#44 - JRL 2009-9 - JRL Home
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2009
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh <shlapent@msu.edu>
Is Putin’s Regime Less Vulnerable than Monarchist Russia in 1916 or the Soviet Union in 1990?
By Vladimir Shlapentokh[i]
[Michigan State University]

“The past in Russia is often similar to the present, but, what is even worse, also to the future.”
--Edward Radzinsky, a famous Russian historian and author of acclaimed books on Nikolai the Second, Rasputin and Stalin

On the eve of the anniversary of the Second (October) Russian Revolution, a Moscow journalist from the popular newspaper /Argumenty i Fakty/ talked to a 96-year-old Russian noble, Baron Eduard Falzfei, who clearly remembered how the 300-year-old Romanov Empire dissipated before his eyes in a few days. As he recounted, even one week before the February Revolution, none of the Russian nobles in his family or around him predicted the catastrophic change in their lives. Of course, many mutually exclusive ideas about how to transform politics in Russia were circulating in Petrograd in 1916 (the most radical among them was the replacement of the tsar). Less than three weeks before the resignation of the emperor, Mikhail Rodzianko, a liberal monarchist, during a meeting with Nikolas the Second, demanded radical changes in the government and tried to scare the emperor with the prospect of revolution. The tsar, however, did not take this threat seriously. He treated it as merely one of the many gloomy prophesies that could be found in any society and in any time. Vasilii Shulgin, another monarchist (he was among those who attended the ceremony of Nikolas’s abdication), in his famous memoir /Years,/ recounted that two days before the start of the revolution the tsar still hated the State Duma and signed an edict that stopped its activity for an uncertain period of time. The committed enemies of the monarchy were no shrewder than the imperial court. In exile in Zurich, Vladimir Lenin bitterly lamented in 1916 that his generation would never see a revolution in Russia, the dream of the liberal intelligentsia.

However, on February 23, the demonstration of women in Petrograd who demanded bread was strong enough to trigger the events that brought the abdication of Nikolas the Second in ten days. It meant the collapse of the Russian monarchy, along with its repressive apparatus, its loyal Orthodox Church and the cult of the tsar. The velocity with which the Russian empire vanished amazed the Russians themselves and the whole world. The improbable dissolution of the empire was described in a hundred memoirs whose authors could not believe their eyes as they watched Russia turn into a country that looked as if it had never been ruled by the emperor from Saint Petersburg. As noted by one of the revolution’s witnesses, the famous liberal socialist Nikolai Sukhanov, “The collapse of Tsarism was unexpected and complete.” Vasilii Rosanov, an outstanding Russian philosopher, famously noted that “Russia dissipated in two days, maximum three.” In fact, most Western historians such as Richard Pipes agreed that “tsarism­which survived not seven decades but seven centuries­presumably so popular, collapsed in a matter of days.”

Seven decades later, something similar happened with the successor of the Russian monarchy­the Soviet empire. The Soviet and foreign forecasters were no more successful than those who tried to predict in 1916 what would happen in the next year. The army of “experts” on Russia on the eve of 1991 was many times greater than it was on the eve of the February Revolution. The methodology of social science in the 1980s was seemingly much more sophisticated than at the start of the twentieth century. However, the result was the same­a failure of the observers. In the early 1980s, Andrei Sakharov, a great mind and a connoisseur of the most recent scientific methods of cognition, was no more able to see the future from his own exile in Gorky than Lenin had been. He imagined only the Soviet empire “forever.” What is more, most Russian intellectuals who hated Communism were inclined in the 1970s and early 1980s to support Alexander Zinoviev’s vision of the Soviet Union, as described in his famous book /The/ /Yawning Heights/ (1973), as a perfect society for ordinary people who are concerned only about stability and the satisfaction of their basic needs, and not freedom. There is now a legion of postmortem prophets who advance, with admirable conviction, dozens of causes of the empire’s instant death. None of them, however, were able to predict the demise of the USSR when it was alive. The memoirs of the many Soviet politicians, including people close to Gorbachev, then the leader of the USSR, showed that the collapse of the Soviet system in August 1991 was totally unexpected. Gorbachev himself ultimately recognized that he did not expect the collapse of the USSR in August or later. It became evident when Gorbachev made his first statement in the airport after returning from his recluse in Foros in August 1991. It was clear that the Soviet president did not understand that he came back to a new country. He later acknowledged this fact himself. Alexander Bessmertny, the last Soviet foreign minister, insisted that “Gorbachev did not feel that the USSR was about to collapse.” He said that “I don’t think there was any Soviet Intelligence documents which mentioned this future collapse,” and that “I, like most of the Politburo, understood that the USSR was changing, but it never occurred to us that it could cease to exist.”

Western observers who lived in Moscow were as surprised as the Soviet people. Jack Mattlock, who served as the American ambassador in Moscow for four years before the August events and had perfect knowledge of the Russian language and history, wrote in 1995, “Other empires may have shattered under the pressure of war or revolution, but the Soviet Union expired quietly … Within minutes, while most Americans were opening presents or preparing Christmas dinner, Russia replaced the Soviet Union as a nuclear power … The enormity of what had happened soon sank in. I had expected the outcome, but I also realized that, with all my acquaintance with the society and its politicians and my own participation in some of these events, I could not explain with confidence just how it had happened … How could such a state simply have destroyed itself?”

Western intelligence services and politicians were no more successful than ambassador Matlock in their predictions of the Soviet future. David Arbel and Ran Edelist named several dozens politicians, intelligence officers and journalists in Washington who used the word “surprise” to characterize their reaction to the fall of the Soviet Union. Among those who described themselves as being surprised were Secretary of State James Baker, Secretary of State Lawrence Eagelburger and the high State Department official Robert McFarlane. Dozens of other journalists, intelligence officers and politicians in the United States and Europe confessed their sense of surprise.

I myself was in Moscow in May 1991 and witnessed the drastic deterioration of the standard of living and the universal discontent. However, among the people with whom I talked (from outstanding social scientists to taxi drivers) many predicted (me included) a strong counteroffensive by the Communists, but not the fall of the USSR. Eduard Shevardnadze, then a member of the Politburo and the minister of foreign affairs, predicted this event in December 1990 at a meeting of the Fourth Congress of People’s Deputies. Indeed, in August 1991 the Soviet ruling elite undertook a putsch, which, however, to everybody’s surprise (and to the relief of liberals) was dismantled in three days. The self-proclaimed junta did not dare order the army to shoot into the crowd and quickly capitulated. The Communists and KGB did not resist Yeltsin’s decision to bury the Soviet Union. There was not even one member of a party committee at any level (from the regional to the factory level) who publicly defended the regime, which served, supposedly, as the basis of their status and well being. For the Russians, the fall of the regime was a total surprise­a déjà vu for those who remembered February 1917. Using Rosanov’s phrase (mentioned above), Vladimir Ryzhkov described the collapse of both regimes with the same statement: “They wore off almost instantly.”

Ten years later, the Russians still had not accepted the disappearance of the USSR. Only one quarter of them, contrary to the official propaganda in the 1990s, believed in the objective necessity of the event. The sudden disappearance of both empires produced an outburst of resentment and bitterness in songs, novels and movies. Soon after the collapse of the Soviet Empire, Oleg Gazmanov composed a nostalgic song with the refrain, “I was born in the Soviet Union, I was made in the USSR.” In the cabarets of Berlin and Sophia in the 1920s, Russian émigrés cried while listening to the songs about the country that suddenly disappeared. Ivan Bunin received the Nobel Prize for his novels, particularly/ The Life of Arsenyev,/ /Lika, /and/ Dark Avenues/, in which he tried to restore the spirit of the old Russia which had disappeared so quickly. Post-Soviet filmmakers such as Karen Shakhnazarov did the same in movies like “Vanishing Empire” and in serials like Sergei Ursulyak’s “Liquidation.”

The political commonality of the tsarist and the Soviet regimes: A comparison of two big events

The fact that the existing social order collapsed in Russia two times in the twentieth century, evidently amazing its contemporaries, is by itself remarkable. This factor should not be ignored when predicting the future of Putin’s Russia. Indeed, Putin’s anti-liberal Perestroika made Russian history look more homogeneous than it was in the period between 1989 and 1999 (particularly before the shelling of the parliament in 1993). In the 1990s, it seemed as if the continuity of history had been broken and the comparison of post-Soviet Russia with the Soviet past, and all the more with the prerevolutionary past, no longer made sense. With the Putin regime, the continuity was restored and this comparison became natural again. Now we have at our disposal three periods in Russian history that allow us to make some generalizations and even predictions about the future course of events.[ii] <#_edn2> In order to prove this thesis, I will illustrate the commonality between the tsarist and Soviet regimes, and then compare Putin’s regime with each of them. We will address each regime with the same focused questions in order to examine the degree of commonality (and differences) between them, as required by the methodology of case studies.

Both regimes were deeply authoritarian, even if the differences between them were significant, particularly in terms of the ideologies they used to justify expansion. The liberal elements of the tsarist monarchy were considerable (for instance, there were some liberal freedoms, including the possibility to leave the country), but they were almost completely absent from the Soviet regime. The commonalities between monarchist Russia and the Soviet Union were vehemently rejected in the 1970s and 1980s as nonsense by the majority of Sovietologists; they were recognized by only a small number of American scholars. Alex Inkeles and Richard Pipes were among them.

Let us now describe the major characteristics of the two authoritarian regimes:

1. Exclusion of people from the governing of society. Both empires excluded ordinary Russians, businesspeople and the intelligentsia from participating in high politics. Tsarist Russia permitted these groups to voice their discontent, while the Soviet regime did not.

2. Freedom of media. While the freedom of media was totally absent in Soviet society, it was quite real in tsarist Russia even if the tsarist regime was mostly indifferent to the revelations in the press.

3. Independence of courts. In both regimes, the government exerted influence on the decisions of the courts in political trials, as was clear during the first Russian revolution. However, the tsarist courts did, in some cases, show dignity and independence, which were totally absent in the Soviet courts.

4. The role of the parliament. The commonality in the role of the parliament in both regimes was quite great. In both cases, the supreme leaders made strategic decisions among a narrow circle of officials or relatives and the parliament had no impact on the people in the imperial court or in the Politburo, even if the differences between the two parliaments should not be overlooked.

5. The role of nongovernmental organizations. Nongovernmental political institutions, including political parties, played either no role at all, as in Soviet society, or a secondary role, as in tsarist Russia. In the tsarist regime, these institutions were not able to create an opposition that could actively fight the government.

However, for our analysis, it is even more important to note that the regime was able to prevent the emergence of a serious legal opposition. It was not able, at the same time, to create local political institutions that were ready to defend the monarchy. The tsarist regime, when it faced its death sentence, could not rely on the parties that were ideologically close to it, such as the Oktiabrist Party or the Monarchist Union of the Russian People, which included supporters from the Black Hundreds, an official patriotic movement (a version of Putin’s youth organization “We” ­ Nashi). What is more, even the Orthodox Church, an eternal ally of the imperial power, with its network that covered each cell of society, turned out to be useless for the monarchy during its emergency. All these organizations were completely passive during the fall of the monarchy.

The role of political institutions as independent actors in the Soviet times was much smaller than in prerevolutionary Russia. Deprived of any autonomy, all party committees, from regional to rural districts, had no ability to act on their own and were absolutely passive during the tribulations of Perestroika and particularly during the collapse of the Soviet regime. They did not lodge even a single protest against the banning of their party. Other Soviet nongovernmental organizations such as the Komsomol or the Trade Unions that served the state apparatus were, of course, no more valiant in their defense of the regime.

6. Ideology and the prestige of the leaders. Ignoring public opinion, the tsar and General Secretary believed that the official ideology was shared by the majority of the Russians. In one case, it was an ideology based on the triad of orthodoxy, autocracy and nationality; in the other case, it was the tandem of communism and nationalism. However, both ideologies, while they were strong enough before entering “the dangerous zone,” could not save the regimes.

7. Legitimacy of the regime. Both regimes had strong legitimacy before entering “the dangerous zone.” In the first case, this legitimacy was linked to the personality of the tsar. In the second case, legitimacy was based on the superiority of the Soviet system, the crucial role of the Communist Party, and the key role of the leaders, even if the personalities of the leaders after Stalin were objects of criticism. However, in both cases, the legitimacy of the regime quickly vanished. The abdication of the tsar and the outlawing of the Communist Party in December 1991 were accepted in the country with joy in the first case and with indifference in the second.

8. Bureaucracy and corruption. Bureaucracy in the two regimes was the docile instrument of the state, which was assigned to stifle resistance against the regime. However, there were remarkable differences between the two bureaucracies. While the Soviet state apparatus, even on the eve of Perestroika, was crueler than the tsarist bureaucracy, it was much less corrupt and more efficient than it. At the same time, in the last years of Perestroika, Soviet apparatchiks quickly became corrupt, and were no more willing and able to defend the regime than the tsarists had been.

9. Governors and local government. Both regimes held in contempt the idea of giving autonomy to the governors or regional party secretaries. Without any basis, regional leaders in both cases were extremely passive when they entered the “zone of dangers.” In both 1917 and 1991, the local bosses failed to make even a single attempt to save their respective regimes. Of course, local governments, the famous Zemstvo, enjoyed some elements of autonomy. However, the executive power, before the revolution as well as after it, almost totally dominated Russian cities and villages. In both regimes, ordinary people were helpless against the arbitrariness of the local bureaucracy, even if in Soviet times they had a strong chance of finding support in the capital.

How Stalin tried to equate the tsarist and Soviet regimes

Since the mid 1930s and particularly during and after the war, Stalin was anxious to make his regime look similar to its tsarist predecessor. This step was in line with his use of Russian nationalism, which, since the early 1930s, played a part in the Soviet ideology. He restored the shoulder boards in the army; during the civil war this element of the uniform was the symbol of tsarist times. He brought back the terms “officer” (instead of “commander”) and “minister” (instead of people’s commissar), as well as almost all military ranks of the tsarist army, from “marshal” to “corporal.” He restored the tsarist ranks for several other professions, such as those who worked in the state justice system, as well as the railroad and coal industries. Again, following the example of tsarist Russia, he put uniforms on civilians in several branches of bureaucracy and introduced various types of medals. Stalin also introduced separate schools for boys and girls, restored the military colleges for youth, along with several other measures that demonstrated the commonality of his and the tsarist regime. Stalin included in the pantheon of prominent people several individuals who were also highly respected by the monarchy, such as military leaders Suvorov and Kutuzov. Of course, Stalin ordered his apparatus and media to show high respect for the cruelest tsars of the past, such as Ivan the Terrible and Nicolas the First. The reconciliation with the church and its transformation into a loyal state institution was another element of the rapprochement of the monarchist and Soviet regimes. The imperial restorations survived Stalin’s rule and continued to flourish through the Soviet period.

How Putin’s regime coddles both the tsarist and Soviet regimes

Putin, like Stalin, was eager to show his sympathy for the authoritarian regimes of the past. The Kremlin only tempered its admiration for tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union a little in order to maintain its formal image as a supporter of democracy. Indeed, since late 1990, the Kremlin propaganda tried to either ignore the facts about the opposition’s activities against the tsarist monarchy, or diminish the importance of the two revolutions (1905 and 1917). Two major anniversaries­the 100^th anniversary of the First Russian Revolution, which came in 2005, and the 90^th anniversary of the February Revolution, which came in 2007­were mostly ignored in the country. Historian and journalist Viacheslav Nikonov, a notorious apologist of the Kremlin, ended his article about the 90^th anniversary of the February Revolution by suggesting that “February 1917 is not a date that should be celebrated since, in a few days, Russian statehood and a great country were destroyed.”

A prominent historian from Novosibirsk State University Sergei A. Krasilnikov is very critical of the Kremlin’s attitudes toward the past. “The order has been given,” he wrote, “to rehabilitate Russian and Soviet statehood in all epochs and in all times­for all the czars and general secretaries.” The same view is held by Leonind Parfenov, a highly respected TV journalist who talked about the current regime that “cultivates and conserves the mood in favor of the state as the ultimate value and insists that it is our real feelings and that autocracy is in our blood.” Yurii Afanansiev, a famous democratic supporter during Perestroika, wrote about “Putin’s strategy of rapprochement with tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union.”**

Indeed, the sympathy of Putin’s regime for the monarchic past became evident almost immediately with Putin’s arrival to power in 2000. Being confident about “Russia’s genetic and mental predisposition towards the super-centralized state,” Putin praised the monarchy as an institution that should not pander to the opinions of the electorate, even if he also said that “the rebirth of monarchy in Russia is not very likely.” Nikita Mikhalkov, a film director and Putin’s friend, likes to flaunt his “monarchist convictions.” In his movie /Barber of Siberia,/ he depicted Alexander the Third, who was known for his acerbic nationalism and despotism, as an ideal Russian ruler.

Putin was not at all confused with the numerous characterizations of his appointment of Medvedev in 2007 as a monarchic act. Besides, Putin himself was chosen to be president by the monarchic gesture of Boris Yeltsin, who did not object to being named by his courtiers as “tsar Boris” (a book was also published with the same title). What is more, Putin ordered Yeltsin’s memorial service to follow the rituals of the Russian tsar’s funerals, a fact noted by Russian media.

Putin’s positive attitudes toward Stalin’s regime have been even more clearly pronounced. As a matter of fact, during the seven years of his stay in the Kremlin, Putin said almost nothing negative about Stalin when he talked inside the country. He used several occasions to mention Stalin in a positive light. He, for instance, cited him as a leader who knew how to stimulate the activities of Soviet academics, which was necessary for industrialization. As president, he used many occasions to mention Stalin in a good light. Putin’s presidential website is full of materials that praise Stalin unconditionally. He talked about the bad things that happened in “Stalin’s time,” but never talked to a domestic audience about his responsibility for the atrocities. In his contact with foreigners, Putin also separated Stalin’s imperial, foreign policy, which he usually defended (Stalin’s role in the war in particular), from his domestic policy, which he labeled “dictatorial.” The restoration of such powerful symbols as the Stalinist hymn and the flag of the USSR in the army was, of course, a good sign of Putin’s attitude toward the Soviet past.

To which regime is Putin’s Russia closer­the tsarist or Soviet one?

Let us try to identify the cases in which Putin’s regime was closer to the tsarist regime versus the Soviet one. Putin’s Russia was almost identical to the tsarist and Soviet regimes in the way it excluded people from participating in political processes. As was the case in both of the previous regimes, Putin’s regime excluded ordinary people, businesspeople and the intelligentsia from participating in the governing of the country. In all three regimes, the parliament did not play a serious role in the decision-making process. The official ideology was, prior to the “period of dangers,” very influential, and the legitimacy of the three regimes was quite strong, despite the existence of some opposition, which was very weak in Brezhnev’s time and during the dissident movement and quite strong before 1914. In all three regimes, the governors (or regional party secretaries) and the local authorities were totally at the mercy of the central government.

At the same time, in many respects, Putin’s regime has more commonalities with the Soviet regime than the tsarist one. Party life in tsarist Russia was much more authentic than under Putin’s regime, which is closer in nature to the Soviet Union. In any case, prerevolutionary Russia did not know such a phenomenon as the political party “Russia’s Unity,” which is now similar to the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, as recognized even by pro-Kremlin TV journalists like Vladimir Pozner. Putin’s State Duma was much closer to the Soviet /Verkhovnyi Soviet/* *than to the tsarist State Duma. Both Putin’s and Brezhnev’s parliament were rubberstamp institutions, while the tsarist Duma was a living political body. Indeed, this Duma, since the very beginning, confronted the executive power, an unthinkable act for the Soviet parliament or Putin’s Duma. The limited political influence of the tsarist Duma permitted it to play an important role after the collapse of the regime, while Gorbachev’s parliament, with its somewhat increased prestige in the country, could not do the same when the Soviet Union was falling apart. Local government in Putin’s Russia, with its dependence on bureaucracy (the so called “vertical of power”), is much weaker than tsarist Russia and in fact differs very little from the self-government of Soviet times, when the party officials were the absolute bosses of the formally elected members of the local Soviets. Putin’s regime was closer to the tsarist regime than to the Soviet regime in terms of corruption. The Soviet regime, even in Brezhnev’s time, was far less corrupt than the Putin or tsarist regimes. At the same time, Putin’s regime* *looks somewhat softer* *than* *the Soviet regime in the case of media. Even if the major media outlets are controlled by the authorities, as in the Soviet past, Putin’s Kremlin tolerates some liberal media such as /Ekho Moskvy/ and /Novaya Gazeta/.

The crises that brought an end to the two authoritarian regimes

Before their collapse, both regimes went through “the dangerous zone” when their fundamentals were undermined­in tsarist Russia during the period of military failures in WWI, and in the Soviet Union during Perestroika. The safety of the two regimes could probably be maintained over a long period of time if their leaders were able and willing to prevent the slipping of their regimes into this zone. However, as soon as any regime enters “the dangerous zone,” it must pass a test. Each particularity of its political and social structure prevents or contributes to negative tendencies in society, which could ultimately bring the demise of the regime or save it.

The first regime entered this zone in the middle of WWI; the second regime, in the middle of Perestroika.* *Of course, the circumstances of the failure of the two regimes were quite different. Paraphrasing the famous beginning of /Anna Karenina,/ we can say that the well functioning regimes were similar to each other, but different in the way they died. On the surface, in one case, the regime was destroyed from “below”; in another case, from “above.” However, in both cases the split inside the ruling elite and its loss of self-confidence to cope with the destructive processes were the ultimate causes of these two crucial events in the twentieth century.

In the contemporary terminology, we can talk about the political and economic crises that the empires suffered and could not overcome. It was not true that all crises were lethal for both empires. There is no place here to evaluate the collapse of the two empires, that is, whether it was good or bad for Russia and ordinary people. The answers are very different depending on the criteria used for the assessment of these two cosmic events in world history. Until now, many Russians considered the February Revolution in 1917 (without speaking about the October revolution) and the anti-Communist revolution in 1991 as great disasters, while many others greeted them as the best events their country’s history. At the same time, in both cases, the leadership could have avoided “the period of danger,” if it abandoned its geopolitical ambitions. For the tsar, the Entente (the alliance with France and England) and the victory in the war promised the expansion of the empire. For the Soviet leadership, the structural changes in the economy promised military parity with the West.* *In both cases, some advisers warned the rulers about their actions. In one case, the pro-German party at the court was against Russia’s involvement in the war; in the second case, party conservatives were against the radical reforms. However, the combination of pure subjective and objective factors pushed both regimes to their termination.

Putin’s regime looks invulnerable

Before August 2008, Putin’s regime looked as invulnerable as the tsarist monarchy in 1914, when the masses enthusiastically supported the war against Germany and praised the monarch. The Soviet regime in 1985 was also confident in its strength and its ability to solve its major problems in the international and domestic arenas. Gorbachev was very optimistic about the “potential of socialism,” as he said during Perestroika. The tsarist regime had plans for the 1920s, while Gorbachev, in the giddy days of Perestroika, elaborated a program that promised to provide each Soviet family with an apartment by 2000. Even today, despite the current crisis, Putin deemed it reasonable to endorse, with great fanfare, the “concept of development of the Russian economy until 2020.”

Putin’s self-assertion and optimism was based on the continued flow of petrodollars and a belief in the decline of the United States. The rise of oil prices, along with a new ability to blackmail Europe with its supply of fuel, gave Putin self-confidence and arrogance. The oil intoxication influenced the minds of the Kremlin on many issues. The Kremlin leader and the whole elite almost suddenly began to feel superior over the world, the United States and Europe in the first place. The various economic and international difficulties that the United States experienced in 2006-2008 helped convince the Kremlin that America was no longer a superpower. The war with Georgia, which was described by official propaganda as a great military success, was indeed supported by the absolute majority of the Russians. In fact, the August-September days of 2008, when the regime celebrated the victory over Georgia, were the last happy days of the Kremlin. Three quarters of the Russians endorsed the official policies, domestic and international (in December, this number dropped to 50 percent).

In the aftermath of the Georgian war, it looked like the anti-American propaganda, along with the hatred of neighbors, was sufficient for legitimizing the regime. The Kremlin openly returned to praising the imperial ideology and dared to suggest, through its propagandists such the editors of the newspaper /Expert/ (a member of the liberal print media in the past), that the five-century expansion of the Russian and the Soviet empires was evidence of “our full parity with advanced industrial states.” In August of 2008, official media believed that “everything is in order,” just as the monarchist press described it in 1916, and official Soviet outlets in 1985 and 1990.

The period of dangers for Putin’s regime

The shift from complacency to apprehension occurred in October. This did not happen because of the ruling tandem was concerned about a hostile international reaction to Russia’s behavior in the Caucasus. The Kremlin, particularly in the first weeks after the war, scoffed at the international condemnation, describing it as not at all dangerous to Russia. Even if the West was hostile, as Medvedev suggested, nothing dangerous could happen. He added, “We are not afraid of anything, including the prospect of a new Cold War.” The Kremlin felt the tremors of danger only when it discovered the negative impact of the war on its economy. The catastrophic decline in the value of its stock market and the flight of capital started before Russia began to feel the impact of the growing world financial crisis, which multiplied the troubles in the financial markets. By mid October, the value of Russian stocks fell by 70 percent in comparison with early May. However, it was the fall of oil prices and other raw materials that delivered the most painful blow to the regime. Indeed, oil prices fell from $145 to $34 per barrel at the end of December. Meanwhile, raw materials made up 80 percent of the export revenues and one third of the budget. The fall in the value of the ruble against the dollar was also very painful for millions of Russians who kept their savings in national currency. As the famous Russian politician Boris Nemtsov formulated, “The essence and symbol of Putin’s regime is big money.” The prominent Russian economist Evgenii Gontmakher added that it is not nuclear bombs and tanks, as was the case in Soviet times … “money is the major weapon of the Kremlin.”

When in January 2005 the Kremlin faced the first mass protests of retired people against the monetization of their benefits, it quickly solved the problem by flooding money into the welfare system, which mollified the furious old people. With big money, the Kremlin significantly increased the standard of living in the 2000s. The real average salary increased between 2000 and 2007 by 2.5 times. Three quarters of the Russians believed, on the eve of 2008, that the next year would be better for them and for the country.

With the clear intention of gaining support from the public, the Kremlin not only improved the material life of the country, but increased people’s leisure time and made entertainment more available. The Russian government provided its citizens, for instance, with a winter vacation of unprecedented length. A vacation of a similar duration was not seen in the Soviet Union of the past, or in wealthy countries of today, such as the United States. This paid universal vacation lasted 10 days starting with the New Year.

In 2004, Putin drastically increased the wellbeing 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 $3,000 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 rest institutions and free high-quality medical services. Big money made it possible for Putin’s regime to avert the danger of the opposition on the part of the creative intelligentsia. Most of them were materially successful people. In November, the stream of petrodollar slowed and the country entered a new phase in its development.

In November and even December, the people were far from an understanding of the economic dangers that would face them in the next months and years. In the beginning, the government banned the media’s use of the word “crisis,” while Putin and Medvedev tried to suggest that Russia will get through its period of “economic difficulties” without much problem. Later, Putin changed his overoptimistic tone. On a talk show on December 4, he tried to soothe the people’s worries with the suggestion that Russia overcame many disasters in its one thousand year history and it will cope with the current situation.

Few people in Russia doubt that the country entered a deep economic crisis and that the situation will worsen. Even economists far from the opposition describe the economic developments in very gloomy terms. In November, the fall in industrial production was as deep as in the 1990s: 91 percent compared with November 2007 and 89 percent in comparison with October 2008. This decline was steeper than in 1992-1994 and even 1998, the most painful year for the Russian economy. There is a consensus in the country that the crisis will reach its peak in the Spring of 2009.

Despite the official propaganda, by end of November, according to data from the Fund of Public Opinion, 42 percent believed that “the country is in deep crisis”; 26 percent were seriously concerned about “the developments in their region,” and 39 percent said that “the discontent of people is growing.” In some industrial regions, the level of discontent reached 51-54 percent. Of special significance are the data collected by the regional pollsters. In my opinion, these pollsters produce more reliable data than the Moscow polling firms. According to a survey carried out by the Voronezh pollsters in mid December, 61 percent of the residents of the big industrial city Voronezh expected the next year to be “worse” than the current year (in 2007, only 13 percent said the same thing).

Most critics of the regime in 1916 and 1990 were also very skeptical about the possibility of radical changes in society. Still, in the opinion of many liberals, even if the crisis devastated the standard of living, the famous patience of the Russian people would save the regime for a while. Moscow liberals vie with each other in criticizing their own people for their obedience to authority and indifference toward the incompetence of the government.

At the same time, it is evident that the Kremlin is ready to rely on brutal force and is preparing to crush the people’s discontent, and any protest action, street disturbance or strike. The ruling tandem recently curtailed the role of jury trials, which would deal with, among other things, the people enmeshed in “mass disturbances.” The Kremlin also widened the number of activities that can be treated as “treason.” Both moves reminded Russians of the notorious counter reforms of Alexander the Third in the 1880s, which were directed against the liberal innovations of his father Alexander the Second. The authorities showed their readiness to use cruel means when it crushed the protest marches in Moscow in December 2008. They arrested a group of retired generals and officers with chests full of medals. The riot police also dispersed and arrested hundreds of people who protested against the rise of the import tariff on imported cars in Vladivostok and several other Russian cities (Khabarovsk, Novosibirsk, Chelyabinsk and Izhevsk). In late December, the Ministry of Internal Affairs officially declared that it expected public protests and was ready to deal with them. Not only the critics of the regime, but also officials recognized that in one or another form Russia is entering difficult times. The Kremlin is also ready to curtail its expenditures on many projects, though it suggested that it would do everything possible to contain the growing unemployment and the decline of the standard of living. The Kremlin also put much hope in the public’s high rating of Putin as a national leader.

Putin’s high rating: How much does it reflect the Russians’ mood?

In December 2008, Putin’s positive rating reached 83 percent and 78 percent respectively, according to the /Levada Center/ and /The All Russian Center of the Public Opinion /(people were asked, “Do you approve of Putin’s activities?”). According to/ The Fund of Public Opinion,/ the rating was lower at 62-69 percent (people were asked, “Do you trust the head of the government Putin?”). Since the appraisal of Putin’s work as a leader of the country showed, at least so far, no correlation with the economic troubles, some observers supposed that this rating was a misleading indicator of public attitudes toward the regime. Of course, the rating reflects the gratitude of many Russians for “seven fat years,” a big contrast to the terrible 1990s. They also see Putin as the only symbol of the country’s stability. A significant number of Russians (how many we do not know) support Putin because they are under the direct impact of TV, which continually praise Putin and his alter ego Medvedev, and never allows opposition leaders access to the screen. It is remarkable that, according to a survey by VTSIOM, the number of Russians who placed Putin’s name on the list of “most loved Russians” was only 5 percent in December 2008. This data contrasts with the 78 percent of Russians who stated their approval of Putin when asked closed questions in a survey by the same polling firm.

As noted by some independent observers, such as Vladimir Milov, the high rating of Putin would quickly fall if these circumstances changed. As soon as a crisis expanded and people evaluated the situation in the country on the basis of their own experiences, Putin’s high rating, combined with a free media, would evaporate with the same speed as the cults of the previous leaders (the tsar, Gorbachev and Yeltsin) vanished. During a protest demonstration in Vladivostok on December 14, in connection with the rising import duties on foreign cars, one half of the participants (1,000 people) signed an appeal to replace the government headed by Putin.

Conclusion

Putin’s regime has joined two other authoritarian regimes in twentieth-century Russian history. Essentially it does not differ from the tsarist monarchy or the Soviet Union. However, there are two specific features of Putin’s regime that make it even more vulnerable than the other authoritarian regimes. It is ideologically “naked,” that is, it is neither leftist, like the Soviet regime, nor religious and nationalistic, like the tsarist one, nor liberal, as in the case of Yeltsin’s regime. The harshest anti-Americanism cannot claim to be the dominant ideology, nor to shape the minds of ordinary people, because, as history shows, xenophobia can be an effective ideological tool for the ruling elite only if it is combined with egalitarian slogans, which is not the case for Putin's regime, which is terribly afraid of leftist ideas. At the same time, Putin's regime is deeply corrupt at all levels of the hierarchy. The tsarist court was also accused of being corrupt.* *However, the wealth of the tsar and his family was beyond reproach and even the fiercest enemies of the monarch did not use the adjective “corrupt” to describe the tsar. To talk about the corruption of the Soviet leaders, from Lenin to Gorbachev, is simply absurd. Putin’s Kremlin had a strong reputation for being corrupt. Boris Nemtsov recently emphasized that Putin’s regime resisted democratization, because it was afraid of an investigation into corruption, given the criminal origin of the fortunes directly related to the Kremlin. For this reason, Putin’s bureaucracy is much more corrupt than the Soviet one and probably also the tsarist one. Even if Putin’s bureaucracy is interested in maintaining the regime, its corrupt nature has made it inefficient, incompetent and incapable of confronting serious problems and defending the system. Several experts­persistent critics of Putin’s regime such as Nikolai Petrov, among others­insist that the regime is so corrupt and so incompetent that it is unable to cope with a crisis.

The regime was able to improve the life of the people due to petrodollars. The contract between the Kremlin and the masses­a relatively good life in exchange for authoritarian rule­has been working. However, with a drastic fall in the standard of living, despite the notorious Russian patience and the cruelty of the police, the contract is in the process of being declared void, which could have serious consequences for the country.

Whatever the developments in the next years, history has shown that the Putin regime, without a network of loyal political institutions and without an efficient ideology, does not have a chance for longevity. The major institutions of the regime, such as the local organization of the party “Russia’s Unity,” would be passive in the case of an emergency. To follow Gontmakher’s gloomy scenario for the next years, as described in his article “Novocherkassk ­ 2009,” the party members would burn their party cards, and no official in the country would dare to give the order to shoot the protesters. Some governors would flee their offices, while others would try to install some order with separatist slogans.

Of course, nobody knows when Putin’s regime will meet its end. It is impossible to predict who and with what cost the existing regime will be replaced by a new one. Nobody can predict the relative roles of the liberal, left and nationalist elements in a post-Putin Russia, or the conflicts that could arise among the political class: between different special services, between the presidential and governmental administrations, and between Moscow and the province. Mayor of Moscow Yuri Luzhkov's harsh critique of Putin's economic failures in a January issue of the governmental newspaper /Rossiiskaia Gazeta/ is a clear sign that this pragmatic politician decided that the confrontation with the Kremlin now is not only possible but also promises some dividends. In December, the liberals pointed to a few events that demonstrated their growing role and impact on the behavior of Russians. They suggested that liberalism was the only positive future for the country.[iii] The same argument was made by those who believed that Russia has a leftist future,[iv] and by those who were confident that only ejecting non-Russians from the country could bring prosperity.[v]

Certainly, Putin’s regime has a chance to stay in power despite the crisis. We know several cases when authoritarian regimes were able to overcome major problems, even if they were doomed to falter later. Only a decade before the fall of the monarchy, Nikolas the Second’s regime almost collapsed during the revolution of 1905-1906. The Soviet regime was exposed to serious dangers during collectivization and mass starvation in 1930-1933. There were also dangerous days in June 1953, when, after Stalin’s death, the tanks appeared on the Moscow streets. Many people feared a possible confrontation between the army personnel loyal to Zhukov and the security police loyal to Beria, which could have had serious consequences for the country.

In the same way, the USSR could have survived in 1991 if the junta won the battle against Yeltsin, which was quite possible since the overwhelming majority of the population was in no hurry to support Yeltsin. Even in Moscow, only a tiny proportion of people defended Yeltsin in the White House during the glorious days of the August events. And still, despite these soothing examples in Russian history, Putin’s regime cannot escape the fate of the authoritarian regime in such a big country.

According to the book of Daniel in the Bible, during the feast in the palace of the Babylonian King Belshazzar (sixth century B.C.), as the king and his court glorified their victory, four words emerged on the wall: “Mene, Mene, Tekel and Parsin.” These words were translated by Daniel­an exiled Jew who was called upon by the king to explain the meaning of the words­as a prediction of the end of the kingdom and the death of the king. The same night, Belshazzar was slain and his regime collapsed. Some Russian pessimists suggested that these four famous words can already be seen on the Kremlin wall, and Putin’s regime is close to its end.

The Kremlin’s recent preoccupation with prolonging the presidential term, as well as its growing reliance on using coercive means to protect the status quo, are signs of its serious concern about its immediate future. In December, the Russian public paid special attention to the fact that Moscow, given its lack of confidence in the local police, brought in riot commandos from other regions. Indeed, in order to quash the protests in Vladivostok on December 14 and 21, the Kremlin sent the riot police from Moscow, while the participants of a demonstration in the capital were beaten by police who were brought in from the provinces.

Of course, the regime could try to avert a threat to its existence by liberalizing political life and starting a real fight against corruption. Such an alternative to the current policy is hardly realistic, because it would endanger not only the political power of the ruling elite, but also its property. For this reason, we are doomed to watch Putin’s political regime fight for its survival in a worsening economic climate. It is difficult to predict the impact of this process on international life. The West can do nothing to influence the drama unfolding in Russia.

Endnotes

[i] I would like to thank Dr. Lubov Alievskaia Shlapentokh for the main idea of this article and her numerous comments.

[ii] The spirit of Charles Tilly’s methodology for the study of historical events inspires this comparative analysis of two big events in Russian history. If it is possible to compare major revolutions in two or three countries in order to make some generalizations, as Theda Skocpol did in /States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Study of France, Russia, and China/ (Cambridge University Press, 1979), why it is unreasonable to compare the collapse of authoritarian regimes in one country to predict the impact of the authoritarian regime on the fate of contemporary Russia? (See Charles Tilly, /As sociology meets history/. New York: Academic Press, 1981; and his /Regimes and repertoires,/ Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). Another important theoretical basis for this essay is the methodology of case studies, which can be described as “the detailed examination of an aspect of historical episodes to develop or test historical explanations that may be generalized to other events.” (See Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, /Case Studies And Theory Development In The Social Sciences/, MIT Press, 2004, p. 5). Close to this approach is the methodology offered by Gary King, Robert Keohand and Sidney Verba­what they refer to as Designing Social Inquiry­which proposes principles for making inferences from the study of individual cases (Gary King, Robert Keohand and Sidney Verba, /Designing Social Inquiry/, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001; see also Paul David Allison, /Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal Event Data/, Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1984, p. 5).

[iii] In December, President Medvedev invited a few thousand people to the Kremlin and addressed them with a speech in which he praised the constitution and human rights. During his speech, Roman Dobrokhotov, a young journalist, stood up, to the great amazement of the people there, and condemned the changes in the constitution, which prolonged the president’s term and violated freedoms in Russia. He was taken away by police, and later that day he was fired from his job. However, hundreds of people supported his act on the Internet and he became a sort of hero among liberals. (See his interview with /Ekho Moskvy,/ December 16, 2008). Another episode was no less remarkable. On Sunday, December 21, an anonymous employee of the Ministry of Internal Affairs posted on the site of this institution an appeal to the police to defend the regime against ordinary people. This appeal appeared on the site for only a few hours, but was then discussed in the liberal media. Some pointed out how little the public knows about the real mood of those who should defend the Kremlin. (See Konstantin Rekemchuk’s interview with /Ekho Moskvy,/ December 22, 2008). Liberals also enjoyed the fact that Nikita Mikhalkov, one of Putin’s myrmidons, was not reelected as the head of the Alliance of Movie Makers, which held its congress in late December (Mariia Bezruk, “Chuzhoi' sredi svoikh,” */Tribuna/ <http://dlib.eastview.com/sources/publication.jsp?id=5386>*, No. 49, December 25, 2008).

[iv] The believers in a leftist socialist future for Russia found an eloquent advocate in Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The former oligarch sent from his prison cell articles that praised “neo socialism” as the future for Russia and the world (Mikhail Khodorkovskii, “Novyi' sotsializm: Levyi' povorot - 3. Global'naia perestroika,” */Vedomosti/ <http://dlib.eastview.com/sources/publication.jsp?id=788>*, No. 211, November 7, 2008).* *

[v] There are many data showing a big social basis for rabid Russian nationalism. It has many admirers in the FSB, the army and police. No less than half the population supports the slogan, “Russia for Russians” (“Rossia dlia russkikh…?” /Levada-tsentr,/ August 25, 2006, available at http://www.levada.ru/press/2006082500.html, accessed December 10, 2008).