Will the real Vladimir Putin please stand up?
Anna Arutunyan - Moscow News - themoscownews.com - 5.10.12 - JRL 2012-86
As Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, once explained to me in an interview: "Those who wanted to understand Putin have already done so, those who don't want to they never will."
file photo And yet there's no end to the angst over what Russians will see in their new old president as Putin gets inaugurated for a third presidential term: An autocrat? A reformer? Putin 3.0? Given the multitude of faces that Putin feels he has to present to different audiences, domestically and internationally, the possibilities are actually endless.
Below, I've somewhat whimsically singled out seven of the most recognizable ones. Whether they correspond to the seven wonders of the world, the seven deadly sins or even "Seventeen Moments of Spring" is completely up to the reader.
Who will Putin 3.0 turn out to be? Most likely, a combination of all seven. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we leave it up to you to consider which most accurately reflects the true face of the returning incumbent of the Kremlin.
1. CEO
This is, evidently, how Putin would like to show himself and he's had ample opportunity. Early in his first term, he described himself as a manager hired by the people to run a corporation and Russia Inc. has stuck since then, for good and bad. When the financial crisis struck in late 2008, Putin set off on a nationwide tour of his corporation swooping down on fledgling factories to hand out wages and resolve disputes between oligarchs.
Has the role worked? Not according to former Kremlin adviser Stanislav Belkovsky, who has tended to see Putin as a man at the helm of a large corporation.
"I think Putin sees himself as a corporate boss, he even wanted to head Gazprom once," Belkovsky told The Moscow News. "But if Russia is a corporation, then it's very unprofitable. There's no system of management in place."
That may be why Putin's government has tried to take his role as corporate manager even further, with recent plans for a state corporation to develop nearly two-thirds of Russian territory in the Far East and eastern Siberia one that may get unprecedented powers and will answer directly to President Putin, bypassing a number of federal and local laws. He may not be a literal CEO, and Russia may not be the most transparent corporation. But it has given top management enormous clout in a comparatively short amount of time, even if allegations about senior officials' alleged wealth won't be proven anytime soon.
2. Silovik
Putin is a man of the KGB. He served in the organization for 15 years, ultimately reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. It is no wonder, then, that when he came to power critics were alarmed over the number of his uniformed friends getting high posts in the Kremlin. By 2006, some 26 percent of state officials had a military background, and of those nearly half came from the KGB or FSB, according to leading sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya.
Are the siloviki happy about Putin's return to the presidency? You bet.
"Bless them, they are indeed happy little fluffy bunnies," said Mark Galeotti, a security expert at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and a regular contributor to The Moscow News opinion pages. "Albeit fluffy bunnies with uniforms, guns, great big dachas and every prospect of holding on to all three for the foreseeable future."
Putin has capitalized on his image as a former spy, even though he spent much of his KGB days in Dresden on mundane assignments, drinking the occasional German beer and recruiting the odd informant or two.
It has certainly helped him appear hawkish to Western leaders, who were unnerved by his fiery promises of an "assymetrical response" to a proposed U.S. missile shield during a 2007 security conference in Munich.
But all that doesn't necessarily mean that Putin, a man of many faces, is primarily a silovik at heart.
"I think that Mr. Putin will have to bang some heads together soon, as, if anything, they are getting a little too cocky," Galeotti said of Putin's touch-and-go relations with the security officers who, during Putin's four-year hiatus as prime minister, had to formally answer to a far more softly spoken president, Dmitry Medvedev.
3. Sex symbol
It started as early as 2002, when a girl group sang, "I want a man like Putin." But Putin's status as sex symbol didn't abate in spite of or perhaps because of its sheer unlikelihood: not since Napoleon was a short, somewhat plain-looking man in his 50s so popular with the girls. It's true that one of Putin's predecessors as Russian leader, the 19th-century Tsar Nicholas I, was dubbed "the most handsome man in Europe" for his similarly icy stare, but he was tall and barely 30 when that appellation stuck. Unlike Putin, however, Nicholas never got calendars of lingerie-clad journalism students posing for him on his birthday.
"I think Putin is absolutely still a sex symbol," said Alexander Yelin, who wrote the "I want a man like Putin" song.
"In 2002, he was popular with everyone, including the younger girls," Yelin told The Moscow News. "Now it's more with the older women. They really get excited when they see a man who is simply sober. They don't even care about the [alleged use of] Botox because at least it shows that he cares about how he looks."
4. Patriot
For those nostalgic about the greatness of Russia's Soviet past, Putin had a heartfelt rejoinder: the collapse of the U.S.S.R., he said in 2005, was the "biggest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.
It was Putin who revived the Soviet-era anthem not for the sake of homage to Soviet ideology, but out of a sense of pride in his nation's history, and for the same reason that Putin occasionally plays the nationalist card: to placate critics. The same goes for the Victory Day parades that have grown increasingly lavish under Putin.
5. 'Godfather'
Spanish investigator Jose Grinda Gonzales certainly wasn't the first to notoriously refer to Russia as a "mafia state," as 1990s oligarch Boris Berezovsky was dubbed "Godfather of the Kremlin" by the murdered American journalist Paul Klebnikov in his book of the same title. More recently, according to Wikileaks, a number of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables described a world of "kryshas," mafia bosses and senior Kremlin officials all doing business together.
Even if Putin came to preside over such a world, he certainly didn't create it. Most likely, it created him. The first unproven allegations that Putin used his ties in the KGB and the government to enrich his friends go back as far as the murky days of 1991, when everyone was operating without the benefit of "normal" laws. Then, according to the late St. Petersburg City Council deputy Marina Salye, he won unauthorized tenders for friends in the timber industry as part of a food-forcommodities exchange. Salye's allegations were never tested in court, and she died, in case anyone was wondering, of natural causes.
By 2010, allegations were produced by a former business associate of Putin's, Sergei Kolesnikov, that the then-prime minister had helped enrich a whole group of friends and had siphoned money away to build a lavish palace on the Black Sea. Whatever the truth of the claims, they fed into an opposition campaign to paint Putin and his United Russia party as one of "crooks and thieves."
The allegations may have struck such a chord because they coincided with Medvedev's campaign to root out corruption. The main reason his campaign failed, critics say, is that it was a top-down effort when a lot of the corruption probably emanated from the same corridors of power.
"Everyone in this room knows the name of the person from whom this corruption is coming," Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, mysteriously once told a small group of journalists.
But whether the allegations about Putin being a Francis Ford Coppola-style "Godfather" are partfact or pure fiction, one line uttered by Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone in "The Godfather, Part III," did come remarkably close to summing up how Putin may have felt about coming back to the presidency: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
6. Workers' champion
In June 2009, Putin famously chastised oligarch Oleg Deripaska over his debt-stricken minerals plant in Pikalyovo, where thousands of workers were left jobless and penniless due to wage arrears. "You've made thousands of people hostage to your unprofessionalism and your greed," Putin fumed on national TV. "Where is the social responsibility of business?"
During that economic crisis, Putin became known for flying in and taking the workers' side a personal trade union leader, if you will. In 2010, after a methane blast at the Raspadskaya coal mine killed nearly 100 people, he ordered salaries to be raised. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that every live call-in show with Putin features groups of factory workers lining up, Sovietstyle, to lay out their problems or show their praise over the video link.
7. Neo-liberal
But lest Tea Party supporters get excited about finding the ultimate socialist bogeyman, consider this: Putin became one of the few world leaders to adopt a flat tax rate of just 13 percent in 2003. And at just 20 percent, Russia has the lowest corporate income tax of all the BRICs, far below the U.S. rate of 35 percent.
As for Putin's most trusted advisers, look to the fiscally conservative Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister who still gets lavish praise from Putin despite having a fallingout with Medvedev. In political culture as Byzantine as Russia's, that kind of trust says something.
Perhaps, in some ways, this surprising face of Vladimir Putin is the one that may come closest to his actual role in the future particularly as Russia faces the prospect of austerity measures in the wake of the developing double-dip recession in Europe and elsewhere around the world. In his immediate postinauguration orders, we can already see how Putin is making large-scale privatization and economic efficiency two of his key objectives.
Whether Putin is remembered as a neo-liberal or for his other roles will depend largely on how far Russia can escape its current dependence on oil and gas revenues. If energy prices stay high and support Putin's bold spending plans, all will be well. But if oil prices collapse, Putin's government will have the tough task of making unpleasant budget cuts changing his legacy completely.
Keywords: Russia, Government, Politics - Russian News - Russia
As Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, once explained to me in an interview: "Those who wanted to understand Putin have already done so, those who don't want to they never will."
file photo And yet there's no end to the angst over what Russians will see in their new old president as Putin gets inaugurated for a third presidential term: An autocrat? A reformer? Putin 3.0? Given the multitude of faces that Putin feels he has to present to different audiences, domestically and internationally, the possibilities are actually endless.
Below, I've somewhat whimsically singled out seven of the most recognizable ones. Whether they correspond to the seven wonders of the world, the seven deadly sins or even "Seventeen Moments of Spring" is completely up to the reader.
Who will Putin 3.0 turn out to be? Most likely, a combination of all seven. As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, we leave it up to you to consider which most accurately reflects the true face of the returning incumbent of the Kremlin.
1. CEO
This is, evidently, how Putin would like to show himself and he's had ample opportunity. Early in his first term, he described himself as a manager hired by the people to run a corporation and Russia Inc. has stuck since then, for good and bad. When the financial crisis struck in late 2008, Putin set off on a nationwide tour of his corporation swooping down on fledgling factories to hand out wages and resolve disputes between oligarchs.
Has the role worked? Not according to former Kremlin adviser Stanislav Belkovsky, who has tended to see Putin as a man at the helm of a large corporation.
"I think Putin sees himself as a corporate boss, he even wanted to head Gazprom once," Belkovsky told The Moscow News. "But if Russia is a corporation, then it's very unprofitable. There's no system of management in place."
That may be why Putin's government has tried to take his role as corporate manager even further, with recent plans for a state corporation to develop nearly two-thirds of Russian territory in the Far East and eastern Siberia one that may get unprecedented powers and will answer directly to President Putin, bypassing a number of federal and local laws. He may not be a literal CEO, and Russia may not be the most transparent corporation. But it has given top management enormous clout in a comparatively short amount of time, even if allegations about senior officials' alleged wealth won't be proven anytime soon.
2. Silovik
Putin is a man of the KGB. He served in the organization for 15 years, ultimately reaching the rank of lieutenant colonel. It is no wonder, then, that when he came to power critics were alarmed over the number of his uniformed friends getting high posts in the Kremlin. By 2006, some 26 percent of state officials had a military background, and of those nearly half came from the KGB or FSB, according to leading sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya.
Are the siloviki happy about Putin's return to the presidency? You bet.
"Bless them, they are indeed happy little fluffy bunnies," said Mark Galeotti, a security expert at New York University's Center for Global Affairs and a regular contributor to The Moscow News opinion pages. "Albeit fluffy bunnies with uniforms, guns, great big dachas and every prospect of holding on to all three for the foreseeable future."
Putin has capitalized on his image as a former spy, even though he spent much of his KGB days in Dresden on mundane assignments, drinking the occasional German beer and recruiting the odd informant or two.
It has certainly helped him appear hawkish to Western leaders, who were unnerved by his fiery promises of an "assymetrical response" to a proposed U.S. missile shield during a 2007 security conference in Munich.
But all that doesn't necessarily mean that Putin, a man of many faces, is primarily a silovik at heart.
"I think that Mr. Putin will have to bang some heads together soon, as, if anything, they are getting a little too cocky," Galeotti said of Putin's touch-and-go relations with the security officers who, during Putin's four-year hiatus as prime minister, had to formally answer to a far more softly spoken president, Dmitry Medvedev.
3. Sex symbol
It started as early as 2002, when a girl group sang, "I want a man like Putin." But Putin's status as sex symbol didn't abate in spite of or perhaps because of its sheer unlikelihood: not since Napoleon was a short, somewhat plain-looking man in his 50s so popular with the girls. It's true that one of Putin's predecessors as Russian leader, the 19th-century Tsar Nicholas I, was dubbed "the most handsome man in Europe" for his similarly icy stare, but he was tall and barely 30 when that appellation stuck. Unlike Putin, however, Nicholas never got calendars of lingerie-clad journalism students posing for him on his birthday.
"I think Putin is absolutely still a sex symbol," said Alexander Yelin, who wrote the "I want a man like Putin" song.
"In 2002, he was popular with everyone, including the younger girls," Yelin told The Moscow News. "Now it's more with the older women. They really get excited when they see a man who is simply sober. They don't even care about the [alleged use of] Botox because at least it shows that he cares about how he looks."
4. Patriot
For those nostalgic about the greatness of Russia's Soviet past, Putin had a heartfelt rejoinder: the collapse of the U.S.S.R., he said in 2005, was the "biggest geopolitical catastrophe" of the 20th century.
It was Putin who revived the Soviet-era anthem not for the sake of homage to Soviet ideology, but out of a sense of pride in his nation's history, and for the same reason that Putin occasionally plays the nationalist card: to placate critics. The same goes for the Victory Day parades that have grown increasingly lavish under Putin.
5. 'Godfather'
Spanish investigator Jose Grinda Gonzales certainly wasn't the first to notoriously refer to Russia as a "mafia state," as 1990s oligarch Boris Berezovsky was dubbed "Godfather of the Kremlin" by the murdered American journalist Paul Klebnikov in his book of the same title. More recently, according to Wikileaks, a number of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables described a world of "kryshas," mafia bosses and senior Kremlin officials all doing business together.
Even if Putin came to preside over such a world, he certainly didn't create it. Most likely, it created him. The first unproven allegations that Putin used his ties in the KGB and the government to enrich his friends go back as far as the murky days of 1991, when everyone was operating without the benefit of "normal" laws. Then, according to the late St. Petersburg City Council deputy Marina Salye, he won unauthorized tenders for friends in the timber industry as part of a food-forcommodities exchange. Salye's allegations were never tested in court, and she died, in case anyone was wondering, of natural causes.
By 2010, allegations were produced by a former business associate of Putin's, Sergei Kolesnikov, that the then-prime minister had helped enrich a whole group of friends and had siphoned money away to build a lavish palace on the Black Sea. Whatever the truth of the claims, they fed into an opposition campaign to paint Putin and his United Russia party as one of "crooks and thieves."
The allegations may have struck such a chord because they coincided with Medvedev's campaign to root out corruption. The main reason his campaign failed, critics say, is that it was a top-down effort when a lot of the corruption probably emanated from the same corridors of power.
"Everyone in this room knows the name of the person from whom this corruption is coming," Kirill Kabanov, head of the National Anti-Corruption Committee, mysteriously once told a small group of journalists.
But whether the allegations about Putin being a Francis Ford Coppola-style "Godfather" are partfact or pure fiction, one line uttered by Al Pacino, as Michael Corleone in "The Godfather, Part III," did come remarkably close to summing up how Putin may have felt about coming back to the presidency: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."
6. Workers' champion
In June 2009, Putin famously chastised oligarch Oleg Deripaska over his debt-stricken minerals plant in Pikalyovo, where thousands of workers were left jobless and penniless due to wage arrears. "You've made thousands of people hostage to your unprofessionalism and your greed," Putin fumed on national TV. "Where is the social responsibility of business?"
During that economic crisis, Putin became known for flying in and taking the workers' side a personal trade union leader, if you will. In 2010, after a methane blast at the Raspadskaya coal mine killed nearly 100 people, he ordered salaries to be raised. It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that every live call-in show with Putin features groups of factory workers lining up, Sovietstyle, to lay out their problems or show their praise over the video link.
7. Neo-liberal
But lest Tea Party supporters get excited about finding the ultimate socialist bogeyman, consider this: Putin became one of the few world leaders to adopt a flat tax rate of just 13 percent in 2003. And at just 20 percent, Russia has the lowest corporate income tax of all the BRICs, far below the U.S. rate of 35 percent.
As for Putin's most trusted advisers, look to the fiscally conservative Alexei Kudrin, the former finance minister who still gets lavish praise from Putin despite having a fallingout with Medvedev. In political culture as Byzantine as Russia's, that kind of trust says something.
Perhaps, in some ways, this surprising face of Vladimir Putin is the one that may come closest to his actual role in the future particularly as Russia faces the prospect of austerity measures in the wake of the developing double-dip recession in Europe and elsewhere around the world. In his immediate postinauguration orders, we can already see how Putin is making large-scale privatization and economic efficiency two of his key objectives.
Whether Putin is remembered as a neo-liberal or for his other roles will depend largely on how far Russia can escape its current dependence on oil and gas revenues. If energy prices stay high and support Putin's bold spending plans, all will be well. But if oil prices collapse, Putin's government will have the tough task of making unpleasant budget cuts changing his legacy completely.