2012 in Review: Russia Turns in on Itself

(Voice of America – Russian Service Crossfire – Donald N. Jensen – January 3, 2013)

Russian state has struggled unsuccessfully since 1991 to reconcile ­three disparate, somewhat contradictory sources of legitimacy.  It portrays itself as democratic, but the trashing of the 1990s by the Putin regime deprives the current system of a founding myth.  During the Putin era there have been efforts to merge Soviet and Russian imperial history into single, multi-faceted tradition, but the result has been a hodgepodge of Russian and Soviet symbols, still relying on the Great Patriotic War to legitimate the regime as a successor state to the USSR but ambivalent about the Stalinist past. Vladimir Putin bought the regime some legitimacy by the Chechen War and invented a “war” on the oligarchs.  He also benefited from a lucky rise in oil prices.  But these bases for legitimacy are now disappearing­.   In system where institutions and the rule of law are weak and power and property blurred, each election or change of power threatens to become a political and economic crisis.

Vladimir Putin’s return to the Kremlin in 2012, easily the most important political event of the year in Russia, thus further weakened the regime.  Moreover, his return came, as Mikhail Dmitriev has pointed out, as five broad trends undermining Russia’s political system unfolded: a sharp increase in the demand for alternative leaders; the aging of Putin’s political brand; the failure of the regime’s political rhetoric to mobilize the population; and the polarization of the electorate.  A rising middle class, a major consequence of the economic growth of the past decade, demanded less corruption, more transparency and greater participation.

After his mid-year return Putin did not accommodate these developments in any important way.  Rather, he tightened the screws and played to his narrowing political base ­ nationalists as well as poorer, rural and industrial voters outside Moscow and St. Petersburg.  The government imprisoned Pussy Riot feminist musicians for protesting in Moscow’s main cathedral.  Laws restricting rallies and Internet access were pushed through the Duma to combat what the Kremlin viewed as enemy-sponsored subversion.  Law enforcement officials harassed opposition leaders.  To an extent, the Kremlin’s reaction worked.  By the end of the year, the street protests which had accompanied Putin’s falsified election had lost steam and the opposition was divided over tactics and strategy.  Although things have quieted down in recent months, however, there is growing willingness to protest in the regions, according to the respected Levada Center, where voters are dissatisfied over specific issues such as communal services, low pay, unemployment, and housing costs.

Even more dangerous for Putin, meanwhile, are the differences in the elite that result from Putin’s diminished political support.  He is less able than in the past to juggle the business interests of the Kremlin’s powerful clans or protect their financial resources.  (Although divisions are largely non-ideological, there has been disagreement over the Kremlin’s hard line toward the opposition, according to Russian media.)  Some oligarchs quietly funded the opposition while medium and small business owners are increasingly frustrated by being kept away from the trough.   There are also signs that several would be successors ­ so far without popular standing — are jockeying for position. Putin has inaugurated a selective anticorruption drive to keep potential rivals in line and sought to increase control over officials by banning foreign bank accounts and real estate.  Pushing too hard, however, could destabilize the corporation Putin has long sought to keep in balance.

Russia’s foreign policy in 2012 was a largely a byproduct of its domestic dynamics.  The Kremlin’s guiding foreign policy principles were to pursue Russian national interests in traditional great power terms and minimize foreign interference in its internal affairs. Moscow thus allowed cargo transit via Ulyanovsk on Russian soil to support the NATO campaign in Afghanistan, as this helps Russia’s security interests.  But Moscow also blocked Western efforts to intervene in the Syrian crisis due to concerns it would lead to the overthrow of the brutal Assad regime.  Indeed, Putin’s fundamental concern during the crisis in recent months sometimes seemed less the fate of the Syrian dictator than that one regime that eventually might be changed by outsiders would be his own.  At home the Kremlin railed against imagined external enemies such as the United States, an old Soviet tactic, and sought to reduce foreign influence inside Russia by cutting back US foreign aid programs.  At the end of the year the Kremlin overreacted to the US Magnitsky Bill — a highly symbolic but narrowly targeted measure imposing visa and financial sanctions on Russian official human rights violators — by banning US adoptions of Russian children.  Relations also suffered with the EU and especially Germany, which has been critical of the Kremlin’s human rights practices.

Through it all Russia’s economy performed well, with a growth rate of more than 3% despite the dismal global economy, and reasonable sovereign and corporate debt levels.  The country also entered the WTO after 19 years of negotiations, thanks in part to lobbying by the Obama Administration, which preferred to avoid linking human rights with other bilateral issues even as Putin connected them.  Over the longer term, however, Russia faces economic stagnation unless it reduces its hydrocarbon dependency and corruption. The government also cannot simultaneously afford its social welfare commitments and keep the country’s fiscal house in order.

After the “stability” of the Putin years, as the Economist has recently noted, Russia thus looks increasingly like the Soviet Union in its waning days, vulnerable to shock and unable to halt its own decline, though that decline could continue for years.  Harassing a divided and weak opposition or thumbing his nose at Washington may provide Putin with tactical victories, but such steps are politically dangerous, since they are not supported by all of the elite, could further alienate the rising middle class, and are distractions from far more serious problems.  As 2013 begins, the Russian president’s main nightmare thus ought not to be the fear of potentially destabilizing mass demonstrations on the Moscow streets, but that someone lurking in his entourage will act upon the realization that the survival of the system Putin has built, uncertain though its prospects may be, may be more likely without its current ruler.