In early October 2004, a Russian national newspaper published an address of congratulations to Vladimir Putin on the occasion of his birthday by the president of Russia’s National Olympic Committee, Leonid Tyagachev. I will take the risk of assuming that Russian newspapers have not carried texts of this kind for the past twenty or so years. The last time that a sports official gave so much thanks to a national leader for his support of athletes or extolled so much praise was during the rule of Leonid Brezhnev. It seemed that such senseless and distasteful adoration had long ago become a thing of the past, but it appears that such practices have been committed to memory only temporarily. Old ways are returning, it seems, and what is most regrettable, no one seems to be surprised by it. Ministers, members of parliament, law enforcement officials, and businessmen queued up to repeat Tyagachev’s patriotic deed. They fell short of his eloquence, but subscribed to the tendency.

The tragic events in Beslan are now history, while Russia confronts a clear and simple fact: the country has changed dramatically over the past twelve months. This change is not just a matter of the endless applause drumming on the president’s ears or the government’s stated eagerness to sacrifice the division of powers, independent courts and immunity of private ownership for “political rationality.” Nor does it have anything to do with its readiness to revive old fears. The real change involves the very social situation in the country: freedoms are disappearing. State-run television, for example, has become a perfect match for its Soviet-era predecessor, while the print media will likely be next in line. Everyone is moaning over Russia’s shortage of qualified personnel in virtually all areas, but it appears professionals are simply not needed. One of Russia’s best TV reporters, Leonid Parfyonov, has been literally banned from the screen. Raf Shakirov, an extremely talented and professional newspaper editor, has been fired. Russia’s main statist and outstanding politician, Alexander Voloshin, now idles away his time at the RAO UES energy corporation, to say nothing of Russia’s former successful businessman, Mikhail Khodorkovsky.

Russian society is obviously going through an abrupt turning point, and the most capable and notable personalities are once again unwanted in their homeland. What is needed is some form of aggressive mediocrity; just one look at the mute members of government and parliament, and now the regional governors, provides convincing proof of this. The idea of a civic society, a vogue of the recent past, has transformed into the judgment of numerous loyalists who are vigorously tipping the FSB on anything that looks suspicious, while the FSB is fully unprepared for it. And civic valor has come to mean taking an oath to “consolidate forces around the President,” not responsibility or legality.

Mediocrity has settled upon one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface, and this is the main outcome of the Great Watershed Year. The situation brings to mind what Russian science fiction writers, the Strugatsky brothers, stated in their novel Hard to Be a God: “Where mediocrity triumphs, power is taken by the dark souls.”  It is much more important, however, to understand exactly what happened and where the fatal mistake was made.

A TRAGEDY OF MISTAKES

Vladimir Putin continued to commit mistakes throughout the year. The administrative reform ended up in conspicuous failure, and officials in both the presidential administration and in government had to admit it. The reason for the failure was not due to incompetence, but rather a gross miscalculation was made at the stage of planning. The reform initiative was centered on the idea of separating the different levels of power. It implied that the ministries would determine policies and coordinate activities in the specific areas which report to them; the government services would have controlling functions, while the agencies would steer practical actions in line with ministry-defined policies which are supervised by the services. The main idea was to fix independence of all the government entities from each other. It meant that a ministry was not supposed to do “manual jobs” or deal with any specific details of arising problems – its task was to map out strategies. The head of an agency would not act on the minister’s will; otherwise the minister might succumb to the temptation of writing strategies and manipulating assets which were allocated for the implementation of these strategies.

Naturally, the ministers revolted against that idealistic model, since everyone wanted to manipulate situations as they arose. A fatal compromise was the result: the cabinet members got an opportunity to interfere in the activities of the government services and agencies. The latter became subordinate to the ministries, if not turning into their actual departments. This ruined the reform at the initial stage.

A huge and painstaking reorganization of the government machinery was thus void of any good sense. Moreover, the general situation with governability, together with any efforts to achieve a breakthrough, deteriorated badly. The ministers slipped back into the position of deputy prime ministers, while the turnover of documents and the decision-making process became slower than before. A breakthrough could scarcely be expected, when, for example, officials in many new services did not receive their salaries for half a year. However, this was not because money was absent, but because it could not be decided what ministry a particular service should be ascribed to.

Thus, the revolutionary plan collapsed because of last-minute hesitations; it seems that somebody braked slightly at the eleventh hour, rendering redundant all of the efforts.

It seems that such apprehension also lies at the root of the mistakes in the lifting of social privileges. This lifting, taken per se, is a progressive and correct step, and the idea has been discussed for a long time. It was clear that a window of opportunity for such an unpopular move would open right after the presidential election, but ministers and other top-ranked officials had failed to make the appropriate computations by the time this opportunity actually emerged; the prime minister apparently feared an awkward situation and avoided responsibility. Thus, three different figures for a single provision would be named on just one day. Not even a simple cost estimate was drawn up to show how much each financial privilege cost the federal budget, or how allocations had been made by regions. Despite years of long talking, nothing was ready on time.

In such a situation a genuinely resolute step would have been the suspension of a decision. To get the whole thing off the ground without a workable mechanism is tantamount to dooming the budget to plunder and the people to torment. Postponing the date for lifting privileges would be most reasonable in a situation where the appointees to government posts have proven themselves to be professionally inadequate. Yet, as it often happens in Russia, an order was given to implement the reform at all costs.

The next error involved the elimination of governor elections, where the fight against terrorism offered a good pretext for changing the country’s political system. Previously, Putin seemed to be a man who was capable of protecting the green shoots of a new democratic Russia which everyone had painfully nourished for over 15 years; but today the Russian president is different. Putin did not abrogate democracy in 1999, when Russia’s unity was in a far greater danger than now and when the regional barons had flocked together in the Fatherland party. He acted upon clear principles of democracy at that time, observing the division of powers and aligning local laws with the federal Constitution and legislation. But five years after the start of his presidency, the old half-feudal principles were proclaimed the pillars of Russia’s unity. Following the Beslan tragedy, the leader gave up – by his own will – the major gains of the past few years which could have laid the foundation for a renewed Russia. Having gained power, he signed an end to the election of governors, thus curtailing even a semblance of democracy in the political system. The United Russia party, staffed by the nomenklatura, is now called upon to consolidate the country the way the former Communist Party of the Soviet Union, also staffed by the nomenklatura, was supposed to do. Is there any difference in this arrangement?

After Beslan, Putin made yet another dramatic mistake. Nothing was said openly and candidly about the kind of reforms that were apparently needed in the law enforcement agencies which displayed a glaring lack of organization during the crisis. The Beslan tragedy revealed the inability of the security service heads to handle their duties, and nobody accepted blame. The security services proved that they were unable to coordinate a single stage of the antiterrorist operation, while leaving the hostages and servicemen of the Alfa and Vympel task force units pay with their lives for the mess.

In the wake of Beslan, the failure to publicly confess to the weakness of the state, together with the silence about whatever plausible antiterrorist measures or reshuffles in the security services were required, further demonstrated Putin’s weakness. Yeltsin, by comparison, although being in a far shakier position than Putin is today, fired his security chief Sergei Stepashin and interior minister Victor Yerin after terrorists seized a hospital in Budyonnovsk in 1995. Putin did not dismiss anyone, while the usual excuse – “No one else is more qualified than the present staff” – sounds rather childish. No one will be worse than these guys. And the essence of the presidential duties is to search for those who are better qualified. A period of five years is long enough to train from scratch an expert on disaster situations, which are now occurring with increasing frequency.         

The irresponsibility of the generals will inevitably cause a new major failure of the security services. Or, has caused it already, if one considers the Pumane case which smells of a secret police provocation miles away. The reluctance to disturb the black box of the secret services reveals yet another Putin’s weakness. It means that his trust of the security system is every bit as wanting as his trust of the business community. He feels secure only if he places his friends into positions of power, or his collegemates who owe everything to him – but whom the professionals do not respect very much. The problem is that this approach makes fighting with terrorism impossible.

A NO-RETURN POINT

Putin committed enough mistakes over the past year to shake any country, and yet they did not mark ‘a point of no return.’ That event was marked by the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which really pushed everything downhill.

Its economic consequences are obvious. The Economics Ministry said that Russia was expected to receive about $4.5 billion in the form of direct foreign investment in 2004, but a report in late August said capital flight to other countries might stand at around $17 billion instead; after September the figure was predicted to rise. That the country lost over $20 billion became clear as daylight in August, in fact. Whatever the wise men of the Russian Finance Ministry say about the increase in U.S. discount rates, 90 percent of the blame for the losses is attributable to the YUKOS case. It filled the country with fears which, in turn, prompted businesspeople not to make long-term plans for Russia, but prepare “emergency landing runways” abroad instead and keep hard currency revenues there, too.

In addition to the economic aftermath, Khodorkovsky’s arrest marked a turning point in Russian domestic policy. The relationship between the President and the oligarchs was initially based on the understanding that big business cannot dictate to the government, but the nation needs big business, and it can be successful only under conditions of independence and freedom.

Right from the start, Putin removed oligarchs Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky; he carried out this move accurately, without overshooting the mark at the same time. The authorities bargained with Gusinsky and did not confiscate property from Berezovsky. Everything was done to make the blackmailing oligarchs recognize the new reality and exit from the scene; at the same time, Putin did not sow the seeds of fear throughout the Russian business community.

Putin maintained a balance for several years, while confining his actions to certain limits. This ability proved to be one of his strong features. On the one hand, the balance helped the state power to become stronger and, on the other, it enabled the formation of bourgeois state institutions that had never existed in Russia before.
By deciding to arrest Khodorkovsky, Putin upset the balance that he had built with his own hands. He chose to return to the favorite Russian methods, where political reasons overshadow all principles and laws and where fear and indulgence toward the stealing executive become the primary instrument for the ruling sovereign for reaching his goals.

After YUKOS was flayed, any talk about the division of powers, independent courts and the supremacy of the law has become meaningless. When something is sold at one-third of its actual price, it simply means that the item was stolen. When the state sells Yuganskneftegaz, YUKOS’s main upstream subsidiary (which had assets between $15 and 17 billion) for a meager $9 billion and in very strange circumstances, while refusing to accept the tax arrears that YUKOS ostensibly accrued, this signals that the authorities understood they were committing a robbery. And to blame just one person makes no sense since all of the ideological groupings seated near the throne – from Sechin and Ustinov to Kudrin and Gref – are pilfering YUKOS’s assets.

This disgraceful scene, where the state ordered the destruction of Russia’s biggest corporation, must make any proponent of a strong state fall silent. As experience tells us, any attempt by the bureaucrats to put things in order ends with large-scale stealing. This is quite in line with the Russian saying: “The law is like a poke – it makes a hole wherever you strike.” The bureaucrats crush all that is new and efficient just to stuff a few more suitcases with bribes.

The collapse of YUKOS represents not only a defeat for Khodorkovsky, it provides a balm to the heart for people like Berezovsky who have the right to say now: “Well, didn’t we warn you before?”

PRESIDENTIAL SECRET

Why did Putin back down? It should not be forgotten that he restrained himself for quite a long time, ignoring the provocative behavior of YUKOS’s executives and the attempts of his own aides to get him drawn into that horrific campaign. So why did he go back on everything that he declared to be his goals during his first term of office?

Strictly speaking, there can be only one answer: the President, seemingly resolute and confident of his strength, has proven to be too feeble. He has no clear plan of what he would like to achieve and how, what should be built and in what sequence. His resolute look conceals inner confusion and diffidence.

This weakness became noticeable back in 2001, when the mass media published transcripts of telephone conversations from the chief of the presidential administration staff, Alexander Voloshin. Of course, Voloshin’s phone calls could only have been bugged by one of the secret services; Putin pretended not to have noticed anything. Russia has deep-going traditions of bugging, and yet publishing the contents of a taped transcription is considered to be a federal offense. Putin did not dare find and punish the malefactors then. Unofficially, the Kremlin’s former security boss, Alexander Korzhakov, was blamed in the scandal. However, Putin, by not acting as a strong boss of the secret services, displayed his weakness and dependence on specific personalities.

Putin’s weakness is also manifest by his incredible appointments of particular officials. Quite conscientiously, he appoints to leading positions weak persons incapable of independent decision-making: Mironov, Gryzlov, Fradkov, Patrushev, and many others are fledglings from Putin’s nest. By gathering inferiors around himself and selecting members who follow the principle of a teenage street gang leader – “Everyone is against us, the whole world is an enemy, never surrender your friends, but bash aliens” – makes for a weak presidency, not a strong one.

The bad turns and errors of the past year are not only distasteful; they are the cause of serious concerns. The government is rapidly turning into an ossified nomenklatura. Its political skills are degrading at a high rate, as shown by the recent developments in Abkhazia. It vests hopes in the use of force and television propaganda, and diligently scrapes off the legitimate opportunities of feedback; to do otherwise would force the authorities to consider people’s interests rather than dupe and bribe them. This heightens the possibility of a crisis, since only flexible systems can produce stability. As for Putin’s power vertical, it is tightening. It does not conceal the authorities’ diffidence, but makes the whole system fragile.

One may get the impression that Putin is materializing the ideas that might have seemed promising in 1999 and 2000. Although many of them do sound reasonable, the country has changed dramatically in those four years, and in many respects credit for this must go to Putin. If so, quoting again the Strugatsky brothers, we would very much like to put him “into the same rank as Richelieu, Nicker, Iyeyasu Tokugawa, and Monk.” However, the President’s abrupt about-face that has crossed out everything he has done in the past, shows him as a doctrinaire rather than an outstanding politician proceeding from real life.

The result makes him look more like the Russian Emperor Nicholas I, not Richelieu. A historian once said of the Russian emperor: “He believed he was responsible for everything happening in the country, wanted to know and manage everything, were it a quarrel between the chairman of local nobility and a governor, or the construction of a police station in a provincial town. The fruitless efforts to embrace the universe and to put it into a symmetric order exhausted him. The diversity and chaos of life hampered the implementation of his doctrines, drove him into despair, and he had to channel all his efforts into inventing tools for harnessing the frenzy of things and people so that his principles could blossom. Consequently, he sought to pin down every national to his or her place and demanded blind obedience from both chief and workers.”

The end of Nicholas I’s epoch is well known. Russia lost time for modernization and wasted the energies it gained from the victory over Napoleon. Attempts to conserve the “order of things” resulted in a total loss of everything. Russia’s internal policy of the time was a reign of mediocrity and highly corrupt bureaucracy, whose “blind obedience and moral deviations” became illustrative for the authors of history textbooks worldwide. The best people of the time opposed the regime, and the best personal qualities of the emperor had no impact on the essence of his epoch.

Nicholas I’s rule resulted in Russia’s defeat in the Crimean War; Russia recovered from the loss, but appears to be unable to make up for the lost time.