#12 - JRL 8342 - JRL Home
RFE/RL
August 25, 2004
Analysis: A Hard-Line Agenda For Putin's Second Term (Part One)
By Victor Yasmann
Copyright (c) 2004. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org

Earlier this month, the influential National Strategy Council (SNS) published suggested political guidelines for President Vladimir Putin's second term titled "A National Agenda And A National Strategy," RosBalt reported on 5 August.

The council was founded in 2002 by the controversial and enigmatic political consultant Stanislav Belkovskii (see "RFE/RL Russian Political Weekly," 7 April 2004) and made its name during the summer of 2003 when it published a report alleging the existence of an "oligarchs' coup" plot. That report was widely seen as the first volley in the Kremlin's campaign against oil giant Yukos and its former CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovskii, and the first indication of a transition in domestic policy from so-called managed democracy toward bureaucratic authoritarianism. Belkovskii, who is the president of the council, was a co-author of that report.

In January, Belkovskii, who holds more radical views than do most of the roughly 40 other SNS members, announced his resignation. He went on to found the National Strategy Institute, which has been frequently confused with the SNS ever since. Also in January, Agency of Applied and Regional Policy Director Valerii Khomyakov was named the new director general of the SNS.

Speaking to journalists in Saratov on 4 August, Khomyakov said that the report titled "A National Agenda And A National Strategy For The Second Presidential Term Of Vladimir Putin" was prepared by a working group headed by SNS co-Chairman and economist Iosif Diskin, RosBalt reported. Khomyakov also said that President Putin has read the report, the goal of which is to stimulate public discussion and the consolidation of a national political agenda.

The 'Nomenklatura-Pragmatic' Program

The report opens with a summary of Putin's first term, which it characterizes as a struggle between two competing political programs -- the "liberal" project and the "nomenklatura-pragmatic" programs. The liberal project included a radical demolition of the old politico-economic system, a reduction of the role of the state, and the creation of the foundations of a market economy. This "liberal" program, however, paved the way for "oligarchic capitalism" and transformed the country's democratic institutions into a mere facade behind which the oligarchs made sweetheart deals with the bureaucracy.

The "nomenklatura-pragmatic" program proposed reforms aimed at using the state as the main instrument of modernization. It does not, however, envision the reform of the state itself. The main result of Putin's first term was the ascendancy of this project and the virtually total defeat of the liberal model that grew up during the period of managed democracy.

The basic tool of managed democracy is the institution of a super-presidency, under which all political and economic actors are dependent on presidential decisions, the report argues. During Putin's first term, the Kremlin established the complete dominance of the mass media and substantially restricted the activity of both the right and left flanks of the political spectrum. It transformed the pro-Kremlin Unified Russia party into the Duma-majority party, mutating it "from a representative of the electorate's interest into a tool of control over society," the SNS report states.

Managed democracy also largely squeezed regional elites from national decision-making, which has taken on an increasingly Moscow-centric nature. In the last couple of years, this bias has been complemented by a fairly strong St. Petersburg element as well. The SNS report emphasizes the instinctive antidemocratic nature of the government and its desire to orchestrate national political life and to manipulate the public consciousness.

This antidemocratic nature creates a profound crisis of public confidence in all institutions of power, including the government, the Duma, the Federation Council, the justice system and law enforcement organs, and the armed forces. Polls show that public confidence in such state institutions is not more than 6-8 percent.

"Just like a decade ago, the liberal Russian intelligentsia is in opposition to the government, accusing it of perfidious plans and a striving toward dictatorship, but it is making no efforts of its own to conceptualize the current situation in Russia," the report states.

Decaying Military

One of the most interesting sections of the SNS report is the one devoted to defense and law enforcement. The report argues that the lack of real military reform -- combined with corruption and mismanagement -- have led to the accelerating deterioration of the material status of the military and the erosion of its morale.

"As a result of the fight for their survival, a considerable part of the officer corps of the Russian Federation has already crossed the line of irreversible moral decay," the report claims. "Corruption, embezzlement, and commercial activity at the expense of the service has become the norm for many officers."

"A negative balance exists between the army and the state," the report continues. "The state is no longer in a position to maintain and control the armed forces. Therefore, it closes its eyes to corruption and plunder. In turn, the military remains loyal to the state insofar as it is allowed to steal and accept bribes."

The situation is no better among the law enforcement organs. They cannot cope with crime and corruption in Russia, problems that are so severe they jeopardize the country's further modernization. Also, corruption is so pervasive within these agencies that they themselves pose a danger to the state. According to some experts, about $20 billion in bribes pass through Russia's law enforcement organs each year, the SNS report says. Such corruption also threatens the public. Almost one-half of Russians see these agencies as a threat and one-fourth claim to have personally experienced some infringement of their rights at the hands of law enforcement officials, the report states.

Despite this pessimistic analysis, the report has few suggestions for improving the situation. It proposes the creation of a unified system of strategic military planning, the formation of a military force structure based on real "target-threats," the creation of two or three model units in each branch of the military, the purging of corrupt and disqualified personnel, the establishment of civilian control over the military, and the creation of a civilian army affairs commissioner within the presidential administration.

As far as the law enforcement community is concerned, the report proposed giving the National Security Council a leading role in coordinating the law enforcement agencies. It also urges the continued reform of the Interior Ministry, programs to increase public intolerance of corruption, and state support to journalists conducting investigative reports.

At the same time, the SNS report is sympathetic to the efforts of the so-called siloviki to review the results of the privatization of state property during the 1990s. "The much-discussed amnesty on privatization entails the acceptance of a selective approach to the enforcement of law, to the absurd contention that the laws of the 1990s are 'unstable,' contradictory, and that only privatization laws should be rigorously enforced," the report states. "Such an amnesty is a direct insult to those who acted honestly or who didn't enter business at all because they doubted that it could be done legally. Granting an amnesty would close off for a long time any possibility of legalizing the genuinely legitimate large fortunes in Russia."

The report adds, however, that it might be desirable to offer selective amnesties and leniency to those "who made significant contributions to the development of the country," specifically mentioning anyone who received a state order after 2000. "Judges should take into consideration a convict's real contribution to the development of the economy when sentencing," the report states. "When it is determined that a significant contribution was made, the judge must choose a punishment that is not connected with imprisonment but with the obligatory restitution of any harm caused."

"The National Strategy Council proposes this formula for a 'national compromise': it is more important to force the rich to work for the good of the country than to switch them around," the report states.

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#13

Moscow Times

August 25, 2004

The World of Vladimir Vladimirovich

By Caroline McGregor

Staff Writer

When political life starts to seem painfully dull, many of the city's politically conscious head to the imaginary world of www.vladimir.vladimirovich.ru for its short spoofs of what may or may not go on behind the Kremlin's walls.

The scenarios portray President Vladimir Putin going through the affairs of state as if he were an earnest little kid, not quite sure how he'd wound up in the Kremlin.

In a recent story, the president of South Ossetia calls Putin: "How's life down there?" the Putin character asks. "We have a war," the president of the separatist Georgian republic tells him in a serious voice. "We have rain," Putin responds in a dreamy voice. "It pours and pours ... thundering and lightning everywhere."

Such lighthearted sketches are the brainchild of Maxim Kononenko, a computer programmer-turned-journalist who insists that, unlike the writers of the former NTV program "Kukly," he's not out to produce scalding political satire; he just likes to crack a good joke.

In another story, posted last Monday, Putin and the head of his administration are discussing the sky-high price of oil. Putin wants to know how much oil is in a barrel. His chief of staff admits he only knows it's different from a pint, the size of a beer at Rosie O'Grady's. "The main thing is we have a lot of them," he says.

"I don't have an agenda," Kononenko said over a mid-afternoon espresso the other day near Novy Arbat. He was on his way to Ekho Moskvy radio's offices there for negotiations about a possible Friday night show based on his sketches. The newsreader would give a straight version of events, followed by Kononenko's spoof version.

Kononenko, 33, gets a lot of mileage out of what he posts on his web site. He would not write scripts for the radio show, he said, but instead producers would use what he had put on the Internet that week.

One fixture of the Vladimir Vladimirovich world is the office telephone with only one button -- the one that the virtual Putin uses to call the head of his administration when he does not know what to do, which is often.

Kononenko resists comparisons to Daniil Kharms, the absurdist writer who was famous in the 1920s for his paradoxical anecdotes. "I don't like Kharms," he said flatly.

Another hallmark of Kononenko's humor derives from his putting low-brow slang in the mouths of bureaucrats publicly known for their formal, stuffy speech. One of his signature phrases is "Slysh, bratello," or "Listen, bro," a line that appears in every sketch.

"Somehow the jargon works," said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst who said he occasionally swings by the site when he is online. "Away from public sight, the way bureaucrats talk among themselves can't be all that different from policemen or prisoners."

Kononenko is releasing a book compilation this fall, and his postings also pop up regularly alongside his bushy-haired, bearded mug on the news pages of the newspaper Gazeta, where Kononenko is a music reviewer for the culture section.

The deal is, Kononenko said, Gazeta can take material from his site and print it as often as it wishes, free of charge, and in return he is not required to produce for his site on any schedule but his own.

When he writes, it is under the pen name Mr. Parker -- literally, the pen name.

It was all inspired by a gift from a grade-school sweetheart in the 1970s, he said, pulling a silver Parker pen out of the inner pocket of his drab green flak jacket. (It's not the same one -- he's gone through many since then.) "Back then these things were a colossal rarity," he said. "It was a big deal for me."

When he started tinkering with computers soon thereafter, Kononenko used Parker as his first login and the name stuck.

Kononenko said he was a big fan of the sassy and wildly popular cartoon Masyanya, and registered the vladimir.vladimirovich.ru domain name back in the fall of 2002, when he, like many others, had dreams of tapping similar success.

"I thought of doing a cartoon, but I can't draw," he said. Next he thought of making the site about different people named Vladimir -- Vysotsky, the singer, Nabokov, the writer, Gusinsky, the businessman. "I didn't set out to write about Putin, but I couldn't escape him."

Every mention of Putin in the sketches is followed by the trademark symbol, presenting Vladimir Vladimirovich as no different than ubiquitous consumer goods like Coca-Cola or Kleenex.

"When he came to power, it irritated me that everyone spoke of him not as the president, or as Putin, but as Vladimir Vladimirovich," he said. "He privatized that name. Now you can't associate it with anyone else."

Kononenko said he knows his vignettes about the Kremlin are read inside the Kremlin. Ekho Moskvy editor Alexei Venediktov told him that he had opened the site to show former chief of staff Alexander Voloshin during an interview in his office. He has also heard that Voloshin's successor, Dmitry Medvedev, is less than pleased with the primitive depictions.

As for rank-and-file members of the administration staff, "they all read it," he said. "Imagine if there was a site about your newsroom, you'd read it first thing."

Kononenko said friends had relayed to him a request from someone in the administration to post new sketches early in the morning, so that Kremlin staffers could read them and get on with the day, rather than checking the site impatiently through the day.

"It's like a TV series," he said. "As long as something is there, people are happy."

He calls his project a polit-series, and he says that an average of 15,000 people visit the site a day.

Someone named Kostya left this message in the site's guestbook last week: "Thanks a million, Parker. A fresh breeze is blowing over the country thanks to your great text. If the country had 50 others like it, then it would be fun to live with Putin."

There are other humor sites devoted to Putin, like www.vovochka.spb.ru, but Kononenko's is by far the most popular.

Perhaps driven by worries that the site could be shut down, or perhaps by a desire to use it to influence last fall's parliamentary elections, one particularly deep-pocketed fan approached Kononenko last November and offered him a lump sum of money on the condition he keep the site up and running for one year.

Kononenko will not name the person except to say that he is a businessman, and he will not describe the sum except to say that it is "not small."

The mysterious patron retained for himself the right to influence the site's content, Kononenko said, but he never invoked that right. "He's disappeared. I haven't heard from him since."

Kononenko said he had no qualms about that. "I produce a literary product. If someone wants to buy it and use it, that's fine with me."

Kononenko said he has more than enough money to keep the site running past November, thanks to his salaried jobs as an editor at Internet tabloid Dni.ru and at Bourgeoisie, a glossy magazine launched by Dni.ru's owners. "They're for simple people. It's a lot of show business and as little as possible about politics," Kononenko said with a shrug.

He has a few volunteers who translate the sketches into English, German and Spanish for the site. The German volunteer is particularly industrious and prompt, but the latest offerings in the other two languages are from about six months ago.

Kononenko said he already has a plan for the final sketch he will run on the day Putin leaves office -- provided his creative energies last that long: Vladimir Vladimirovich will go fishing. "He's always saying he wants to go, but he never gets to, so finally he will."

English versions of Maxim Kononenko's sketches will start appearing on the Opinion pages of The Moscow Times on alternate weeks in September.

Olympic Gold

One day, Vladimir Vladimirovich went for a stroll along his presidential beach in Sochi. His Navy guard ships loomed in the distance, helicopters circled overhead and around the beach, and tired policemen shifted their weight from one foot to another.

"I'm surrounded on all sides," Vladimir Vladimirovich muttered to himself, kicking the pebbles with the toes of his expensive Italian shoes. "Like a wild animal at the zoo."

Vladimir Vladimirovich stuck his hand in the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his government-issued cellphone with the two-headed eagle in place of a keypad and pressed the only button to call the head of his administration.

"Listen, bro," Vladimir Vladimirovich said. "Is there anything new?"

"They've won another medal," the head of the administration happily answered. "A gold one!"

"Listen, why do we need these medals? What, don't we have enough gold?" Vladimir Vladimirovich asked, a bit exasperated. "If so, let's mine more of it. Here we are traveling who knows where, spending budget money and bringing back next to nothing."

"That's already the 501st Russian medal!" the head of the administration proudly retorted. "If each is 100 grams, that makes 50 kilograms of gold! It's all money ... and national pride."

"I'm your national pride," Vladimir Vladimirovich interrupted. "As usual, for Luzhkov it's Greece and for Putin it's Sochi, with cops on his back."

Vladimir Vladimirovich wound up and pitched the phone into the Black Sea, where it was quickly fetched by scuba divers from the Federal Guard Service.

Vladimir Vladimirovich looked sullenly toward Turkey. He was annoyed.

A Barrel of Oil

"Forty-four dollars a barrel," Vladimir Vladimirovich said slowly, dreamily staring at his portrait on the wall. "Forty-four dollars a barrel! Just think ..."

Vladimir Vladimirovich pushed the button to call the head of his administration.

"Listen, bro," Vladimir Vladimirovich said. "A barrel, that's how much?"

"Forty-four dollars!" the head of the administration answered promptly.

"Why do you immediately talk about money?" Vladimir Vladimirovich said, gently correcting the head of his administration. "I'm asking about volumes. How much is it by volume? A bucket? Just what is a barrel exactly?"

"Volume?" the head of the administration asked, confused. "Haven't a clue. A pint, now that I know. It's one glass of beer at Rosie O'Grady's, but a barrel, who knows? But who cares? The main thing is that we have a lot of these barrels. Even more than pints at Rosie's. And for each one we get $44!"

Source: www.vladimir.vladimirovich.ru.