhstans exports to Russia to move to the neighboring states, like Kazakhstan, where the increased by 38 percent, and its exports to Belarus more than investment climate is more favorable, said Alexei Devyatov, doubled. Russias exports to Kazakhstan shot up 25 perthe chief economist at UralSib Capital. The SES member states cent, and foreign trade turnover between Belarus and Russia will also need to resolve systemic issues such as tax risks of doincreased by 50 percent at the end of 2010. We have been ing business and foreign exchange interactions in memberworking in the Customs Union for two years [and] the benefits state banks, said Konstantin Grechukhin, an analyst with the are obvious, Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev told Russian audit firm MEF-Audit. In a common economic space, a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Council and EurAsEC sharing knowledge and new technologies is the only way to go, Grechukhin said. And while Russia and Kazakhstan may have benefited from establishing the Customs Union, this is not necessarily true of the other members. Bilateral trade between Belarus and Kazakhstan is negligible at best. In 2010, Kazakhstan accounted for just 1.3 percent of the Belarusian foreign trade turnover, while the share of Belarus in Kazakhstans external trade was below one percent. Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has openly complained about the armtwisting politics of the Kremlin, saying that his country had been under pressure to cede control of some of its juiciest companies like Belarusian potassium company (Belkali) and Belarus staterun Minsk Automobile Plant (MAZ) unless the country joined the union. Given russia finally succeeded in persuading Belarus and Kazakhstan to join a Customs Union in 2011, and this the importance of champion enterprisyear the union will be transformed into a Single Economic Space, but the only missing player is Ukraine. photo: Sergey gunyaev, rIA novosti es such as MAZ and Belkali for Belar-
tries like Libya and Iran. A gas OPEC is an interesting idea. We will think about it, he said. We are not going to set up a cartel. But it would be correct to coordinate our activities with an eye to the solution of the main goal of unconditionally and securely supplying the main consumers of energy resources. Emboldened by economic successes at home, Putin has, over the past few years, been trying to lure Russias neighbors to its economic sphere using sticks and carrots. The stick often comes in the form of raising the attractiveness of Russias offers, such as cheaper oil or gas. But if and when that fails, the Kremlin has proved it is ready to flex its economic muscle with equal zeal and vigor. From 2009 on the Kremlin has pushed more resolutely for the creation of a Customs Union with Belarus and Kazakhstan, effective from 2011, and its transformation into a Single Economic Space starting in 2012. Last year it offered its neighbors, which for whatever political or economic reasons were not prepared to join the Customs Union and the Single Economic Space, to create a Free Trade Area within the CIS.
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us or Gazprom for Russia, it is still unclear how the states can tute of International Relations (MGIMO). Russias neighbors, agree on regulating these enterprises with supranational intoo, have progressively diversified their trade. Although they stitutions, especially when they are governed not by economhave done so to differing degrees, they have by now become ic, but by political logic, said George Plaschinsky, an associate less dependent on the Russian economy. analyst at the Center for European Transformation in Minsk. With few exceptions, all the countries bordering the WestPreviously the Russian authorities had an experience of imern fringes of the former Soviet Union have intensified their posing different decisions on gas and oil companies in order to trade relations with the European Union as well as with Chiachieve some political aims and assert themselves as the ener- na, whose importance in Central Asian trade has been growing. gy superpower. Perhaps to the chagrin of the Kremlin, over the past few years Most complaints center around the fact that the Kremlin fre- China has become a crucial import partner and financier in quently has shown no scruples in its dealings with the flock central Asia, and a major destination for Kazakh oil and Turkit pretends to lead. A constant talking point in Moscow these men natural gas. The Russian trade structure is also playing a days is the construction of the Nord Stream and South Stream trick on the regional Putinomics. Between 41 percent and 45 gas pipelines. Russia has made no secret of the fact that the percent of Russian exports to former Soviet states are currently purpose of building pipelines is to bypass transit-countries comprised of energy resources, while 39 percent of its imports like Ukraine, Belarus and Poland and deliver gas directly to an consist of machines and equipment. This, analysts say, suggests estimated 26 million European consumers. But its neighbors that theres unlikely to be growth in trade unless the economies see Kremlin projects as a source of intimidation. Russia curof the trading partners undergo fundamental transformation. rently transports about 20 percentor more than 30 billion cubic metersof gas a year to European consumers via the Yamal-Europe pipeline, which passes through Belarus and Poland. A spat over Minsks nonpayment of $ 192 million in gas bills last year led Russia to threaten to cut deliveries through the pipeline. The two counties only settled their differences after Belarus agreed to join the Kremlin-led Putins integration project does not appear to have come at Customs Union as well as sell the remaining 50 percent of its the most opportune moment, and there is little evidence to prized pipeline company Beltransgaz to Gazprom. show that Russia is closer to achieving its objectives today But Ukraine is a tough nut to crack for the Kremlin. While than it was a few years ago. Many similar initiatives that RusUkraine has complained for years that high gas prices are rusia spearheaded in the past have become little more than talkining its budget, it has nonetheless refused to cede control of ing clubs. These include the 1993 Economic Union Treaty, the the countrys Soviet-era gas pipeline network in exchange for 1994 Free Trade Agreement, and the multilateral Customs cheaper Russian gas. And despite repeated requests from Mos- Union, which was transformed into the Euro-Asian Economic cow, Kiev has also refused to join the Kremlin-led Customs Community (EurAsEC) in 2001. None of these previous projUnion of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan, saying that will ects achieved their declared goals, said Zagorsky. Moreover, scuttle its ongoing negotiations on an Association Agreement the current economic and political indicators are not favorable. with the European Union. Today the Customs Union and SES projects are being implemented at a moment when Eurasian integration appears even unequal partners less feasible than before. The Kremlin also found out that as ever more ex-Soviet states kgb capitalism become part of the global economic village, they start demonWhile the Kremlin has never admitted to it publicly, analysts strating potential for economic independence from Moscow. believe that Moscows rush to set up both the Customs Union The share of former Soviet states in total Russian exports and the SES was the Kremlins answer to the launching of the dropped from 22 percent in 1994 to 15 percent in 2010. Their EUs Eastern Partnership. For Russia, which sought to conshare in Russian imports dropped from 27 to 14 percent over the same period. Recent integration efforts have been symbolic solidate its influence in the post-Soviet space, the project is of at best, as investment figures show. While foreign investments predominantly political rather than economic value, Zagorsky said. Indeed, Belarus is the only country that has vital ecoin former Soviet states grew in absolute terms in 2008 and nomic stakes in both schemes, primarily for maintaining the 2009, their share in Russias total accumulated investment benefits of direct and indirect Russian subsidies. abroad has been continuously declining, from 22 percent in For Russia, the specific value of the project when it was first 2003 to a mere 8.5 percent in 2009. This indicates the declinlaunched in 2003 was the inclusion of Ukraine. At the time ing interest of Russian businesses in neighboring markets, Kiev signed a quadripartite treaty on the establishment of a said Andrei Zagorsky, a professor at the Moscow State Insti-
The Kremlin has frequently shown no scruples in dealing with the flock it pretends to lead.
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Single Economic Space, but dropped out in 2006 because it was not prepared to participate in anything beyond free trade. The process stalled temporarily while Russian policy focused more on EurAsEC. The Customs Union idea was reactivated in 2009 involving only Belarus and Kazakhstan. After the 2010 presidential elections in Ukraine Moscow renewed attempts to get Ukraine on board the Customs Union with a promise of additional discounts on the price of natural gas. The Customs Union was presented to Kiev as a viable alternative to the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) with the European Union. However, Moscows efforts to lure Ukraine into the Customs Union and the SES have not been successful so far. As a result, and contrary to common belief, the movement toward a trilateral Single Economic Space did not promote the integration of Russias neighbor. Instead, it narrowed the core of the Russian integration project by sidelining EurAsEC and its two other member statesKyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. This may explain
the constantly heightened tension between the Kremlin and the Ukrainian government. But for those accustomed to trying to read the Kremlins mind there could be another, more heinous explanation. As a prospective member of European institutions, Ukraine does present a threat to Russia, said Andrei Piontkovsky, a political analyst and a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington. The real threat is to the Putin model of a corporate, authoritarian state, unfriendly to the West, Piontkovsky said. For the Kremlins occupants, it is a matter of life and death that countries that were once part of the Soviet Union but chose a different model of developmentUkraine being the chief exampleshould never become attractive to ordinary Russians. Ukraines success will mark the political death of Putinism, that squalid philosophy of KGB capitalism. If Ukraine succeeds in its European choice, if it is able to make it work, it can settle the question that has bedeviled Russian culture for centurieswhether Russia is a part of Europe.
as Weak as the Weakest link

By rosemary griffin Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
The State Is Unkind Toward Russias Vulnerable Citizens.
troubled more likely to receive help than their counterparts did in 1999?
home truths One of the most visible of Russias vulnerable social groups is its homeless community. This comprises a broad spectrum of The process of evaluating a society based on how it society, from victims of economic turmoil and real estate fraud treats its most vulnerable members dates back many to those fleeing unstable homes or struggling with addiction centuries, with some of the worlds greatest thinkand mental illness. ers, from Aristotle and Mahatma Ghandi to Fyodor While the number of homeless people in Russia has fallen Dostoevsky, drawing on this idea to promote a varisince the 1990s, between three and four million are estimated ety of social causes. In early 2012 it seemed that Rus- to be homeless in Russia overall, according to Nadezhda Klysian voters may have been applying a variation of ueva, the coordinator of the Service to Help the Homeless this logic to choose a new president. Concrete proprogram at the Catholic charity Caritas in Moscow. She addgrams to help the vulnerable may not have been a big ed that of this figure, 30,000 to 100,000 continue to live on the issue this election season, but the belief that Ruscapitals streets. sia had achieved stability and put the wilder excessRussias homeless can access facilities provided by the state es of poverty and criminality of the 1990s behind and charities, but many still find themselves with insufficient when President-elect Vladimir Putin first came to support. Klyueva said there is a chronic shortage of shelter for power in 2000 was. A view shared by a large propor- the homeless in the Russian capital. Moscow has four cention of Russian society, including many of those who ters where homeless people can stay, which can hold a total of chose to protest against the authorities in the recent 2,500 peoplethere just arent enough centers here, she said. months, it was perhaps Putins trump card in a presi- Access to somewhere clean to wash for those who are living dential election campaign played out against a back- outside shelters is also a major problem. There are three placdrop of civil unrest. Between todays voters and the es set up for homeless people to go and wash in Moscow, Klylawlessness and destitution of the wild 1990s lie 12 ueva said. Two of them are located on the outskirts, which years of social change in Russia, but are its homeless many homeless people cannot afford to get to. The one in the any better provided for, its children any safer, or its city center is near the Kursk railway station, but it cannot
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and returned to St. Petersburg in 1991. And when I came back from the army, they told me that dad and mom had departed this life, and that I have no claims to the apartment. Its so unDefineD resiDence strange. Well, there was no privatization yet back then, you As well as struggling to meet basic physical needs, Russias know, he said, at times laughing nervously. homeless people are wrestling with the negative attitude of The collapse of the Soviet Union, with the ensuing economthose more fortunate than themselves. There is a stigma ic turmoil and legislative changes, initially exacerbated this attached to being homeless, Klyueva said. Often even close situation. Many people sold their flats during privatization in relatives of those who are homeless have a negative attitude hopes of finding another place to live, but fell victim to real estoward them, leading to a sense of worthlessness. This is tate fraud, conniving relatives, or found their capital depleted perhaps summed up in the word bomzh, a Russian acronym by the turbulent economy. for a person without a defined place of residence, used with In some of the worst cases, those who had been institutionvarying degrees of disrespect to refer to the homeless. Klyueva alized, such as the disabled, mentally ill, or former convicts said that they are trying to replace the word, at least in official found themselves with no home to return to when they were usage, but it remains common. released. One of these people was a 33-year-old disabled womIn an attempt to combat the impact of negative perceptions an from Tolyatti, interviewed for the St. Petersburg survey. about their status, Caritas encourages the homeless to work Well, I, when I was little, my mother died, I was still little. My in its volunteer programs as part of their recovery programs. father died when I was in residential care. The fact that I was One man to have benefitted from Caritas rehabilitation proat school in residential care, that my father died, and it went to gram is Mikhail Zhukov, a journalist who found himself living the state, the apartment, she said at the time. on the streets and decided to write about his experiences with the help of Caritas. You often have to listen to entirely welloff, or as we say, home people, saying that they envy homeless people because they have so much free time. They are probably right in their way. And at the moment when they say these words, they are being entirely sincere. But only at that moment, up to the point when free time becomes having nowhere to go, Zhukov wrote in a blog post last year. Zhukov is one of many well-educated, articulate Russians who are living on the countrys streets due to financial misfortune, personal problems, or in some cases the system of mandatory residential registration and its predecessor from the Soviet Union, known as the propiska. Stalin introduced the propiska system in 1932 to manage mass migration to Soviet cities in the face of wide-scale rural famine. By the time it went nationwide in the 1950s, it had become an effective way to keep criminal and subversive elements away from large urban populations, and it formed the precondition for access to employment, housing, education and welfare in the Soviet Union. Homelessness in the Soviet period was largely a result of this [propiska] system, although it was concealed, and in practice criminalized, wrote Tova Hojdestrand in an article published in 2004. A researcher at the University of Stockholm, in 2005 Hojestrand completed a Ph.D. with a thesis on homelessness in Russia, mainly based on research into the phenomenon at railway stations, charities and other places where homeless people gathered in St. Petersburg in 1999. A study into homelessness organized by NGOs and printed in St. Petersburg in 2007 polled homeless people about how they had lost their right to accommodation. One of those was a 50-year-old man from St. Petersburg, who had a higher education, fought in Afghanistan and took part in the elimination of the Chernobyl nuclear accident as a military construcrussias homeless community numbers from three to four million people, all of tion worker. After two years of treatment in a military hospital whom face a chronic shortage or shelter and support. photo: Ilya pitalev, rIA novosti he was discharged from the armed forces for health reasons,
cope with the number of people who want to use it. Sometimes homeless people have to wait two to three hours just to wash.
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no other WaY out A tragic side effect of difficult social conditions since the collapse of the Soviet Union has been Russias high suicide rate, which has dropped since the 1990s but remains a serious problem. Boris Polozhy, the director of the department of ecological and social problems of psychiatric health at the state-run Serbsky Psychiatric Center, highlighted this during an online conference held by RIA Novosti in November of 2011. In 1995 there was a peak in Russia, when the suicide rate stood at 42.5 per 100,000 people. In 2010 this figure had almost halved, now we have a suicide rate of 23.5 per 100,000 people, Polozhy said. He put this improvement down to the authorities paying increased attention to the problem, and the introduction of special programs to help those with suicidal thoughts at a regional level. But the problem remains, particularly in regions with the worst socio-economic conditions in the country. In a megapolis like Moscow, the suicide rate is 3.5 times lower than in the country overall, Polozhy said. Last fall, a spate of suicides among Russias teenagers provoked a national outcry, with the news reports of teenagers taking their own lives continuing to mount in 2012. Polozhy said Russia is fourth in the world for teen suicide. But for many moving to the capital, the old catch-22 situaThere is some support for Russias vulnerable teenagers from tion remains, with official registration hard to come by without workand legal work hard to find without official registration. the office of Russias Childrens Ombudsman Pavel Astakhov. In February it investigated the case of Kristina K., who killed Oleg Olkhov, the deputy director of the Orthodox Christian movement Kursk Station. Homeless Children, said that in his herself on the grounds of a childrens home in the Arkhangelsk Region at the beginning of the year. A report on the ombudsexperience many of Moscows homeless were born outside the mans Web site described Kristina as a kind, sociable, commucity. Most of those on the streets in Moscow are from outside nicative person, who had run away from the childrens home the city, with many from former Soviet republics, he said. in the past. She was taken away from her parents after they diSet up six years ago, the organization is funded mainly by vorced and her mother became an abusive alcoholic. She had private donations from the Orthodox Christian communibeen missing for over a month when her body was found. She ty and feeds around 5,000 people a year while helping around 150 to return home, Olkhov said. Olkhov does not see the reg- left behind two younger sisters who remain in state care. The ombudsman found failings in the administration of the chilistration system as the biggest problem, but cited documents drens home, and said that those responsible for failing to care in general as an issue for many of those he works with today. for her would be investigated further. The problem is not the system of registration, the problem is
According to Nochlezhka, an NGO that works with the homeless in St. Petersburg, 50 percent of those who registered with it in 1998 stated imprisonment as the formal reason for being homeless. Some would argue that convicts should lose their right to state accommodation when they commit a crime, but among prisoners in Soviet jails were those who had committed political crimes, did not have a propiska or were longterm unemployed. Although these offences, or at least the last two, are not considered to be crimes in modern Russia, those convicted continue to be penalized. During the 1990s, the number of homeless people increased dramatically due to legal changes, the disintegration of the Soviet state and the introduction of a market economy, Hojdestrand wrote. Many people without a propiska in Russia in the 1990s had the added problem of finding that their last place of abode was now in an independent country, and attempts to regain residency status were dependent on cooperation between Russian and now foreign governments. But the 1990s saw some progress being made on this issue. In 1991, parasitism and vagrancy disappeared from the Criminal Code. The Russian Constitution, adopted in 1993, gave citizens new rights, including freedom of movement. It also granted those leaving new CIS-states on the grounds of persecution the right to settle. The process of replacing propiska with the current registration system began in 1993, when a law was passed granting Russian citizens the right to free movement, to choose their place of residence and to live within Russias borders. In Putins era the laws were relaxed further, with Russian citizens now allowed to remain without registration for up to 90 days, rather than five, as was the rule in the 1990s.
that these people are vulnerable, they find themselves taking a job where the employer exploits them, takes away their passport and then they find themselves in trouble, he said. The St. Petersburg survey found that having identification documents, primarily a Russian Federation passport, significantly broadens the pool of recipients of state pensions and benefits, increases the chances for homeless individuals to receive permanent (official and unofficial) jobs, and halves the proportion of homeless people surviving principally on alms. Olkhov also said that the situation on Moscows streets has improved since the organization was set up in 2006: We are, or originally were, focused on helping homeless children. Now there are almost no homeless children on Moscows streets, so now we are helping older people, he said.
For many, the catch-22 remains: its impossible to register without work and work is hard to find without registration.
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russians as an expense
By Dmitry Babich RUSSIA PROFILE
Opposition Candidates Made Unrealistic Promises.
Can it be said that opposition candidates did not offer voters any solutions for pressing social issues? No. The problem was that the solutions these candidates suggested were out of touch with reality, and the voters who had experienced Boris Yeltsins limitless populism of the 1990s refused to buy this kind of product, Lev Gudkov, the head of Levada Center, said. Why did the Russian oppositionboth systemic and Gennady Zyuganovs promise of a return to a completely free, non-systemiclose the social side of the presidential state-financed education for everyone was one such unrealiselection campaign to Vladimir Putin? Few dispute the tic promise. The promise of the social-democratic candidate fact that the campaign was indeed lost. Putin was ac- Sergei Mironov to pay a childcare salary to one of the partually the only candidate who led a serious campaign ents in a family with three or more children was another one. on social institutionshealthcare, education, housAll candidates except Vladimir Putin and Mikhail Prokhorov ing, said Olga Kamenchuk, an expert at the VTsIOM promised to cut utility payments and to provide big families sociological think tank. All other candidates kept ap- with free housing, writing off old debts or reducing the mortpealing to the same limited audiences they had acgage payments to no more than five per year (Zyuganovs proquired long before the election, or made unreal prom- posal). The billionaire candidate Mikhail Prokhorov was too ises to everyone. This was a losing strategy. radical for the majority on the liberal sidehe suggested makThe protest audiences in Russia are well known: the ing the pension age higher for people without children. His part of the population that is still nostalgic for the So- previous initiative of allowing employees to make a volunviet times (the realm of the communist leader Gentary agreement with employers and work extra hours (up to nady Zyuganov); radical leftist youth (the realm of 60 a week) did not help his popularity either. the Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov); nationalists Igor Nikolayev, a professor at the Higher School of Eco(a loose conglomerate of xenophobic groups, from nomics in Moscow, conducted research on the candidates sothe openly racist Movement Against Illegal Immigracial programs and published it in the Moskovsky Komsomotion to the otherwise libertarian Democratic Choice of lets daily a week before the vote. Nikolayev made a rough Vladimir Milov, which demands to seal off the border estimate of how much it would cost to fulfill each of the canwith Central Asia and to stop any migration from the didates promises. According to Nikolayevs estimates, Sergei Caucuses while at the same time opening the border Mironov turned out to be the most expensive candidate. His for EU citizens unilaterally); the burgeoning new an- plans of boosting childbirth rates, helping the old, providing gry city dwellersthe relatively affluent urban middle for the veterans, etc would cost 124.459 trillion rubles ($ 4.217 class that saw its unimpeded rise to prosperity curtrillion). Gennady Zyuganov placed not far behind, with 110 tailed in the last two to three years. trillion rubles ($ 3.72 trillion). The flamboyant Vladimir ZhiriEach of the registered and unregistered presidennovsky came in a distant third with 81.2 trillion rubles ($ 2.75 tial candidates tried to pluck his share of these rather trillion). To compare: all the expenses Russias federal budget meager grapes of wrath without successfully widen- incurred in the year 2010 amounted to $ 326.8 billion, so in oring his audience. The main candidate in this election der to fulfill Mironovs fantasies Russia would need an addimanaged to retain his part of the so-called Putins tional 13 federal budgets. majority, which comprised 75 percent of the populaPutins promises were radically less obliging (about nine tion at the peak of Putins rule in 2007 to 2008 and trillion rubles, or $ 304 billion, even less than the annushrank to about 60 to 65 percent now, said Boris Du- al budget expenses), while Prokhorovs plans sound like mubin, the head of the department of socio-political resic to the ears of budget-conscious economistshe would search at the Levada Center, one of Russias most rejust need 7.340 trillion rubles, or a mere $ 248 billion. In exspected sociological think tanks. He did it largely change, Prokhorov promised to eventually turn Russia into thanks to a successful campaign on social issues. He an EU member. The old and the ill, according to Prokhorovs even managed to attract some of the left-leaning votplan, would be provided for by a network of charity organizaers who were disappointed with the painful education tions run by rich donors thanks to reduced taxes. I dont think and healthcare reforms in 2009 to 2011. making Russia into an EU member is a realistic task for the
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next Russian president, or even for the one who will be running the country in 12 to 18 years, said Sergei Karaganov, the head of the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, an umbrella organization for Russian and foreign policy experts. In fact, some economic steps the European Union has taken are so friendly to Russia that one wishes the EU would become an economic dwarf, not an economic giant. Prokhorov has a chance to use the wave of popular protests, Sergei Markedonov, a political scientist, wrote in a column for the Izvestia daily. But I am not sure he can do it without drifting to the left (within certain limits). The question is: is Prokhorov capable of drifting left? Strong support for economic freedom at the expense of economic justice has been the hallmark of his campaign. Prokhorov can inspire a part of the non-middle class electorate with his promises, but only for a short time, said Boris Kagarlitsky, the head of the leftist Moscow-based Institute for Globalization Studies. Contrary to the negative image Russian economic liberals such as Anatoly Chubais have before an average Russian voter, the prevailing mood among Russians is that of dreaming about petit-bourgeois success and an easy life. People may buy Prokhorovs tales about the European Union, but only for a short time. As for Putin, his campaign emphasized social aid that does not require additional budget expenses. The proposed steps include developing the rental market for real estate and reducing mortgage payments in line with decreasing inflation; reducing the cost of medicine by developing the domestic pharmaceutical industry; and making plots of land available to farmers and rural dwellers by confiscating unused land from ineffective
putin successfully campaigned on social issues like healthcare, with realistic promises that would cost less to implement than the current budget expense.
photo: Alexandr Kondratyuk, rIA novosti
state owners. Putin also suggested filling the coffers of impoverished Russian theatres and cinemas by allowing them to sell their copyrights to the state. The state would then make these productions available to the public by putting them on the Internet. Putins other suggestions include raising salaries for schoolteachers and especially for people who run sports clubs and other afterschool education services for children. But while all these ideas seem great, Putins main opponent is Putin himself. The question is: why wasnt this all done before? What prevented the state from raising teachers salaries, providing land plots and purchasing copyrights for theater productions during Putins rule? The voters gave their answer to that question, and that answer is hope.
putin the competitor

By David nowak Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
Can Russia Fulfill the Promises It Has Made to the International Sports Community?
mary sporting goal is obvious: to deliver the two events he lobbied so spectacularly to obtain. The first duty for the new president is to fulfill all these promises, said Georgy Cherdantsev, one of the countrys top sports commentators and analysts. The countrys reputation is at stake. Sochi is going well, but Vladimir Putins return to the Kremlin for a third term there are six years until the World Cup and nothing is there. managed to elicit groans of relief in the corridors of He needs to make it all a reality. FIFA and the International Olympic Committee that Putin spearheaded the Sochi Olympic bid by making an immay have been heard as far away as Moscow. Officials passioned speech in English to International Olympics Comthere have been forced to understand that little in mittee (IOC) members in Guatemala in 2007, at the end of his Russia gets done without Putins nod, and that his resecond consecutive term as president. As prime minister, he election leaves the power vertical so crucial to the suc- personally lobbied FIFA officials to give Russia footballs top cess of these projects blissfully uncompromised. competition instead of its homeland, England, in 2010. Now, As Putin steers Russia into a position to dominate again as president, Putin can emboss his credentials as histothe sporting landscape of the next decade, his prirys greatest sports project manager by ending his third term
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having given the world two festivals of international competiDemanDing manpoWer tion where before there were sludge fields and crumbling roads. The progress already made in Sochi is settling a lot of nerves when it comes to the World Cup (indeed, FIFA recently comracing against the clock mented that Russia is today better prepared for the 2018 World With the Olympics less than two years away, the country is Cup than Brazil is for the 2014 edition), but there is one factor nearly ready. All 200-plus stadiums, slopes, jumps, runs, roads, that is mostly out of Putins control that will go a long way in tunnels and the essential miscellany should be complete by determining the success of these events. Putin needs to proyear-end, as 50,000 workers toil 24 hours a day at coastal and duce athletes to match. In the event of a Vancouver 2010-style mountain venue clusters, in the biggest building project in medal flop, or the football team crashing out in the group Europe for decades costing a total of at least $ 30 billion. stage, praise of fantastic organization will be of little consoThe IOC is happy that Russia is on schedule despite the delay lation to Russians whose memory of the unstoppable Soviet of around 70 projects revealed by Deputy Prime Minister Dmi- sports machine is fading rapidly. I dont doubt for a second try Kozak earlier this year. The first serious test events have that we will put on these events magnificently, said Igor Kots, gone smoothly on the whole, barring a hold-up at the ski jump the editor in chief at Russias oldest sports daily, Sovetsky facility that the Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko shrugged off as Sport. But our sporting chances are alarmingly low. If we insignificant. were to hold the Olympics tomorrow, for example, we wouldnt With the World Cup, which Russia is thankfully confining appear anywhere on the medal table, he said. The performto a single, European time zone, things arent nearly as develances of our athletes have been distressingly bad over the last oped, with officials yet to agree upon the 11 cities to host the two or three years. Our alpine skiers are nowhere to be seen, matches. and we have just put on the worst showing at the biathlon Putin, who was congratulated by FIFA President Sepp Blatworld championships in the last 15 years. As a simple Russian ter in a statement this month that emphasized Putins govern- sports fan, this worries me, Kots added. ment guarantees and total commitment to the World Cup, A glance at Russias current aptitude in its traditionally needs to arrange for the construction or refurbishment of a strong winter sports seems to support Kots concern. The Rusdozen arenas to conform to FIFA standards, in a project that sian biathlon team that went to Ruhpolding, Germany, as one has been allocated $ 10 billion, though this number is expected of the world championships favorites this month came back to balloon. This is a much broader project than the Olympics, with a meager two-bronze haul. Head Coach Valery Polkwhich is why time is of the essence here, Cherdantsev said of hovsky had hoped for a medal in each of the 11 disciplines with the World Cup. Only the iconic Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow, Russian representation. Polkhovsky promised a thorough postwhich was used for the 1980 Olympics and is the chosen venue mortem but guarded against excessive alarm, pointing to 27 for the 2018 final, meets FIFA requirements. World Cup podiums achieved by Russian biathletes this season. The country has fearsome heritage to live up to: when taken combined, Russia and the Soviet Union have 18 Olympic biathlon goldsthe most of any nation.
With the Olympics and the World Cup, putin, himself an athlete who even participated in making the video Learn Judo with Vladimir putin, has his eyes set on turning russia into a global sporting locomotive
photo: Alexey Babushkin, rIA novosti
on slipperY ice In figure skating, where Russia comes second only to the United States historically, the countrys men must try to shed their dependence on Evgeny Plushenko for success. The 2006 Turin gold medalist and runner-up in Salt Lake City in 2002 and Vancouver in 2010 is coming back to the sport after injury and disqualification, looking for gold in Sochi to end his career with a suitable flourish. But Plushenko will be 31 years old by then, putting more pressure on youngsters such as 18-year-old Artur Gachinski to take up the mantle. Gachinski leads a 17-strong Russian team at this months world championships in Nice, France, where they must cope without Plushenko, who is recovering from knee
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surgery, in attempting to better last years result of one silver and Gachinskis bronze. Success in Sochi will be expected from upcoming pairs team Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov, and teenagers Elena Olinykh and Nikita Katsalapov. The country is trembling with excitement over the potential of Adelina Sotnikova and Elizaveta Tuktamysheva, two junior champions who will be 17 when the games begin. The Sochi games give Russias men the chance to end 16 years of Olympic hockey misery, their last medal coming as bronze in Salt Lake City. Even in world championships, the Russians are slipping. After winning back-to-back gold in 2008 and 2009, the team won silver in Germany in 2010 and finished fourth last year in Bratislava. I really think this is our best chance of glory in Sochi, said Kots.
the nascent Kontinental Hockey League forward to challenge the NHL as the worlds preeminent competition. To a certain extent our Kontinental Hockey League is still a weak competitor to the NHL, but its gradually gaining momentum, and Im confident that in time it can become real, good, healthy competition for the NHL, Putin said. The KHL was founded in 2008 with 24 teams from the former Soviet Union, and now contains 22 ex-Soviet teams plus Lev Poprad from Slovakia. Huge salaries mean it is littered with former NHL stars, but Europes other powerhouse hockey leagues, such as Swedens Elitserien and Finlands SMLiiga, are reluctant to buy into the KHL project, considering it a step down from their own domestic leagues and a loss-making endeavor. Putin must win these countries over if the KHL is to get up a head of steam as he has vowed, be it by added financial inon to greener pastures centivesfor instance by offering the huge Russian television Meanwhile, analysts say its too early to forecast Russias 2018 audience as an expansion marketor by restricting competiWorld Cup chances, but expectation will be high to reprotion to Europes elite teams to guarantee a minimum quality of duce the kind of form that took the country to the Euro 2008 hockey, analysts said. Additionally, he would be wise to push semifinals under Guus Hiddink. Russia has performed well for a world playoff series between NHL and KHL champions, a since crashing out of qualification for the 2010 World Cup, matchup pitting the Stanley Cup and Gagarin Cup winners as with Hiddinks compatriot Dick Advocaat steering the country has been mooted in hockey forums, to build brand awareness to the Euro 2012 finals this summer after winning a tough and rekindle the exciting rivalry of the 1972 Summit Series bequalification group that included Slovakia and the Republic of tween Canada and the Soviet Union. Ireland. Lying beyond Putins glittering megaprojects, though, are By 2018 the team will have a very different look, as the the everyday endeavors needed for the country to produce old guard of Sergei Ignashevich, Alexander Anyukov, Yuri top-class athletes and return it to the peak of achievement Zhirkov, Roman Pavlyuchenko and Andrei Arshavinwho that the Soviets were accustomed to. In a healthy economy, have provided the backbone of the squad for the last decade money poured in at the top trickles down to the grass roots is replaced. to allow success to breed success, and to facilitate the flow of Talent such as CSKA Moscows Alan Dzagoev, Lokomotivs talent in the opposite direction. Having opened these chanRoman Shishkin and Spartak Moscow winger Pavel Yakovlev nels by persuading global sportsmasters to stage their shows can ensure the kind of smooth generational change that leads in Russia, Putins challenge is to rid them of bureaucratic UEFA President Michel Platini to believe glory is within reach clots that threaten to leave the amateur end hopelessly ostrafor the host nation. Russia is capable of winning the World cized from the elite. It may be one of Putins greatest failings Cup, Platini said in an interview earlier this year. Russia can if banal corruption prevents the country from truly realizing accomplish great success at the championships so long as the the legacy opportunities offered by the Olympics and World team is built around strong players. Cup, if his business associates fill their pockets at the expense of sporting opportunities where they wouldnt have come WorlD recorDs before. The Olympics and the World Cup, however, are just the brightThe greatest opportunity brought by the influx of sports to est in a slew of sporting events to be held in Russia over the Russia, however, may be saved for Putin himself. What hes next few years, as Putin seeks to reassert Russias place on the doing by staging all these events is showing to the worlds world stage in as many spheres as possible. leaders that he is worthy of being among them, said NikoAfter last years FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, which lay Petrov of the Carnegie Moscow Center. They demonstrate Russia won, and the World Figure Skating Championwhat a success the country can be, and in this [Putin] is showships, moved from Japan after the tsunami and earthquake, ing that Russia is rising from its knees to become a superpowthe next few years will see the 2013 Universiade in Kaer once again. zan, the arrival of Formula 1 motor racing in Sochi in 2014, More crucially, perhaps, the Football World Cup reveals Puthe 2016 World Hockey Championships, and the 2017 FIFA tins plans to stick around as president beyond 2018, when his Confederations Cup. current term ends. It begins in the summer of that year, falling The sporting ambitions of Putin, a confessed health freak and after a winter or spring presidential election. Can you imagjudo black belt, arent confined to Russia, but extend well beine a World Cup without president Putin cutting the ribbon? yond its borders. Putin last month signaled his intent to drive Petrov asked.
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put in, never off

By Dmitry Babich RUSSIA PROFILE
Russians Like to Joke About Elections.

Contrary to a common view, elections in Russia are not an entirely novel affair, and as surprising as it may appear to readers of modern Western press these elections were not always fraudulent. However, elections have always been a subject of jokes among skeptical Russians who always suspected their government of evil intentions. They never paid much respect to the opposition, either. A Russian is a mocker and skeptic, famous Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky quoted his French friends on their general impression of Russians political attitudes. Interestingly, Russians remained skeptical and baleful even given the best possible atmosphereat peaceful European spas and other places of leisure where affluent Russians traveled en masse in the 1860s and the 1870s. No less interestingly, these affluent Russians directed their irony at one of our countrys best epochsthe period of liberal reforms of the 1860s and the 1870s, when Russia, freed from serfdom, was in the process of establishing elected local self-government and trial by the jury. So, what is it in the Russian psyche that makes Russians so skeptical about themselves and their elections? And was such an attitude indeed a perennial phenomenon?
Land elected Ivans successors, his son Fyodor and the famous Boris Godunov (the unfortunate Czar Boris, immortalized by Alexander Pushkin). The commoners, who elected one third of the assemblys delegates (the other two thirds representing the church and the boyars), viewed the election of a new czar suspiciously, even grievingly, every time. Papers from that epoch document all sorts of cruel jokes, rumors and conspiracy theories, one of which proved fatal for Czar Boris and his family, ultimately leading to the Polish intervention that brought a defrocked adventurist monk to the Russian throne. One contemporary joke pokes fun at Ivan the Terribles irrational fear of the boyars and their potentially anti-monarchist use of the Assemblies of the Land. Weary of a possible conspiracy and a subsequent loss of power, Ivan sought to marry a fellow monarch, the legendary English Queen Elizabeth, asking her to provide him political asylum in case of such a scenario. The marital offer was declined under a typically Western, democratic pretext: queen Beth wrote to Ivan that she could not get approval from her Parliament. Ivan did not be-
Elections have always been a subject of jokes among skepitcal Russians who suspect the government of evil intentions.
lieve in this division of powers, and he was right: at the time, the Parliament was a toy in the hands of the queen and her Privy Council. The joke tells of a delegation of Russian boyars named Longinov, Stroganov, Putin and Neverov coming to London with Ivan the Terribles marital offer. The queens servant announces their arrival, introducing the visitors as Misters Long Enough, Strong Enough, Put In and Never Off. This introduction can be said to sum up the Wests present-day fears of the Russian politics rigid character of both at home and abroad.
terrible elections In a more or less organized way, the first elections were held in Russia in the 16th century under Ivan the Terrible. Even though this sounds like an oxymoron, it wasnt one: firstly, the adjective terrible is a mistranslation of Ivan the Fourths actual nickname (Grozny is better translated as formidable). Secondly, Ivan the Fourth was by no means terrible in the beginning of his rule. His debut was one of a civilized czar with European aspirations. He even consulted several elected Assemblies of the Land (Zemsky Sobors) on a number of issues, such as the termination of a bloody Livonian war. Later Assemblies of the
proletariat rules The last Assembly of the Land was held in 1684. This kind of election was abolished due to European influences. Peter the Great, the first Russian czar-emperor, sought to establish an absolutist rule according to the European model of the time. Until the early 20th century elections were reserved for members of the gentry, who elected their own self-rule bodies, and to the 19th century middle class (the importance of ones
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mere fact that one could ignore elections and stay home was a change for the better. From Joseph Stalin to Leonid Brezhnev, the rule was that there should not be even a single voter who would not use the honorable right to elect deputiesa quote from the Communist Partys appeal to voters in 1937). Russia had full democracy between 1989 and 1993, said Vyacheslav Igrunov, one of the leaders of the Yabloko Party in the 1990s. This democracy was destroyed by the whole course of societys development, where the amount of economic injustice sooner or later had to translate into the loss of political rights. Ok, Ill tell that to Vladimir... Vladimir Churov, the much-criticized chairman of the Central Electoral Commission, disagreed, saying that in 1989 to 1990 elections still put the Communist Party in a privileged position. Boris Yeltsins reelection to the presidential post in 1996 inspired a new set of jokes. The United States and the European Union, weary of a communist comeback, supported Yeltsin. Despite Yeltsins immense unpopularity, his electoral victory was indeed preordained. Several key economic figures, including the CEO of Gazprom, said they would not follow the communists orders should their candidate, Gennady Zyuganov, vote was dependent on the amount of ones property, preferwin the election. This was fertile ground for jokes: Journalists ably in the real estate domain). In Anton Chekhovs short ask Yeltsin: What will happen after your victory in the presistories, elected self-rule officials (zemtsy) are painted as dull, dential election? Russia will have a new president. And what faceless characters, the subjects of humor and ridicule. During will happen in case of your defeat? Russia will have an old the 20th century, after a brief and tragic period of flirtation president. with elected Dumas in 1905 to 1917, Russia again abandoned Television, newspapers and all kinds of other media controlled the farce of bourgeois democracy. by the mighty Kremlin-connected oligarchs, primarily Boris In 1937, the first secret ballot was held according to the Berezovsky, Vladimir Gusinsky and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, atnew Constitution, drafted by Joseph Stalin and his Politbutempted to help Yeltsins campaign. This made the outcome of ro colleagues. Originally, every bulletin was supposed to have the election feel even more predetermined. Yeltsin meets at least two names of candidates, and the Soviet Unions chief the chairman of the Central Electoral Commission the day afIdeologist Andrei Zhdanov even spoke of the need to deal ter the election. Boris Nikolayevich, I have both good news and with the hostile candidacies. But that was 1937the peak bad news for you, the chairman says. Start with the bad news! of Stalins repressions and the culmination of his inexplicaZyuganov got 65 percent of the vote! Ok. And what is the good ble paranoia. In October of 1937 a special plenary meeting of news? You got the remaining 75 percent! the Communist Partys Central Committee decided to have jollY street spirits just one candidate on each bulletin, saying that a separate list Vladimir Putins elections in 2000 and 2004 and Dmitry of communist candidates would drive a wedge between the Medvedevs in 2008 left little trace in popular satiric memory. communists and other Soviet citizens. Elections without a Only the recent upsurge in street protests and electoral activchoice became the subject of numerous jokes. Since the bulity brought some fresh masterpieces. I did not vote for these letins were filled out in secret, some voters wrote whole compositions on the subject. A voter in the city of Kaluga wrote in- bastards! I voted for other bastards! read a sign that one of the participants in the opposition rally at Bolotnaya Square side a voting booth: You gave me some kind of a magic pen: my hand is automatically writing the name Stalin on the ballot. carried, referring to situations when votes cast for strong opposition parties were registered votes for smaller opposition By a special decision of the Soviet Central Electoral Commisparties or even as votes for United Russia. It is possible to sion, bulletins where people wrote their own names and good live better! But 50 percent of the population do not believe in wishes for the government were considered valid. it! another poster said. A young man held a portrait of Leonid presiDents olD anD neW Brezhnev, whose sclerotic rule in 1964 to 1982 became the The end of this system came in 1988, when a new law on elecheyday of jokes. Brezhnev pointed his finger at the viewer and tions to the Supreme Soviet and other soviets of the Soviet Un- asked: So which one of us is living through true stagnation? ion was adopted. After a 50-year-long hiatus, in 1989 several Christ was also a hooligan when he came to temples! said names were put on a voting bulletin. And though jokes like another poster in support of the Pussy Riot punk group. You vote or you dont vote, your gains will equal naught beJokes have not been coined on the streets since the early came widespread, people welcomed the new development. The 1990s. It is good to have more than just online freedom!
Special Report
COMMENT
43
trust nobody
Comment by Alexei Varlamov Special to RUSSIA PROFILE
Russia Is a Dark Country of Lucid People.

In the mid-1990s the russian literary magazine noviy Mir published an essay by a young critic, pavel Basinsky, on realisma style largely regarded as dated in the emerging era of postmodernism. Yet in his essay, entitled The return, Basinsky argued that realistic literature could never go out of style because it deals with fundamental issues, such as peoples trust in themselves, others, and the world. He reinforced his thesis with citations from classic russian authors, notably Andrei platonov, and ultimately made a convincing argument. But if we attempt to extend this theory to our society at large, we would probably have to admit that post-Soviet russia seems to be living in a world that is deeply surreal, postmodernist and absurdist at times, and that trust is probably what it lacks most. Indeed, we tend not to have trust in governments, and this is reciprocated. We doubt the reliability of our healthcare system, our education system, science, trade, and transportation. And we are rather suspicious of foreigners, especially Westerners, which does not prevent us, however, from preferring European and U. S.-made merchandise, with domestically produced food being the only exception. We believeoften not without reasonthat somehow things work better in the West, with fewer airplane crashes, shipwrecks and nuclear disasters. When reporting on the rare man-made disaster in the West, our media have difficulty concealing their schadenfreude over the fact that russia is not the only country to suffer from a perceived shortage of human ingenuity. However, this does not make us any less skeptical about the way things are handled in our own country, nor does it foster greater trust in our fellow countrymen. Some acquaintances of mine were selling their apartment. They found a buyer themselves and agreed on a price, but until the last minute they feared they might get duped. Once the deal was completed, the buyers admitted to having had the same fears. relieved, both parties shook hands and wondered aloud why russians are so suspicious of one another. That habitual lack of trust is something I know first-hand. The title of my debut novel, Sucker (Lokh in russian), sprang to mind after I acted like a sucker myself, falling victim to crooks due to my own stupidity. It is true that cheating in russia is not uncommon, neither in trade nor in politics. But it occurs on both sides of the divide. According to a popular Soviet-era saying, which expresses quite aptly the eras economic realities, They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work. This remains largely the case in todays russia as well, at least in the public sector. who ended up on the train tracks. Well, the grooves of distrust have been well worn in our minds ever since. That said, I would not agree that mutual mistrust and suspicion are inherent to the russian mentality. When visiting some of the countrys remotest places, barely touched by urban civilization, only rarely did I come across such an attitude. In large population centers people may be quite hostile toward one another, though, as they reproduce patterns formed by the recent Soviet past, when one imprudently spoken word could cost a person his or her freedom or even life. paradoxically, general mistrust often exists in the russian mindset alongside a tendency to idealize some particular individuals, including ruthless dictators like Joseph Stalin. The russians are highly sensitive to the distinction between one of their own and an alien. Spin-doctors try to stoke this, but more often than not, their cleverly designed projects fall victim to public distrust, as has been the
Post-Soviet Russia is living in a world that is deeply surreal, postmodernist and absurdisttrust is what it lacks most.
Many of us had behaved stupidly in the early 1990s, by letting the so-called financial pyramids cheat us out of our first post-Soviet capital. And then we allowed our first postSoviet president Boris Yeltsin to get away with not delivering on his promise to maintain the nations standard of living. If he failed to, he declared, he would go and lie down on train tracks. But it was the public, not him, case with the pro-Kremlin youth movement nashi, for example. The russians normally do not have much trust in political organizations, which explains the poor showing of the pro-government United russia and other major parties, including opposition ones, in the latest parliamentary election. nor are the russians particularly comfortable with the parliamentarian system. They would
Special Report Business
COMMENT
politicians out there in those days, such as Boris nemtsov, Anatoly Chubais, Yegor gaidar, grigory Yavlinsky, and Sergei Kiriyenko. Yet, for some mysterious reason, we chose the former KgB officer over all those liberals. And we have continued to stick to that choice throughout the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, whoto Western observersis a lot more progressive than putin. Similarly, we did not have much trust in Mikhail gorbachev, arguably the most popular russian politician in the West. And that lack of trust on our part is irrational, rather than stemming from the mans personal characteristics or conduct. Such an irrational approach may or may not be wrong, but that idea of the president as a manager, a civil servant hired by citizens to perform public administration duties for a limited period of time, just does not fit in with the russian mindset. In russia, the choice of a leader is always illogical. And it will not necessarily extend to his or her entourage. This is
44
why an effective system of governance is so hard to build in this country. Apparently russia is destined to be run in manual mode. We believe that our public healthcare system leaves much to be desired but that we have excellent doctors; that our system of education has been largely destroyed but that there remain remarkable teachers; that our jets crash every now and then but that no one can match our pilots in skill. placing faith in certain individuals amid a general climate of mistrust is what underlies russian realism, in fact. I have faith in individuals; I see salvation in individuals scattered here and there, all over russia, be they intellectuals or peasants, because they are the ones who really matter, no matter how few they are, wrote Anton Chekhov in 1899. Another proponent of russian realism, the Soviet-era author Andrei platonov, expressed this same idea in his own way: This is a dark country, yet people living here are radiant.
more willingly take to the streets to demonstrate their lack of confidence in the authorities rather than display solidarity. Their trust in individual politicians is often irrational and based on charisma or a sense of affinity, rather than logic. We believed in the sincerity of our first post-Soviet leader, Boris Yeltsin, when he withdrew from the Communist party, when he climbed atop a tank outside the russian parliament headquarters to call for civil resistance to the 1991 coup, and when he publicly mourned those killed resisting, asking the nation for an apology. But our wholehearted trust in him soon gave way to profound disillusionment. We then placed our trust in Vladimir putin, who succeeded Yeltsin in 1999. The new leader looked young, decisive and energetic, especially compared to his aging and increasingly frail predecessor. But there were many other young, energetic and progress-minded
Alexei Varlamov is a russian writer, philologist and researcher of the history of russian 20th century literature.

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RUSSIAPROFILE .

ISSUE 2 VOLUME IX SprIng / 12

special report: the state of the state

With thanks, Andrei Zolotov, Jr. Chief Editor

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

Dealing With the outsiDe WorlD

the frienDship of nations

as Weak as the Weakest link

cant beat the sistema

rebuilD not reform

putin the competitor

faDing shaDes of White

put in, never off

partY time in russian politics

comment by Alexei Varlamov

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

the hopeless president

Memories of Medvedevs Presidency Are Fading Fast.

Throughout his time as president, Medvdev constantly disappointed expectations.

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

What Does It Mean to Be the President of Russia?

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

the friendship of nations

Once Again, Putin Faces a Multicultural and ProblematicRussia.

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

Todays Russia cant be called a nation-state.

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

There Is No Alternative to Federalism in Russia.

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

photo: Vitaliy Belousov, rIA novosti

the state of the state

cant beat the sistema

Informal Politics and Patron-Client Networks Continue to Plague Russia.

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

rebuild not reform

Russias Military, Police and Security Services Are Beyond Reform.

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

RUSSIA PROFILE Issue 2 Volume IX Spring/12

the state of the state

fading shades of White