Winston Churchill famously observed that the Kremlin’s political struggles are like a fight among bulldogs under a carpet : Outsiders hear plenty of growling, but have few clues who is winning until the fight is over. Unfortunately, not much has changed in Russian politics since this observation was made. American political scientist Stephen Holmes recently noted that we had a better idea of the role of Stalin’s show trials than we do of the elections’ role in the current Russian political system.
It seems that the bulldogs are moving beneath the carpet yet again. After a provocative report was published last week by the Institute for Contemporary Development (a liberal think tank with ties to President Medvedev), the question remains how to interpret, decipher, and decode the political noise coming from Moscow today. Is something happening there, or is it just noise ?
It is rather obvious that the regime is in crisis and that the political marriage between President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin is in crisis, too. Nobody speaks of divorce yet, but there is a Medvedev camp and a Putin camp in Russian politics. What is difficult to know is to what extent President Medvedev, himself, is a member of the Medvedev camp. The global economic crisis caused visible splits among the elites and put an end to the illusion that Russia is a rising power. Currently, Moscow policy elites are torn between the realization that the current system is dysfunctional, and the belief that this is the best system for Russia right now. But is this state of schizophrenia durable ? Can a dysfunctional system be an attractive one ?
The Institute’s report, “21st Century Russia : Reflections on an Attractive Tomorrow”, is a 23,000-word essay that presents a frontal attack on the ideological pillars of Putinism. The report claims that in order to succeed in its modernization effort, Russia should open its political system (re-introduce gubernatorial elections, abolish censorship in the media), join NATO and the EU, and dismantle the current security apparatus (Ministry of Interior and the Federal Security Service). Most of the ideas are not new—the principal authors, however, are. Igor Yurgens and Yevgeni Gontmakher are not street radicals who have nothing to lose. They are influential members of the establishment. Still, the strategy of their report is to challenge the three key myths that are the basis of Putin’s Russia : Myth 1 : Opening the political system means instability ; Myth 2 : The siloviki (the “people of force” or the security or military officers) saved Russia ; Myth 3 : Russia cannot trust the West.
Yurgens’s and Gontmakher’s analysis is based on the assumption that the economic crisis has dramatically re-shaped the psychological atmosphere in the country. In their view, the memories of the 1990s are fading away ; and, consequently, Russia’s middle class looks at Putin’s stability as stagnation, rather than salvation. It is still difficult to know if this is a correct assessment of the public attitude. It is difficult to ascertain whether the report is an act of hope or an act of desperation. Despite these unknowns, it is easy to interpret “21st Century Russia” as a game changer. For now, President Medvedev does not need to endorse the report. If he simply doesn’t distance himself from it, he will let people know that Medvedev has indeed joined the Medvedev camp, and that the primary season has opened in Russia.
And let us not forget : The fact that Russia does not have real competitive elections does not mean that Russia will not have really competitive primaries. Primaries, that is, that will take place in 2010—and primaries in which only the elite will have the right to participate.
