Date: Thu, 06 Mar 2008
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh <shlapent@msu.edu>
Subject: Big Money as an Obstacle to Democracy in Russia
Big Money as an Obstacle to Democracy in Russia
By Vladimir Shlapentokh (Michigan State University)
Introduction
The idea that economic growth and the standard of living are the most powerful factors that determine democratization, plus the idea that democracy encourages economic growth, have been seen by many as conventional wisdom. In this paper, I will deal only with the first theory. One part of this assumption suggests that poor living conditions, and particularly deterioration of the quality of life, push the masses to action, resulting in a change of regimes or even revolution. Another part of the dogma suggests that, with the rise in income and a growing middle class, a society always moves toward democracy. Since Seymour Lipset’s noted article (1959), this thesis has dominated the literature. The prominent political scientist Robert Barro vehemently defended Lipset’s thesis in his famous article, “Determinants of Democracy” (1999). Andrei Shleifer and Donald Treisman’s piece in /Foreign Affairs/ (2004) stands as one recent example of publications that support this theory. In this article, the authors firmly state that the level of democracy depends on the level of average income; for this reason, they treat Russia as “a middle income capitalist economy,” which enjoys a “middle income democracy.”
In the last two decades, this theory has been the object of severe critiques by a number of prominent scholars. The Russian experience supports the exact opposite of Lipset’s postulate. What is more, this experience is another piece of evidence in favor of the concept advanced in the early 2000s by a group of authors headed by Daron Acemoglu. These authors “argue that this evidence is consistent with another well-established approach in political science, which emphasizes how events during critical historical junctures can lead to divergent political-economic development paths, some leading to prosperity and democracy, others to relative poverty and non-democracy.” As I will argue, the increase of wealth not only encourages democracy, but can also be an obstacle to it.
The Standard of Living and Political Behavior in Russia
In roughly the last hundred years of Russian history, since the end of the civil war in 1920-1922, the standard of living had only a weak impact on the political behavior of Russians (in both the case of a low or declining standard of living and in the case of a rising one). Among the many flawed theories about the origin of Perestroika and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union is the idea that Gorbachev started the reforms because of the discontent of the population with their standard of living. This theory was supported by several known Sovietologists, such as Anders Aslund and the Russian politician Egor Gaidar, who were among the most ardent advocates of liberalization, as well as many other experts inside and outside the country. Of course, to judge by the objective data describing housing conditions, the availability of cars and food, the Soviet people lived in conditions that were several times worse than the residents of Western countries. The shortage of almost all kinds of goods, usually of very bad quality, and the many hours waiting in lines to purchase them were organic parts of Soviet life in the early 1980s, a few years before Perestroika. However, a nationwide survey, which I conducted in the late 1970s, found that the majority of Russians were satisfied with their quality of life and believed that they lived better than Americans. A few comparative studies in the 1960s and 1970s also found that the levels of satisfaction of Americans and Soviet people with their jobs and leisure time were almost the same.
According to all available data, the majority of the Soviet people, with their low standard of living, supported a variety of official tenets, including the preeminence of Soviet and Russian patriotism, the supremacy of socialism, and the social and moral superiority of the Soviet Union over the West. In addition, the Soviet people saw the Communist party as the positive leading force in society. They trusted its leadership and strongly supported almost all of its domestic and foreign policies.
By 1985, the Soviet Union was probably one of the quietest places on the planet. In this period, anti-government activity was reduced to practically zero. The number of people arrested for political reasons in all national republics in 1980-1981 barely surpassed one hundred. It was remarkable that the Soviet dissident movement, which served as a sort of mouthpiece for the masses, particularly the Slavophile section, focused its activities on human rights issues and was indifferent toward the standard of living of the masses. Not surprisingly, when Gorbachev made his first declarations on the necessity of Glasnost and Perestroika in 1985-1986, he justified his decision by declaring the importance of accelerating technological progress; he only casually mentioned the importance of improving the standard of living. It is remarkable that in the long-secret memo, “The Imperatives for Political Development,” sent by Alexander Yakovlev to Gorbachev at the end of 1985, in which the architect of Perestroika elaborated his initial program, the low standard of living was not even mentioned. Later, many Russians reformulated the main causes of Perestroika and focused on the low standard of living in Soviet society.
The deterioration of life in Soviet and post-Soviet Russia only rarely led to protest. As a result of Gorbachev’s ill conceived economic reforms, the quality of life in Russia deteriorated immensely by 1990 in comparison with the Brezhnev period. The supply of food was almost completely disrupted and store shelves were literally empty. Again the country was relatively calm. There were only a few protest actions in Gorbachev’s time when the economy fell apart.
The people were also silent in the post-Soviet period when, as a result of Gaidar’s reforms in 1992, prices rose dramatically, people’s savings were wiped out, salaries and pensions were not paid for months and even years at a time, and people raised vegetables on their balconies and cut each other’s hair in order to save money. Most Russian politicians in 1992-1994, including the reformers themselves, believed that the people would not endure their suffering without stormy reactions. Still, the stupefied world did not see any sign of riots or mass demonstrations. In the first half of 1993, there were only 34 strikes with 20,000 participants and this in a country with hundreds of thousands of enterprises and millions of workers. With the same resilience, the Russians reacted to the economic default in August 1998 when, for the second time in a decade, they lost their savings and experienced a steep fall in the standard of living. Even if it was evident that those who controlled political and economic power enriched themselves enormously by the plummeting of the ruble, ordinary people did not undertake even one serious protest on the whole territory of the Russian Federation. The tribulations of the Russians in the 1990s did not hinder President Yeltsin’s reelection in 1996, or his transfer of monarchic power to an obscure colonel of the KGB, Vladimir Putin.
Oil Prices and Changes in the Wellbeing of the Masses
If the fall of the standard of living did not affect political processes, the rise of the standard of living did even less in this respect. The relentless rise in oil prices has been the most important development of Putin’s reign. The price rose by almost five times, from $20 per barrel in 2000 to $100 per barrel by the end of 2007. With roaring oil prices, the standard of living after 2000 increased significantly. According to official data, the real income of the population increased during Putin’s reign by almost two times. The average salary increased by 2.2 times between 2000 and 2006. In 2007 alone, real salaries increased by 16 percent. While high inflation is still a problem, almost one quarter of the population said that their life had improved in 2007, a significant rise in comparison with the previous years (in 2003 only 17 percent said the same). Three quarters of Russians believed, on the eve of 2008, that the next year would be good for them and for the country.
The influx of oil money changed many aspects of Russian society for the better. In the last years, with the growing flow of petrol dollars, the leadership made improvements in education, health and science, without speaking of the gigantic increase in military expenditures. During the last decade, the country watched the beautification of Moscow and Petersburg, as well as many regional centers. The reliance on oil and gas resources provided Putin with the ability to enhance Russia’s geopolitical status and take an aggressive stance toward its neighbors and the West. This development delighted the majority of Russians who were humiliated by the fall of the Soviet Union. It also contributed a lot to Putin’s popularity. The hatred of the West and its neighbors (the Baltic republics, Ukraine and Georgia) created a sort of public ideology that eliminated to some extent the ideological vacuum of the 1990s.
Of course, the increased well-being in the country has been accompanied by greater social polarization. The material improvements for Russia’s retired people have been rather meager. Roughly 75 percent of them live in “absolute poverty,” according to a study by the Russian Center of Living Standards. However, despite the dominance of egalitarian views, the public reacted to the glaring discrepancy in the lives of the rich and poor quite calmly. It is impossible to remember in the last years any public action, even of moderate size, against the ongoing social polarization.
The Official Policy of Encouraging an Easy and Merry Life
With the clear intention of gaining the support of the masses, the Kremlin not only improved the material life of people, but increased their leisure time and made entertainment more available. The Russian government provides its citizens, for instance, with a winter vacation of unprecedented length. Such a vacation was not seen in the Soviet past and cannot be found in contemporary countries, including wealthy nations like the United States. This paid universal vacation, besides the regular vacation, lasts 10 days starting with the New Year. During this period, nobody works in Russia: governmental offices are closed, the newspapers do not print and major TV programs go off the air. In Soviet times, this vacation lasted (besides Saturday and Sunday) only two days. The Kremlin was eager to increase the number of working days as much as possible. Today the Kremlin looks as if it does not care at all about production and labor ethics. According to some computations, the GNP was 12 percent lower in January than in December. Many Russians are stupefied by the policy that encourages laziness in society; 20 percent protested openly against this vacation, which challenges common sense. An article published in the Russian newspaper “Labor” at the end of the vacation bacchanalia was entitled, “Are you not tired enough to relax?” With the growing standard of living and the concern of rich Russians to maintain their high standard of life and their property, Putin’s regime was able to earn public support for its anti-democratic actions.
The De-democratization of Russian Society
The momentous economic progress and the society’s growing absorption with money helped the Kremlin implement its strategy of de-democratization. As the prominent Russian sociologist Lev Gudkov formulated, “Our whole society rests on bilateral, two-way corruption.”
It is impossible to measure in numerical terms how much Russian democracy declined in these years. In any case, Freedom House suggested that Russia was “not free” in 2007. Russia received a score of six (a score of one means full democracy) and its political order was better only in comparison to Uzbekistan, Somalia, Turkmenistan and five other countries, which got the lowest score (7). During his tenure, Putin eliminated all traces of the division of powers. He turned the Duma (parliament) into a puppet institution, not unlike the Soviet Supreme Council of the past. The judicial system became as acquiescent to Putin as it had been to the Soviet masters of the Kremlin. He eliminated voting procedures for individual candidates in national and local parliamentary elections.
Putin banned the popular election of governors, depriving the people of their influence on local executive power. Independent analysts and opposition parties as well as Western public opinion almost unanimously denounced the parliamentary election in December 2007 and the presidential election campaign of March 2008 as dishonest.
A special target of Putin’s offensive was the nascent civil society. Putin significantly reduced the freedom of the media and launched a direct offensive against NGOs by asserting that many of these organizations acted as fronts for the West, trying to undermine Russia’s political stability even as they claimed to promote democracy.
Putin’s domestic policy was successful because, contrary to the main theory about the positive impact of wealth on democracy, the major actors in Russia (the masses, the middle class, the political elite and the intellectuals), who benefited most from the oil money, supported Putin’s regime in its offensive against democratic institutions.
The Friendly Passivity of the Masses
In fact, the masses in the 1990s were deeply hostile toward the regime. Remaining far from public protest actions, the Russians hated Yeltsin and his government. The parliamentary election of 1993 was a good example. Gaidar’s pro-governmental party, “Choice of Russia,” which was expected to win the majority in the Duma, received only 16 percent of the votes, while Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s aggressive nationalistic party took almost a quarter of the votes (23 percent) and the Communists, 12 percent. Yeltsin’s rating was no higher than 10 percent past 1992. In 1995, only one percent of Russians said that they “absolutely trusted” Yeltsin and 7 percent “trusted him considerably,” while 91 percent declared that they distrusted the president. Before the presidential election of 1996, Yeltsin’s rating oscillated around 5 percent, while his rival from the Communist Party, Gennadii Ziuganov, was supported by one third of Russians.
In contrast, voting behavior and the popularity of Putin in 2000-2007 were radically different. Of course, in evaluating Russian data, it is important to take into account that the Kremlin controls the electronic media. There are plenty of data showing that the electorate was under the open pressure of the state apparatus and the results of elections were frequently rigged. However, all caveats aside, more than one half of the population supported Putin’s regime and its antidemocratic course.
The Middle Class does not Support Democracy
The political attitudes of ordinary Russians were not influenced by the modest growth of income. Moreover, people whose level of income reached a relatively high level (the so called middle class) turned out to be indifferent or even hostile toward democracy. The dogma about the middle class as the bearer of democratic values was also refuted in Putin’s Russia. This country also put in question Maslow’s famous theory, which suggests that, with the satisfaction of basic material needs, people yearn for spiritual values and self-respect. Indeed, Russian sociological data show that the size of income and wealth had very little impact on political views. A survey conducted by the Fund of Public Opinion in 2007 found that “the freedom to chose their own representatives in power” was important only for 2 percent of people with the lowest level of income (less than 2500 rubles or about $100 per month) and for 3 percent of the people with the highest income (more than 4500 rubles or about $180 per month). Only one percent in both groups appreciated “the right to be elected to political institutions” and “the freedom to join political parties.” While abstaining from the elections is a form of passivity that borders on protest (it is not easy to separate friendly and hostile passivity in this action), the behavior of low and high income Russians in this respect is practically the same: 36 percent never or rarely vote. In 2007, low income people were also less inclined to recognize the existence of a real political opposition in the country than the high income group (47 percent and 50 percent, respectively). A study conducted by the Institute of Sociology and funded by the Ebert Foundation in 2007 did not find any differences between the politics of the “middle class,” which makes up 20 to 22 percent of the population, and those of the rest of the population.
What is more, a survey conducted by the same research organization in 2005 suggested clearly that poor people are more critical of democracy in Russia than “people who live well.” While 34 percent of people in the first group consider “Russia as a non-democratic state,” only 20 percent of the people in the second group think the same.
Big Wealth and Democracy in Post-Soviet Russia
The belief in big businesspeople as supporters of democracy was more widespread than the view on the liberal orientation of the middle class. In the first decade of the post-Soviet period, it looked indeed as if the successful businesspeople would become, as predicted in textbooks, the champions of liberalism and democracy. Konstantin Borovoy, a new businessman and the first president of the Russian stock exchange, was an ideal example that illustrated Maslow’s concept and the belief in the democratic potential of the bourgeoisie. During the anti-Gorbachev rebellion in August 1991, he organized a mass demonstration against the restoration of the Communist order.
However, it became clear by the mid 1990s that most of the newly rich people, the so called oligarchs, while cherishing liberal freedoms, were deeply contemptuous of ordinary people and democratic institutions that could restrain their power. Headed by Boris Berezovsky, a group of thirteen oligarchs wanted to cancel the presidential election in 1996 by any means. This group, with their deeply anti-democratic views, installed a sort of feudal regime with a weak king known as “Semiboyarshchina” (the rule of seven boyars, an allusion to one of the darkest periods in Russian history at the start of the early seventeenth century) that controlled not only the economy, but also law enforcement agencies. One of them, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, argued that the people who control the country’s economy should control the country politically as well. He suggested that the oligarchs should “unite political power and financial opportunities.” On another occasion, he said, “Russia would be a happy country in comparison with the current society,” which Khodorkovsky equated with societies based on slave ownership. They had no reservations about the shelling of the parliament in 1993 and its impact on the future of the democratic process in their country.
When Putin came to power, he declared a war against the oligarchs’ role in politics. Three of them, Berezovsky, Gusinsky and Khodorkovsky, were eliminated from political life. Again experts and politicians expected that the country’s wealthy people would not resist Russia’s transformation into an authoritative society. Khodorkovsky was an exception. He challenged Putin, refusing to flee the country and was finally incarcerated in 2003. Instead of defending Khodorkovsky, the leaders of big business dropped to their knees. In a letter to Putin in July, they did not even mention the name of their disgraced confrere. In fact, none of the famous oligarchs, such as Oleg Deripaska, Roman Abramovich, or Vladimir Potanin uttered a single word in public to support Khodorkovsky. As a Russian journalist noted, big business capitulated without taking a single shot at Putin. What is more, Oleg Deripaska, in his capitulation before the Kremlin, went so far as to declare that he was ready to give his big company “Rusal” to the state. It is remarkable that, by 2004, the Russians were already rejecting the idea that big business protects democracy. According to a survey by the Institute of Complex Social Studies, only 18 percent of Russians were inclined to think in this way.
Today some people still defend the theory about the positive role of big business in the development of democracy, but the majority of observers doubt its democratic potential.
Reliance on the State Apparatus
Without abandoning the use of repression against its political foes, the Kremlin used moneyand not only direct coercionas a powerful political weapon, which is unprecedented in Russian history. Oil revenue helped the Kremlin increase the loyalty of the state apparatus.
First of all, the Kremlin assumed that the average state employee is more loyal to the regime than the rest of the population. For this reason, the Kremlin used money to increase the size of the state apparatus on a scale unknown in Soviet times. In fact, in some ways, Putin behaves like a feudal king who has created a network of vassals to whom he distributes land. In this case, Putin uses moneynot landto make his vassals loyal to him.
The size of the bureaucracy, which enjoys a much better life than the average Russian, increased significantly in comparison with Soviet times. There were no more than 660,000 state employees in the whole Soviet Union. Putin’s bureaucracy, in 2006, included 1.6 million employees, even if Russia today is two times smaller than the USSR. By the number of bureaucrats per 1,000 residents, Russia surpassed the United States and France by one third and by even more than ther countries. It is important to note that the drastic growth of the state apparatus started in 2002, in the first years of Putin’s term.
However, even more important for the Kremlin than the increase of the size of the state apparatus was the improvement of apparatchiks’ material life. The Kremlin uses several means to maintain the political elite’s high standard of living, including official salaries and perks, the open permission to illegally get assets from private businesses and the tacit permission to commit corrupt activities or nepotism with the guarantee of immunity against persecution.
The Benefits and Perks
The official salary of the Russian bureaucracy is two times higher than the average salary in the country and it is growing faster than the average salary as well. Official salaries are only part (and often a small part) of the income that bureaucrats receive from the state. They also receive various bonuses which significantly increase the official salary. Among these perks are bonuses for “the official rank in the state hierarchy,” “the length of services” (10-30 percent of the salary), “the special conditions of work” (up to 200 percent), “access to state secrets,” “the accomplishment of special tasks,” “the annual compensation for good work,” “money for the annual vacation” and others. In some cases, bonuses surpass salaries by ten times. In 2004, Putin drastically increased the well-being of the highest officials in the country, from the deputies of the departments inside the Ministries to the President himself. The salary of these people was raised to $3000 per month (6 times higher than the average salary). High officials also received BMWs with two drivers, a country house close to Moscow, free vacations in summer vacation resorts and free high-quality medical services.
Private Business
The major source of well-being of the highest echelon of the bureaucracy, including State Duma deputies, is not their high salaries or numerous perks, but their private businesses and the opportunity to take bribes. The deep immersion of the Russian political elite in private business was revealed on a full scale when conflicts ignited among the members of different clans. General Victor Cherkasov, the head of one of the leading “power” agencies (the Committee for the Control of Drugs), in October 2007, publicly accused his colleagues, the “Chekists” (people from the political police) of transforming “from warriors into merchants.” The scandal in the “Chekist family” brought to light the enormous wealth of General Alexander Bulbov (Cherkasov’s deputy), who was arrested. Bulbov controlled several big businesses and a great deal of real estate in Moscow and Kaliningrad.
The involvement of high bureaucrats in business increased with a new type of nationalization, which transformed a company’s state-ownership status to a mixed ownership (partly private, partly state-owned). This status allowed the Kremlin’s people to access the company’s assets.
Following the “tradition” of the Yeltsin family, the members of Putin’s close circle took control over the biggest companies in the country. Eight people (the seven highest Kremlin officials and the president) controlled “the assets of these companies, which were equal to three Russian national budgets, while the owners of the companies were so loyal that they were ready to give almost everything to the Kremlin.”
The transformation of the political elite into the owners of big fortunes and the fear of redistribution or confiscation of these resources by a new regime accounts for their support of the Putin regime and its anti-democratic course. Russian elites suspected that the preservation of their property would be unlikely if an independent parliament was empowered to investigate the sources of their wealth. The same precautions apply when it comes to the independent judicial system and its power to launch investigations at the request of the parliament. A free media, too, could uncover and question the roots of the elite’s fortunes. The elite’s obsession with the task of protecting their property is behind the Kremlin’s policy toward presidential change in 2008.
The Permission of Corruption
While official salaries and participation in private business are the main sources of well-being for the highest level of the bureaucracy, middle and low level bureaucrats prosper to a great degree because of corruption. The Kremlin is very much hypocritical in its denouncement of corruption. As the prominent Moscow political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin said, “the authorities buy state employees, permitting them to take bribes and illegally combine state service with commercial activity.” As various sources suggest, the scope of corruption during Putin’s rule increased radically. A survey of Russian businesspeople in 2000 and in 2007 showed that reports of “serious concern about corruption” increased from 25 percent to 33 percent. During Putin’s reign, only a few Moscow bureaucrats were punished for corruption and only a few officers from law enforcement agencies were sent to jail. The case of the “Three Whales” furniture company was typical in this respect. The investigator from the Attorney General’s office discovered in 2000 an elaborate scheme for illegal enrichment of businesspeople and officials. The customs house reduced the tariff payment for imported foreign furniture to a minimum, leaving, however, the prices paid by Russian consumers at the old level. With this trick, the sellers of the furniture received extra profit, which they shared with the highest officials from the FSB and Customs Service. However, in the beginning of the investigation, the case was closed by the Attorney General. The major witness was murdered and the investigator was sentenced for an abuse of power. One year ago, Putin, however, ordered the reopening of the investigation. But, even though the owners of the firm were sent to jail, no one from the FSB and the Attorney General’s office were implicated by 2008 in the case.
“Legal Nepotism”
Nepotism is another form of the feudal reward for bureaucrats for their service to the regime. It also helps the enrichment of bureaucrats through the business and positions of their children and wives. The classic case was seen in the entrepreneurial activity of Elena Baturina, the wife of Moscow Mayor Yurii Luzhkov. As other examples, I can cite the facts that Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov appointed his 28 year-old son Piotr as a top manager at the State Maritime Company in the Far East and then as a leading manager in the Foreign Trade Bank. His other son, Pavel, a 24 year-old, received a prestigious position at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sergei Ivanov, the Minister of Defense, found good jobs at leading banks for his two sons, who also are quite young. In addition, it is normal to send relatives to the party lists and in this way secure their election to the State Duma.
Immunity against persecution
As the /Moscow Newspaper /wrote, “High status protects bureaucrats against any responsibility, including criminal.” This feudal immunity is extended to the relatives of officials. During Putin’s tenure, only a few officials were prosecuted by the judicial system. The Kremlin protected officials who were arrested in the West on corruption charges. The case of Pavel Borodin, the former manager of the Kremlin’s properties in 2001, was typical in this respect. The attempt of the American and Swiss judicial systems to put him on trial for embezzlement failed, because the Moscow Attorney General did not cooperate with foreign agencies.
The Apparatchiks’ Style of Life
Now the Russian bureaucrats live much better than the rest of the country. As a study of the Institute of Sociology in 2005 shows, compared to the rest of the country, state employees are two-to-three times more satisfied with their food, clothes, housing conditions, education, vacations and, of course, their status in society. The annual income of many members of Putin’s administration reached a very lofty level. In 2006, for instance, if one believes the official declarations of bureaucrats, the income of Yuri Trutnev, the Minister of Natural Resources, was about $10 million; Igor Levitin, the Minister of Transportation, and Leonid Reiman, the Minister of Informational Technology and Communication, both made a half million dollars.
The State Apparatus: the Loyal Actor
The Kremlin’s belief in the loyalty of the bureaucracy was well grounded. As various data show, state employees are significantly more loyal to the rulers in Moscow than the rest of the population. In 2005, state employees were two times more likely to express their satisfaction with Russian democracy than the rest of the population. Their level of satisfaction with various political institutions (the governor, mayor, state legislation and judicial system) is two to three times higher than in the population as a whole.
The Yearning to Become a Bureaucrat
Most Russians, according to a survey conducted in 2005, hold bureaucracy in contempt. Only 2 percent of the population believed that the state apparatus was concerned about the prosperity of the country, while two thirds was convinced that it pursued only its own egotistical goals. At the same time, the profession of bureaucrats became one of the most popular in the country. One third of Russian youth (48 percent among students) wants to join the ranks of state employees. Those who wished to become bureaucrats did not hide the fact that “the patriotic factor” played only a minimal role in their motivations. Most important in their thinking are the pure material factors (social guarantees, privileges, the stability of the position, salary, and opportunities to receive bribes and make deals) and “connections.” These data contrast with the prestige of such occupations in the 1960s-1980s in the Soviet Union, when jobs in the state apparatus attracted a small number of young people, and most dreamed of becoming scholars or engineers.
The Direct Effect of Money on Political Life
The abundance of money provides the Kremlin with many avenues to maintain its total control over the country. The deputies of the State Duma, along with the members of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts, depend directly on the Presidential Administration, particularly when it comes to housing conditions. The Kremlin makes decisions about which type of apartment will be offered to new deputies of the Duma. The Kremlin also provides deputies with special medical services, as well as access to vacation resorts and transportation.
With its unlimited resources, the Kremlin brought many thousands of teenagers from the province to Moscow to enroll in aggressive political youth movements, such as “Ours,” “The Young Guard of the Party,” “United Russia,” “Young Russia” and “Locals.” Feeding, lodging and entertaining them, the Kremlin turned these young people into patriotic fanatics who, at the command from above, harassed foreign embassies, the regime’s political adversaries and nonconformist writers. The Kremlin supposes that militant youth detachments can be used in the case of serious political disturbances in order to crush the political opposition. The influx of oil money permitted the Kremlin to create docile political organizations, such as “For Putin” and “The Civil Force.” Of course, the Kremlin has plenty of money to finance its allies in any sort of election.
The Suborning of Intellectuals
However, the most important “investment” of oil money by the government was made in the intellectual community. It is well known that the top of the Russian intelligentsia (the intellectuals) has always been, as seen in pre-revolutionary and Soviet times, the major opposition to the authoritarian regime and the creator of a liberal ideology. Indeed, in Soviet times, the intelligentsia was the major ideological motor of resistance to the authorities. As my surveys of the 1960s and 1970s showed, it was the intelligentsia, and particularly the so-called creative intelligentsia (writers, scholars, actors and media people), who were the bearers of liberal ideas and “socialism with a human face.” This stratum of the population was the social basis of Perestroika and the champion of democracy in the late 1980s.
Putin’s Kremlin managed to do what none of the Russian rulers (besides Stalin) were able to achieve. The presidential administration not only pacified most members of the intellectual community, but also turned many of them into supporters of the regime. Roy Medvedev, for instance, a well-known historian, recently published an obsequious biography entitled, “Putin, Vladimir.” Another prominent cultural figure, the Oscar-winning film director Nikita Mikhalkov, produced a toadying “masterpiece” that lavishly praised Putin called “55”a present to honor the president’s 55^th birthday.
Big money made it possible for Putin’s regime to avert the danger of opposition from the creative intelligentsia. In early 2008, among the 142 people whom Russians identified in a survey as members of the elite, the creative intelligentsia was represented by 76 individuals. Practically all of them are materially successful people. However, only seven of them refused to take part in various actions that favored the current regime and only one of them, the actor Oleg Basilashvili, participated in opposition activities. He, for instance, publicly expressed his support for the Alliance of Right Forces in 2007. He was also the only cultural figure who dared to publicly challenge Putin during the meeting of Petersburg’s creative intelligentsia with the President in 2006 (only Khodorkovsky did the same on the eve of his arrest in 2003). In late 2007, citing major cultural figures (aside from a few liberal journalists) who supported this party, Boris Nemtsov, one of its leaders, named only Basilashvili and five other popular members of the cultural elite.
The history of the “Open Letter to Putin” in October 2007 is remarkable in several aspects. This letter was the cultural figures’ reaction to the groveling behavior of their colleagues who implored Putin to stay in power after 2008. This letter was signed by only 11 people; the best-known names matched those on Nemtsov’s list. It is possible to name a few dozen intellectuals, such as the famous scholar Yuri Ryzhov or the writer Victor Erofeev, who dared to express their discontent toward Putin’s regime, even if they did not join protest actions against it. The funeral of the famous journalist Anna Politkovskaia, who was murdered for opposing the regime, was attended by some journalists and politicians, but only by a few members of “the creative intelligentsia,” who all kept silent.
The behavior of today’s intellectuals and those of Soviet times differ radically. In the second half of the 1960s, several thousand intellectuals signed public protest letters in their fight against Stalinism and the KGB. Each signatory was exposed to serious dangers and indeed hundreds of people were persecuted. Let us mention as examples the “Letter of 99” that was signed by the mathematicians of Moscow University, or “The letter of 20” signed by scholars at the Academic Town at Novosibirsk. Besides protest letters, hundreds of Russian intellectuals participated for almost two decades in other, even more daring forms of dissident activity. In fact, the intellectuals of Putin’s era have not staged any serious actions. Almost none of the famous intellectuals participated in “the marches of discontent” in Moscow and Petersburg in the second half of 2007. Let us compare Politkovskaia’s funeral with the funeral in the late 1960s of the physicist Valerii Pavlinchuk, a major participant of the protest movement. Hisis funeral turned into a real political demonstration that included the participation of many of his colleagues, most of whom were later fired from their research institutes.
Ordinary people are aware of the “moral capitulation” of its educated class. About half the population is convinced, according to a survey in 2008, that “the influence of the intelligentsia declined in comparison with Soviet times”; less than one fifth think that the role of the educated class has increased.
Conclusion
The developments in Russia mostly refute the idea that wealth has a positive impact on democracy and that changes in the standard of living represent a powerful political factor. With the obedient state apparatus and the support of many intellectuals, Putin’s regime has no grounds to fear even a drastic drop in oil prices. Of course, this development would certainly hurt the Russian economy, including its weak banking system and even such giants as Gasprom. As suggested by several Russian economists, the huge “Fund of Stabilization” (recently renamed “The Reserve Fund and “ The Fund of the Nation’s Welfare”), which accumulated 180 billion petrodollars by January 1, 2008, would be unable to stave off the dire consequences of a fall in oil prices in the long run. It is evident that, with the decline of oil revenue, it would be impossible to avoid deterioration in the standard of living. However, under the existing circumstances, these developments would hardly produce a serious shift in the political landscape. Besides, even with the decline of oil revenues, the Kremlin would always have enough money to maintain its huge state apparatus and suborn intellectuals and media.
The Kremlin understands that the real threat is not a decrease in the standard of living, but a resurgence of liberal activity in the intellectual community. The Russian rulers are doing everything to prevent this development, resorting not only to using money, but also direct persecution of any individual, such as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oligarch turned intellectual, and Garry Kasparov, who challenges the Kremlin with liberal ideas. For the same reason, Putin’s leadership reacts hysterically to the support given to Russian liberals by the West.
Fearing any sign of democracy, the Kremlin turned the upcoming presidential election in March 2008 into a pure farce. It will not permit Dmitry Medvedev, Putin’s appointed candidate, to participate in public discussions with the three other candidates, even though all of them essentially support the current regime. In his last two big talks (one at the meeting of the State Council on February 8, 2008, and the other at a press conference on February 13, 2008) Putin rejected even mild critiques of his political regime as having no grounds.
The future of democracy in the country depends not on income dynamics, but on the restoration of a strong liberal movement in society and ultimately on the readiness of a relatively big number of intellectuals and politicians to risk their well-being and even their freedom to defend democratic ideals. In other words, Russia needs new Sakharovs in the intellectual community and political mavericks like Gorbachev in the Kremlin in order to return the country to its democratic coursea process it began in the late 1980s and stopped in the early 2000s.
Today, however, the chances for such developments to materialize look bleak. Only a few people in Moscow believe that the change of presidents will restore the spirit of Perestroika in Russia. Dmitry Medvedev, the future president, began his speech in Krasnoiarsk on February 15 by praising freedom in the country and promised to build up an independent judicial system. However, most Russian liberals dismiss this flirtation with freedoms as insincere, because Medvedev, working as Putin’s aid, was an active participant in the destruction of democracy in Russia. He also accepted his presidency, in spite of the deeply anti-democratic election process. By all accounts, Medvedev, with Putin as prime minister, will continue the policy of his former boss even with some cosmetic changes.
Acknowledgment: The author wishes to thank Joshua Woods for his editorial contribution to this article.