#26 - JRL 2007-114 - JRL Home
Date: Fri, 18 May 2007
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh <shlapent@msu.edu>
Subject: The Dying Russian Democracy as a Victim of Corrupt Bureaucrats

The Dying Russian Democracy as a Victim of Corrupt Bureaucrats
Vladimir Shlapentokh

The Russian democracy is in a coma and there is no serious hope for recovery. Those who pretend to be the guardians of democracy in the country­the Kremlin bureaucrats and their allies among the oligarchs­are its worst enemies. They see the health of democracy in the country as a danger to their illegally accumulated wealth and political power. In order to protect their fortunes, the ruling elite have made xenophobia and an anti-Western policy the leading ingredients of their domestic and foreign policy. Only the wealth they keep in the West in secret bank accounts and real-estate investments stops the ruling elite from adopting an even harsher anti-Western policy.

Soviet Russia and America as self-appointed beacons for the world

The high role of Russian democracy in the contemporary American mind and particularly in the perceptions of the ruling elite should be directly linked to the fact that the United States (as well as Russia) positioned itself in the twentieth century as the bearer of ideals for mankind. In fact, both the American and Russian intellectual classes talked about the special calling and exceptionalism of their countries long before the twentieth century. After WWI, Soviet Russia was much more aggressive than America in promoting its universal ideals for mankind. However, after WWII, America, with its life and death confrontation with the USSR, drastically increased its ideological activity in the fight for influence in the world. It used various means to intensify the propagation of liberal capitalism, as opposed to the Marxist ideology.

A belief in the universalism of the American model increased inside the United States after its victory in the cold war. With the war against international terrorism and Islamic fundamentalism, the feelings about America as a savior of the world and as “a benevolent empire,” to use the words of Robert Kagan, could only be found in Washington. In most publications that celebrated the victory of the cold war, Russia took an honorable place as the most important object of liberal transformation, as suggested by the American model. The outcome of the liberal reforms in Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union was of utmost importance in the debates about the future of democracy in the world. As a matter of fact, the belief that Russian democracy was being built by American standards was dominant in Russia in the 1990s among liberals and particularly among their enemies, the Communists and nationalists.

Belief in the victory of democracy and civil society in post-Soviet Russia in the 1990s: The triumph of structuralists

In the 1990s, Russia’s move toward democracy was thought to be beyond doubt among both Western and Russian observers. Indeed, in the early 1990s, the Russian people watched the birth of democratic institutions, which could only have been dreamt of in Soviet times: the election of the head of state, the independent parliament, real political parties, some autonomy of the judicial system and the office of the general prosecutor, freedom of speech, a free media, the right to move around inside and outside the country, and, of course, private property and full freedom in economic activities.

In the 1990s, Western scholars who believed in the crucial influence of economic and social changes in society on the political order (the so called structuralists) hailed Russia’s political progress almost unconditionally. Enthusiasm over democratic progress continued even in 1999, one year before Putin’s appearance as president, when it was stated by a group of authors that “relative to the elite, the ordinary people in Russia and Ukraine exhibited more coherence of (democratic) beliefs than is usually found in Western democracies” and that “a substantial majority of the elite and the masses prefer democratic to authoritarian values.” It was typical during this period to mock the view of culturologists, who, with their focus on the critical role of culture in society, believed in the crucial role of Russia’s long-term authoritarian traditions, which ultimately made the installation of true democracy impossible.

Putin’s counter-democratic Perestroika

The structuralists celebrated the victory of Russian democracy throughout the decade, without paying much attention to the authoritarian tendencies that began in 1992-1993. Indeed, by 2005-2007, Russian society could be seen already as mostly authoritarian. Putin had concentrated more power than any of the Soviet leaders after 1953. In only three years, he eliminated all traces of the division of powers. He turned the parliament into a puppet institution, not unlike the Soviet Supreme Council of the past. The judicial system became as obeisant to Putin as it had been to the Soviet masters of the Kremlin. He turned the election process into a sham procedure that guaranteed voting outcomes at all levels. Elections looked relatively honest only when the Kremlin was indifferent to their outcomes. Putin eliminated voting procedures in the national and local parliamentary elections for individual candidates. As a result, people were forced to choose between the lists of candidates offered by the parties that received access to the election. In many cases, oppositional parties could not participate in the local elections.

Putin got rid of the popular election of governors, depriving the people of their influence on local executive power. He also abolished the rule that invalidated the results of an election if a minimal number of registered voters did not vote. This action guaranteed “the success” of any election, whatever the level of passivity of the voters. Putin also excluded from the ballot an alternative known as “against everybody,” which deprived protesters of expressing their opposition against the pro-Kremlin parties. The local elections in 13 regions in March 2007 were almost unanimously denounced by independent analysts and oppositional parties as mostly dishonest.

A special target of Putin’s offensive was the nascent civil society. Putin significantly reduced the freedom of media. In 2006, fearing a “color revolution” (in Ukraine and Georgia, such a revolution brought regime change), Putin started a direct offensive against NGOs by asserting that many of these organizations were fronts for the West to undermine political stability in the country under the pretext of promoting democracy .In March and April 2007, the police brutally attacked the demonstrations and meetings of protesters in Moscow, Petersburg and Nizhnii Novgorod. The participants of these actions wanted to show, among other things, their anger toward the crackdown on Russian democracy.

The case of Khodorkovsky, the owner of an oil company called Yukos, who challenged the political regime, was quite characteristic in this respect. In 2005, he was arrested and sentenced to eight years in prison. The business community and its organizations did not utter a single word in Khodorkovsky’s defense.

Summarizing the real political practices in Russia under Putin, it is enough to note that, according to Freedom House, Russia, in 2007, belonged to a group of countries that was labeled “not free,” with a rank of six (one was the highest rank and seven the lowest). Other countries in this group included Algeria, Angola, Azerbaijan, Cambodia, Egypt, Iran, Kazakhstan and Pakistan. The situation was worse in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and North Korea.

By 2007, only Putin (as seen in his presidential address to the Russian parliament in April) and his propagandists described the political system as a “democracy” with honest elections. A major advocate of Russian democracy was Vladislav Surkov, Putin’s leading ideologue. In order to reject any comparison of Russian political reality with the West, he invented, in June 2006, the term “sovereign democracy” as a specific form of Russian democracy. Surkov’s statement was accepted by the ruling party “The Unity of Russia” as its ideological platform. However, despite the official propaganda, only 30 percent of the Russians in the beginning of 2007 thought of their country as democratic.

Most analysts and liberal politicians inside Russia mocked the official propaganda and the term “sovereign democracy.” For instance, Boris Nemtsov, the former prime minister, saw it as ludicrous and intended simply to embellish the authoritarian regime.

Public attitudes toward democracy and liberalism in the 2000s

While the offensive against democracy by power holders was, by itself, a heinous development, the support of this offensive by the Russian public was particularly painful for the “structuralists” and those who had begun to believe that the country was joining the community of democratic nations.

It is not easy to assess Russian attitudes toward democracy, because of the various interpretations of this term by ordinary people. On issues related to democracy, Russian polling firms are often at odds with each other. However, even with this caveat, it looks like Putin’s policy of dismantling democracy was supported by the majority of the population.

In a survey conducted by the Levada-Tsentr in February 2007, only 25 percent of the respondents evaluated democracy as a “just system.” One third preferred the Soviet system to democracy. In April 2007, 71 percent of the Russians supported the idea that “our people need an ‘iron hand’” … “always” or “at least right now.” Only 5 percent of the public suggested in 2003 that the state should promote democratic values. Most Russians (70 percent according to a Romir survey in 2003) rejected the Western model of society and insisted on “a special path for Russian developments.” Only 11 percent voted for the Western type of political order.

Observing the negative or contemptuous attitudes toward democratic institutions, the “structuralists” could console themselves by considering the Russians’ appreciation for individual freedoms and human rights. Surveys conducted by various public opinion firms in the last ten years converged on the conclusion that most Russians (60-80 percents) highly appreciated such individual freedoms as the right to move around inside and outside the country, the right to make choices in their economic activities, the right to own houses and land and the right to freely exchange currency.

The counteroffensive of culturologists in the 2000s

Since 2000, the real developments in Russia radically changed the polemics between structuralists and culturologists. The later began an offensive, while the former took a defensive stance. While evidence of the authoritarian trend in Russia began to multiply, many scholars and politicians, in search of an explanation, returned to the “cultural factor.” Nikolai Petrov and Darrell Slider looked at Putin’s Russia as a mostly traditional authoritarian society, even if they did not deny that it had some liberal elements. Several Russian scholars in the 2000s also abandoned the optimistic camp and started to talk about the crucial role of political traditions and the people as bearers of the authoritarian mentality. Among them were political scientist Liliia Shevtsova and the late sociologist Yurii Levada and several others.

Some prominent liberals, who are now politically passive, blamed the failure of democracy on Russian traditions and the mentality of the people. A typical example was the journalist Leonid Radzikhovsky, who, in almost all of his talk-radio appearances on /Ekho Moskvy, /described democratization in the country as hopeless, because of the authoritarian mind of the Russian people. He also mocked the participation of liberals such as Garry Kasparov and Mikhail Kasianov in the protest march in Moscow on April 15, 2007.

Russians are able to love democracy

As described above, the dominant view among scholars, politicians and journalists is now that the roots of Russia’s rejection of democracy lie in the mentality of the people, which is nurtured by a political culture that is deeply authoritarian and hostile toward democratic institutions. There is no doubt that the elements of culture (if maintained by the existing political, religious or economic establishments over a long period of time) are transferred from one generation to the next and indeed influence human behavior. Since the Russians lived for centuries in an authoritarian or totalitarian society, they are accustomed to respecting and fearing a strong state.

However, in fact, as soon as other centers of power and influence emerge, the changes in real life lead to quick changes in the values and patterns of behavior, which make up the core of the dominant culture. A comparison of Russian attitudes toward the political system before and after 1985 is a powerful argument for the flexibility of culture and its dependence on the developments in social reality.

Indeed, in a short period of time (1988-1991), under the impact of a new course in the Soviet leadership, democratic views began to develop quickly in Russia, despite the total absence of its democratic experience. Official data indicated that between January 1 and February 23 of 1990, 6.4 million people participated in pro-democratic meetings across the country. Attendance at mass meetings peaked on February 24-25, and then in March when, despite the Kremlin's frenzied opposition, more than one million people participated in meetings and demonstrations.

These meetings were followed by the success of the democratic forces in the election of the parliament of the Russian Federation on March 4, 1990. Two famous democrats, Gavriil Popov and Anatolii Sobchak, were elected as mayors of the two biggest cities, Moscow and Leningrad. But, of course, it was the election of Yeltsin as the president of the Russian Federation in June 1991, despite Gorbachev’s attempts to prevent it, that was the most eloquent sign of the people’s devotion to democratic ideals.

During the period of democratic euphoria, the people flocked to political parties and movements. In 1988, thousands of informal organizations, which pursued various goals such as human rights, democratic freedoms, national autonomy and environmental protection, emerged. Watching the activities of the first freely elected parliament, as polls at this time showed, the Russians supported only those members of parliament who defended democratic ideas and rejected the position of the party leaders, including Gorbachev. The democratic media became extremely popular. The liberal program /Vzgliad/ (Outlook), which aired on the main Soviet TV channel, attracted several million viewers every Friday. The weekly newspaper /Moskovskie Novosti /(Moscow News) and /Ogoniok/ (A Little Fire) beat all records in popularity among publications of this type. The anti-Stalinist novel /Children of Arbat,/ by Anatolii Rybakov, became an unprecedented bestseller in the country. Movies that were critical of the Soviet system such as Tengis Abuladze’s /Repentance/ drew millions of spectators. Economists such as Larisa Piiasheva, with her commendation of liberal capitalism in 1987-1991, became as popular as movie stars.

However, after 1992, the country’s mood quickly moved from high political activity and support for democratic ideals to political passivity and a negative stance toward the liberal, political and economic reforms.

Why did the Russians turn their back on their fledging democracy? I reject the theory that they suddenly came to their senses and returned to their old political culture and their deep rotted sympathy toward authoritarianism. In my opinion, three developments during the period of liberal reforms and the praise of democracy in the public ideology account for this shift. All of them can be found in the realm of material life: 1) the collapse of the standard of living and disorder in the country, 2) the rude violations of democracy by the reformers, and 3) their fast transformation into corrupt officials who widely abused their power for personal enrichment.

The collapse of the standard of living and disorder in the 1990s

A major factor that accounts for the surge in the antidemocratic mood in the country was the developments of “present time,” that is, the events of the post-Communist period (i.e., the direct results of the liberal reforms) and not the developments that occurred under Ivan the Terrible or even Stalin. The events that account for the shift in the public mind took place in the 1990s. The developments of the 1990s influenced the next decade and will probably continue to effect the people’s thinking for many years to come. While the length of the effect of big events on people’s minds is debatable, hardly anyone argues that such developments as collectivization, the great purges and the wars affected the Russians several decades later. If many Americans vividly remembered the Great Depression of the 1930s for no less than three decades, the Russians will remember the developments of the 1990s for no shorter period of time.

In fact, since the end of Perestroika and throughout the 1990s, the Russians lived in a society that had been hit by a catastrophe with consequences that surpassed, in many respects, the results of the nefarious war with Nazi Germany. I watched it myself, visiting Russia many times during this period. Indeed, there was a high degree of disorder, combined with a catastrophic decline in the standard of living. By 2000, the standard of living was two to three times lower than in 1990. Due to the astronomical inflation at the end of 1992, official data indicates that 70 percent of the savings of the Russians was lost. This development was extremely painful for elderly people who had been gathering their money for a rainy day, but it hit all age groups of the population. Facing prices that rose by dozens of times, the people found that most products and services were unreachable. Driven to despair, they not only spent each spare hour working their private plots and gardens to produce potatoes and vegetable, but began to grow tomatoes and cucumbers on their balconies and abandoned the use of most services like cleaning and beauty shops. The frequency of their visits to movie theaters decreased by 187 times (from 16 in 1985 to 0.3 in 1999). Hospitals did not have sheets for patients, or the most basic medicines. Visits to the theater or concerts were beyond the means of the absolute majority of the population. The Russians almost ceased to travel to their relatives who lived in other regions of the country. They certainly stopped air travel and even tried to abstain from using mail and long-distance telephone service. In 1992, one third of the Russian population was officially declared as living in poverty. Beggars looking for food in the garbage and homeless people became a fixture of the city landscape for the first time since the end of the civil war.

In addition to the stupefying rise in prices, after 1992, millions of Russians did not receive their salaries. In 1994, the number of those who did not get their salary on time was 58 percent. In 1992, in addition to the delays in payments to workers, the Russian government was unable to pay pensions on time. Millions of retired people rose in the early morning hours in order to stand in line, hoping to withdraw their meager pensions from the banks; 82 percent of the population saw their major problems as unemployment and poverty, as opposed to political issues.

At the same time, the Russians suffered enormously from the rise in crime and corruption. The number of criminals, according to the imperfect official statistics, rose by two times from 1990 to 2000 (from 897,000 to 1,741,000). The number of violent deaths increased by the same amount (15,600 to 31,800). The people were afraid to leave their homes at night. Muggings and burglaries became a “normal” part of Russian life. In this decade, even small shops and all banks had guards, a profession that became very popular in the country. At the same time, the people could not move without paying bribes to officials at all levels.

The psychological blow to the Russians, the victims of liberal reforms, was no less agonizing than the material one. The people were moved from a relatively egalitarian society, with the ruling elite hiding their privileges, to a deeply polarized one, with a high level of conspicuous consumption among a rich and arrogant minority. The drastic move from the bigotry of the Soviet media to the flaunting of rude sex on prime-time television shocked most Russians. The level of social inequality increased by three times. People broke off relations with close friends who had adjusted to the new life, because they could not and were ashamed of their poverty. The collapse of the Soviet Union deprived people of the advantages of living in a big country. The pride of an empire, which had scared the whole world, had alleviated the flaws in the material lives of many Russians, which, however, was quite decent for most Russians in the 1970s and 1980s.

The fall of the USSR turned the relatives and friends of many Russians into foreigners and made communication with them much more difficult than in the past, a circumstance that contributed to the gloomy mood in the country. The inundation of Russia with the refugees of all types also was a factor in the general psychological discomfort. During this period, the people almost all bad news from media: the national economy was declining literally each year by 5 to 10 percent; by the end of the decade, it was two times less in comparison with 1990. The Russians saw idle factories in their cities and untilled fields in the countryside. Workers sold the products of their enterprises at rail stations. Bartering, a Middle Ages phenomenon, became an important part economic life. Workers in many factories received their salary in the form of the products that the factory produced. I saw how despondent workers, who had not received their salaries over several months, tried to foist on me, as a passenger on a train in 1996, glass crockery that had been made by an internationally famous factory in Gus-Khrustalny, located a few hundred miles from Moscow. The people also regularly heard about the separatist intentions of various regions. The picture of a devastated country was gloomier than what the Americans saw in the 1930s.

The material and psychological blow to the Russians was so great that even demographic indicators, which usually change very slowly, moved in the negative direction at an unbelievable pace. In one decade, the mortality of males, the most vulnerable part of the population in this period, rose by almost a half, an unprecedented case in world history (from 11.9 in 1980-1983 to 18.6 in 2002). Millions of people delayed the formation of their families. The rate of marriage declined over the decade by almost one third (8.9 in 1990 and 6.2 in 2000). The suicide rate increased by 1.5 times (from 26.5 to 39.1 per one thousand). The birth rate dropped by one third (from 13.4 in 1990 to 8.7 in 2000). In the 1990s, the Russian population decreased each year by 500,000 to 1,000,000 people.

In this context, the people began returning to their old belief that in Russian society only an authoritarian ruler can maintain order in the country and guarantee the satisfaction of the people’s basic needs. They also saw the strengthening of authoritarian methods to fight street crime and the corruption of bureaucrats as the only way to solve their problems. While the question, “What is more important, order or democracy?,” may be awkward, it still reflects important feelings in the Russian mind. Answering this question in the 1990s, 80 percent of the public chose “order.”

In the beginning of the 2000s, among the 10 most popular values from a list of 24 values (respondents could choose no more than five) five values were directly related to order: “security” (43 percent), “human right” (34 percent), “law” (31 percent), “stability” (25 percent) and “order” (21 percent). For comparison, “family” garnered 46 percent and “wealth,” 37 percent. The public’s benign attitudes toward the security police and FSB (in 2003, 64 percent wanted to strengthen the FSB) were further evidence of the country’s concern about order.

The real political practices of the 1990s: The democrats betrayed democracy

To what degree were the young, inexperienced, but arrogant reformers responsible for the collapse of the Russian economy in the 1990? This is a debatable issue in view of many objective factors. However, their complicity for the start of de-democratization in Russia in 1992-1993 is obvious.

In fact, in the 1990s, the Russians not only experienced the collapse of the standard of living and chaos in society, but they also saw how the liberals trampled on the democratic principles that they had celebrated. They never protested against any antidemocratic actions undertaken by Yeltsin’s Kremlin. The cases of resignation as a form of protest against policies or even personal humiliation were very rare in Yeltsin’s time and later.

Whatever the reasons for the Kremlin’s fatal decision to shell the parliament in October 1993, it signaled a retreat from the giddy days of nascent Russian democracy. Since the bloody showdown with the parliament, Yeltsin’s regime moved inexorably away from democratic principles. The fraudulent referendum on the constitution, endorsed in December 1993, provided the Russian president with power similar to that of a monarch. The two presidential elections after 1991 (in 1996 and 2000) were deeply flawed. Since 1996, the regional elections were also, in most cases, dishonest and unfair. The elections of the Moscow Duma, the election of the heads of the republics in Bashkortostan, Kabardino-Balkaria and Mordovia and the governor of the Orel region and other regions all guaranteed “landslide” victories for the incumbents, capturing a “Soviet-style” majority with 90 percent of the votes.

It is not surprising that the Russians mistrust the country’s new democratic institutions. According to the Levada-Tsentr, in 2005, three “pure” democratic institutions (the lower chamber of the parliament, its upper chamber and political parties) earned the trust of only 5 to 10 ten percent of the public. Among the 79 countries included in the World Values Survey in 1999-2001, Russia held 69^th place with regard to the public’s trust in the parliament.

The corruption of the leaders of democratization

The public’s disillusionment with democratic leaders was the third factor explaining the rejection of democracy by ordinary Russians. They were furious watching how liberals not only rudely violated the rules of democratic games but also used the reforms for personal enrichment. The Russians were also aware that the so called oligarchs made their gigantic fortunes overnight with the help of Yeltsin and the liberal reformers. The arrogance of the new elites, who encouraged TV shows to report on their conspicuous consumption, could make even the most dedicated democrat into a foe of democracy in this poor and devastated country. In the 1990s and later, no democrats condemned the conspicuous consumption of oligarchs and politicians, their villas in London and Southern France and their luxurious parties at home and abroad. However, even if ordinary Russians were highly disappointed with the country’s democratic institutions and the liberal reforms, they were not accountable for the dismantling of democracy in the country.

Russia’s ruling elite as the motor of antidemocratic tendencies

In my opinion, it was the Russian ruling elite, under both the Yeltsin and Putin regimes, that intentionally sacrificed democracy. The question is, why? Perhaps the elite fell victim to the old political culture and behaved accordingly. I do not think so. The ruling elite defined the political processes and the public mood in society. Their decisions about the political course were usually made with only a minimal consideration for the attitudes of the masses and the dominant political culture.

Of course, I do not deny that the Russian elites, as any other elite group, have always tried to recruit the masses on their side, particularly when they are in a struggle for power or when the country is in danger from foreign enemies. During the war, Stalin ordered the abandonment of socialist phraseology, including the slogan “Proletarians of all countries unite,” in the media and made nationalism, which was thought to be more appealing to the masses, the crux of the official propaganda. For the same reason, he allowed the restoration of many churches and asked church dignitaries to encourage Russians to defend their country against the Germans.

During Perestroika, Gorbachev appealed to the people’s hatred of local bureaucracy and tried to direct their anger against the provincial party apparatchiks. He successfully instigated the masses against the bureaucracy during the election of the Congress of People’s Deputies in 1989, when dozens of party secretaries fell victim to the Kremlin’s propaganda.

Yeltsin, when he started his new political career in 1987-1988, had his own target in the Russian psyche­the idea of egalitarianism­and began to pose, ironically, as an adversary of privileges. Yeltsin also played with Russian nationalistic feelings. In 1990-1991, he described the country as an oppressed nation within the USSR and demanded its sovereignty.

What was the impact of the dominant political culture on the ruling elite? There is no doubt that such an influence occurred during the period of socialization when the media was controlled by the same elite. However, the influence of the old political culture on elites was much weaker than its influence on the behavior of the masses. The political elites, along with the cultural elites who served them, were the creators of ideology, while the masses were only its consumers. The elites shaped the concrete content of the political culture and particularly the dominant ideology in each given period of history.

When the attitudes of the masses conflicted with the ideology of the elites, the position of the majority of people was practically ignored. Let us consider an example from Soviet times. In the aftermath of the revolution, the Bolsheviks were so assertive in their behavior that they defied the deep elements of the old political culture, including religion, private property, Russian nationalism, anti-Semitism and several others. The ruling liberal elites of the early 1990s were as self confident as the Bolsheviks. They challenged the seemingly deep-rooted values, such patriotism, the geopolitical status of the country, the army, public property, collectivism, egalitarianism, atheism and several others.

In fact, the de-democratization of the country began in 1992-1993 when no one was talking about an antidemocratic shift in Russian society. It would be against common sense to assert that Yeltsin’s policy was affected by the political attitudes of the masses. In 1992, Yeltsin entered a war against the parliament and was ready to use force if it decided to impeach him. He continued the process of de-democratization on full scale in 1993 when he ordered the shelling of the freely elected leftist parliament.

The influence of the changing public ideology

Having moved against democratic institutions, the ruling elite started to change the public ideology with the goal of changing popular attitudes. Already by the mid 1990s, the ruling elite began shifting the tenor of the public ideology. While continuing to talk about democracy, the leadership turned away from its praise of the Western model and started to focus on the importance of Russian statehood and national interests.

A decisive change in ideology occurred with Putin’s arrival to power in 2000. The Kremlin introduced elements that praised the state as a major value and state intervention in all spheres of social life, stressed the importance of Russia’s high geopolitical status and showed open hostility toward the West. The new public ideology expressed regret about the collapse of the Soviet Union and nostalgia for the Soviet empire and also included in its roster of values Russian nationalism, xenophobia, Orthodox religion and the dream of restoring the Soviet Union, even if only partially. The new ideology praised the glorious past of Russia and particularly those Russian and Soviet leaders who strengthened the state and the empire.

A series of movies praising Stalin and denigrating his opponents, which appeared on official TV channels in 2006-2007, revealed the essence of Putin’s public ideology. In 2007, a state television station showed a 40-part series on Stalin in which the dictator was praised beyond imagination and was even turned into a deeply religious man .In a TV movie that came out the same year, Trotsky was described as an agent of the Western powers, while Stalin again looked like an angel. The same thing was true for a movie about Khrushchev (2007), who was derogated, while Stalin was praised.

Putin’s public ideology was quite efficient. Indeed, the attitudes of the Russians toward foreign countries (the United States, Ukraine, Georgia, Estonia or Belorussia) in 2000-2007 illustrated this thesis. The Kremlin could easily regulate the temperature of public attitudes toward these countries by starting an acrimonious campaign against them, or by suggesting that the given country was almost a cordial friend. The people’s negative attitudes toward democracy were not a cause but a product of the official propaganda.

Why the elites wanted an authoritative regime

If we discard the old political culture as the major factor that pushed the ruling elites toward de-democratization, what then caused it? The answer lies in the radical changes in property relations after 1989-1991, when the new Russian political elites, in collusion with oligarchs, acquired big fortunes through mostly illegally means. With Putin’s arrival to power, the Yeltsin elites were joined by a new group of elites who received a gigantic chunk of national wealth through a new phase in privatization and redistribution of property. It is very important to note that Putin did not touch the fortunes of Yeltsin’s family or the carpetbaggers of the 1990s who grabbed state property through mostly illegal means with the Kremlin’s support. Putin made an exception only for those few oligarchs who challenged his power. In fact, under Putin, the legitimization of new private property became an even more acute factor in the political processes than during the Yeltsin period.

Under Putin, when the country was ruled by a network of former KGB and army generals, the focus on private property and wealth evolved into a sort of corporative ideology, as Andrei Illarionov suggested. In fact, the necessity to protect their wealth in the long term against a redistribution or confiscation by a new regime directed Putin’s domestic and international policy. Rising as a protector of the new wealthy class and its illegal wealth, Putin refused to fight corruption in the country. No high officials from Yeltsin’s or Putin’s teams were sued by Putin’s regime for corruption. This subject was not even mentioned in the last presidential address to the parliament in May 2007. It is remarkable that the Kremlin, when it looked for an argument for sending Khodorkovsky to prison, never justified its harsh actions by pointing to the illegal or semi-legal origin of Khodorkovsky’s fortune, which he made in the mid 1990s.

The Russian people, with all their high praise for Putin, acknowledged in March 2007 that Putin, given his vow to protect the new wealthy class, did almost nothing to curb corruption. Only 2 percent credited the president for success in this area; 16 percent recognized the rise of the standard of living, which can be ascribed to the high price of oil, as Putin’s major achievement.

The legitimization of their wealth in the eyes of the Russians and foreign law is the dream of the political and economic elite. Of no less importance is the legitimization of their assets, since two thirds of the Russians, in 2007, did not recognize the legal origin of the big fortunes in the country, a fertile ground for an Orange Revolution, similar to what happened in Ukraine in 2004, which is feared by the members of Putin’s regime.

The ruling elite’s obsession with their personal private property is crucial for understanding why the offensive against democratic institutions started in 1992 and continued on full scale under Putin. The elites reasonably assume that the preservation of their property is incompatible with an independent parliament, given its ability to inquire about the origins of the elite’s wealth. It is also incompatible with an independent judicial system, which could conduct investigations at the request of the parliament, and with a free media that could uncover the roots of the elite’s fortunes. The elite’s absorption with the task of protecting their property is behind the Kremlin’s policy toward the change in presidents in 2008. After a long search for a successor, Yeltsin finally chose the person who seemed more reliable than other candidates and better equipped to protect him and his family against judicial prosecution. In Russia today, nobody doubts that the same criterion is essential for Putin, who is now on his own search for an heir.

It is remarkable that a new political party, “The Patriots of Russia,” used the idea of “de-privatizing” the numerous companies, which belong to 720 Russian billionaires, as the central tenet of its program. Gennadii Semigin, a well known politician, proposed the implementation of de-privatization by legal means through the judicial system. No less than two thirds of the Russian population would support this program if it was brought about.

The importance of private property and personal enrichment in the political elite’s ideology represents a powerful argument against the thesis about the crucial role of the old Russian political culture as the major stimulus for Russia’s de-democratization. Indeed, the traditional political culture and Orthodox religion were always hostile toward rich people. Ever since the time of Alexander Radishchev, one would be hard pressed to find a single Russian writer who imparted sentiments with even an inkling of admiration for wealth and the privileged lifestyle. It suffices to mention the giants of the Russian literary tradition, such as Gogol, Turgenev, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy and, of course, Maxim Gorky.

Conclusion

As is often the case, two major schools of thought have attempted to explain the political processes in Russia and both are right and wrong. The structuralists are right because the changes in economic structure and first of all the changes in property relations in Russia changed the political and social order and made it impossible to return to the old totalitarian society. The new property structures had many political and social implications. In fact, the anti-Communist revolution in 1991, as subsequent developments showed, was essentially a revolution similar to the French revolution, which also created a class of new owners who later (several decades after the restoration in 1815) worried about legitimacy of their property. Hippolyte Taine, a famous French historian, wrote in the mid-nineteenth century that “whatever the grand words adorning the revolution” … “it was a transformation of property which made up its historical meaning.” Taine came to this conclusion by watching how those who had acquired property during the French revolution were worried about its preservation and legitimization after the restoration of the monarchy in 1815.

At the same time, the structuralists were wrong, because they ignored the specific character of the Russian reality and the particular character of the elites. As a result of the confluence of various factors (the yearning for enrichment by all means necessary and the belief in the inability of ordinary Russians to behave as rational democratic citizens) brought greedy, cynical people to the top of political life. These people believe in rude power and the ability of money to buy everyone for any purpose. The ultimate cause of the tragedy of Russian democracy lies in the fact that the new Russian elites were shaped in a sort of moral vacuum. While the old ideology, a combination of Communist and imperial ideas, was destroyed, the new rulers were free of any serious influence from democratic or religious ethics. It was convenient for them to believe in jungle individualism and social inequality as conditions for success. Those members of the contemporary elite who claim to be Russian patriots are not true Russian nationalists. They are indifferent to the life of the people and their future. They are completely obsessed with their egotistical interests. In this respect, they differ greatly from the elites in the new post-Communist states (not only the Baltic republics and Poland, but also Ukraine), where people are influenced by nationalist ideals. When the Kremlin considered the choice of maintaining Belorussia as a strategic ally, its only one in the post-Soviet space, and the possibility of increasing its revenues by raising the price of gas for Minsk, the Russian president chose a few billion dollars over the alliance.

Ultimately, the problems of Russian democracy have been caused by the lack of people at the top of society who are devoted to democracy and who are at least minimally altruistic, selfless and willing to create a democratic society. As history teaches us, civil society cannot emerge spontaneously in a country. It must be nurtured by the ruling elites. Civil society cannot emerge simply because income grows, as suggested by Andrei Shleifer, who invented the formula “middle income ­ middle democracy” and by Egor Gaidar with his economic determinism. In fact, even the simplest rules of decent behavior, including table manners, were accepted by ordinary people in Europe in the late Middle Ages, because, as shown in a now famous book by Norbert Elias, /The civilized process,/ the upper class changed their own behavior and in this way served as the model for the nation.

The fact that the anti-Communist revolution could not advance a group of politicians with strong morals is the curse of contemporary Russia. Indeed, almost all the prominent people in the country participated in the nation’s wild privatization and enriched themselves and their families by illegal means. Russian society could not muster even one leading politician to serve as a model of honesty. What is more, the political and cultural elites served as very bad models for the Russian people. As recently noted in /Izvestia, /Andrei Maximov, the director of the TV Channel /Culture,/ leading figures now widely use expletives in public, resort to criminal jargon and praise promiscuity and cynicism. In this way, elites have hardly showed the young generations what it means to be civilized.

During Putin’s presidency (2000-2007), the nightmare of the 1990s practically disappeared. Life for the Russians improved enormously in comparison with the dismal 1990s. The number of people living in poverty declined since 2000 by more than one third. The purchasing power of the average income, according to official statistics on the Russian family, increased by 1.5 to 2 times. The number of families with personal computers increased by more than 4 times and now a quarter of Russian families has access to the Internet. Most Russians get their salary and pension on time. Moscow, Petersburg and most regional centers have been refurbished and now look like new cities. For those Russians who hate democracy, this positive development is another powerful argument in favor of authoritarianism as the best form of government in Russia. However, in fact, the economic progress under Putin cannot be attributed to the positive influence of authoritarianism. As the /2007 Statistical Yearbook of the Russian Federation/ showed, most sectors of the economy are behind (in some cases very far behind) the level of the Soviet economy in 1985. There is only one cause of Putin’s economic miracle: the high price of oil and gas. As long as these prices hold, there will be no serious chance to challenge the authoritarian regime.

Those who are responsible for Western foreign policy should keep in mind that genuine democracy has no chance in Russia in the next decades. In the foreseeable future, the West will be forced to interact with a group of elites who will not allow the development of democracy in their country. Russia will also remain a highly unpredictable partner in foreign relations.

Acknowledgment: /The author wishes to thank Joshua Woods for his editorial contribution to this article./