#3 - JRL 2006-285 - JRL Home
Russia Profile
December 20, 2006
A Sitting Duck
Is Putin Losing His Grip on Power?
Comment by Georgy Bovt
Georgy Bovt is the editor of the Russian weekly magazine Profil. He contributed
this comment to Russia Profile.
Today the Russian political elite is consumed by one question: How will President Vladimir Putin hand over power to his successor? The successor’s identity has ceased to be a topic of much debate since the country as a whole has decided that whoever receives Putin’s political blessing will be his successor. It is hard to imagine anyone making a successful challenge to Putin’s handpicked heir in the 2008 elections.
Yet there is still an element of unpredictability on Russia’s political scene, mainly because for the first time Russia has what Americans call a “lame duck” president. Strictly speaking, the term was originally applied to a president who had already lost an election: in the 19th century, there was almost half a year from the moment a new president was elected in November to when the old one left office in March. Although the lame duck could make amendments to laws and policies during this period, in practice, such a figure was taken less and less seriously. After the 22nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution was passed in 1951, setting limits on the number of presidential tenures, a lame duck became any president at the end of his second term.
After numerous assurances that he will not change the Russian Constitution and run for a third term, Putin finally seems to have convinced the majority of the elite and most of the country that he will leave office in 2008. Most people, however, appear not to have grasped fully what life after Putin will be like - mainly due to political apathy coupled with the inability to look even a few years ahead.
The question now is how far the system of power created by Putinthe “power vertical”will be able to preserve his agenda.
Historically, there have always been problems with political continuity in Russia. Almost every ruler has re-examined and re-interpreted the achievements of his or her predecessor. Although he provided personal guarantees for Yeltsin and his family, Putin himself overhauled his predecessor’s work.
The main problem with the lame duck phenomenon in Russia is that the duck has to deal not with state institutions that function according to laws in a well-tuned system of checks and balances; rather, the Russian “utka” has to work within a system in which power is highly personified.
In such a system, too much depends on the will of one person, who therefore makes decisions that are personal rather than systematic or institutionally mandated. Additionally, in Russia’s system, the elite did not receive their power through a long process of selection in a two- or multi-party system, but were instead chosen by the head of state on the basis of their personal relationships with him or their proven loyalty at a particular point in time. Virtually all the top figures in the country have been chosen due to their personal loyalty to Putin. Moreover, major posts in the state-owned companies that play key roles in the economywhich is becoming increasingly state-dependentare generally chosen in the same way.
In 2008, the top of the pyramid will be removed. What will happen with the rest of it? This question is of greatest concern to those close to Putin. The people hovering in the political space around him are far from uniform. They are indebted to Putin for their power and handsome incomes, and would like to maintain the status quo. For them, 2008 and Putin’s departure represent a possible redistribution of powera change that may not favor them.
As a result, everyone is starting to get nervous. The system is leaving behind the political stability Russia has enjoyed over the past few years. Events are beginning to happen that would be inconceivable in a genuinely stable political system.
The murder of Central Bank Deputy Head Andrei Kozlov would have seemed impossible not that long ago. Such murders were characteristic of the wild 1990s. The murder of opposition journalist Anna Politkovskaya on Putin’s birthday no lessalso would have seemed impossible until recently. This does not, of course, mean that some influential forces at the top “ordered” these murders. But it means that individual links in the system of power have started to break as a result of the nervousness that comes from a lack of faith in the rules of the game, and in their political and economic futures.
The hysteria around Georgia is also symptomatic of this condition. Against the backdrop of this uncertainty, some forces are developing a scenario that would allow for an injection of militarism and national chauvinism into the population at large. The heightened discussion of ethnic relations after the events in Kondopoga stems from the same insecurity.
There is no doubt that in the next two years we will see a number of surprises in Russia’s political life. Likewise, there is no doubt that political life would at least attempt to return to its previously settled state if Putin were to announce his intention to stay for a third termespecially as most of the population has no problem with Putin staying. But he continues to assure us that he will, indeed, go.