#8
Obschaya Gazeta
No. 51
December 2001
BREAKUP OF PUBLIC POLITICS
The regime is out to do away with unpredictability and uncontrolability
Author: Dmitry Furman
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
JUST LIKE THE PREVIOUS REGIME, THE PRESENT ONE IS NOT OUT TO SAFEGUARD ITSELF FROM REAL THREATS, SINCE THEY DO NOT EXIST AT ALL. IT AIMS TO RULE OUT EVEN THE REMOTE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH THREATS. TO ACHIEVE THIS, IT NEEDS ABSOLUTE PREDICTABILITY AND CONTROLLABILITY.
Battles and events are disappearing from open public politics. A "lack of alternatives" is imposed from the top, from the president, spreading down and encompassing all spheres of public politics. The no-alternatives president must have formed a similar parliament with no-alternative votes. The upper house has all but reached this "Soviet" condition already. The next Duma will probably be like it, or as close to it as possible. The situation is such that only one question remains unanswered at a regional election - who the regime decides will be the winner and who will be ousted from the race altogether. The regional elections themselves are as alternative-free as the presidential election was. They are also gradually ceasing to be events.
The regime's actions cannot be explained only by the survival instinct and the desire to put its own people into all key positions. The actions are clearly too much, even in terms of survival. Just like the previous regime, the present one is not out to safeguard itself from real threats, since they do not exist at all. It aims to rule out even the remote possibility of such threats. To achieve this, it needs absolute predictability and controllability.
The recent election of the new Federation Council chairman is typical from this point of view. The election itself is not nearly as interesting as how it was arranged. Stroyev was not merely replaced with Mironov. He was relieved "of his own volition", forced to say all phrases appropriate to the occasion and recommend the successor. For that, Stroyev was given an order. This is how well-disciplined leaders of the second echelon were dismissed in the Soviet Union. Stroyev's successor was elected by the "soviet-type" majority. It follows that the regime wants more than a banal election of the man it needs - it wants the ballot predictable by all 100%, it wants the replacement to be a natural, routine, and absolutely alternative-free move.
Distribution of seats on the Moscow municipal legislature between parties on the eve of the election should probably be ascribed to the same tendency (some observers see it as the model of future parliamentary election). It is clear that the municipal legislature elected predictably and without alternative cannot pose any threat to the authorities - just the way the previous legislature did not pose any. All the same, similar eagerness to root out any independence is at play here, he desire to turn any event into a ritual where everything is decided beforehand.
That is why the unification congress of the Unity and Fatherland takes place in so working an atmosphere that observers assume that nothing at all is going to happen at the next congresses. It took Bolsheviks about a decade about a decade in the driver's seat to root out real public fighting. The future ruling party is not going to root it out. There will be no public fighting to root out in the first place.
That is why everything independent and spontaneous is alarming, regardless of whether it is dangerous or not... All the same, some uncontrollable things occur, some obscure parties and movements are established. At a future date, they may in theory pose a threat. Right now, they do not fit the ideal of absolute order. That is why their representatives are summoned for the Civic Forum which marks the beginning of formalization of the sphere. The TV-6 network is not dangerous either. But it is uncontrollable, and when uncontrollability and spontanaeity are to be driven out of public politics, they have to be driven out of the sphere of discussion of public politics as well.
The disappearance of political events from the public sphere doesn't mean their disappearance altogether. It was so in the Soviet Union, it is so now. The power struggle is not to be eradicated. Only its forms change. It is changing from a battle for the love of the masses into a battle for the love of the ruler - and moving from the open sphere to the clandestine.
Public political events of revolutionary eras eventually split into public non-events and non-public events. Public events become interesting with minor deviations from the ritual, not with their essence. It is in these deviations that observers always try to see reflections of what transpires behind the scenes. It was so with Boris Yeltsin's speech for example where he thanked the presidential administration. The conclusion was immediately drawn that the presidential administration was under the attack of chekists from St. Petersburg. No one knows anything for a fact but it is clear that real life takes place over there, behind the scenes, and real battles take place there, in the impenetrable sphere of relations between Putin and his entourage, old and new.
The process of elimination of unpredictability is not over yet, and the regime has a lot to do yet in this sphere. Stagnation is not what is coming, something else is. It isn't hard to predict what kind of nation Russia is going to become five or ten years from now. It will be a nation where results of all votes at all levels will be 90% identical. It will be a nation where nothing at all happens in the public political sphere, and where rituals alone are performed - the ritual of election, ritual of parliamentary meetings, ritual of regular presidential meetings with civil society, etc. It will be a nation whose citizens will get a glimpse of the real power struggle only from rumors and results - sudden resignations or arrests for corruption.
It is impossible to say as yet to what extent this prediction is going to come to pass. One thing is clear: when life is absolutely squeezed out from a ritualized and controllable public sphere, it suddenly breaks through from an unexpected direction, and the public sphere may become much too spontaneous for comfort.
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