Russia Profile
August 24, 2007
Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel:
Putin's Legacy
Introduced by Vladimir Frolov
Contributors: Stephen Blank, Ethan S. Burger, Vlad Ivanenko, Andrei Lebedev, Edward Lozansky, Anthony T. Salvia, Andrei Seregin, Andrei Zagorski
I know that it might seem a little too early to talk about President Vladimir Putin's legacy. After all the man still has about nine months to go in his Kremlin office, and there is still a small chance he might change his mind about retiring after his second term expires.
However Putin's reign began not on the day he was elected president of Russia in March 2000, but about seven months earlier, in August 1999, when ailing President Boris Yeltsin fired yet another prime minister and appointed in his place an obscure former FSB chief. Last week marked the eighth full year that Vladimir Putin has spent at the pinnacle of Russian state power, so it seems fitting to launch this discussion on what his rule meant for the country.
At the time Putin came to power eight years ago, Russia was teetering on the brink of chaos. A week before Putin's appointment, a gang of Chechen terrorists led by Shamil Basayev launched a bloody raid into neighboring Dagestan seeking to establish a terrorist caliphate from the Caspian to the Black Sea. A few weeks later, two apartment buildings were blown up in Moscow with massive civilian casualties.
A year after the financial meltdown of 1998, the Russian economy was reeling under high inflation, heavy international debt and a dysfunctional tax system. Russian regions were fiefdoms ruled by corrupt regional elites seeking greater autonomy from Moscow.
Eight years later, Russia has the ninth largest economy in the world, it has paid off its entire sovereign debt, and is sitting on $420 billion in hard currency reserves; its economy is growing at 7 percent a year and the Russian stock market has gained about a trillion dollars in value since Putin became prime minister.
In foreign and security policy, Russia's transformation under Putin has been no less spectacular. After years of humiliation and disrespect Russia, has regained what Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov calls "freedom of speech and freedom of action in international affairs." Some Russian pundits have even compared Putin to Franklin D. Roosevelt, who similarly restored the belief of the American nation in its future.
Putin's critics claim that he has restored autocracy after a brief democratic spring under Yeltsin, that he has destroyed freedom of speech and brought Russian media under state control. The critics fail, however, to explain Putin's staggering popularity among the Russian people. His approval ratings rarely dip below 70 percent, and were he to seek a third term, like Roosevelt in 1940, he would be similarly reelected in a landslide.
So what is the real legacy of Vladimir Putin's eight years in power? Has he provided the answer to the question that plagued him in the first years of his presidency Who is Mr. Putin? What has been his impact on Russia's relations with the outside world? What kind of country is Putin leaving his successor? Is Russian democracy better off than it was eight years ago? Does Putin need to stay in power or return in a few years to continue the course he has charted for Russia?
Andrei Lebedev, Senior Associate, the State Club Foundation, Moscow
Those who qualify Putin's legacy as unconditional success are contradicted by those who point out that an exceptional situation helped secure excellent results. "Look," critics say, "the starting point was amazingly low in all respects socially, politically, and economically. It would have been difficult to fare worse, and most leaders would have fared better as Mr. Putin himself would had he taken more liberal course".
There is no sense arguing with hypothetical assumptions. There is no use trying to prove there was no way other than through strengthening the power vertical to prevent Russia from disintegrating under the weight of disparate oligarchs' interests, the threat of prevailing criminality, the centrifugal forces of regional separatism (not only that of Chechnya) and external political pressure. One has to judge by results. Whatever Putin's critics and supporters say, these results are not equivocal.
Putin's great achievements are indisputable. Economic growth penetrated even the farthest regions of the country, giving hope if not immediate well being to millions of Russians. Political threats have been reduced, diminished or altogether prevented.
Other threats, however, still linger. Corruption is one of the most dangerous. Though no country can boast defeating corruption altogether and the Russian government has taken some steps in the struggle against it, there is no hope of victory until the highest circles of the elite are affected.
Economic growth depends largely on oil and gas exports revenues. There is a slim chance that "innovative technologies" will succeed in taking off as a significant economic driver, but the time for that is running out. Judging by the clumsy approach to developing nanotechnologies, the struggle of innovations against bureaucracy might be doomed.
The political scene is overregulated. Soviet-style techniques of dealing with the opposition eradicate competition and are counterproductive. It repulses the most creative and fruitful people from joining politics where they could serve society and the state well.
The realm of Foreign affairs represents, paradoxically, the area where results have probably been strongest. Russia's international standing is probably higher than during the best of Soviet times. However, Russia still has to realize its strategic interests and to transform its temporary alliances into more or less permanent bonds and establish strategic partnership with suitable states that go further than intergovernmental declarations.
To sum it up, today Russia is at a crossroads. A lot has been done to save the country and Putin gets full credit for that. But a lot remains to be done in the uphill battle to prevent Russia from degrading. This is the work for the next Russian president.
Andrei Zagorski, Professor, MGIMO-University, Moscow
The balance sheet of Putin's presidency is incomplete if the list of his political and economic success is not complemented by deficits.
Putin has disappointed initial expectations triggered by his comprehensive reform agenda of 2000. The announced reforms have come to a complete standstill during his second term, and he failed to deliver on the promise of leveling the field. The core problems of guaranteeing property rights and ensuring fair competition in both politics and economics remain unresolved.
Under Putin, a bureaucratic and unprecedentedly corrupt state capitalism has been erected that benefits a narrow Kremlin nomenclatura as well as those operators who demonstrate loyalty to the regime. Instead of growing by private initiatives spreading wealth, the Russian economy is increasingly administered through budgetary expenditures producing an illusion of economic growth in sectors other than energy.
Lacking real structural reforms, the Russian economy loses out in competition with manufacturers from China, South Korea, India and the old industrial nations of Europe and North America. The gap between rich and poor, between the booming and depressed regions in Russia is growing instead of narrowing.
It did not take Putin much effort to kick off the economic growth that began even before his appointment as prime minister in 1999. It was a result of the depreciation of the ruble following the 1998 default as well as the availability of industrial production space and skilled personnel. This growth was supported by reforms launched at the beginning of Putin's first term. And the country was easier to govern in conditions where the price of oil was $70 per barrel, compared with $14 per barrel or less, as was the case in the second half of the 1990s.
The economic growth enabled Putin to ban political competition and to consolidate the reign of the new nomenklatura free of checks and balances from a representative parliament, independent judiciary, emancipated regional leaders, the business community, a free media or a viable civil society. As those institutions have no longer much to say in Putin's Russia, they are legitimately considered unimportant by the people. It should come as no surprise that the popularity of the president is not contested.
Putin's successors can take neither of those benefits for granted and will have to pursue a completely different agenda.
Being confronted with new challenges, many Russians will soon dream of returning to the good old Putin years, just as now some dream of returning to the good old Brezhnev years of the 1970s. However, in the new environment, a hypothetical return of Putin to power would not help conquer the problems facing us any more than the return of Brezhnev would.
Vlad Ivanenko, Ph.D., Statistics Canada, Ottawa
I believe that history will confirm the view that Putin is the best leader Russia has had in the last 100 years and, moreover, his record of achievements may not be surpassed for some time to come. The last consideration suggests that it is too early to evaluate Putin's legacy because he is capable of achieving even more. To assess what he can do in retirement, we should concentrate not on what Putin has tried to do, but on what he has failed to accomplish during his presidency.
The main problem that Russia faces today is its inability to find a decent place in the global economy. Despite the impressive progress over the last nine years, the world still recognizes the country mostly as a supplier of raw materials. If Russia is unable to attain global competitiveness in sectors other than extraction, it will gradually be caught in the orbit of a stronger center of gravity, be it the EU or China. In this case, it will lose the ability to set national policies independently, which is the least desirable result for the Kremlin.
Thanks to favorable terms of trade, Russia has been able to accumulate significant financial resources, making ambitious development plans possible. Yet, the level of potential funding far exceeds the quality of unveiled national strategies and the observed administrative capability of Russian public servants. Thus, to succeed, the country needs to put forward leaders who dare to dream and a mechanism to improve the accountability of its bureaucratic apparatus.
It may sound paradoxical, but a retired Putin is in a better position to succeed on both fronts. First, he will be free from informal, but nevertheless binding, obligations associated with running an office. Knowing Russian problems intimately, he can experiment searching for the best development strategies. Second, the powers-to-be will be obliged to react to his advice, as Putin is likely to retain a popularity that far exceeds that of his replacement in the foreseeable future. Thus, he can challenge unopposed the autocratic system that he helped build in the last decade, but which has become a constraint that limits Russian economic progress.
At any rate, it is too early to claim that Putin has fulfilled his mission and is ready to retire. He is an ambitious man who hates leaving behind unfinished projects. Administrative reform was his biggest failure. Putin knows that and he is not going to give up easily.
Ethan S. Burger, Scholar-in-Residence, School of International Service, American University, and Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, D.C.
Both professional and amateur historians are still debating Napoleon's legacy, and most of the relevant documents of the period that have survived are accessible. There is still much to learn about decision-making in contemporary Russia.
Vladimir Putin has said that he will not be leaving the Russian political scene in 2008. What does this mean? It suggests that making an assessment of legacy is both premature and more a reflection of observers' values than objective factors.
There is no doubt that the Russian people claim to have a sense of greater stability in their lives now than before Putin came to power, but how deeply have they been probed for their views? The Russian national economy is indeed stronger due to high prices for raw materials, especially energy, but what is the condition of the Russian economy outside the sector of natural resource production?
It is troubling that features of Soviet rule are evident in many aspects of contemporary Russian society: For example, the state or its "favorites" have taken control of the country's vast natural reserves who has profited?
The state runs the country's biggest television stations, so why does its leadership feel threatened by a diversity of opinion. Indeed it is troubling that the BBC's Russian service was taken off the air on Friday by its last FM distribution partner in Russia, the local radio station Bolshoye Radio. How does this relate to the death of Alexander Litvinenko? Many polls of the Russian population reflect that the Russian people have grown more nationalistic, more cynical and richer during the post-Yeltsin years, but at the same time, they sense that the level of corruption in the country has increased.
The situation in Chechnya may have produced a temporary lull in violence, but with the ability of terrorists to wreak havoc, what are the future implications for Russia? What is the truth about the bombing of the recent bombing of a train between Moscow and St. Petersburg?
Most international organizations and NGOs have taken off their gloves in describing the human rights and rule of law situation in Russia. Putin is promising to deploy new strategic weapons against the United States and modernize its bomber fleet to be prepared to attack the United States, if necessary.
Putin has undone the concept of Russia being a federation and has re-centralized the country. Whether this will continue indefinitely is uncertain. It also is unclear whether he will attempt to maintain power directly or indirectly. Russia again is a government of men and not law. Bringing the Olympics to Sochi is not much of an offsetting factor.
Andrei N. Seregin, Head of Research, Imageland Public Relations Agency, Moscow, Russia
The problem with answering the notorious "Who is Mr. Putin?" question for most of the observers in the West seems quite simple. With only half a year remaining until Putin leaves office, Russians themselves won't find an easy answer. Putin is a highly contradictory political figure his huge political successes must be balanced against the potential for serious future problems as a result of his policies.
He has effectively reinstated Russia's prominence in the world and developed new reasons for national pride. Still, the economy's dependence on natural resources is growing; the state, while taking more control over the industry and market has yet to be proven effective; and social inequalities and ethnic conflicts are increasing. Today, Putin resembles Nikita Khrushchev, who could boast of huge success, but was also responsible for serious failures.
The greater problem, though, is not to define precisely who Putin is, but whether he has ensured his successor will have enough control over Russian political elites. Putin managed to overcome almost all of the Yeltsin era troubles all but one. The stability of the Russian political system and balance of power among the elites still depends heavily on the president, who is the only legitimate guarantee of maintaining the status-quo among political and business tycoons through numerous mutual personal obligations. The moment Putin leaves office, his balancing influence will mostly disperse.
Some would argue that Putin himself started from scratch in the late 1990s and gained prominence and influence through a rather short, focused and effective PR campaign. But the economic and social conditions of Russia then were quite different from what they are now. This is why, despite far more active campaigning on the part of all of Putin's potential successors, none of them can hope to have the incumbent's popularity.
However, Putin's popularity with Russians now seems to be a kind of political liability rather than a political asset. Though it still may be effectively used in the campaigning by Russian political parties in December and Putin's political heirs, Putin's influence can't be fully transferred to any of projected successors once he leaves office in March.
The start of Russia's 2007-2008 campaign season has already been marked by huge government interventions into many sectors of the economy, including automobile manufactures, helicopters, aviation engines, pharmaceuticals. In many cases, this intervention has involved the state taking whole segments of an industry under its direct control through creating state-controlled mega-corporations. Some experts see this process as a pretext to another wave of redistributing wealth and influence among Russia ruling classes, which makes it hard not to believe that after Putin leaves the redistribution of property will be radical enough to ignite another round of elite conflict, undermining the political and economic stability that is still seen by most Russians as the main success of Putin's tenure.
Taking this prospect into account, it seems certain that Putin will retain some amount of influence even after he leaves the Kremlin, and perhaps Putin will capitalize on his popularity while out of power to make an ancient-Rome-style triumphant comeback after his successor fails.
Anthony T. Salvia, Special Advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Reagan Administration, Washington DC.
Vladimir Putin's historical role has been to fashion a new Russia out of the rubble of the Soviet system and whatever remnants of pre-Soviet Russia that survived. It has been an astonishingly deft performance conducted in the face of a jihadist war on Russia soil (now won) and ongoing Western efforts to encircle the country (on going). He gets no credit in the West, which crudely and disingenuously portrays him as a latter-day Stalin. The Western aid money and NGO invasion of the Yeltsin years may not have been entirely ill-intentioned, but they were designed to turn Russia into a satellite that would rubber stamp a U.S.-led reshaping of the international order even if this contradicted Russia's national interest. Yeltsin played along; Putin refused. His rejection of Western patronage paved the way for the nation's current revival. Under Putin, Russia like the United States under my old boss Ronald Reagan is back.
For all of Putin's achievements, a great deal remains to be done. Among the areas of most urgent concern are Russia's collapsing demographics, the troubling, over controlled state of the nation's internal political order, diversifying the national economy away from raw materials and tackling widespread poverty.
Another is the matter of Russia's overarching mission in the world (or lack thereof), which some commentators confuse with a governing ideology. Russia needs no such ideology, but rather a set of moral objectives to guide the formulation of foreign and domestic policies capable of inspiring people at home and abroad. Russia may be back, but it needs a mission.
What could such a mission consist of? President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have given tantalizing hints, but have yet to spell it out. Speaking at an EU summit in Finland last October, Putin, according to the Financial Times, urged the assembled heads of government to "safeguard Christianity in Europe." It is well known that Pope Benedict XVI and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II are interested in the Roman Catholic and Russian Orthodox Churches working together in meeting the challenges posed by secular materialism, radical Islam and a rising China. It would not be a bad thing if Putin was thinking of a Northern Hemispheric alliance to preserve the broadly defined values of European civilization.
In a recent, much-publicized article on Russian foreign policy, Sergei Lavrov evoked Dostoevsky in decrying the "anything is allowed" approach to the conduct of foreign policy, in which traditional, ethics-based moral criteria of right and wrong are brushed aside in favor of standing "above the moral law, beyond good and evil." Here Lavrov rejects the Leninist notion that the moral value of an action is determined not by objective criteria of good and evil derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition, but by whether or not it advances the interests of progressive humanity as Lavrov implies globalists believe.) He equates globalism with a decline in moral standards and calls for "humility" in the conduct of foreign policy and the universal application of international law, suspended by the Western powers in their drive to detach Kosovo from Serbia, to mention one example. He hints that globalism has roots in Bolshevism and Trotskyism (he's on to something there) and calls for an international system in which nations practice the golden rule.
This is rich material that cries out for development as a mission for Russia internally and abroad. If Russian leaders were to be guided by the classical virtues prudence, courage, humility, sobriety and justice in their development of foreign and domestic policies, Russia would be striking a blow for a much better world. If, in his remaining time in office, Putin were to forge such a mission for Russia and truly realize it, he would be rendering his people and the world a service. Above all, such high-minded principles should inform Russia's internal governance and much else will follow. As the great imperial Prime Minister Pyotr Stolypin once observed, when a nation maintains a decent internal order, foreign policy takes care of itself.
Stephen Blank, The US Army War College, Carlyle Barracks, PA
(Dr. Blank's views as contributed to Russia Profile do not represent the position of the U.S. Army, Defense Department or the U.S. Government)
There is no secret to Putin's popularity. Economic success, a president who is youthful, sober, tough in rhetoric, supported by economic progress and prosperity itself largely due to the reforms of 2000-02 and energy and backed by an increasingly cowed, repressed, and intimidated media easily explain it.
Were a truly open political competition to take place, it is likely that Putin might win, but not by such huge margins. Second, his legacy will be one of economic progress based on the aforementioned factors. But the fact is he has left a trap for his successor. Reforms needed to continue the impetus of 2000-02 have ceased and are not in sight. If anything, we are now seeing a regression to increasing state control of key economic sectors. The demographic problem has not been solved and attention to it has only been fitful. Worse, Russia cannot produce enough energy using its resources to satisfy all of its customers and in Asia, for example, projects that are crucial to the economic and foreign policy interests of the state are behind schedule and way over cost.
These shortcomings are due to state policy more than to any other factor and are direct outcomes of the move by the Siloviki and state leaders to appropriate the economy for themselves, a trend that Putin has encouraged.
In the realm of democracy, we have seen a steady rise not just of a closed economy, but also of a closed political system that is more prone to use violence against its challengers than has been the case since 1985. The rise of political murders, even outside of Russia, along with the creation of neo-Soviet policies like state media monopolies, increased censorship, police penetration of the society and organized, politicized youth groups who engage in violence, all speak to a regime that for all its bravado is deeply aware of its fundamental illegitimacy and fears open political competition. The resort to ersatz ideologies like sovereign democracy must be viewed in this context.
In foreign policy, Putin will undoubtedly be rated a success because the criterion is Russia's independence of action and great power status. But that has largely been achieved through Western neglect and incompetence, of which there has been a staggering amount in the last eight years. Yet for all of the boastfulness of Russian foreign policy, there is a growing isolation from the West, an increased resort to provocative acts of pointless military recklessness carried out for their own sake rather than sound strategic thinking. The sobriety of the regime is fast eroding as it is becomes dizzy with its own sense of its success. As a result, Russia still has no genuine allies or friends upon whom it can rely, and few means to achieve its foreign policy goals other than energy and intimidation. Undoubtedly, Putin has been successful, but he was successful only as long as his regime was developing reforms or exploiting their utility in the face of Western incompetence. In several years, this legacy may look a lot less golden than it does now and the tarnish may soon be showing.
Edward Lozansky, President, American University in Moscow
In addition to the list of Putin's impressive economic, security and foreign policy achievements, I would also note his skillful division, weakening, and marginalization of Russia's extremist movements, or the red-brown coalition, as they are sometimes called.
This coalition, if united, could gain momentum and pitch the country into a horrible, nightmarish and bloody chaos similar to that unleashed by the 1917 Bolshevik coup. Of course, the setting up of and financial support for new parties feeding out of the Kremlin's hands is a far cry from Western democratic processes. However, if this obviously undemocratic behavior helps to split the fascists and other lunatics, I am all for it. Whatever you might say of the flamboyant and controversial politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, he serves the useful purpose of attracting millions of voters who would otherwise vote for communists or nationalists. Another new left-of-center party, Just Russia, was definitely created to further split the communist electorate. If some of these artificial parties veer off the course set by the people up top, the oxygen flow to them is quickly cut off, as in the case of Dmitry Rogozin's Rodina.
Is this a good policy? In the eyes of zealous global democracy promoters, it certainly is not. They see it as more proof of the Kremlin's autocratic machinations and manipulations. But for those interested in the country's stability and its gradual, rather than revolutionary, democratic development, such a policy certainly makes sense.
According to all reliable public opinion polls, this is the summarized message of the Russians to the West: "Yes, we definitely want to live in a free and democratic country like you do, but we need more time; please do not push us, bear in mind that this is a slow process."
Unfortunately, the West just does not want to listen. It demands full-scale democracy in Russia, whatever that might mean, right now and therefore offers moral and sometime even financial support to individuals and groups who want to unite the right, the left, the communists, the fascists, and even the National Bolsheviks with their StalinBeriaGulag slogan, just to get rid of an autocratic Putin. By pursuing such a policy, the West is making a tragic historical mistake but that is a different subject.
In terms of Putin's legacy after eight years in power, I would also point to Russia having definitely passed the test set out by former U.S. Education Secretary William Bennett. During the Cold War, Bennett frequently used the following line in his speeches: "If you want to find out if the country is free or not, just lift the borders and see which way the people will run." Obviously the Soviet people would have run away fast in all directions, but now that the gates are open, people are running not out, but in. According to official statistics, Russia has now more than 12 million illegal aliens, practically the same number as in the United States. Also, probably for the first time in its history, Russia has extended its motherly hand to its compatriots living abroad. They are no longer called enemies or traitors, but part of the Russian world. This is a very welcome change. On the negative side of Putin's legacy I'd mention the unprecedented growth of corrupt bureaucracy as well as the country's continuing demographic crisis. It looks like no one knows how to handle these issues and this is very sad indeed.