Subject: Re: Sergei Roy/ JRL #122/ Putin-Medvedev Tandem
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2008
From: "Vlad Sobell" <Vlad.Sobell@dir.co.uk>
When Sergei Roy informed me that he intended to criticise my article “The Putin-Medvedev tandem is a bad idea” (JRL 2008-#120), I somewhat flippantly replied that I expected to be comprehensively taken apart the way I have never been before and that I expected the undertaking to be done in the most aesthetically satisfying manner.
Sergei’s essay that duly appeared on my screen a couple of days later (JRL 2008-#122) exceeded my expectations. Leaving no stone unturned, he has methodically, step-by-step demolished the edifice I so lovingly constructed, and he has done it with his trademark literary flair and extraordinary acumen.
Where I argued that Putin had violated the spirit of the constitution by clinging to power through constitutionally dubious means (the Putin-Medvedev tandem), he informed his readers that Putin did exactly what the letter as well as the spirit of the fundamental law demanded: The supreme authority in Russia happens to lie with the people, and the (outgoing) president did exactly what the people had demanded.
When I suggested that the constitution does not provide for a tandem, the reply came that this is not a tandem or diarchy (in itself a strange concept), but “cohabitation a la russe”, between two supreme officials who, by virtue of being long-standing close associates, see eye to eye with each other. The adjective “a la russe” comes from the unique circumstance of their being allies rather than potential opponents, as happens to be the case in the French model.
As to my concern that Putin is arrogating too much power at Medvedev’s expense (for example, by continuing to play a strong role in foreign policy), Sergei clearly is not worried. On the contrary, with the distinct possibility of John McCain becoming the next US president, the notion that Russia should not draw on Putin’s experience in standing up to the likely unprecedented onslaught of superpower Russophobia would be preposterous.
When I entertained the possibility, however remote, of Medvedev and Putin falling out with each other, Sergei informed me that such a development would be at their own peril, as this would violate their unwritten covenant with the electorate, with dire consequences in the shape of their plummeting popularity.
My ruminations that the fraternal relationship between both leaders risked being based on idealism, and that their apparent banishment of conflict underestimates the democracy’s ability to safely regulate it, were dismissed as a “pleasing intellectual pastime in which one might indulge without doing much harm to anyone”.
Finally, my recommendation that Putin corrects what I considered his strategic error by promptly leaving the scene met with a no uncertain reprimand for an insensitive and misguided foreigner. Russia has had more than its fair share of trauma and instability. Thus the idea that it should, by accomplishing a transparent change of leadership, risk temporary instability for the sake of greater fundamental stability in the long term would border on the insane.
As many JRL readers may attest, the savaging of one’s labour of love by a critic can be a sobering experience. And I can confirm that seeing my article demolished in this way by Sergei Roy is especially bracing. I am writing this not merely because I am privileged to be counted as his friend; I am writing it, above all, because one cannot but have the utmost respect for a bona fide, home-grown Russian democrat who has participated in his country’s post-totalitarian regeneration and who has been ready to risk his life, literally, for the democratic cause.
Thus, one cringes at the possibility of being perceived by Sergei and his fellow travellers as yet another arrogant foreign “Russia expert” who deploys jargon such as “temporary instability” or “fundamentally more stable footing in the long run”, terms that can suggest the author is toying with people’s vital interests and security. If such unfortunate phrases crept into my prose, than I sincerely wish I were able to find better ways of putting my ideas across.
Incidentally, one of the many reasons why I consider the Western (but especially Washington’s and London’s) onslaught on Putin’s Russia so repugnant is precisely that the Western imperial grandees and their nomenklatura hacks fail to take notice of Sergei and his fellow pro-Putin democrats. While lecturing about “democracy”, they fail to see that there have long been genuine liberal democrats in Russia who support Putin’s regime, warts and all, because they understand it has the best practical solutions to their country’s problems and because they see it as fundamentally democratic. Instead, this Western camp talks only to and about the assorted characters who meet the Western definition of “democrats”, but who actually are opportunists ever at hand to tell the West the nasty things it wants to hear about Putin and his regime.
Can anything out of my edifice be restored? Despite my acknowledgement that Sergei has done a thorough demolition job, I believe that there is something he has overlooked. Or rather he has failed to see beyond the immediate horizon. Had he done so, he might have noticed that there is another structure inviting his attention. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have approached the subject differently to place more emphasis on this very structure.
It is precisely Putin’s and his regime’s success where, paradoxically, the risks reside. Putin has stabilised the scene and turned Russia’s economy into a welfare-generating machine the like of which the country has never seen before. Furthermore, by solving the problem of his presidential succession, he has made sure that the machine will remain in place in the foreseeable future.
However, he has yet to solve perhaps the most difficult problem, namely of ensuring that the machine remains intact after its designer-in-chief departs. In my paper, I tried to look to this next stage because depart he eventually must. The system can become truly self-sufficient and independent, and hence truly secure, only after its architect really lets go.
I therefore concluded that Putin’s continued presence makes matters worse rather than better because the longer he stays the more the system gets dependent on him. Thus my recommendation that Putin promptly leave the scene was made not because I want Russia to risk instability, but on the contrary, because I want it to prevent instability further down the line.
When one hears of a “Putin Plan”, with the implicit idea that the leader will (or indeed, must) be around for another two decades, my hair distinctly begins to bristle, just like Sergei’s apparently did when I invoked the arguably beneficial and tolerable short-term “risks and potential instability” produced by his prompt retirement. Hasn’t Russia had enough of the plans and millennial transformations of “great leaders”? Haven’t such designs been the cause of its past misfortunes? Even granted that the regime, through Shuvalov, argues that this time around the objective is not to “catch up with anyone or anything” (or build a paradise on Earth) but merely to turn Russia into a pleasant country to live in, I cannot help having doubts. Haven’t we been here before?
Putin’s Russia has seen a monumental turn towards normality, successfully overcoming the consequences of past ideology-driven delusions. I, nevertheless, fear that instead of a final “soft landing” to normality, we may be witnessing the beginning of yet another “great leap forward”, this time under the banner of Putin and his Plan.
Being an admirer of Putin, and considering him to be a visionary in a league superior to most of his contemporary Western counterparts, I perhaps naively took it as a given that he understands these pitfalls and is working to avoid them. This is why I assumed that his ultimate plan, paradoxically, would be to prevent the emergence of a Putin Plan and of its sinking into his country’s collective consciousness. Sergei’s response to my article has not in this respect come up with convincing and satisfying answers.
Nevertheless, having come to this conclusion, I do feel that both my and Sergei’s conflicting concerns can be reconciled by resorting to a “cost-benefit analysis”. While I am happy to be reassured that Putin’s continued presence as the pre-eminent leader is hugely beneficial, this benefit will not come without a cost. Whereas Sergei sees only benefits, I also see the costs.