By Vestnik Kavkaza
A year ago the elections to the State Duma took place. After them mass political protests of the citizens began in Russia. Participants of the protests stated that there were falsifications and breaking the law during the elections. Some saw in the demonstrations signs of “color” revolutions, others believed that Russia appears in the situation of turbulence once again. After the victory of Vladimir Putin in the elections, the authorities felt confidence, but no stability. Whether the turbulence was overcome or not – Russian experts discuss the issue.
Boris Kagarlitski, the head of the Globalization and Social Movements Institute
Was the turbulence overcome? I believe the turbulence which took place in December-May or December-June 2012 really was overcome. If we speak about the specific political crisis which we watched during the first half of 2012, this crisis and this confrontation are also exhausted due to the opposition’s efforts. The opposition couldn’t challenge the power with anything except for a desire to be the power itself. People got an opportunity to compare and didn’t see any socio-economic alternative, not to mention personal attacks on the president, they didn’t dare criticize the government seriously, as the government includes “their own” ministers, and the ambiguous position of Mr. Kudrin is understandable. In general, there were only personal attacks which were considered by the population to be routine fights. It put people off. The second stage, which became clear by spring, was connected with the fact that the power started taking “populist measures”, as the opposition called them, i.e. they provided the policy of encouraging demand as a counter to the policy of severe saving which Western Europe provided. This policy worked. Now we have economic growth – even though it is not big or stable, we have it, while in other cases we could have lost it.
Vladimir Zharikhin, the deputy director of the CIS Countries Institute
I think one of the main reasons for the protests that took place was the awkward model of transferring power from one to another. I should say the former president, or the current Prime Minister, is guilty in the developments, as he showed that he didn’t want to hand over power to Putin, as if he was forced to do this. Many of those who saw it felt the internal tension which led to the developments. After they happened, regional elections took place in which United Russia got the results which it used to get without any difficulties. To some extent, the environment of Medvedev follows people which took part in these meetings. Both they and the opposition are shockingly unprofessional. Our economic structure is oriented to the raw material sector. It has one peculiarity. We should not have complexes, as many countries which live off the raw material sector for centuries feel fine, for example Canada or Australia. However, it is rather restricted. And the creative class, which is in fact the middle class, but it doesn’t like it when it is called so, has an objective problem – the number of places which the middle class can take in the energy sector of the economy is limited. We need two system administrators, but not five. As the middle class has begun to grow in recent years, they felt their places were in danger. This threat led them on to the streets and squares, but when they saw what the opposition offered them – extension of democracy and so on – they realized: this was not the point, we wouldn’t get more jobs from this. And they seemed to calm down. The slogan for fair elections suddenly disappeared, as fair elections do not lead to the growth of jobs in the high-tech industry.
Leonid Radzikhovski, Russian publicist and political scientist
Turbulence is life. You cannot overcome life and stop it. The problem of power is in realizing that life in the context of turbulence is an absolutely normal political process in the 21st century. Turbulence is only absent in North Korea, but 140 million citizens of Russia and the administration of Russia do not want to turn into North Korea. So instability, turbulence, uncertainty is an absolutely natural situation throughout the whole world. It is probably unpleasant. Global warming is unpleasant too, but it is a fact. That is first. Secondly, unfortunately, we ignore a very important factor – I cannot understand why nobody pays attention to it. The factor is called “legitimation.” Putin is the legitimate President of Russia and will stay so till 2018. His ranking can be equal to zero, like the popularity ranking of Boris Yeltsin. But ill, old, ruined, hated by the whole country, drinking, inadequate and so on, Yeltsin didn’t stop being the legitimate president for a second even; his power was absolutely legitimate and nobody attempted to take it. They tried to undertake impeachment, but failed. Thus, there is no problem of taking power from Putin. There is no opportunity for this, as Russia is a super-legitimate country. Citizens of Russia pay great attention to legitimacy. This is understandable: twice in the 20th century they destroyed legitimate regimes, and in both cases they got dissatisfaction. Therefore, nobody dares stand against legitimate power in Russia. There is no problem of taking power away in nature. There is a different problem: how should the power live in the context of a decrease in its ranking? It is decreasing and this is unavoidable. Firstly, the economic crisis remains and will continue. I agree that it is harder in Europe – 25% of young people are unemployed there. I would like to see Moscow in this situation. Thousands and millions of people go on to the streets in Europe. In our country it is possible too, but it doesn’t mean any threat to the current power. Millions of demonstrators protested against the former president Bush; but he was the legitimate President of the USA till the end. It is a very important moment for the authorities to realize that life is possible and ruling is possible under reducing popularity. It is an important mental moment. It has to be realized. This is the first moment. The second moment is connected with it: we have a very low charge in society. The opposition doesn’t exist; nobody cares about it. But support for the power is not active – I don’t consider administrative resources, falsifications, as it is obvious that millions of people voted for the authorities – but they voted without the enthusiasm, love, hope or faith which existed 12 years ago. 12 years is a very long period. Our people were spoiled as the economy grew rapidly, living standards grew rapidly. Nobody can provide the pace of growth in the future. If Lenin, Napoleon, Alexander the Great, Washington and Gandhi replaced Putin all together, they couldn’t provide the economic growth which is expected by people. It is simply impossible. That is why the popularity of Putin will reduce year by year. It is not a tragedy or a problem. The power shouldn’t care about this, it should rule relying not on its popularity, but on the institutions which should be developed. The legitimacy of the President is not a function of his popularity, thank God! If it were so, presidents in all countries would change once a week, and it would be impossible to live. The main problem of the current power is that they think too much about clowns, Sobchak and Novalny, and forget about the real problem. The real problem is within the power itself – improvement and development of administrative institutions which are not developed and the institutions of civil society, which exists in embryo form.
Alexei Mukhin, the head of the Political Information Center
I think the distance dialogue between the supreme power and the opposition has partially ended, as Vladimir Putin's election as President of Russia and this fact, despite the opposition’s expectations, didn’t cause mass protests in the so-called Western civilized world. It was expected that this victory of Putin's would be interpreted as a disaster, and the elections would be recognized as illegal. But a series of technical efforts and a resurgence in Putin’s popularity in Russia didn’t allow these dreams to come true. Moreover, Western society reacted quite positively to Putin’s return. Those who were relying on the presidential elections being recognised as illegal miscalculated. However, it happened later; in the period between December 2011 and March 2012 the opposition was sure that the bloody regime, as they write on the internet, would fail. This feeling gave them a certain drive to launch people on to the streets and promise them that the regime would fail soon. Nevertheless, despite this fact, the supreme power didn’t call its bluff through solving the problem by military means, and this is a valuable quality which was demonstrated by the authorities. Moreover, they considered the demands of the protest movement leaders during the structuring of the political system after the presidential elections, even though the number of those who protested reduced drastically. The federal authorities didn’t make the mistakes which the opposition expected from them, and the protest didn’t turn into an overthrow of the regime. It didn’t happen. This caused strong but unformed dissatisfaction among the opposition activists, who expressed it by a traditional means – on the internet. Of course, their concept of the autocratic power in Russia appeared to collapse. A big role was played by the fact that a huge part of the Russian population is conservative, and the threat of the protests intensifying consolidated Putin’s electorate, which made his victory decisive. It prevented a dispute over the victory at the presidential elections and it being presented as illegal, despite the opposition’s expectations. At last Putin has changed the human resources model, even though they thought he would leave everything as it was. I expressed thoughts on the serious actions over Serdyukov and Yelena Skrynnik; and I think they are not the last figures. Now the principle of professional skills, purity of reputation, lies at the basis of Vladimir Putin’s human resources policy. It should make Putin’s environment think and reconsider their relations with the supreme power. It is a good lesson for executive power employees too. The creative class to which the opposition appealed experienced serious disappointment in the opposition leaders, whose activity amounted only to self-publicity. Now the creative class is dealing with financial and economic problems. Vladimir Putin has to pay attention to it, I believe it is a promising audience. Moreover, the President’s health seems to be getting better again and we expect further serious changes in the political and economic structure of Russia.
