Putin's Regime: A Firm Future So Far
file photoDate: Wed, 02 Nov 2011
From: Vladimir Shlapentokh <shlapent@msu.edu>
Subject: Putin's Regime: A Firm Future So Far
[Professor of Sociology,Michigan State University]
[Footnotes not here]
Executive summary
The numerous negative trends in Russia today have prompted many Russian and foreign analysts to predict the imminent collapse of Putin's regime. These prognoses were fueled recently by Putin's decision to return to the position of president, and his clear intention to rule the country "forever," which, in the opinion of many observers, only made it even more likely that the end of his regime would come soon. I very highly doubt the accuracy of these prognoses. The negative trends have not manifested the mechanisms that need to be present for there to be a real, direct threat to the regime. There is no serious political opposition in the country, while the political elite is united and is mostly against a change in the regime. Even more important is the fact that there is no public discontent coming from ordinary Russians whose material lives improved greatly under Putin's rule. Russians' satisfaction with their lives is quite high, and Putin's high ratings are a sign that the masses link their relative prosperity to him. At the same time, Russians, although they generally appreciate democratic institutions, are confident that they have no ability to impact political life in the country. They do not want to challenge the Kremlin, which controls the media and the police, preferring to be absorbed with their private lives, rather that confronting the authorities. What is more, Putin's regime not only relies on the satisfaction of Russians with their material lives, but also on the involvement of ambitious Russianspeople with a position in the bureaucracy, together with their relativesin corruption and even criminal deeds. By encouraging corruption and providing immunity from prosecution to the corrupted people, Putin created a powerful social base that will help him resist attempts to change the regime.
So far, the greatest threat to the regime lies in the economic sphere, not in politics. Dynamic oil and gas prices are a key factor that could determine the fate of the regime. However, even an abrupt decline in the standard of living would not necessarily make the fall of the regime unavoidable. Of course, negative trends in Russia can undermine the regime, creating a basis for the opposition to challenge it with real political actions. Several sudden shocks could also deliver serious or even mortal blows to the regime. In any case, the American government has to expect that the probability of dealing with Putin as the supreme master of Russia is quite high, for at least another decade.
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There is an unbelievably large chasm, even by Russia's historical standards, between the picture of society that has been accepted by the majority of Russianswhich is full of Putin's propagandaand the perception of society put forth by critics of the regime.
The Positive Picture of Putin's Russia
According to the governmental description, the Russia that the majority of Russians has accepted as true is a prosperous and stable society; one that even the global economic crisis cannot stymie. There are several facts supporting this view. The personal income of Russians has doubled in the last ten years.[1] Incidence of poverty has declined significantlythe number of families with income below the poverty line declined from 29 percent in 2000 to 13 percent in 2010.[2] The number of cars per person has increased three-fold in the same period. In addition, more than half of all Russians are regular users of the Internet; eighty percent have a cell phone. Russian society is much more orderly than it was in the 1990s. It is much safer to walk on the streets of Russian cities today than it was before Putin's regime. Russians no longer live in a country facing the threat of disintegration, as they were in the 90s. Putin has practically eliminated the separatist movements that were so visible in 1990. Although the North Caucasus has not been appeased, most Russians are indifferent to the turmoil in the North Caucasian republics, and it does not spoil their mood. In 2011, one-quarter of Russians said that they would be glad if Chechnya, the most militant republic, left the Russian Federation, while only 27 percent said they would be sad if that happened.[3] Russians are mostly concerned with the federal subsidies to the North Caucasus being cut, and are not accepting the official argument that they are necessary for the keeping this region inside the Russian Federation.
Russians' Acceptance of Putin's Political Order: The Lack of Drive to Change It
Russians' attitudes toward political life in the country are much more ambivalent now, when compared with the past. This ambivalence illustrates the willingness of the majority of the people to adjust to the reality, which they cannotor do not want tochange. No doubt, a considerable part of the Russian population would like to live in a truly democratic society. In the Levada survey of 2011, three-quarters of Russians indicated that they want a true political opposition, and approximately the same numbers want a real, competitive election. But at the same time, they are aware that the authorities will not permit either real opposition or an honest election. More than half of Russians have expressed their belief that the "election will be not real."[4]
Keeping in mind their inability to change the political order, Russians prefer to say "yes" to the existing system and its leadersas they did in the pastonly allowing themselves to be critical of individual aspects of the system, or of single bureaucrats. In the 2011 Levada survey, almost no one mentioned a lack of democracy in the country as a problem, among a discussion of the flaws of the government.[5] With the rejection of any public actions against the regime, Russians concentrate on their private lives, to a degree they never have in their history.
The Satisfaction of the Majority with Their Lives and Their Leaders
Russians feel quite comfortable with their improving quality of life and the acceptance of the existing political system. In the 2011 study, the average monthly salary of Russians was 700 U.S. dollars; in Moscow it was $1,400.[6] Also in 2011, 79 percent of Russians (according to another polling firm, it was 92 percent) were satisfied with their lives (versus 54 percent in 2000), and 75 percent considered their personal material situations to be good or relatively good.[7]
These data are congruent with the high approval ratings of the Russian rulers. In September 2011, only 18 percent of Russians disapproved of the activity of Premier Minister Putin, and 14 percent of President Medvedev. What is more, two-thirds of Russians feel positively toward their governors.
Of course, we need to treat these data with a grain of salt. Certainly, the aura of power and a fear of the authorities influence the ratings, as is always the case in an authoritarian society. As soon as the boss quits his office, the attitudes towards him will change overnight. Moscow's former mayor Yuri Luzhkov illustrates this very nicely. The day after he was fired, he lost what had seemed to be an ironclad popularity among Moscow residents.[8] It is true that in the last few months, particularly following Putin's September 24th declaration of his intentions to stay in power as president for the next 12 years, criticism of the regime, Putin, and Medvedev have magnified. The stream of satirical songs and sketches about the Russian leaders in the few oppositional outlets and, mostly, on Internet (but not on official TV channels) increased significantly. They have had little impact, however, on Putin's standing in public opinion.
Still, no matter what circumstances sway the peoples' ratings of their rulers, these ratings reflecteven if in a distorted waythe climate of society. They also inform the rulers of the degree to which they can rely on conformity, and how much they will need to resort to violence to keep their power.
A Negative Picture
The analysts who are critical of the regime offer the public a very different picture of contemporary Russia. They place the focusand very reasonably soon the most negative elements of Russian society. Here is an incomplete list:
In politics: the authoritarian political system and its empty imitation of democracy; the omnipresent corruption from the top to the lowest levels of the bureaucracy; the inefficiency of the state and its law enforcement agencies; the lack of independent courts; and the feudalization of the country, which is identified by the phenomenon of many regions of the country acting independently of the whole.
In economics: the total dependence of Russia on oil and gas exports; the de-industrialization of the economy and de-professionalization of the labor force; the lack of free competition; unrestrained state intervention in the economy; the aging of the transportation systems and production equipment (which are exacerbated by new technological disasters); and the decline of science and education.
In social relations: gigantic social inequality; the continuing emigration of the country's best minds; the atomization and demoralization of society; and the growing severity and prevalence of ethnic conflicts.
Any of these negative trends, whether by themselves or in some combination, serve as the basis for the myriad gloomy prognoses made by several dozen critics of the regime, who may lean to the right or the left, and who come from both inside Russia and abroad. These prognoses promise political crises, revolution, economic catastrophe, anarchy, political turmoil, the disintegration of the Russian Federation, and ethnic wars. Many liberals have forecast a Russian version of the "Arab spring". While the critics differ in their predictions of when the aforementioned calamities will take place (in a few months, a few years, or even longer), they are unanimous in their prognostication of the imminent fall of the Putin regime.
Lilia Shevtsova, a respected analyst, writes that Putin's regime "is doomed," and will drag "the state which it represents" into the abyss. She added that "everything in society has started to disintegrate" and that "even people working with the regime talk about the approaching catastrophe." The final sentence in her article sounds particularly gloomy: "The agony is approaching faster than we are able to understand its irreversibility."[9] Mikhail Deliagin, a famous economist, agrees with Shevtsova; he also contends that "the agony of the regime has already started."[10] Following Putin's decision to re-appoint himself as the next president, Andrei Piontkovsky, a prominent Moscow analyst, exclaimed that "the day when Putin solemnly proclaimed his eternal rule is the day of his end."[11] The same prognoses of a highly pessimistic future for Putin's regime have recently been made by politicians and analysts, like oppositional politicians Gary Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, and Mikhail Kasianov, or political scientists like Sergey Belanovsky and Mikhail Dmitriev from the Center for Strategic Decisions.
Found among the gloomy forecasters are moderate critics of the regime, some of whom have even worked in collaboration with it, such as Vladislav Inozemtsevdirector of the Center of Post-Industrial Societywho insists that now "Russia enters a new era of perturbations."[12] Also among those who have predicted the demise of the regime is Mikhail Gorbachev, who talks about "the degradation of the state and the demoralization of society," and possibly of "a new disintegration of Russia."[13]
The ominous prognoses for Putin's regime are mostly inspired by the wrong idea that negative trends will lead directly to the collapse of the regime. The fact is that even the most dismal developments do not always bring a regime down. Negative trends can only destroy the existing political order from the inside if they can create and put into motion one or all of the mechanisms that have the ability to destroy the regime directly: 1) a revolt of the masses in the streets; 2) a powerful opposition with charismatic and honest leaders; and 3) a split inside the ruling elite. Of course, as has happened on the eve of all of the grand revolutions that have ever occurred, the combination of all these mechanisms make the salvation of the regime impossible. However, when the negative trends are not able to build the mechanisms necessary to destroy the regime, the regime can maintain power for quite a long time. Consider two examples from recent Russian history.
The Case of the 1990s: No Mass Protests
The deterioration of the quality of life in the country in the 1990s was catastrophic, and almost all the politicians and analysts predicted mass disturbances and the fall of the regime. Indeed, in the early 1990s, no less than one-half of all Russian workers stopped receiving salaries. In addition to the delay in payments to workers, the Russian government was unable to pay pensions on time. Moreover, by the end of 1992, official data indicates that Russians lost 70 percent of their savings. The decline in personal income was about 50 percent.
One can hardly imagine the surprise of the new Russian regime, as well as experts on mass movements around the world, when they discovered almost absolute passivity among the Russian masses in the 1990s. Although there had been large miners' strikes in 1989 and 1991, such activity was virtually absent after 1991. There were no assaults on any police stations or local governments, nor were there large protest marches or demonstrations. In the first half of 1993, there were only 34 strikes with 20 thousand total participants, in a country with hundreds of thousands of enterprises and millions of workers. Even the participation of Russians in political meetings decreased in 1993-1994, in comparison with the previous period.[14]
The Collapse of the Soviet Order
Even as they ignore the Russians' passivity during their tribulations in the 1990s, contemporary analysts predicting future gloom like to refer to the collapse of the Soviet order, suggesting that Putin's Russia will follow the same fate. They are, however, confusing two dates in their reasoning: 1985 and 1991. By 1985, Soviet society was suffering from many chronic diseases, such as an inefficient economy, technological retardation, a relatively low standard of living, the permanent shortage of consumer goods, and simmering ethnic conflicts. Yet, none of these societal ills presented a direct threat to the Soviet regime or made the collapse of the Soviet order inevitable. Whatever the character of the negative developments prior to1985, they did not generate mass public protests (strikes, demonstrations, riots, ethnic rebellions, etc.), nor a climate where the opposition was able to lead the people to the street, nor a serious split inside the Soviet political leadership. Decisions about reforms were taken up by the Politburo, which supported Mikhail Gorbachev's proposal of innovations, because the leadership was concerned about the USSR losing its military parity with the USA. By 1991, the reforms had led to the weakening of the state, the destruction of the economy, chaos throughout the country, and, ultimately, to the collapse of the system.
So Far, the Negative Trends have not Generated a Direct Threat to Putin's Regime
It is typical that, among all those granting a negative prognosis for Putin's regime by enumerating dozens of dismal tendencies in contemporary Russia, none of them can point to any of the elements that would bring about a revolution: public protest actions, serious political opposition, or an internal struggle inside the ruling elite. Indeed, how can the negative trends that are so publicized in the Russian and foreign press, such as the decline of science or the growing emigration of active people from Russia, or such developments as the alienation of people from the political process in the country, or the triumphing corruption, hurt Putin's regime directly? We have no evidence of even one serious strike among workers in the country over the last ten years. The biggest protest actions of the liberals gathered, at best, a few thousand people, who were easily dispersed by the police. The most serious danger to the regimethe nationalist movementis, so far, almost completely under the control of the Kremlin, which even sees it as a potential ally in case of emergency. The spontaneous nationalist riot in downtown Moscow in December 2010, a very rare event in contemporary Russia, was crushed without any serious resistance by the participants, who were mostly teenagers. The few inter-ethnic conflicts in other cities (for instance, Kondopoga in 2006) were also neutralized without any serious effort. Some analysts treated the case of the so-called Far East partisans (a group comprised of a small number of young people who declared war on the local police in 2010) as a harbinger of all people warring against the state, but it turned out to be a singular event.
In sum, the various negative trends have not helped to build serious political opposition to the regime. In September 2011, the Russian Reporter newspaper made a list of the ten most active public figures. All of them provided help in developing civil society in the country, but none had anything do with a threat to the regime. The list of prominent public figures was headed by Olga Romanova, a brave journalist who, with the determination that her businessman-husband would be released from jail, actively denounced the Russian justice system. However, she was unable to create any public organization or a movement to fight the corrupt courts. Peter Shkumato, the next on the list, created the "Blue Bucket" public movement, which grew to tens of thousands of members. The goal of this movement, however, while certainly useful in its own right, was only to fight the abuse of high officials in using their privileges (e.g. the use of a special blinking signal on the roof of their cars, which allowed them to ignore common traffic rules). The third public figure on the list was Fedor Gorozhanko, who created an internet network that started to denounce city authorities for not helping people to eliminate leakage from the roofs of the multi-story houses in which they lived. Other people on the list are also engaged in small actions of the same apolitical character.[15]
There is no one public figure in Russia, aside from Putin and Medvedev, who could gain the support of more than 1-3 percent of the population. Putin's regime was very successful in denigrating the opposition and
making it irrelevant to the current political process. In addition, many oppositional politicians are despised by the majority of the population. For example, Mikhail Kasianov, former premier minister and now an oppositional politician, developed a reputation as a bribe taker when he was in the government.
Thus, against the expectations of many analysts, the negative trends have not generated any serious splits inside the ruling elite so far. The recent attempts of some liberal journalists and politicians to find a crack between Putin and Medvedev, as well as between their non-existent clans, ended in a farce when Medvedev proclaimed Putin the next president, and when he declared that there is a full consensus between the two of them on all political issues. In fact, not only the ruling elite but also the absolute majority of the bureaucracy are against a change in the regime, and despise all sorts of liberal reforms.
People's Corruption: The Strength, Not the Weakness of Putin's Regime
Those who are making gloomy prognoses clearly underestimate the might of the social basis of Putin's regime. In the 1950-70s, the concept of "people's capitalism" was quite popular in the USA. The major idea of "people's capitalism" lay in the dispersal of stockholding opportunities among the population, which was supposed to change the nature of the American economy and American society in general. This idea had many important defenders in the business community, as well as among American politicians and intellectuals. James Albus, a prominent engineer, published a book entitled Peoples' Capitalism: The Economics of the Robot Revolution (1976), in which he laid out a plan to broaden capital ownership to the point where every citizen would become a capitalist with a substantial income from personal ownership of capital assets.[16] The idea of "people's capitalism" practically vanished from American debates on economic order in the 1980s. Two decades later, Boris Nemtsov, a young reformer in post-Soviet Russia, tried to regenerate it without any success.[17]
Ironically, it was Putin who implemented the idea of "people's capitalism," albeit in a new form. He opened access to an illegal stream of income to a considerable part of the Russian population. To grant everybody shares as promised, he gave the most ambitious people access to a powerful source of corruption. In fact, Putin superimposed the feudal model of government on society, which supposes that holders of power in all spheres of life consider themselves to be feudal officials who possess their own fiefs. (Russians use the term "kormlenie," or "feeding," which points to the fact that each position "feeds" its holder with illegal revenues). In exchange for the fief, the holder grants their loyalty to the central administration, guaranteeing, for instance, the desired outcome of an election (the Soviet system resorted to the same social strategy, although less successfully, when it made one-third of the adult population "little bosses"[18]).
Feudal (or Vertical) Corruption
Two major strata comprise the contingent of those who enjoy Putin's "all people's corruption." The first, the "feudal" layer, is comprised of the "office holders," who have lucrative positions in the state apparatus: the top leaders and administrators at all levelsdown to the chief of a small village. This layer also includes the generals and high officers in the army, police and Federal security agency, as well as the managers of various institutions, like school or hospital directors.[19] This first stratum also includes people in business who, being protected by the government at the national and local level, can extricate illegal revenues, receiving a variety of privileges from the state, including semi-legal and illegal government loans, and contracts that are granted without bidding. They also pay government officials for help in destroying their rivals, through tactics such as "raiding," which is the illegal seizure of a rival company.
The size of the first stratum, whose members enjoy some of the benefits of corruption, is about 5-6 million.[20] But if their relatives are added to this number, it grows to tens of millions of people.
The Relatives of Officials as Another Bulwark of the Regime: Omsk's Case
Innumerable data show how almost every member of the bureaucracy extends various privileges to their close and remote relatives, including second and third cousins. See, for instance, what happened in the last years in the Omsk region, where Governor Leonid Polezhaev's clan was comprised of all his relatives, a typical phenomenon in most Russian regions, including small administrative units such as small cities and villages. In 2011, one of his sons, Konstantin, then a hospital director, was caught buying medical equipment fraudulently; he never suffered any consequences for his actions.[21] In the same year, the governor's daughter-in-law, Natelle, privatized a hospital and health resorts for herself, violating various laws. Another of the governor's sons, Alexei, using his father's connections in the oil and gas business, became a billionaire. Alexei's wealth is equal to the two-year budget for the entire Omsk region. What is more, this businessman founded a company in Cyprus, which controls the water supply in Omsk. The company regularly raises the tariff for water in the region, which is prohibited by law. The same governor's son has real estate in Florida, a fact which was hidden from the Omsk citizens. Polezhaev also protects his distant relatives, such as his niece and several of his own spouse's remote relatives. Some of them are members of the Omsk legislature and the owners of companies located in Omsk, greatly exploiting their connections with the governor. Friends are not forgotten by the governor either. As the local media found, his old friend, Valerii Kokorin, embezzled budget money the governor had given to him to build a club for business people.[22]
It is obvious that a great chunk of the population were delighted by Putin's decision to stay as Russia's president forever. As one author in a Moscow newspaper noted, "the members of the country's bureaucratic class, having prospered in the cesspool of corruption created and deepened during Putin's rule, are more than glad to have their license to steal renewed for another six or more years." [23]
The Second Horizontal Layer of Corrupted Citizens: People without Office
The members of the second layer, the "little bribers," are much more limited in the ways they can abuse their small power, when compared to the members of the "feudal layer," because they do not have their own offices and are under the strong control of their own bosses. Still, in a lawless society, these "little bribers"teachers and professors, medical doctors and nurses, clerks who issue various official papers for people (e.g. foreign passports or the documents necessary for buying or selling apartments), sanitation and fire inspectors who could, at-will, certify your shop as meeting standards (or not), and traffic officers, along with a host of otherscan extricate additional income from the ordinary people who depend on them; they could easily spoil these people's lives if the bribes are not paid. While the illegal income of these little bribers is quite small compared to what "office holders" get, it still comprises a substantial part of the "little bribers'" budgets. Of course, the participants in "horizontal corruption," with their modest illegal income from the bribes they receive, minus the amount they must pay out to bribe others of course, are not as loyal to the regime as the "office holders." Still, having adjusted well to the existing order, they are far from being active protesters.
A special large group of participants in the corrupt activities are the hundreds of thousands of employees in private companies who get along with an official salary, and a "gray salary" (a "salary in an envelope", in Russian terminology), which helps the company significantly reduce the taxes they must pay. These employees are well aware of their participation in illegal activity and do not shun it.[24]
The Most Ordinary Russians are Very Tolerant of Corruption
The strength of Putin's regime not only stems from the active support of its "office holders," and the mild support of the "little bribers," but also in the Russian population's indifference toward corruption. It is remarkable that while critics of the regime, liberal or Communist, label corruption as a leading problem in society, the population delegates it to the bottom of the list of problems. Indeed, in a March 2011 survey with open-ended questions about the major problems of Russian society, only 8 percent named corruption, compared with 30 percent who mentioned a low standard of living, and 22 percent who mentioned unemployment.[25]
Russian sociologists were amazed to find that the majority of Russians "are not upset with corruption," and that they are indifferent to the movies and other materials that denounce corruption. Paradoxically, the absolute majority of Russians, no less than 70-80 percent, assume that corruption embraces all spheres of social life, yet the same number of people also believe that corruption is "a normal phenomenon;" they see it as being the same as it was under Yeltsin, as well as under Putin, and expect that corruption will only be higher in the future.[26] At the same time, many Russians are sure that corruption helps to solve many problems in everyday life, and that the struggle against corruption is hopeless.[27] It is remarkable that the most famous crusader against corruption in Russia today, Alexei Navalnyi, could only garner the support of a few percent of the population. [28]
Conclusion
The numerous negative trends in Russia have prompted many Russian and foreign analysts to predict the imminent collapse of Putin's regime. These prognoses were recently fueled by Putin's decision to return to the position of president, and his clear intention to rule the country "forever," which, in the opinion of many observers, only made it even more likely that the end of his regime would come soon. I very highly doubt the accuracy of these prognoses.
The negative trends have not manifested the mechanisms that need to be present for there to be a real, direct threat to the regime. There is no serious political opposition in the country, while the political elite is united and is mostly against a change in the regime. Even more important is the fact that there is no public discontent coming from ordinary Russians whose material lives became much better under Putin's rule. Russians' satisfaction with their lives is extremely high, while Putin's high ratings are a sign that the masses link their relative prosperity to him. At the same time, Russians, although they generally appreciate democratic institutions, are confident that they have no ability to impact political life in the country. They do not want to challenge the Kremlin, which controls the media and the police, preferring to be absorbed with their private lives, rather that confronting the authorities. What is more, Putin's regime relies not only on the satisfaction of the Russians with their material lives, but also on the involvement of ambitious Russianspeople with a position in the bureaucracy, together with their relativesin corruption and even criminal deeds. By encouraging corruption and providing immunity from prosecution to the corrupted people, Putin created a powerful social base that will help him resist attempts to change the regime.
So far, the greatest threat to the regime lies in the economic sphere, not in politics. Dynamic oil and gas prices are a key factor that could determine the fate of the regime. However, even an abrupt decline in the standard of living would not necessarily make the fall of the regime unavoidable. Of course, negative trends in Russia undermine the regime, creating a basis for the opposition to challenge the regime with real political actions. Several sudden shocks could also deliver serious or even mortal blows to the regime. In any case, the American government has to expect that the probability of dealing with Putin as the supreme master of Russia is quite high, for at least another decade.
