Russia’s “sovereign democracy”
By Vlad Sobell (vlad.sobell@dir.co.uk)
• With the ending of the Yukos affair, Russia has entered a more optimistic phase, allowing minds to focus on the presidential succession in 2008. Against the background of a strong economy, President Putin’s regime now has an opportunity to engineer a smooth transfer to a chosen successor, ensuring stability and continuity.
• The regime’s Russian and Western opponents, on the other hand, consider the “problem of 2008” as a signal opportunity to install what they see as genuine democracy, if necessary through a Ukraine-style regime change. A US-based pundit has recently hailed such an outcome as unavoidable.
• This paper shows that these predictions are misconceived, as they are derived from tendentious interpretation of recent events, unsupported by evidence. What such pundits see as the regime weakness actually is its strength. Besides, a regime change in Russia would most likely lead to a truly authoritarian regime.
• We also point to the insufficiently publicised, or misrepresented, attempt by the Kremlin to develop Russia’s “sovereign democracy”, as a condition for maintaining the Federation’s integrity. This effort to nurture a genuinely Russian democratic culture by Putin’s modernising regime is an inherently superior and safer strategy.
A lull before the next storm?
The closure of the Yukos affair and President Putin’s drive since March to swing the pendulum back by restoring business confidence has marked a more optimistic phase, underpinned by continued political stability and an expanding economy. At the same time, this brighter outlook is focusing minds on the most important event on the horizon the presidential succession in early 2008. The regime and Putin supporters will be pulling out all the stops to ensure that power is smoothly passed to a groomed successor, while hoping that the “Putin touch” can somehow be transferred onto the next leader.
On the other hand, the opposition and the legions of the regime’s foreign critics expect the “problem of 2008” to usher in what they would welcome as the defeat of Putin’s authoritarianism and the completion of Russia’s transition to democracy. It is confidently assumed that the regime will attempt to “steal” the elections, prompting a Western-assisted “revolution” as has happened in Ukraine.
Recent weeks have seen a noteworthy escalation of what might be described as the ideological struggle over Russia’s fate, with a Western advocate of regime change incredibly predicting the regime’s imminent implosion. On the other hand, the Kremlin ideologists have called for the entrenchment of “sovereign democracy” as the only way in which Russia’s future as a stable, integrated state can be assured.
This paper argues that the predictions of regime collapse are misconceived, as they are based on questionable assumptions and flimsy evidence. Furthermore, a regime collapse would be highly undesirable, as it would most likely lead to a throwback to genuine authoritarianism. On the other hand, the development of “sovereign democracy” is just what the doctor should order.
Putin’s legacy: the battle-tested foundations of democracy
Following the break-up of the Soviet Union control over the bulk of Russia’s resources passed to the new breed of oligarchs (frequently part of, or well connected with, the disintegrating communist nomenklatura). This was engineered by the political alliance between the reformist regime of President Yeltsin and the oligarchy, which most spectacularly demonstrated its muscle in Yeltsin’s last-minute victory in the presidential elections in June 1996.
The victory, however, has not come without a price. Yeltsin’s struggle with the communist reaction necessitated the granting of free rein to the oligarchs, eventually leading to the state’s capture. Although this was certainly preferable to neo-communism, Russia’s new democracy remained badly distorted. To overcome this defect, it was necessary to create a decent distance between the oligarchs and the state the task that fell onto the next president, Vladimir Putin.
Initially it looked as if the manoeuvre would be accomplished with relatively little aggravation. Following the voluntary exile of the dominant Yeltsin-era oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky Russia in early 2003 offered a promising picture of stability and strong economic rebound, with the oligarchy apparently accepting the unwritten deal: keep your possessions, but support, rather than undermine, the regime.
Unfortunately, this was not meant to last, as the “first generation” oligarchs became eclipsed by the more vertically integrated, oil-based oligarchy of the Yukos kind. While the former were certainly very ambitious and influential, they lacked the practically unlimited financial resources and organisational wherewithal to launch a convincing attack on the regime. President Putin’s showdown with Berezovsky, therefore, resembled a tea party compared with the much more destructive struggle with Menatep/Yukos.
With the confrontation over, it is possible to conclude that after nearly six years in office, President Putin and his associates have created a reasonably stable equilibrium, sufficiently robust to withstand the pressures it is facing, including those of the leadership succession. Russia is where it was in early 2003, but it is more resilient, having absorbed the lessons of Yukos.
Despite the confrontation’s high “collateral damage”, the balance sheet does not look all that bad. Foreign direct investment is strongly growing, with the stock market once again soaring. Tax compliance has dramatically improved (one of the factors behind Russia’s strong fiscal surpluses), while there is evidence that the “price” of corruption has risen, as corruption is no longer entirely risk free. The oligarchs continue to maintain the correct distance from the state, making another Yukos affair increasingly unlikely.
Equally, there is now sufficient evidence that the regime has successfully restrained the “tax terrorism” to which it resorted during its battle with Yukos, thus removing a major source of potential instability. Russia’s investment environment is, therefore, bound to grow more predictable, with more investment flowing in. At the same time, the regime’s political reforms (such as of the electoral system, providing incentives for the development of proper parties, or the creation of consultative Public Chamber) are demonstrably aiming to nurture the civic society and genuine democracy, free from the oligarchic hands.
Will the regime implode?
Given the clear blue sky ahead and apparently believing that Russia simply would not be Russia if it remained stable a prominent US-based analyst, Anders Aslund, has raised the intriguing possibility that the regime will actually self-destruct, chiefly because of errors of its own making. He contends that Putin has re-centralised Russia’s political system to a point at which the regime is losing touch with reality and has grown hopelessly dysfunctional.
Based on this interpretation, the author anticipates the regime’s imminent collapse stemming from its decision-making paralysis, internal tensions and/or its mishandling of a crisis, such as a major terrorist attack. Alternatively, he maintains that this will be precipitated and aided by popularly supported revolutionary surge of so called “democratic opposition” and its Western backers in the run up to the 2007 parliamentary and 2008 presidential elections.
Aslund, however, does not fear the potentially catastrophic consequences of this scenario. On the contrary, depicting Putin as “one of the world’s foremost advocates of authoritarianism”, he considers such an outcome not only inevitable, but also desirable on moral grounds.
This gloomy (cheerful? depending on one’s viewpoint) scenario operates with the cybernetics-derived notion of an over-centralised system unable to process, and satisfactorily respond to, the signals it is receiving, causing it to haywire. The implication is that, while Putin and his associates have built their “controlled democracy” in order to reverse the disintegration of Yeltsin’s years, they have gone too far ultimately generating even more chaos than there had been in the first place. Furthermore, since the theory holds the regime incapable of corrective action (that is receiving and acting on a feedback), it has now irretrievably painted itself in its dismal, chaotic corner.
Although deceptively attractive, this reading of Putin’s Russia is in our opinion seriously flawed. It rests on a thoroughly tendentious interpretation of recent events, which the narrative hopes to portray as conclusive evidence of the regime’s ineptitude. These include the Yukos affair, the terrorist attack in Beslan in September 2004, the Ukrainian elections and the reform of in-kind benefits in early 2005. The problem is that, none of these events need necessarily be interpreted as unambiguous failure.
The formulation and implementation of policy tends to be perceived as a straightforward process, characterised as: “we agree on the objectives we want to reach and proceed to implement them, while relying on a range of readily available tools”. However, seasoned practitioners know full well that in reality it rarely happens that way. While objectives may be well understood and adequate tools available, the actual attainment of these objectives tends to be a very messy business, with the tools frequently malfunctioning or turning out to be unsuitable. Unexpected problems arise on the way, while the authorities’ actions themselves unavoidably produce unwelcome and unpredictable side effects. Disagreements and conflicts flare up on how to proceed further, making progress even more difficult.
Viewed in this light, governments rarely effortlessly move from A to B, but most of the time struggle along, blunder and cope with the unforeseen consequences of their errors. This realistic interpretation of government may be particularly relevant in the case of Russia, as this country’s creaking bureaucracy and still insufficiently developed democratic institutions make the attainment of objectives especially difficult. But this does not mean that in the global league Russia stands in a dunce class of its own, in having a completely dysfunctional government. It would take a brave theorist to deny that all governments blunder and spend most of their time adapting to, and minimising, the consequences of their blunders.
At the same time, this vision of government as an imprecise and messy business does have a silver lining: it sometimes in fact frequently happens that an outcome which, on the face of it, appears disastrous, actually turns out to have weighty positive ramifications and long term consequences, whose beneficial impact is not immediately obvious often even to its makers.
The salient event the Yukos affair can, of course, be interpreted as a blow to Russia’s economy and political stability. But equally as is argued above in the context of Russia’s post-Soviet evolution it can be seen as a highly desirable, albeit costly, detour. Apart from decoupling the oligarchs from the state thus creating the foundations for a standard big business-government relationship the Yukos affair has also helped to legitimise the new capitalist order in the eyes of the population (or rather, has made the population see that what most Russians see as “theft” will not necessarily go unpunished). In the long run, this is more significant than short run damage to Russia’s investor perception.
The reform of in-kind benefits may have been “botched”, as the analytical consensus has apparently concluded. But the critics are disingenuous in omitting to mention the undertaking’s complexity as well as its potential for fuelling social disquiet. Could a major departure from Soviet-era social welfare provision, affecting some 45 million people and running head on against the age-old paternalistic culture, be at all implemented without a hitch and protests? Is it not conceivable that such reforms might be “botched” even in the most effective Western democracies? Besides, six month down the road, there is sufficient evidence to show that the new system is functioning well, while providing an additional boost to the economy.
The Aslund narrative fails to highlight the material fact of the Russian government showing sufficient flexibility enabling it to safeguard the essence of the reform, while compromising at the margins in the face of spontaneous popular resistance. Since the regime has also demonstrated a sufficient capacity for “macro-flexibility”, having suspended its anti-oligarch campaign, the theory, resting as it does on the notion of a lacking feedback, cannot therefore stand.
Bizarrely, the theory also assumes that it is only the Putin regime, and the Russian authorities, which are capable of making errors in the face of vicious terrorism. Does terrorism and blunders in fighting not occur in other countries?
Incidentally, evidence from Ukraine does not conclusively show that the nominally democratic, anti-corruption revolution has been all that democratic and corruption-free, while there is the risk that the country will merely see one oligarchy replacing another.
The Ukrainian experience has important ramifications for Russia. Russia does, indeed, suffer from a democratic deficit, a flaw the regime has been quite happy to acknowledge (unlike the Soviets, the Putinistas do not claim to be running the most advanced democracy in the world). But this does not warrant calls for a risky revolutionary action. In the current climate, an unravelling of Putin’s regime would most likely usher in a populist, strongly nationalistic and anti-Western authoritarianism.
The Kremlin’s “sovereign democracy”
An important insight into the regime’s own thinking has been made possible through the pronouncements by deputy head of the presidential administration, Vladislav Surkov. Regarded as the “chief ideologist”, Surkov has called for the establishment of “sovereign democracy”, placing priority on the development of national political and business elites, which would actually live in Russia, instead of, as he put it, in Monte-Carlo. According to Surkov, the failure to develop such national elite and mature political culture would lead to an eventual slow decay of the Federation.
Surkov’s ideas make a great deal of sense. For example, it would be difficult to disagree with the following: “In spite of the high degree of integration of the Western economies, French elite is considered as French, and German as German ... as long as the Russian ruling elite remains an offshore aristocracy, as long as it fails to understand that …it is a national bourgeoisie, we will have nothing good in this country. We will dangle in a critical gap. It is because of this gap that we have not yet succeeded in anything”.
Surkov has acknowledged that it is inadvisable to add any adjectives to “democracy”, and sympathises with the purists’ view that “democracy” is more important than “sovereignty”. However, he argues that both are equally important in the context of Russia’s current predicament, as democracy cannot be built without the parallel existence of a sovereign, properly integrated state.
Applying the concept of sovereign democracy in the economic context, Surkov has pointed out that while globalisation and the inevitable erosion of national economic sovereignty has been a key factor driving global economic development, this does not mean that an appropriate measure of national sovereignty is no longer desirable. On this basis, Surkov defended the regime’s strategy to limit foreign investment in key sectors including energy, pipelines, fixed line telephones, electricity distribution, federal highways and railroads, defence production and the financial system.
Having identified Russia’s business class as the depository of the country’s best human and intellectual resources “it is a national wealth, the base for the political class that should take the lead in Russia” Surkov has urged business people to participate in politics. In his view, the ideal way to achieve this would be to enhance the liberal-democratic wing of the regime’s pedestal party, the United Russia. As he put it: “If you think yourself an outstanding personality, enter the party and the party will also become outstanding”.
The regime’s critics will, of course, ridicule these ideas or interpret them as yet another proof of its supposedly neo-Soviet mindset. However, Surkov (and the regime) is obviously directly confronting Russia’s long-standing malady the inability of the elites to identify with their country and hence develop an indigenous political culture, comparable in its vitality and sophistication with other major European cultures. Russia’s aristocracy merely slavishly aped its European counterparts, while numerous revolutionaries in vain attempted to implant “progressive” Western ideas on Russia’s barren soil.
This historical failure is clearly being again rehearsed in contemporary Russia. It has been, for example, manifested in the refusal of so called “liberal democratic parties” to constructively contribute to the regime’s modernising project. Like their 19th century brethren they prefer to wallow in sterile nihilism and hatred of all things Russian, preferring to practice democracy in interviews with the Western media. Faced with this vacuum, Russia badly needs precisely the “national democracy” (or “democratic patriotism”), which the regime is trying to develop a substantial political and business class.