Asking the question, ‘who is more democratic, Russia or China’? is in some ways like asking the question ‘who is more feminine, Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger’? We can spend some time comparing bicep sizes, and we can speculate about their gentle souls, but Russia and China are essentially two non-democracies. The average Chinese or Russian may today be wealthier and freer than any time before, but neither country can satisfy a minimalist definition of democracy, i.e. competitive elections with uncertain outcomes.

‘Though not quite representing an alternative to the age of democratisation, the Russian and Chinese systems are essentially adjustments to it: the Russians are faking democracy while the Chinese are faking Communism.’

The broader trends of democratisation and globalisation have not, however, passed either by. If in the past, monarchical power or ideology gave strong foundations to non-democratic regimes, today the only way to claim the right to govern is to claim popular backing. Coercion is no longer the central survival logic of either the Russian and Chinese regimes. A corollary of democratisation is the empowerment of people, and in particular the role of technology and communication within a globalising society. However hard they may try, non-democratic countries are still unable to prevent people from using the Internet, keeping cross-border connections, travelling or obtaining information about the wider world.

Added to these trends is another factor: financial crisis. At the onset of the difficulties, many analysts assumed that the changes would destabilise emerging democracies; others saw the crisis as a death sentence for authoritarian regimes. What seems to have happened is  instead something more complex: a blurring of the border between democracy and authoritarianism. Though not quite representing an alternative to the age of democratisation, the Russian and Chinese systems have essentially become adjustments to it. Broadly speaking, the Russians are faking democracy while the Chinese are faking Communism.

A tale of two sophistries

At the juncture 1989-1991, both Communist leaderships — Soviet and Chinese — came to realise that Communism had become a dysfunctional type of system. But they had different understandings of what was wrong with it. In the Soviet Union, Gorbachev decided that what was worth preserving were the socialist ideas, and what was bad was the Communist party and its inability to bring to mobilise the energy of the society. His idea of social transformation meant moving beyond the party rule, and developing a state which could be competitive in the Western paradigm. The Chinese communist party took a totally different view. They believed what was bad about communism were the Communist, socialist ideas, especially in an economic sense, and what was good about socialism was the Communist party and its capacity to keep control of society. So they did everything to keep the power infrastructure intact.

‘If an alien with a degree in political science came from some other planet and landed in Russia, he would most probably think the country was a democracy. China, on the other hand, does not look like a democracy, not even to our alien friend.’

What do these regimes look like today? The Russian regime, observed from afar, certainly looks like a democracy. It enjoys a democratic constitution, runs elections, has a multiparty political system, has some free media and has not yet used tanks to crush massive public protests. If an alien with a degree in political science came from some other planet and landed in Russia, he would most probably think the country was a democracy. China, on the other hand, does not look like a democracy, not even to our alien friend. It is, instead, rather like a classic communist regime. As Richard McGregor observes in his book‘The Party’: ‘Beijing retains a surprising number of qualities that characterised communist regimes of the twentieth century. The Party in China has eradicated and emasculated political rivals, eliminated the autonomy of courts and press, restricted religion and civil society, established extensive network of security police, and dispatched dissidents to labour camps’.

On the level of institutional design not so much has changed in China since 1989, but almost everything has changed in Russia. The paradox, though, is that Russia’s imitation of democratic institutions has led to the establishment of an ineffective political regime deprived of political dynamism and characterised by low quality decision-making. The Chinese regime is generally accepted to be much more effective than the Russian one, and the quality of its decision-making is certainly much better. Moreover, it is arguably more democratic than Russia. Chinese regimes are much more capable for self-correction. They have succeeded in integrating key democratic elements while preserving the communist infrastructure of power.

Five Reasons why China is more democratic than Russia

Power Rotation

Russia clearly has elections, but no rotation of power. In the two post-communist decades, the president has not lost a single election: the role of the elections are not to secure the rotation of power, but to avoid it. In the case of China, clearly, the opposition doesn’t have a chance of winning either. Yet on the other hand, Chinese leaders do not stay in power for any more than ten years, after which a new party leader and president are automatically elected. In other words, in the Russian system elections are used as the way to legitimise the lack of rotation, while the Chinese Communist institutional structure has developed to allow an element of power rotation. Of course, we are still talking about two non-competitive regimes. But the Chinese understand that you need to change leadership, or you have a problem. The Chinese system, based on the principle of collective leadership, prevents the emergence of personalised authoritarianism and provides much more checks and balances. Unlike Russia, China is not haunted by the ghost of succession: the Party ensures a clear process of succession.

Listening to the People

By definition, non-democratic regimes have in-built hearing problems. Surveillance and polling can never replace the information that comes from people regularly taking place in free and competitive elections. Democratic elections are not only an option to elect leaders, but also a direct way to gauge where people stand.

You may go out in the streets, express your disagreement with politics and even insist that Putin should leave - but this does not mean your voice will be heard. Photo: (cc) Demotix/Alexey Nikolaev

When it comes to ‘hearing the people’, however, there is an important difference between China and Russia. This comes down to the fact that the Chinese government has not criminalised labour protest. Labour conflicts, ordinarily directed against regional leaders or company directors, are not considered dangerous for the party. So every year there are hundreds of thousands of strikes, and these have become an important source of reliable information. When people go on a direct protest, it is much better than pure polls — valuable not only because they are visible, but because they also offer an opportunity to contest the ability of the local leaders to settle conflicts. In Russia, the supposedly more democratic system, you don’t see strikes, because the price for protesting on labour issues is very high. Russia’s rigged elections are a much weaker test to judge the mood of the people and the ability of the regional leaders to deal with them.

Tolerance of opposition, tolerance of dissent

Democratic decision-making depends upon both diversity of views and the acceptability of disagreement, and here is where we uncover another point of divergence. If you compare Russia and China, you will see that in Russia there is certainly much more tolerance for organised opposition. The process is completely screwed up, but you can register a party, you can go on the street to protest, you can even ask Putin to resign. The Chinese regime is certainly much harsher and intolerant in this respect. But while the Kremlin broadly tolerates the opposition, it does not listen to it. It does not allow for dissent on policy matters and Government officials are careful not to advocate policies favoured by the opposition.

‘In the case of Chinese collective leadership, having different views is actually seen as legitimate. The loyalty test in China starts only once the Communist party has taken a decision. The loyalty test in Russia starts as soon as the president makes a proposal.’

Though the Chinese system is much more classically authoritarian and communist, its decision-making process is of a much better quality, more inclusive than the Russian one. In Russia, even when you have differences within the elite, most of the people explain them simply by economic differences. In the case of Chinese collective leadership, having different views is actually seen as legitimate. The loyalty test in China starts only once the Communist party has taken a decision. The loyalty test in Russia starts as soon as the president makes a proposal. A sense of general optimism and rising power also seems to have made China more tolerable to dissent on policy positions.

Recruitment of elites

Perhaps the most interesting comparison you can make between the two political systems is the way each of the countries goes about recruiting its elites. Where do people come from to occupy the most important positions in the state and leading industry? A study conducted by Russkiy Reporter in the end of 2011 revealed a number of interesting facts on this front. First, the great majority of the Russian elites went to one of just two Universities. Second, none of those occupying the top 300 positions came from the Russian Far East. And, third, the most important factor influencing membership of this elite circle is to have known Mr Putin before he became president. In short, Russia is governed by a circle of friends. This is not a meritocratic system in any sense: most of these people have not had proper careers, but have simply ended in this ruling group.

This is not the way in which the Chinese Communist party works. It is doing its best to create different layers of society, and does try to make the system reasonably meritocratic. If you are cynical enough, if you want to do well, if you want to make money, the Communist Party is open for you. The Communist party serves as a vehicle to recruit and socialise the elites, and the Chinese leadership invests a lot in ensuring regional representation and providing its cadres with opportunity to get diverse experience.

Experimentation

My last point comparing these two systems is to emphasise the way in which the Chinese and Russians totally differ in their view of the experimental nature of politics. Chinese political and economic reforms are organised around the experimentation of different models in the different regions and try to figure out what works from the point of view of the leadership. This is emphatically not the case in Russia: experiment is, basically, a dirty word there. They are not experimenting in the process of trying to build a governable state.

What does it all mean?

In summary, while there was once a time that you measured democracy looking at institutions, now you need to also ask questions about how the institutions function. Do they look like democracies? Is it possible that the democracy is faked? Russia is a brilliant example that should force us to think. It has fashioned a democratic surface, but under this surface all types of non-democratic practices are flourishing. China is another country — authoritarian and severe undoubtedly. But because of the pressure of the system, the different ideas underlying its transformation, and the country’s involvement on the world stage, its political practices are much more open than its formal institutions may lead us to believe.

Between a faked democracy and a faked communism, the latter seems to be the more capable, governable and accountable regime. Photo: (cc) Flickr/openDemocracy

The nature of any political regime for self-correction is its major characteristic and it is the capacity of self-correction and public accountability that it is at the heart of any democratic advantage. There are now many in Kremlin who, on the contrary, think that excessive democratisation has been responsible for many of the problems that new country faces. Many envy ‘true’ Chinese authoritarianism. But the truth is that in many of its practices China is more democratic than Russia, and its decision-making is undoubtedly superior. Over the last two decades, when China was busy with capacity building, Russia seems to have been pre-occupied with incapacity hiding. When Western commentators try to make sense of the different performance of the new authoritarians, they would well advised to look beyond formal institutional design.

Ivan Krastev was talking to Darya Malyutina

Thumbnail: 'Politburo' by Maxim Kantor. All rights reserved 

Ukraine’s former president Viktor Yushchenko, the father of five children, liked to describe his country as a ‘sleeping beauty’, awaiting her prince. After the Orange revolution of 2004 it looked as though the fairytale had come to its happy end, but eight years later it is obvious that Ukraine is still sunk in a deep, lethargic sleep.

For three years now the government led by Viktor Yanukovych has been dismantling democracy in Ukraine. In its latest report on world press freedom, the organisation Reporters without Borders places Ukraine in 126th position (out of 179), between Algeria and Honduras. In 2009, just before Yanukovych took power, it was in 89th place, but the new president decided not to tempt fate any further by playing the game of western values. 

Two perceptions of reality exist side by side in Ukraine. The first is that shown on television, the main source of information for 87% of the population, owned by the country’s oligarchs and so obliged to remain loyal to the regime. The second, for the small minority of Ukrainians who use it, is that of the internet, where opposition voices dominate.

TV - the government’s weapon of choice.

Television is the government’s chief channel of communication with its voters. Naturally enough, after his election as president in 2010, Yanukovych decided to bring it under control. All the main channels began to function as elements of a homogeneous information stream overseen by Russian spin doctor Igor Shuvalov, and those who refused to toe the line were marginalised. The TVai channel, for example, first lost its broadcasting frequencies, and then, just before last year’s parliamentary elections, even cable operators stopped carrying it. 

The big TV channels belong to four groups, all of them with no option but to be loyal to Yanukovych. Media group No 1, consisting of the popular Inter channel along with half a dozen minor channels, has since January of this year belonged to oligarch Dmytro Firtash and Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration. Group No 2 is in the hands of Rinat Akhmetov, the president’s right hand man, the richest person in Ukraine and chief sponsor of the ruling Party of Regions. Two other media groups belong to ex president Kuchma’s son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk and the Dnipropetrovsk oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky.

Most amazingly, the mainstays of television’s loyalty to Yanukovych are two TV stars from Russia, the legendary Yevgeny Kiselyov from NTV and Savik Shuster from Radio Svoboda. Fleeing from Putin’s authoritarian regime into the arms of Yanukovych, both happily agreed to play by his somewhat less onerous rules

For none of them is television their main business. They have accepted these roles as the price of government support in areas like energy privatisation and favours for their metallurgical companies. The Ukrainian public is moreover not even aware of who cooks up their daily information menu – 82% have no idea who is behind their media. Most amazingly, the mainstays of television’s loyalty to Yanukovych are two TV stars from Russia, the legendary Yevgeny Kiselyov from NTV and Savik Shuster from Radio Svoboda. Fleeing from Putin’s authoritarian regime into the arms of Yanukovych, both happily agreed to play by his somewhat less onerous rules.

No-one is immune

The latest example of an oligarch bowing to pressure from the regime is the UNIAN website, owned by Ihor Kolomoysky. He brought his respected 20 year old brand into disrepute by posting, on government orders, a preposterous story about jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko’s lawyer Sergei Vlasenko. According to this article, Vlasenko was a pathetic character who believed that he was being followed by government agents disguised as cartoon bears. The website’s journalists protested, and were imperiously told by Kolomoysky to shut up, or the site would be closed down.

The fate of Ukraine’s most popular TV channel, Inter, is symptomatic of the trend. It recently changed hands after its previous owner, businessman and former acting deputy Prime Minister Valery Khoroshkovsky, dared to challenge President Yanukovych. After resigning his post last December as a protest against Yanukovych’s choice of Prime Minister, Khoroshkovsky decided to show his independence by dropping all censorship on his TV channel and dismissing a pro-government presenter. But his satisfaction was short-lived. The tax authorities were immediately ordered to investigate his affairs, so he left Ukraine and is now resident in London, where his son is a student at City University. From the UK he agreed to sell his TV shares to Serhiy Lyovochkin, head of the presidential administration, and the change of ownership was immediately followed by the disappearance of a political talk show hosted by journalist Anna Bezulik and the disbanding of the public advisory council set up by Khoroshkovsky to monitor balance in the channel’s news coverage.

Khoroshkovsky decided to show his independence by dropping censorship on his TV channel and dismissing a pro-government presenter. But his satisfaction was short-lived. The tax authorities were immediately ordered to investigate his affairs, so he left Ukraine and moved to London.

A recent development has been the idea of the president’s ‘Family’ getting into direct media ownership. Yanukovych is trying to acquire his own information weapon system, to avoid the need for oligarchic support in the 2015 presidential elections. His media group consists mainly of a few small TV channels, radio stations and websites, but his ‘big gun’ is to be ‘Kapital’, a new business newspaper which will be published in conjunction with the Financial Times.

Interrupting the flow of news

The main result of Yanukovych’s media takeover has been to stop corruption allegations leaking from the internet to television. Since  Yanukovych’s election as president in 2010, not a single major channel has mentioned the scandal of his out-of-town residence Mezhyhirya. This tale of corruption on a fantastic scale would be a sensation anywhere in Europe, but in Ukraine it is simply a non-story. The government owned estate, formerly used by Ukraine’s communist bigwigs, is now 140 hectares of presidential private property (an area almost the size of Monaco) with a palatial residence where a single chandelier cost $100, 000.  

The interesting thing, however is that although television has made no mention of the president’s scandalous palace, it seems that the public is well aware of its story. A poll commissioned by the popular internet newspaper ‘Ukrainska Pravda’ showed that 42% of Ukrainians know about the machinations around the president’s residence despite the silence of the TV channels.

Journalists wait for Viktor Yanukovych to emerge from parliament, having themselves been prevented from observing. Photo: (cc) Demotix/ukrafoto ukrainian news

For the moment, the most popular Ukrainian websites have nothing to do with politics. The most visited site is Google, followed by the Russian social networking site ’vKontakte’. The third most popular site belongs to the Russian postal service; the fifth is another Russian social network, ‘Odnoklassniki’ (literally, ‘Classmates’).  Facebook is in tenth place, beaten by the file sharing site Ex.ua, which distributes pirated content. However the recent elections showed that the internet is becoming ever more dangerous for  Yanukovych and his political forces. In Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, not a single seat was won by a Yanukovych candidate. Despite the stream of TV propaganda, Kyivan voters were getting their information from alternative, online sources. Indeed attempts at falsification at Kyiv polling stations were foiled thanks to Facebook and Twitter, which were used to mobilise people to combat fraud.

The internet is even beneficial for Yanukovych, as a safety valve for people’s anger. Ukrainians are not smashing windows and storming the notorious presidential residence. They are too busy honing their artistic skills, drawing cartoons and pressing the ‘like’ button

For Yanukovych, internet users are lost voters. If his name appears anywhere on the web, it is only as a source of mockery for his frequent verbal slips, such as when he described Anton Chekhov as a Ukrainian poet. He has also been known to confuse Montenegro with Kosovo, and Stockholm with Helsinki. An amusing incident when a floral wreath fell on the president during a memorial ceremony during a high wind didn’t make the TV screens, but got 2.7 million hits on the internet and became the subject of innumerable cartoons and satirical remixes.

The internet is still a free zone where people can express their opinions and passions. In fact it is even beneficial for Yanukovych, as a safety valve for people’s anger. Ukrainians are not smashing windows and storming the notorious presidential residence. They are too busy honing their artistic skills in drawing cartoons and pressing the ‘like’ button beside blogs and articles that criticise the regime.

The growing influence of the Web 

Sooner or later the internet will become a powerful weapon against corruption in Ukraine. The ‘Nashi Dengi’ (‘our money’) site, which reports on the abuse of public funds, has become the main source of financial news for the media in general. It is obvious that in the future the internet will have a direct influence on election results. 

If Yanukovych’s name appears anywhere on the web, it is only as a source of mockery for his frequent verbal slips, such as when he described Anton Chekhov as a Ukrainian poet. He has also been known to confuse Montenegro with Kosovo, and Stockholm with Helsinki.

Social networking sites may also become an alternative channel of communication between the opposition and the voters, although for the moment none of its leaders has much of a presence on Facebook or Twitter – the person with the most followers (31,000) is Vitaly Klychko, which is hardly surprising given his dual status as sports star and politician. But 31,000 isn’t even enough to guarantee a victory in a single constituency, let alone become mayor of Kyiv or president of Ukraine (on the government side, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov’s Facebook page has 24,000 followers, and on Friday evenings he opens it for readers’ questions, though only of a non-critical variety, which leads to a widespread suspicion that the answers come from a ghost-writer).Other opposition leaders have an even lower online profile: Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Yulia Tymoshenko’s successor as head of the ‘Fatherland’ party, has only 9,600 followers, while nationalist leader Oleh Tyahnybok has a mere 6,500. These figures are pathetically low, but increasing online interest in political matters is reflected in other ways. For instance, a photo of Arseniy Yatsenyuk doing his bit to combat corruption by flying economy class –unheard of behaviour for a political leader – gathered more than 3,000 Facebook ‘likes’, a record for a photo of a Ukrainian politician.

Journalists wearing masks at a press conference with Yanukovych. Photo: RIA Novosti/Grigory Vasilenko

The regime, meanwhile, has its own use for the internet - to harass anti-Yanukovych journalists, hacking into their email accounts as well as recording their phone calls and publishing them online on pro-government sites. At the same time journalists are in general loath to stand up for their rights. The exception to this is the small number of people who have united under the slogan ’Stop the censorship!’. They recently attended  a presidential press conference wearing Yanukovych masks, the idea being to point out that Ukraine’s leader is out of touch with reality and talking to himself when he denies that censorship exists in Ukraine. 

Which road to take?  Of course the reality is that Ukraine’s whole future hangs in the balance, caught as it is between Europe – it is one step away from signing an Association Agreement with the EU – and the Russian dominated Eurasian Customs Union After a summit in Brussels last month, the EU has compiled a list of a dozen specific issues on which the Ukraine must take action by May in accordance with previous agreements. These include reforms in the justice system, in criminal law and the criminal procedure code, and in the fight against corruption, as well as the implementation of the recommendations of the Cox-Kwasniewski mission. It is clear, however, that for the sake of Ukraine’s future the EU Association Agreement must be signed, however undemocratic its institutions. It is not so important whose face is on the presidential mask. What is important is the fate of a fledgling 46 million strong nation that has spent the last twenty years at the east-west crossroads, and is still waiting for someone else to decide which road it should take.

Since 1999, when Vladimir Putin took the helm in Russia, Moscow has been using energy as a tool of geopolitical influence in Europe and Eurasia. Now, with Europe getting two fifths of its gas from Russia, the EU has been looking to challenge Russia’s energy dominance with its Third Energy Package‘unbundling’ policies and the launch of an investigation into Gazprom’s monopolistic practices.

Russia’s energy policies

Since the beginning of the 00s, Russian energy policies have centred on a threefold agenda:

1. energy cuts to non-cooperative states;
2. acquisition of strategic energy assets abroad; and
3. re-orientation of energy transit routes.

These three aspects of Russia’s policy have all been driven more by Moscow’s commercial considerations of raising revenue than by politics, though not always. In the period since 2000 Russia has cut off energy exports on more than 50 occasions, most often to members of the Commonwealth of Independent States and to Eastern European states. While these cut-offs have often been criticised as political, in most cases they occurred when Moscow’s political objectives and commercial interests coincided. The best-documented cuts were the successive gas stoppages to Ukraine (March 2005; March 2008; December 2008) and to Belarus in February 2004, which were prompted by tensions over Kiev’s and Minsk’s payment of their gas bill and the deterioration of bilateral political relations.

The most obviously politically-induced cut-offs have occurred in the Baltic states. When Russian investors were unable to acquire the Latvian port operator Ventspils Nafta (2003) or the Lithuanian oil refinery Mažeikių Nafta (2006), oil supplies to those facilities were cut off permanently. Estonia also suffered temporary interruptions to the rail deliveries of oil to during the political standoff over a Soviet war memorial in May 2007. While the timing of the halts was determined by political tensions, they also coincided with the improved capacity of Russia’s port of Primorsk (north of St Petersburg), meaning that oil could be exported westward without relying on Baltic states transit routes.

By the 00s it had become a priority for Russia to ensure that the energy infrastructure was controlled by Russians, rather than transit countries. Specifically, that oil and gas would only be transited, transported or refined in Russian-owned infrastructure facilities. Russian national oil and gas companies sought to acquire transit networks, transport infrastructure, refineries and storage in transit states such as the Baltics, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Armenia and others. If countries agreed – like Belarus – to sell their networks to Russian companies, then sometimes they received preferential treatment and prices. But temporarily rather than permanently, as in the cases of Moldova and Armenia. When countries refused to sell their transit infrastructure, Moscow sought to find another route – whatever the cost.

The acquisition strategy and the energy cut-offs have been closely tied to the third aspect of Russia’s energy policy: the purposeful re-orientation of Russia’s gas and oil export flows to Western clients, away from old routes via the east European states to new direct routes through Russian territory and ports. This re-orientation of energy flows was particularly targeted at those countries which resisted Russia’s efforts to expand its presence in downstream markets through the acquisition of local gas providers and distributors; it was often initiated following political tensions with the state in question.

The first manifestation of this policy was in the Baltic oil sector. Latvia and Lithuania refused to sell their strategic assets, as described above, so Russia closed down the pipelines supplying Ventspils Nafta and Mažeikių Nafta and sought new routes. When Russia had updated its energy export infrastructure by completing the Baltic Pipeline System (BPS) in 2001 and the two Primorsk oil terminals in 2006 and 2008, it cut the Baltic states out of the oil transit business. Going forward, Russia aims to expand BPS to bypass Belarus and the Baltic states completely, thus virtually doubling the capacity of its northwestern ports Ust-Luga, Primorsk, Vysotsk, Kaliningrad and Murmansk by 2015.

Another manifestation of this policy can be seen in the gas sector: Russian-led projects such as Nord Stream and South Stream aim to cut countries such as Ukraine and Belarus out of the gas transit business and to reach Western European consumers directly.

‘Unbundling’ Gazprom assets

By the late 00s Gazprom was pushing towards consolidating its downstream assets and using energy as a tool of influence. But the EU started pushing back. The Third European Energy Package of 2009 seeks to encourage competition in the energy sector, calling for the ownership of transmission system operators to be unbundled by hiving off gas and electricity transmission networks from their generation and sales operations.

Gazprom owns shares in pipeline infrastructure in a number of EU member states: Estonia (37% of Eesti Gaas), Finland (25% of Gasum Oy), Latvia (34% of Latvijas Gaze), Lithuania (37% of Lietuvos Dujos) and Poland (48% of EuRoPol). In the future it will probably own the South Stream pipeline infrastructure in Bulgaria. ‘Ownership unbundling’ would mean that Gazprom-owned gas distribution companies such as Eesti Gaas or Gasum Oy would have to sell their pipeline operations to someone who has no association with the gas industry, or to another network operator.

Of these six EU member states, only Lithuania has embarked on attempts to unbundle its national gas distribution company, Lietuvos Dujos. In 2012 Gazprom took its case to international arbitration at the Stockholm Tribunal, but the decision was reached that unbundling should proceed, whatever the outcome of the case. Estonia has moved more slowly, but it also passed legislation in June 2012 to force Eesti Gaas to sell its pipeline unit by 2015.

EC investigation into Gazprom practices

While in Eastern Europe it has been long suspected that Gazprom sets its gas prices under guidance from the Kremlin, the EC has only recently embarked on scrutinising its pricing practices. In September 2012, following an official complaint from Lithuania, the European Commission Directorate General for Competition launched a formal antitrust investigation against Gazprom practices in the EU. According to the European Commission, Gazprom actions are subject to investigation in eight markets – Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The Commission is investigating three suspected anti-competitive practices in Central and Eastern Europe:

1. hindering the free flow of gas from one country to another;
2. preventing diversification of supply of gas; and
3. imposing unfair pricing through its oil-based gas pricing mechanisms.

While the process is under way, its outcome and subsequent effects are uncertain. The investigation can be viewed as the Commission putting pressure on Gazprom to alter its pricing model from oil-linked to hub-based prices – a change Gazprom has strongly resisted. It can also be viewed as a signal from Brussels to Moscow that the EU is pushing back on the last decade of Russia’s energy policies. However, considering that the new EU member states have spent the last twenty years trying to diversify their gas supplies away from Russia and have (mostly) failed, the investigation needs to consider and prepare for all possible outcomes. The Russians have ultimate power over countries with no alternative gas supplies; if the gas contracts are declared illegal or are terminated, the new EU member states might not be able to access Russian gas or other alternatives.

Success or challenges for the EU?

On the one hand, Russia may appear to have the advantage - Europe is increasingly dependent on Russian oil and gas and Putin seems determined to play the energy card to divide and conquer the EU member states. On the other, the concern of the most energy-vulnerable new EU member states is beginning to attract attention across European capitals. Furthermore, the new EU member states are starting to influence EU energy policy.

In fact, Russia’s energy policies can only be as influential as European states will allow. EU energy policies, diversification, shale gas discoveries, and green energy initiatives will sooner or later diminish energy dependence on Russia and, therefore, its influence.

Dr Agnia Grigas is the author of The Politics of Energy and Memory between the Baltic State and Russia (Ashgate Publishing, January 2013)

There is an increasingly persistent rumour in Russia that the State Duma, the lower chamber of parliament, might be dissolved. This may seem strange because the election was only just over a year ago and, moreover, the results were extremely positive for Putin’s party ‘United Russia.’  Perhaps the current parliament doesn’t suit Putin for some reason?  Does he perhaps want to get rid of it so that a new election could still further strengthen his position in parliament?  To find the answer to these questions, we have to look more closely at ‘United Russia’ itself.

 A nomenklatura, not a party

It is unlike parties in democratic countries, where candidates win over voters by persuading them of the advantages of their chosen course of action. Russian voters have almost no concept of what ‘United Russia’ ideology might be, what changes the party is intending to make to legislation or the difference between its chosen course and that of other political parties. Its success stems simply from the fact that it is considered the party of Vladimir Putin. The Russian president is currently not the formal leader of the party because this role passed to the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, but the ordinary voter pays little attention to such niceties.

Putin is still truly popular in Russia. Experts agree that last year’s presidential election was to a large extent rigged, but the fact that Putin actually won is not usually questioned. Even the most sceptical experts consider that he would anyway have won the election, though it would probably have gone to a second round. So the party whose ‘engine’ is Putin is effectively guaranteed success in today’s Russia.  ‘United Russia’ party members are not given to admitting that without him they would be completely helpless, but independent experts consider that without Putin the party would be in total crisis mode, unable to dominate the State Duma.

Putin at 'United Russia' party congress 26 May 2012. Photo (cc) www.kremlin.ru

If we use the terminology which was current in the USSR (and still is in today’s Russia), then ‘United Russia’ is not a Western-style political party, but a Soviet-style party nomenklatura. In the USSR, the nomenklatura comprised a large number of people involved in the management of the party, the government and the economy (they were sometimes called apparatchiks and this term was an accepted part of the language of Sovietology). They were well paid and had access to special closed shops selling goods which were in short supply (or non-existent) for ordinary citizens.

The break-up of the USSR at the end of the 80s and beginning of the 90s revealed that the nomenklatura was completely helpless in a situation of ideological crisis. It was unable to convince the nation that the preservation of the Soviet system was essential; indeed, it didn’t even try. The nomenklatura used its privileges to privatise part of the state enterprises and to make big money in so doing, rather than to save the USSR.

In other words, the nomenklatura lived well in Soviet times under a totalitarian system, and exploited the crisis to make sure it was well set up in the new, market-economy Russia.

‘United Russia’ is doing exactly the same. Party officials are installed in posts in the State Duma, in the regional legislative assemblies, in the executive and the judiciary.  They can’t (and won’t) do anything to support the continuing existence of the current regime. There is virtually no doubt that, were the regime to collapse, these people wouldn’t lift a finger to preserve it: they would prefer to go into business (or even to go and live in the West) with the capital they are busy accumulating through corrupt practices.

If not the Kremlin…then Miami

Many people in Russia are quite clear about the true intentions of ‘United Russia’ party officials, which is why there was such a row when it was discovered that several high-ranking party members owned expensive flats abroad (mainly in Miami). The very fact of owning property abroad is of itself, of course, not a crime, but the property of the party officials incensed the opposition-minded intellectuals for two reasons. Firstly, many correctly assume that such very expensive purchases could only have been made with money which had been corruptly acquired. Secondly, that the aforementioned expensive property was not just outside Moscow but abroad (a huge distance away from Russia) gives a very strong signal that the owners are already making preparations against the fall of the regime and moving abroad.

'United Russia', party of thievery and crookery.  (cc) www.navalny.livejournal.com

It is in this context that the future of ‘United Russia’ should be considered. It is only natural to wonder what use Putin could possibly have for a party, which costs a vast amount of money to keep on the road, but which will not lift a finger to strengthen the regime in a crisis situation.

Putin today should be gradually readying himself for a significant fall in his popularity rating.  Economic growth is slowing down and oil prices, the sine qua non of Russia’s prosperity, remain at a considerably lower level than in the middle of 2008. The Kremlin will not be able to maintain the growth of real incomes at the rates Russians have come to expect, so disillusionment with Putin’s regime and with him personally can only increase. In such a situation the President will find it hard to carry on being the ‘engine’ pulling ‘United Russia’ behind him – all the more so because information about corruption among the representatives of his party spreads quickly throughout Russia.

Reform of the electoral system

Putin needs a different party. Or, at the very least, a different way of electing the State Duma. He needs parliamentarians who are able to fight for their own seats in the Duma, rather than just exploiting his name to ensure their victory. This is what is behind the current reform of the Russian electoral system. The next parliamentary election will be run on a mixed system: first past the post and proportional representation. Part of the deputies will be elected from party lists (as they are today) and another part will be made up of individual candidates who have won in single-mandate constituencies.  This system will require the candidates to work out their own ways of approaching the electorate and to use their own personal authority to win, rather than coasting in to the Duma on Putin’s coat tails.

The transition to this mixed system will very considerably affect Putin’s relationship with the deputies in the Duma. The current party lists for ‘United Russia’ consist solely of candidates who are absolutely subservient to the Kremlin. They can be completely useless in the political battle, unable to communicate with voters and without any authority, but they are elected for their 100% loyalty. Under the new system, a significant proportion of the parliamentarians could be elected to the Duma independently of Putin or the Kremlin.

'United Russia', party of thieves and crooks!(cc) www.navalny.livejournal.com

The Kremlin will of course do everything it can to ensure that people who are openly hostile to the regime will not be elected: the likes of Garry Kasparov, Aleksey Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail Kasyanov, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Sergei Udaltsov and others, for instance. But there will be a significant number of independent candidates who have nothing to do with ‘United Russia.’

The Kremlin and the independents will then negotiate terms for cooperation. Deputies will lobby for the interests of their own businesses or the companies that funded their election campaign. The Kremlin will make compromise agreements with them whereby, in return for the deputies’ political loyalty, Putin will take account of their interests.

In this system the role of ‘United Russia’ will in all probability be considerably reduced, as party membership will no longer be essential to be elected and receive Kremlin support.  But it does not follow from this that Putin will want to dissolve the Duma before the next election, due in December 2016.  In other words, the very real weakening of ‘United Russia’ which we see today doesn’t mean that Putin will cease using the current Duma, which is after all reasonably efficient at addressing the issues he puts before it.

There is another important argument to be considered here: changing the electoral system in Russia does not mean democratisation. Putin is reforming the system in accordance with the changed circumstances, transforming it into a suitable tool for dealing with situations of mass protest and the slide in his popularity rating.  True democracy in Russia would require first and foremost the de-monopolisation of television: today the TV channels which broadcast throughout Russia are strictly controlled by the Kremlin, so the opposition can only muster any support in that narrow section of the electorate which gets its information from the internet. This situation will not change. Putin will not permit any kind of propaganda against him to be broadcast on TV. So the likelihood of the current regime being transformed into a more democratic regime remains extremely small.

(top) Putin as Prime Minister addressing Duma, 11 April 2012.  Photo: RIA NOVOSTI/Grigory Sysoev

In a quiet lane near New Athos, I stop to admire an old, carved wooden veranda: ‘Used to be a school’ says a voice through the overgrown front garden. An old man in a flat cap peers warily through the branches. He opens the rusted gate and walks away, closing what could have been a promising conversation.

Nature is reclaiming thousands of ruined buildings across Abkhazia, from the concrete skeletons of nondescript townhouses to the solemn grandeur of Tsarist-era sanatoriums and hotels. Many of them were damaged in the 1992-93 Georgia/Abkhazia conflict, and others fell into disrepair during the ensuing blockade, broken only in 2008 when Abkhazia was recognised by Russia.

The Georgian government has since funded the My House programme, which attempts to register property owned by Georgians who fled Abkhazia. Many such properties, however, have changed hands so many times that legal ownership remains unclear: Abkhazian residents believe that they have a moral entitlement to them, having suffered so much; and state ownership of buildings during the Soviet era contributes to the legal headache. Even while Abkhazia’s population has more than halved from 525,000 to 240,700, the result is a housing crisis for young Abkhazians.

Just over twenty years since Georgian tanks crossed the River Ingur, there has been time for many to reflect on the fate of these ruined buildings. At the Abkhazian State University, for example, an English class I visit, asserts the continued importance of the buildings in the Abkhaz historical memory. These buildings, they maintain, bring back the names of family relatives killed during the war, of those who fled, or those whose fate is unknown. The war-damaged buildings are themselves the monuments to the dead.

Sitrak Surmenelyan, Professor of Sociology and Political Science at the University, attributes the disrepair of these buildings to a lack of political will: ‘The problem is that we don’t have a functioning civil society. Look at Fukushima, where the entire Japanese nation helped. Of course, goodwill only goes so far. To repair these buildings would cost a lot of money; and corruption in Abkhazia means that the government is unlikely to repair these buildings, while private citizens cannot raise the money.’

Surmenelyan adds that, attracted by generous incentives to return to their homeland, some members of the Abkhaz diaspora from Turkey and the Middle East – the Muhajirs – bought up some of these vacant houses, but then sold them on and left Abkhazia with the proceeds.

The Lost Village of Shroma

With a friend, I take a drive along the Gumista River to the village of Kamani. Just north of Sukhumi, there is a tall church tower; built, I was told, from the stones of ruined houses in the area. A few kilometres further on, the road bends in a series of right angles. The overgrown front gardens obscure from view the remains of the former inhabitants' houses; few natural forests have locked garden gates. This was once Shroma, a majority Svan Georgian village, deserted since 1993.

On the road to Shroma: villagers' houses are gradually fading into the greenery.

As we approach Kamani, English and Russian signs from the HALO trust warn of landmines. Occasional plaques by the roadside testify to what happened in these valleys, which in 1993 were the back door into Georgian-controlled Sukhumi. A slab of polished marble crowned with flowers reads 'Here lay the head of the volunteer from the Kabardino-Balkar Republic, Zaur Borisovich Pezhev (1969-1992). From his mother'.

The Church of Kamani is all that is left of what used to be a Svan community. The eleventh century building, restored towards the end of Soviet rule, sits on top of a hill commanding a bend in the river below. There is no longer a local congregation, but the church is somehow still functioning, and there is evidence of recent renovation. Abkhaz Cyrillic script can be seen on the newer icons, whilst the ornate iron doors still bear Georgian letters, unusual now in this particular part of the world. A UN report from 1995 quotes a survivor of the massacre that took place here: upon entering the monastery, the Abkhaz forces held Father Andria, the prior. Forced to kneel outside the Church, Andria and his fellow Georgian priests were asked to whom Abkhazia belonged? When he finally told them that Abkhazia, like the rest of the world, belongs to God, they shot him. 

The gates to the Convent, a three-storey red brick building with a caved-in roof, remain locked. Two builders (perhaps aspiring monks) sit drinking tea. ‘For the grace of God,’ Raul and Arda are helping with the restoration. They also want to plant vines again, and to start growing fruit and vegetables. The convent casts a shadow over us, and our conversation: 'That was destroyed by the Communists... And the buildings in the village too' says Arda. This is a country with a turbulent past.

Sukhumi's Parliament Building has been left abandoned, its dereliction a monument to Abkhazian victory over Georgia.

The Sukhumi skyline is dominated by the derelict hulk of the Abkhaz Parliament Building. In 2008, Mayor Alias Labakhua proposed tearing it down, and replacing it with a proper home for the Republic's legislature. The dead building, however, still stands, in much the same condition as it was in 1993, a monument to the horrors of war, and a very noticeable one, in this central district of Sukhumi where much has been rebuilt and refurbished. The lesser horrors of peacetime have taken over: syringes and vodka bottles, a mattress or two; lift shafts full of rubble. The bullet holes are still there, as is Lenin's plinth, though he has long since gone. It is a memorial Sukhumi would rather forget but cannot.

This is a peculiar form of archaeology. I meet Lola who recounts that when she was younger, she used to play in some of the ruined buildings. All sorts of treasures could be found; to illustrate the point, she shows me a few salvaged books from a ruined library: a detailed guide in Georgian to the vineyards and grape varieties of Georgian wine. Old Georgian books, she adds, are sometimes burnt.  'Getting the dog shit off them' she sighs 'was not easy.' 

A Sub-tropical Playground

The country's historic architectural gems are no less blighted. The winding roads of Sukhumi Mountain, to the capital's north-east, are a testament to what was once a sub-tropical playground for the elite of the Tsarist and Soviet empires. Here, summer villas fade in the sunshine. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, hotels opened, with international names – the Europe, Florida, France and San Remo. The ailments of the Empire's elite could supposedly be best cured in Sukhumi, and the sanatoriums followed. Having decreed that Abkhazians were outside the pale, and could not live within five kilometres of the coast (and no closer than twenty to Sukhumi), wealthy Russians and Greeks experimented with new architectural styles. The infrastructure for the growing resort town quickly followed. The Soviets had much the same idea: 'Let's create a new Soviet Florida!' exclaimed a 1934 issue of Ogonyok magazine.

The 1933 Hotel Abkhazia, built in Soviet Florida style, stands empty, scarred by a fire in 1985, although neighbouring buildings in the city centre have seen some ambitious, and tasteful, conservation work. On Sukhumi Mountain, one of the city's finest villas, Villa Aloisi, built in Eclectic style in 1896, is obscured behind scaffolding. Restoration work is continuing here, thanks to an anonymous new owner.

The Villa Aloisi in Sukhumi - one of Sukhumi's architectural gems and now under renovation

In 1999, Anzor Agumaa of the Sukhumi Society of Abkhaz History and Culture, published an exhibition catalogue on Sukhumi's architectural heritage. Much has changed since then, and a number of buildings then listed, have since been saved from complete ruin. Yet there is still much work to be done. Most revealing, perhaps, are his accounts of what happened to the built landscape: General Averkiev's 1905 Art Nouveau villa was destroyed in 1992 when a helicopter crashed on to its roof;  the three villas of the Chachba princely dynasty fared no better: on one page of Agumaa's catalogue, Prince G. Chachba reclines, cigarette holder in mouth, sword by his side and a smirk on his face, whilst the other shows his devastated villa in 1999; the larger sanatoriums outside the city, were also badly looted and vandalized;

Orphans of War

Peter Nasmyth, journalist and author of several books on Georgia, has visited Abkhazia, and he describes the ruined buildings across the politically unrecognised state as the 'children' of both Georgians and Abkhazians alike: 'Like children, they need to be looked after. Often, they were built by Russian and European architects… they are multicultural. They were built for rich businessmen –Italians and Greeks. Batumi is the same. They are from a period when there was a different ethnic sense of identity than what we have today. They carry a respect that transcends the differences between peoples.'

He goes on to say: 'Many Abkhaz and Georgians are ashamed of these ruined buildings. They want them to be repaired. Everybody wants them to be repaired.’ I say, “Save this building for your city, don’t save it for the glorious Abkhaz, or the glorious Georgian, or the glorious Armenian, or the glorious whatever, save it for itself!” When you take the politics out of a building, you have a different approach to political resolution.' Nasmyth shares my view that the terrible state of these bullet-holed buildings creates a sense of danger in Abkhazia, which does not accurately reflect the improved political situation.

Across the other side of the border in Tbilisi, Nasmyth says that the situation seems years away from that in Sukhumi: 'The Hotel Iveria, in the centre of Tbilisi, was, for a long time, a ruin, and full of refugees; now it is a Radisson.'

Nasmyth is passionate about the fate of similar buildings in Batumi and Tbilisi, which he says are sometimes torn down, and then rebuilt as a pastiche of their former selves. Anzor Agumaa calls them, victims of 'constructive destruction.'

There is a legal dilemma about rebuilding: The UN Security Council's 2008 resolution reaffirmed that many of these ruined buildings are not the Abkhazians' to rebuild; and yet one of Abkhazia's most promising routes to economic growth is rebuilding its tourism industry, to become a sub-tropical playground once again; and with Russian investment – still the only country to recognise Abkhazia – that is becoming a more realistic prospect, albeit illegal.

Manana Gurgulia, Chief Editor of Abkhazia's Apsny Press, accepts that in order to maximise the country's tourist potential, the issue of the ruined buildings must be resolved. She expresses the prevailing orthodoxy in Sukhumi, namely, that those who started the war in 1992 should pay for its consequences: 'The damage caused by the war in Abkhazia was approximately twelve billion US dollars. If Georgia compensates Abkhazia for the damage caused by the war it unleashed, then Abkhazia will look for ways to compensate the Georgian refugees for their lost property.'

A Peculiar Archaeology

On both sides of the border, owners of buildings in Abkhazia know that they have to find some way to resolve their property disputes. Leaving nature to reclaim these buildings renders them useless to Abkhazian and Georgian alike; however, restoring them without a legal basis would be seen by the international community as a violation of refugees' property rights. Moreover, the Abkhazian government is well aware of the need for legitimate private investment to finance restoration.

Meanwhile, across the border in Russia's Krasnodar region, real estate prices in Sochi are booming, in anticipation of the city's 2014 Winter Olympics. Investments in property in nearby Abkhazia, while high-risk, could bring good short-term profits; yet local authorities in Sukhumi and Gagra do seem to appreciate the aesthetic dangers such rebuilding could bring: goodbye Villa Aloisi, hello Aloisi apartment block.  

These ruined reminders of the war have locked Abkhazians into an economic, political, social and architectural dilemma, and they are a constant visible reminder of the difficulties they face, rebuilding their country. These skeletons of concrete make war seem closer. In some manner, they have done for twenty years, as a new generation has grown alongside them. What they represent now is normality. Of some sort.

Whether the village houses of Shroma are to disappear forever, or the grand villas of Sukhumi to rise from the ashes, the hope has to be that Abkhazia, the unrecognised, will not become unrecognisable. 

Top Photo: 'Destroyed by Communists': The ruins of Kamani Convent, derelict since 1993.

Photos: Maxim Edwards (except Villa Aloisi old postcard). 

For anybody who followed Russian politics in the nineties this was an unforgettable story. By comparison with the Russian drama of that period, European politics were boring and predictable. Every four years voters in different countries would go to the polls to cast their  votes, the new parliament would produce a new cabinet of ministers and members of parliament would scrap over the petty details of proposed new laws. How boring. Sometimes there were scandals, but in Europe even the scandals were lukewarm, lacking in passion and fire.  A minister might have a lover, a former prostitute, or a high ranking dignitary would embezzle a large sum of public money; the media would disclose illegal lobbying by powerful international corporations. Perhaps now the European stage is also starting to see more real action, but in the nineties the real drama happened in Russia.

In 1996 President Yeltsin appointed Boris Berezovsky Deputy National Security Advisor, which was the peak of his career as a Russian government official.  Berezovsky played a key role in the Chechen peace process: It was his efforts that led presidents Yelstin and Maskhadov to sign a peace agreement in May 1997 (photo: Sergei Guneev, RIA NOVOSTI Agency)

During the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, Russian politics were an incredible spectacle: passion, blood, evil manipulation and a dramatic struggle for survival between politicians, businessmen, the secret services and criminals.  At stake were their lives, their power and their prosperity. This was no theatrical fiction or imitation - the blood, guns, piles of cash, limousines and women were all real.

'In this cruel and colourful spectacle Boris Berezovsky played one of the main roles. In some episodes he was not only the main character, but writer and director too.' 

In this cruel and colourful spectacle Boris Berezovsky played one of the main roles. In some episodes he was not only the main character, but writer and director too. He was seen by many as a puppet-master able to pull the strings backstage or a kingmaker able to promote politicians to the highest posts in the country. His power was so overwhelming that, inevitably, his fall seemed the more pitiful. He lost his 2011-12 court case for financial compensation against rival oligarch Roman Abramovich, his regular predictions about the imminent collapse of the Putin regime seemed more and more like wishful thinking;  gone was his magic wealth and power and his last wife sued him for huge amounts of money. He was finished as politician and businessman well ahead of the moment when his corpse was found in the bathroom of his bullet-proof Berkshire mansion.

The old ‘heroes’ of the nineties

In an amazing twist of fate, the death of Berezovsky has produced more shock waves in Russian public opinion than any other similar event in the recent past.  The nineties may have been a crucial period for politics in immediately post-Soviet Russia, but for most Russians they have now become distant history. After the very public sacking in 2012 of Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov, there were no more VIPs from the nineties occupying top posts in Putin’s Russia.

But many of the heavyweights of the nineties were not destined to enjoy a peaceful retirement. Berezovsky is not the first one to die. 

In 2007 Russia bade farewell to president Boris Yeltsin and in 2010 to former prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, the author of the legendary saying ‘We wanted the best, but it turned out as it always does’.

Father of the Russian economic reform, finance minister Yegor Gaidar died in 2009 even though he was only 53 years old.

General Alexander Lebed, considered a likely candidate for high office, died in a mysterious helicopter crash in 2002.  

Anatoly Sobchak, former mayor of St. Petersburg and maverick democratic politician died in 2000 in the city of Svetlogorsk campaigning for the election to the presidency of his former deputy Vladimir Putin.

Nikolai  Aksyonenko, a former transport minister who had at one point seemed a likely winner in the battle for Yeltsin’s succession, passed away in 2005.  

Pavel Grachev was Yeltsin’s defence minister who in 1993 sanctioned the use of tanks against the White House, where the Russian parliament was in revolt. He died in 2012.

Another major figure of Russian business and political life, Rem Vyakhirev, former chairman of the energy giant Gazprom died in February 2013. 

The death of all these people did not go unnoticed:  the media were full of the official obituaries, the funeral ceremonies were attended by high-ranking government representatives and in some cases an honorary guard fired a farewell salute. There were kind words, a bit of grief, and that was all.

'The Russian media covered Berezovsky’s lonely death as though he had been a celebrity pop star whose life had fascinated the public with tales of drug abuse and sex with children. '

Berezovsky’s death is very different. The Russian media space has been flooded with comments and news, websites are recycling his old interviews, politicians and journalists sharing memories about their encounters with the late oligarch. The Russian media covered Berezovsky’s lonely death as though he had been a celebrity pop star whose life had fascinated the public with tales of drug abuse and sex with children. ‘Suicide? Impossible, I knew Berezovsky well, he would never do anything like that’ declared some of his old acquaintances. Others reported he was in deep depression and homesick for Russia. ‘I do not rule out the possibility that he was killed by the Russian secret services’, said runaway Russian businessman Yevgeny Chichvarkin. For Russian politics Berezovsky was finished a long time ago so why, wondered others, the sudden waves of interest in the figure of the late oligarch?

The explosion of interest in Berezovsky indeed seems odd, because he was never a popular figure and Russians disliked him, regarding him as a wizard of backstage manipulation and an evil genius of political infighting who cared more for his private business than for the interests of the state. Andrei Piontkovsky, prominent political analyst, always called Berezovsky an ‘odious figure’. But he was a genius. In times of great political chaos, two Russian presidents can be said to owe (at least to some degree) their Kremlin throne to his incredible energy and PR skills.

Rise and fall

In 1996, appalled by the possibility of a communist comeback, he saw in the dramatically unpopular Boris Yeltsin his only hope of escaping political and personal catastrophe. A few years later Berezovsky felt threatened by Yevgeny Primakov, the prime minister appointed after the 1998 Russian financial meltdown, who was keen to put the oligarch behind bars. Berezovsky realized people were turning away from him.

Boris Berezovsky and Roman Abramovich as Russian parliamentary deputies in 2000. It was Boris Berezovsky who introduced the much younger Roman Abramovich to the Russian political and business elite, but the disciple soon overtook his master. By staying loyal to the Kremlin he managed to preserve his huge fortune and political influence (photo: Vladimir Fedorenko, RIA NOVOSTI Agency)

But not the young head of the Federal Security Service, Vladimir Putin, who suddenly showed up at Berezovsky’s wife’s birthday with a bouquet of flowers. Berezovsky sensed an opportunity to return to the field and demonstrated incredible energy in making the case for Putin during the 1999 parliamentary election (the presidential election followed in 2000). Sergei Dorenko, at the time anchorman for the Berezovsky-controlled TV Channel 1, remembers a meeting where Berezovsky kept repeating with a charming smile (he was personally very charming), ‘We will screw them, all of them.’

In the 1999 parliamentary election, the Kremlin supported the ‘Unity’ (Yedinstvo) party against its main rival ‘Fatherland’ (Otechestvo) party headed by Yevgeny Primakov and the Moscow mayor Yury Luzhkov.  Berezovsky very efficiently orchestrated a dirty anti-Primakov campaign in the media outlets under his control, Yedinstvo won and Vladimir Putin’s subsequent victory in the 2000 presidential election was practically a done deal.

'In times of great political chaos, two Russian presidents can be said to owe (at least to some degree) their Kremlin throne to his incredible energy and PR skills.'

Soon after Putin’s inauguration Berezovsky’s fortunes changed once more. He no longer had the president’s ear because his protégé, the former KGB colonel, no longer felt indebted to him. Putin was president and wanted all the oligarchs to play by his new authoritarian rules. Unlike Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky didn’t want to end up in jail and fled to the West. He didn’t realise that times had changed, as Roman Abramovich told me when I attended his inauguration as governor of Chukotka in 2001.  

As an active politician in the nineties Berezovsky hardly ever spoke about programmes, values or ideas. He was a gambler who was not afraid to bid high and who was always ready to outbid his opponents. Only in his London exile did he begin to speak about values: now, it appeared, he cared about Russia and its people. The Yeltsin era had helped some of them to understand that they should rely on themselves and not on the state. When I interviewed him in London’s Savile Row, his first office in that city, he admitted that it was the Russian slave mentality which had made the manipulation possible and which lay at the root of Putin’s power.  In London Berezovsky became an out and out liberal: for him the state’s only function was to help people to achieve their individual goals.

The myths

Unfortunately for Boris Berezovsky, Russia and its elite stopped listening to him. For Putin’s regime he became the much-needed public enemy number 1, with the official media presenting him as a villain ready to execute people or design purely criminal schemes aimed at overthrowing the legitimate Russian government. The Kremlin PR machine was ready to blame him for any crime with the probable involvement of the Russian secret services, the murders of Politkovskaya and Litvinenko, for example. He was held responsible for all the so-called ‘colour revolutions’ in the post-Soviet space.

Russian historical mythology has other such examples: in the 16th century Prince Andrei Kurbsky, exiled to Poland, was regarded as the main threat to the regime of Tsar Ivan the Terrible; Stalin’s public enemy number 1 was Leon Trotsky, murdered in Mexico by Spanish communist Ramon Mercader. The death of Public Enemy Number One means that the Supreme Leader has won and that any resistance to him makes no sense.

The story of Boris Berezovsky also fits well with another Russian myth, best presented by Alexander Pushkin as the “Tale of the Fisherman and the Golden Fish”.

A poor old fisherman catches a golden fish in the sea. She grants him a wish if only he will let her go.  The fisherman’s wife, keen to exploit this opportunity, wants more and more from the generous fish. But when she wants the fish to become her servant, the fish and the sea have had enough and take everything back: the fisherman and his wife end up as they started, with nothing. This is Berezovsky’s story too: his appetite for power and influence knew no limit and he was punished accordingly.

It is the myths of Public Enemy Number One and the Golden Fish that have triggered Russia’s emotional reaction to the surprising news of Boris Berezovsky’s death.

In addition to this, the Russian media has found the story of Berezovsky much more exciting than any novel by John le Carré or Robert Ludlum.  A true reality show, a political thriller full of suspense, dramatic turns of action and… a tragic end. 

Top photo: Elena Pakhomenko, RIA NOVOSTI Agency, kremlin.ru website

RUSSIA’S 1968? 

Oliver Carroll:  From Voina to Bykov, Pussy Riot to Moscow hipsterism, culture seems to be playing a very political game in Russia. How can we explain this? Is this something that Russia has seen before? Are we witnessing this Russia’s ‘1968’ moment? And if so, is accompanied by the same kind of generational and political splits that we saw in Europe’s rebellion? Or is it something completely different? 

Artemy: If this really is a cultural revolution, then I’m afraid it happening on a very small scale. Compared to the first decade of the 21st century, which was absolutely lethargic and comatose, Russia’s cultural life and political community has started to show some life. But compared to the kind of cultural euphoria Russia experienced in other times — during the so-called shestidesiatniki movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, or in late 80s during Perestroika and Glasnost — it’s on a much smaller scale.

The saddest thing of all is that today’s cultural developments are much more elitist, touching a much finer layer of Russian people than either of the earlier cultural thaws(ottepel). The cultural movement back then was simply massive, supported and followed by millions of so-called ordinary Russians. What is happening right now is more a minority movement, largely ignored by the majority of the Russian population. And there is also a strong counter-reaction too. Sure, Glasnost had some some reactionary things like Nina Andreeva writing her letter in Sovetskaia Rossiia, or the Stalinist writers who urged people not to give up on their principals. But they were the tiny minority. Right now it’s us that feel as if we are pushed in the corner.

OC: Peter, you lived in Russia throughout the 2000s, the least political moment of modern Russian history. You were also in Moscow at the end of that decade, which was when the political returned with some vengeance. Do you agree with Artemy that such change is pretty much insignificant, at least when compared to the 1960s and 1980s?

Peter: Everything in Russia is insignificant compared to the 60s and 80s. Everything in Russia seems to have shrunk and become an echo of when it was truly important. I think Artemy is completely right here, but it’s very interesting to look at the detail of what’s happening, because it’s a slightly different type of battle. 

'It’s not a battle of us against them, it’s a battle between manipulation and integrity' Peter Pomerantsev

 In Soviet times there was a Soviet culture and a dissident culture. Today, things are less distinct. Over the last few days I’ve been meeting some people from Nashi, for example. I was quite surprised to find out their aesthetic is hipster. They love manga movies, they like modern arts, they have actually co-opted a sort of Western style into their language and then completely twisted it and married it to patriotism and quasi-fascism. In the past, the Kremlin was also sponsoring the most radical art projects, like Kirill Serebrennikov’s Territoriya festival. They went out of their way to make sure that there could be no cultural rebellion by co-opting that language and making it part of the system. Making it pointless as well in the process. 

What I’ve been seeing the last eighteen months in terms of culture and in terms of language is an attempt by the opposition to create a mini world for itself, a place where it is not contaminated by the meddling of the Kremlin. And I think that’s incredible and quite inspiring. It’s not a battle of us against them, it’s a battle between manipulation and integrity, and a search for a new language. So it is a much more subtle war then it was in the 1960s and 1980s, when it was almost a Napoleonic war. This is more like the Cold War, with some skirmishes around the edges, spies meeting each other in the culture wars. It doesn’t mean it’s not important, just much more subtle and playful. 

A: I think some of the things Peter is saying refer to the previous decade, not necessarily today.During the 2000s there was an obvious and quite successful pact with the regime: ‘We guarantee you a certain degree of stability and prosperity; you can buy your Korean car and go on holiday to Egypt’. In the business community it was, as Mr Putin himself put it, ‘pizdit’, no ne pizdet’’ (‘steal as much as you want, but keep your mouth shut‘). And a similar kind of pact was signed with the cultural elite: do whatever you want, any kind of artistic experiment, sex, drugs, violence… You want to make movies that make Quentin Tarantino look like the Muppet Show? Go for it… And again the cultural elite said ‘Yeah that’s fine, that’s fantastic’.

THE MACHINE IS OUT OF CONTROL

OC: So what happened with Pussy Riot, what changed?

A: It’s another era, because the whole pact has broken down. It started to crumble after the financial crisis of 2008. Now it has just collapsed, because the authorities can no longer deliver their part of the deal anymore, and because there is a whole new generation of people who just don’t want to live like this. This whole movement has nothing to do with the material issues that the authorities wanted to tame the people with.  It’s all about morality and ethics, these things …

P: …that we forgot about …

A: … that for many years we thought never existed

P:  I actually think the hardest thing for the protest movement has been to find a language for this new morality,  the search for language to communicate this sense of disgust, since the Kremlin has to a certain extent got a monopoly on language. I think there have been very different language streams going on. We’ve seen a return of the dissident language of the 70s. I certainly heard the word dostoiny, ‘decency’. I heard the words nerukopozhatny, ‘you can’t shake hands with somebody because they’re too dirty‘ — this word never went away but I hear it a lot. Nezapachkatsya, too, ‘I don’t want to get dirty’,

Pussy Riot are using some of that, certainly, but are also, very interestingly, using the language of situationism in 1960s French critical theory. In that sense it literally feels like 1968 here. There has been a whole language around architecture, around urban policy, protecting historical parts of Moscow, fighting for public space.  You have the phenomenon of architectural schools becoming hotbeds of revolution, because architecture and urban planning has become one of the ways people express their desire to revolt. 

'What’s happening now — the kind of new laws they’re adopting, and the kind of PR moves that they are committing —  all looks and feels like a theatre of the absurd' Artemy Troitsky

I think you can trace a lot of this new energy back to Artyom Loskutov, a situationist-absurdist artist hailing from Novosibirsk. I met his friends in St Petersburg and Moscow, and they would come out on the streets with absurdist placards saying ‘the sky is pink today’. How can you respond to that? You can almost co-opt dissidence, but you cannot co-opt absurdism. This is why Voina and Pussy Riot were such a breath of fresh air, and I think why they were considered such a threat. In another culture they might have been too flippant. If this was happening in England, people would say ‘yeah, shut up’.  But in Russia it was simply vital. Suddenly they were sending sort of like rays of weirdness into the play the Kremlin had set up and it was truly shocking. It was the only response to the Kremlin’s language of absurdism. And it freaked them out. 

A: And the Kremlin have responded by getting more absurd themselves. What’s happening now — the kind of new laws they’re adopting, and the kind of PR moves that they are committing —  all looks and feels like a theatre of the absurd. 

P: I agree completely. We’ve just spent three days being lectured by Russian politicians about how are stereotypes of Russian are wrong. We had Vladimir Zhirinovsky, and some of the ugliest people in Russian politics wheeled out to try and convince us. It was almost like this moment at the end of Hamlet: “You think we’re mad? We’re REALLY mad!” It’s like the moment at the end of the party when everyone is drunk and says: ‘Let’s do one last dance everyone’. Zhirinovsky, as usual, captured the Zeitgeist very well: ‘I hate you so much the translators aren’t going to be able to translate my hate. Everywhere there’s corruption, everywhere there’s dirt. We live in a world of evil’.  It was a performance, but he was kind of telling the truth in a way only a buffoon can tell the truth. 

At the same time, you do have this sense of a machine running a little out of control. The puppet masters Surkov and Pavlovsky have gone and the puppets are still dangling about trying to do movements. You have this situation where, to borrow the words of [Matvey] Ganapolsky, ‘they’re printing laws faster than the printer can work’. The machine is hurtling downhill, and the breaks aren’t working... 

A: It looks a bit like the movie ‘The Shining’. 

P: Yeah, ‘Jack’s back’ or whatever. The biggest play in Russia isn’t the opposition movement, the biggest play has been the Kremlin. That’s where the real theatre is.

A: The opposition just catches those little pieces from the Kremlin party. 

CLAIMING THE BOLSHINSTVO

O: But now the opposition is playing its play its part in the absurdity, with all its pranks and games. They’ve moved away from the language we were talking about just a minute ago — morality, legality, honesty — that was what people were talking about in December, and I don’t think they are any more ... 

A: No, no. When we ask the perennial Russian question — ‘What is to be done?’ — the agenda is the same. It’s the same agenda but under slightly different circumstances. One year ago we felt we had the energy, the brains and also the numbers. Some of those demonstrations were a hundred thousand people strong. 

Right now, the political atmosphere has changed. Most opposition leaders now understand that it’s will be very difficult to overthrow this regime without winning at least a degree of sympathy from the so-called ordinary people. So there is a certain shift from slogans about morality, decency, honesty, to a more socially oriented agenda. We talk about economic issues, about social issues, like pensions and unemployment, and also national and nationalistic issues which are indeed a very hot topic here in Russia. 

Since Pussy Riot, we realised that we are not a majority. This came as quite a shock to some people, myself included. I did not realise just how much conservatism and reactionary sentiment the dominant feeling within society. I still don’t really understand it. I see the Pussy Riot girls as brave, funny, nice, sexy, freedom loving girls who have done a bold and convincing action at a church that many people don’t even perceive as a church. The Church of Christ the Saviour is less than ten years old, and looks more like a shopping mall or a business centre ...

O: With underground parking... 

A: Yes, and a car wash… 

The thing is I don’t believe that Russians are really stubborn or inspired Orthodox Christians. Just forget it! People might make noises like ‘This is blasphemy, I want to lynch these girls’. But when you ask a Russian when he was last in church, if he’s honest he will tell you he’s never been there, or that he was last there five years ago on a day trip to Vladimir with his family.

'The drama in Russia isn’t between liberal and conservative, between left and right, between Asia and Europe. It is between overarching, triumphant cynicism, hateful cynicism ...  and an attempt at some sort of integrity' Peter Pomerantsev

What has infuriated them so strongly with the Pussy Riot case? Partly it is a matter of male chauvinism and their hatred of feminism. Partly it’s a generation thing: they’re punks, they’re young. It’s the same thing that made elderly Russian communists and workers beat up hippies in the street in the 1960s and 1970s. But this is not the whole answer. In truth, I don’t really understand how my people can be so cruel, so stupid, so conservative and so unresponsive to people who are working for them, I mean for their freedom.

P: I’ll attempt an answer, maybe not a whole one. I think the drama in Russia isn’t between liberal and conservative, between left and right, between Asia and Europe and all this sort of rhetoric that you hear. The drama in Russia, if you boil it down, is between overarching, triumphant cynicism, hateful cynicism which glories in its own cynicism and thinks everything is for sale and there’s no values, and an attempt at some sort of integrity. 

This is an old battle. It is a battle that’s been played out in Russia since the Brezhnev period. I think the hatred towards Pussy Riot is because they can’t believe them, can’t believe that they’re honest, doing it honestly. The thing that you hear about them all the time, it’s not actually that they’re women, but that they’re working for the Americans. The whole charge against the opposition from the majority of Russians is that it’s meaningless, they’re all for sale. They are all doing it for Marat Gelman or George Soros or someone else. Once you’ve been broken yourself you say everyone is for sale. I think that’s the great drama in Russia and that’s why they hate them. In another culture they wouldn’t be a threat; In Russia it’s a threat because they are doing something outside the cynical paradigm. 

O: I suppose the question is whether cynical is still in fashion? Around 2007, 2008, Facebook and social media was just taking off in Russia — and I think it is important to emphasise just how important the Internet has become in Russia — then, many young Russians were using the like button to project their own identities. It became a civil position to “like” one of Kirill Rogov’s or Andrei Loshak’s essays. People wanted to identify with this new...

P: Earnestness?

O: Exactly. And again that I think has changed... 

P: In a sense that fashion is dictated by the cultural elites, no, cynicism is not in fashion. It has definitely gone out of fashion there. But is it still the overarching Russian disease? Yes. 

A:  You know even among those people who made an attempt to break free from the conspiracy of cynicism, there are some who have become cynics again. They’re new-born cynics. I think they were idealistic a year ago, right now they are either very angry or very desperate. The angry ones try to do something and the desperate ones , the majority, they just want to emigrate and forget what’s going on here. If you could perform a magic trick of letting Russians go without any obstacles I think that about five million of the youngest and smartest and professional and generally speaking most decent Russian people would disappear from this country in the blink of an eye. 

P: In London, it’s not even millionaires, it’s young, middle class.

O: Artemy, you mentioned that the opposition is now focused on the interests of the ordinary Russian, the majority, the bolshinstvo. This is, in fact now the prevalent discourse of the elites, of Putin’s men. It is the word you are hearing from the ruling elite with ever greater regularity. They are working for the many, the bolshinstvo, not the few. Has the opposition got any chance of winning on this agenda? How are they going about it?

A: The agenda of the bolshinstvo?  I think the only opposition leader who desperately wants to do something serious about it is Navalny. He has invented or created a couple of tricks to put all this into reality. One is thedobraya mashina pravdy, the Goodhearted Truth Machine, which is basically an enlightening unit which tells the so-called majority the truth about what’s going on in the country. Then of course there is all the Navalny related internet projects, rospiland so on.  I’m all for that, what else can I say?

'The opposition's task is not to demonstrate how the party and Putin are no guiding light. People understand this already. They have to do something else. And I don’t know what this something else is.' Artemy Troitsky

I'm not sure it's realistic though, because people in Russia actually know what’s going on in the country. They don’t have to be enlightened, they don’t have to be informed. They know what’s happening with the ruling party. They know they are just a bunch of career-minded blood suckers. They know what the Russian police is about, they know about everything and they hate the life they live. Even those who voted for Putin. Peter is right about this overwhelming burden of cynicism and apathy and just ‘fuck it all’ attitude that the majority of Russians subscribe to. So the opposition's task is not to demonstrate how the party and Putin are no guiding light. People understand this already. They have to do something else. And I don’t know what this something else is. 

THE RUSSIAN, THE STATE AND WAR

P: I approach it from a political science point of view as opposed to a cultural one: there is a systemic problem in a sense that a Russian can be, and usually is, very very decent in his private life. The typical Russian loves his kids, loves his wife, but the minute he interacts with the state, all rules are off and it’s a territory of amorality. That’s an old systemic problem I think actually going back to Tatar Mongol times of the idea in Russia of the state as a coloniser, as something inherently aggressive. That makes that any kind of public discourse or the emergence of it is impossible. Russians are decent at home, they’re decent in their private lives, you’d have to be loyal to your friends. The word svoloch (‘bastard’) is still a strong word, people don’t want to be a bastard in their private lives, but the minute they enter the Kremlin they become arseholes. Simply because that space is a space with no morality and nobody looks at anything but that. So I don’t actually see how Russia can progress without this very old idea of the state as an aggressor changing. It’s something deeply systemic. 

A: Yes, but this is exactly what’s happening to all those millions of desperate Russians. They are against Putin and they want to escape from the country as soon as they can, not because of their political beliefs or whatever. It’s simply because they are tired of not being able to live a very normal life outside of their apartments. 

P: I know a lot of mid level chinovniki (bureaucrats), and they’re all very decent. And yet they sign laws which are horrific. They just have different faces. The minute any Russian goes abroad and emigrate they flourish. They’re the richest immigrants in New York, they live in London, they go to Germany, everywhere they go they flourish the minute you have different rules. There is nothing inherently cynical about Russians, it’s through this relationship with the state. They’ve become excellent entrepreneurs and Westerners the minute this status appears. But I don’t see how you can… does that mean one should break up Russia? Is that how it changes?

'It’s an up and down process. The great thing about the protest rally last winter was really that the people started to laugh at the authorities. People had no fear. But right now, as far as I understand, fear has made a major comeback. People are really afraid' Artemy Troitsky

O: Might I suggest that something is already changing in the mentality of Russians? Just looking the differences between say 2007 and 2013, you can see that a certain burden has been lifted… I think culture has played a role in delivering the change, creating new ways of relating to power, ridicule even. Is it not a question of tooth paste and tooth paste tubes: once it’s out, it’s out?

A: Well, when the tooth paste is out of the tube it can go in different ways. It can be used for cleaning teeth or it can just be spat out.  

I think it’s an up and down process. The great thing about the protest rally last winter was really that the people started to laugh at the authorities. People had no fear. But right now, as far as I understand, fear has made a major comeback. People are really afraid. With all those new laws, with all those arrests and the Pussy Riot case and so on they just feel that anyone is under threat now. I talked to some of my friends who used to go to demonstrations last year they now say they’re not going anymore. I asked them what has changed and of course they find all sorts of reasons not to go like ‘well, nothing is happening, nothing is changing, it’s not worthwhile’ and so on, but I’m pretty sure that the bottom line is ‘we are afraid to do it’. 

O: Sure, but last year when you spoke in Westminster you were arguing that the system was close to breaking down. That same underbelly is there: a nation which is extremely well-educated — including, by the way, in the presidential administration and elsewhere in government — a nation that is travelling and working abroad, a nation with a sense of pride… How can they live in this theatre of absurdity? Can it really continue?

P: Where do you get the proud bit from? The great drama or story of Russia is that it is a broken nation, it’s colonised. That great painting of the people dragging along the thing is not proud, it’s a slave culture. It’s only a tiny bit who are proud, and they hate those who are proud. Pussy Riot are proud,  and they hate that, they find it sickening.  So the paradox is they’re very well-educated, see everything, know everything, and keep on doing it. That’s the tragedy, not that they’re proud. It one of the great illusions that Russians are proud. 

A: I think I agree with Peter. As for smart people in the government, this is also changing. The smart people, like Surkov and Pavlovsky and so on, however monstrously cynical they were, they have all now been wiped out. And in their place are real idiots, fanatics and freaks. 

I still think change is going to come. I’m just afraid that it will come from the other side, as a result as some kind of coup d’état. Putin only really has the support of a very small group of his very best friends. You can see the bulldogs fighting under the carpet. Yeltsin’s so-called ‘family’, the people who brought Putin to power, are unhappy. This is not because they are freedom loving people. They are very unhappy because they are losing a lot of money. They hate the image of Russia as an Orthodox Christian Taliban. They hate the fact that Russia is no longer an attractive country to invest into, that it is seen as a cancer ward internationally. Even oil companies are now thinking twice before putting any money into the Russian economy. 

P: I think there’s another risk. If you see the Russian drama as one between cynicism and integrity there is a lot of dangers in that as well. Because on the one hand you have Pussy Riot or liberals who want to live in a different country, and on the other hand there is always the fear that a sort of genuine nationalist/fascist will emerge from the bottom up. I don’t think Putin can ever have an ideology, because he’s from a generation that can’t even fake an ideology.  They don’t have the belief-gene. But there is certainly room for a Roizman type figure to come up from the bottom…

RUSSIA’S NATIONALISM WILL BE PAGAN

O: I sometimes wonder how much of this nationalism is part of the political theatre. How much of it is actually real? There’s one school of argument that is also part of the political game: you think we’re bad, you haven’t seen the others... 

A: It’s hard to say. I always say that the problem of orthodox fundamentalism is not really a big issue. I don’t believe it can be important. But when it comes to nationalism, well, it does smell of danger, and it does smell of danger for the reason that they don’t really depend on anyone. Simply because there is this process called globalisation or global migration which is also happening everywhere. In this respect Russia is part of this global problem. In Russia it’s multiplied by the fact that the Russians themselves are so weak and demoralised and drink so much. So I don’t really know what to expect here but it can be quite serious. 

P: I think, I hear a word… I think it’ll be very Russian, it will not be a Hitler-nationalism, much weirder than that. It will be much stranger, much more eclectic, much more bizarre, with bits of orthodoxy and shamanism probably in there as well… (laughs) But I’m hearing one word a lot…

A: Paganism! (laughs)

P: Yes, as well! It’s going to be something weirder, it’s going to be Russian. It will probably start in Siberia and suddenly it will just come. It will have certain ingredients. Another word we’re hearing a lot, apart from bolshinstvo, ischistota, purity. If the key word for the Kremlin the last ten years was stability, now it is chistota, purity. It brings together a whole bunch of stuff, it brings together corruption — let’s make it pure and clean — but also obviously brings an ethnic thing. 

A: Purity means no homosexuals …

P: It can mean anything. There is a desire for purity…

A: … law and order, morality, and back to basics approach. And of course it’s a mixed bag. I personally would support part of this agenda. The other part of this agenda scares the shit out of me. It’s a very controversial discourse.

P: Oliver and I were talking to a girl who has graduated through the Nashi school. She was very interesting, because she is somebody who wants to believe in something. She really admires Limonov, because he believes in something. Her problem with Pussy Riot, she says, is that they don’t really believe in anything. She wants to believe, she is disgusted by the corruption, and thinks Nashi types will clean up the corruption. They’ll get into the Presidential Administration, they’ll clean it up. She’s for democracy in some sort of weird way, she’s using a lot of what would almost be opposition language. But you also have this thought lurking in the back of your mind that wouldn’t have thought twice about taking a gun and shooting you in 1937. They want purity, they want to clean up the system, but they also want to get rid of all the enemies. And that’s kind of frightening, that narrative. 

A: I wouldn’t really draw the comparisons between 1937 and now too much, because the main thing is that Russia is not an isolated country anymore. Mr Putin would in his wet dreams love to see everyone around him executed, but he can’t really commit to that because then his billions of dollars in his offshore funds will disappear. 

P: Indeed. And while we have talked a lot about how awful Russian cynicism is, maybe it is precisely this cynicism that will save Russia, because it will never take a fascist movement too seriously. So it’s a real double edged thing there.    

OUTSIDE OF MOSCOW

O: So farwe have been talking mostly about Moscow, perhaps St Petersburg. Artemy, you travel a lot around the country. Are you seeing any difference in the regions? Obviously, Russia is a very varied country, number of countries maybe. Is there anything happening in the regions which is of interest, different to what we see in the capitals? 

A: Well, I would say that the regions are not that different when it comes to people. People are the same everywhere. I wouldn’t say that people in the regions are less smart or even lass informed than those who live in Moscow. Because the internet is levelling all if this. The bog difference is that in the provinces there are no outlets where creative people can do something.  There is only the internet. This is why anyone with talent from the Volga, Siberia, from everywhere, they all go to Moscow, sometimes to St Petersburg. It’s very sad, but it simply is very boring in these big eastern cities. 

P: I think Russia is several countries at the same time, which makes it very confusing. I did the Trans-Siberian recently. Yekaterinburg is booming, rich, much more independent than Moscow. It has excellent theatre, excellent playwrights, everything. It feels freer than Moscow, much more liberal. Going out in Siberia, there are some towns that are actually more advanced than Moscow. When you go to Vladivostok, they are already globalised. They’re talking about Japan, they deal with Australia, Moscow is just an irritant for them. They are basically free already. Occasionally the central authorities come, they bow for ten minutes and think ‘go away’! There is another very bad journalistic cliché, that Moscow is not Russia. It’s completely the opposite. Moscow is the essence of Russia, but there are no Muscovites, that’s what doesn’t exist. It’s the best from everywhere. It’s not like New York in America, it’s like Los Angeles in America. It’s that relationship.

O: I disagree, or rather I don’t think it’s just a cliché. If we were to talk about freedoms, and specifically press freedoms, for example, the difference is very clear. It varies across regions, but at the moment the Moscow press is much freer and much more sophisticated than anywhere else. You have to be reasonably lazy not to get some independent news in Moscow. Obviously, there are university towns like Tomsk and so on which have a good press. But you mentioned Yekaterinburg as being a free space, didn’t you? Yekaterinburg certainly had some plurality of media, some independent agencies which were until recently considered free. And I can’t dispute what you say about theatre. But the big story there is now about Aksana Panova and the URA.ru news agency, considered independent and oppositionist, and now at serious loggerheads with the local administration. If you look a bit deeper than the headline, you’ll see that, as all the other news outlets in the city, URA.ru was actually operating with contracts with the local administration for informatsionnoye obecnechenie, for good PR... 

P: OK, there are obvious differences. What I mean is that Muscovites are different from the rest of the country, Moscow is actually the collection of the most driven and the most talented people from across the country. The people I saw at the protests weren’t actually Muscovites. Muscovites are the laziest Russians, because they do have a micro-climate where they do feel free, go to cafés and whatever. The ones who were on the street were actually form the provinces who had come to Moscow, face the corruption, can’t get up the ladder, and they’re fucked up. It looks like Moscow is protesting and the rest is docile, Moscow just has everyone who is active. In that sense everything that happens in Moscow is a reflection of what happens in the rest of the country. 

A: I could add a couple of things here. One is that the provinces largely depend on local governors. I remember being in Samara in the mid to late 90s, when Samara really was a booming city — very cultural, very independent, very rich. I visited the place three or four years ago, and I simply couldn’t recognise the place. Rundown buildings, sad people and so on. I asked my friends if I had false memories. And they said ‘no, it was completely different, because we had a great governor, and a great mayor, and it was fantastic here. Now we have the usual pricks from United Russia and everything goes down the drain’. Media-wise, though, it is true the provinces are far, far behind Moscow. Even St Petersburg’s media is far behind Moscow...

P: Yet as you said, the internet is everywhere. I think one of the great paradoxes when we look at Russia is that the real public space is virtual. It’s completely faked, full of simulacra, while the virtual world, the internet is actually honest and free and real. So to find reality in Russia, you don’t go into the real world where everything is fake, you have to go to the virtual world. That’s where the reality is.   

CULTURAL FRONTLINES

O: Isn’t the cultural world also rapidly becoming that place where you can be honest, free and real? 

P: Well, we are also witnessing a cultural shift no doubt, a different way of looking at the world. And yes, it’s more of a 1968 moment than a 1917 moment. The next few years are going to be the time of the film makers, the writers. There’s already stuff bubbling through. Teatr.dochas a generation of young playwrights, not always that good, but with a completely new post-Soviet voice. These kids aren’t doing postmodernist games, and it is fascinating too see them one after the other — from Tolyatti or other godforsaken town — doing those bleak, bleak, bleak, grungy plays about the awfulness of provincial life and being a teenager in Putin’s Russia. I’ve been waiting for them to start making great films. For some reason they haven’t converted their theatrical talent into a new Russian cinema, or it hasn’t emerged. So I’m still waiting for that. 

A: I think in any case what’s happening now in Russian culture I personally perceive it in a very positive way. I am also expecting a real explosion in independent film making. I really don’t know why this is not yet happening yet, because it’s so easy now. You can shoot beautifully on tiny cameras and you don’t have to worry about the box office - you can simply channel it to the internet. You can become famous overnight.

'Pussy Riot were fascinating because they were using a language the West understood. The grew up on a sort of situationism and on Riot Girl, both very Western schools. So it is a very interesting moment where suddenly Russian discourse and international discourse coincided.' Peter Pomerantsev

Moreover, if we are searching for international solidarity, solidarity will most likely come through the cultural channels than anything else. Pussy Riot is of course a perfect example of that. 

P: You know why Pussy Riot were important? In England, people keep asking me ‘what happened to Russian literature? It was brilliant all the way up to the 1930sand then suddenly: boom, nothing!’ In fact, it continued to be brilliant despite the repressions, it just became increasingly self-referential. Sorokin doesn’t make any sense for an English reader — they don’t know what the hell he is talking about. Russia became a bubble which had its own self-referential language, meaningless for the rest of the world. Which is a tragedy, because the world lost out. When Russia was connected to Europe, in the 19th century, this was a literary party. 

Pussy Riot were fascinating because they were using a language the West understood. The grew up on a sort of situationism and on Riot Girl, both very Western schools. So it is a very interesting moment where suddenly Russian discourse and international discourse coincided. With Pussy Riot, suddenly someone from Russia made sense to us. We got them, we understood them. We don’t understand Limonov. For Christ’s sake, no Westerner can understand Limonov. I think there are brilliant writers in Russia, there are brilliant playwrights. It will be very interesting whether Russia’s cultural players can continue developing a language which chimes with the West. I think that could be very important.

A: I couldn’t agree more.

A few months ago, to my great surprise, I saw a book by a Kazakh poet Abai among the bestsellers in a bookshop in Moscow. As a native of Kazakhstan I was really taken aback: until May 2012 I had rarely met anyone who had heard of Abai in post-Soviet Russia. Yet there it was, the newly re-published collection of Abai’s poetry, popular reading for the young in Russia. Moreover, Abai’s collection contained a foreword by a young Russian writer Sergei Shargunov. 

What could possibly bring together Abai and Sergei Shargunov – a nineteenth-century Kazakh poet and a thirty-two year-old highly politicized Russian writer, who is all about contemporaneity? Perhaps unexpectedly, it is the new mass political opposition and grass-root activism in Russia, something this country hasn’t seen since 1991; something that brought together what since 1991 had seemed incompatible – literature and politics.  

That the year of 2011 was the year of Russia’s political awakening is a well-known fact. The overwhelming majority of Russia’s youth had until then remained resolutely politically passive: a Public Opinion Foundation survey run in 2010 found that 82% of young people trusted Vladimir Putin. A mere 5 years ago, when I myself was doing my BA in Moscow, the majority of my friends and their friends had no interest in politics at all. And suddenly in 2011 they all go to demonstrations, vote, blog about politics, sign up to be political observers, and the whole of Russian internet carries screaming headlines of ‘New Russian revolution’.  

Politically engaged literature

While this change has been well documented, there is another aspect which is less widely known: that the protests in Russia have been supported by intelligentsia and artistic circles, and that literature has played a marked role in the development of grass-roots activism.  One may say this is not surprising at all: do we not think of social responsibility when we think of Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy or Gorky? Indeed, Russian literature has always been known for what Isaiah Berlin described in his 1970 Romanes lecture Fathers and Children as the ‘well-known Russian tendency to preach’. Since the eighteenth century literature has been assigned the role of enlightener, educator and promoter of high civic values. Coined into the formula poet and citizen in the nineteenth century, this view of literature grew even stronger during the Soviet era, when it was regarded as the Party mouthpiece. 

However, with the break-up of the Soviet Union, the tendency changed radically: in the period after 1991 Russian cultural circles deliberately avoided being ‘political’ in any sense. In post-Soviet Russia, even postmodernism, which for the rest of the world has always been associated with political engagement, became an escapist artistic movement promoting the play for the sake of the play. So how is it that Russian literature has returned to its original role of promoting high public values and spirit?

New media

We should perhaps start with another important change that 1991 brought into Russian literature, and that is the ‘location’ of literature. In 1991 it migrated from books and magazines on to the internet. 

After the collapse of the USSR, publishing became barely affordable: the influential ‘thick’ literary journals (a term alluding to their usually 200-plus pages per issue), which for more than two hundred years had played the role of social and cultural trendsetters, had to reduce their circulation from nearly millions to mere two or three thousand, and most publishing houses turned to issuing series of detective stories and romantic novels. Thus, the internet became the primary arena for both high-culture literature and aspiring authors. An internet portal called Journals Reading Room, where ‘thick’ journals monthly publish their recent issues, was established and most literary newspapers are also available online. 

Writers, poets and critics are active on the social media platform LiveJournal, using their blogs to announce new texts. Facebook is equally important with multiple discussions, cross-posting the announcements from Journals Reading Room, various online editions, and so on. Publishing houses and editions update their facebook pages daily, and being invited to a conference, readings or a presentation via facebook is a commonplace. Twitter at the moment is less cultivated, but more and more interesting twitter feeds keep appearing. The language itself speaks for the importance of internet: the term  'blogosphere' is a term which is now widely used by the Russian literati.

No one could have possibly predicted that the ‘migration’ of literature from hardcover editions online would, in the end, stimulate the politicisation of literature.  However, when the protests broke out in 2011, official information channels remained mute about the demonstrations taking place in Moscow and all over Russia, so the only way to spread the word about the protest actions was the internet. And again, facebook, livejournal and twitter became the ‘three pillars’ of the new Russian revolution: facebook became the headquarters of the protest movement, livejournal - its rostrum, and twitter – the chronicler, running commentaries from strike hotspots, prisoner transport vehicles and even from prison cells. The 2011-2012 protests became arguably the best-documented event in Russian history. 

The active use of internet services played a very unexpected role in the development of grass-root activism. Pointing this out, Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s Press Secretary, described the protestors as suffering from  ‘information overload’.  On the one hand, it proved to be the most effective means of spreading information and facilitating communication. On the other, the very idea of revolution was revolutionised: the protest now unfolded not only in the streets and actions, but, first and foremost, online, where it acquired textual form. Blog entries, tweets, hashtags, facebook messages and mini-blogs, have largely verbalised the revolution. With the help of the internet, the revolution was immediately transformed into narrative. The fact that all the new information about protest actions was available to read as soon as it was written, facilitated the shaping of the marchers’ consciousness and their inclusion in the protest narrative: now everybody’s word could be heard.  

It was the ‘narrativised’ nature of the protests which stimulated the intellectuals, particularly the literati, to engage actively with political developments. Already involved in social media because of its role in the modern Russian publishing business, they were naturally inclined to continue writing and contributing to the narrative of the revolution, as they were comfortable with the online tools for doing so. It was, therefore, essentially the blockage of the official media that resulted in the involvement of politically marginal Russian artistic circles in the revolutionary processes, modifying the very nature of the protest actions and giving rise to a curious modern form of interaction between literature and politics. 

Images of the 2011-12 protests. Clockwise from top left: 'hamsters for fair elections'; 'a boa constrictor only knows how to deal with banderlogs, not people', OccupyAbai, 'The boa constrictor has had enough to eat'  photos (cc) Vadim Lurye (http://24december.visantrop.ru) 

But the protest did not limit itself to online and verbal forms: there were stories, articles, poems, blogs, comments and tweets as well as demonstrations, rallies, hunger strikes and pickets. The influence of the two parts of the narrative was reciprocal. While the real, physical part provided reasons and an incentive for writing, the protesters’ consciousness was shaped by fictional and non-fictional texts; images, metaphors and expressions consolidated into an opposition jargon, which informed demonstration posters, slogans and the media. In this way the protest movement, developing between the textual and real axes, turned into a metanarrative in its own right. 

Jargon and images

A great example of the interaction between literature and reality could be the trajectory of the word banderlogsin the protest culture. A word invented by Ridyard Kipling in ‘The Jungle Book’ first entered the discourse of modern Russian politics on December 15, 2011, when it was used by V. Putin to refer to the demonstrators in his live broadcast at Conversation with Vladimir Putin, part 2. The expression was taken up by a prominent poet Dmitry Bykov, who played it up four days later in the next issue of his extremely popular project Citizen Poet  (the episode was entitled ‘The New Law of the Jungle’).‘But there are the banderlogs, replied the snake with a hiss,

Blogging their banderblogs and giving jungle laws a miss.

They don’t obey the law or use their heads to think,

And I’m no icon for them, but just a worm in the sink.’

From Bykov's poetry, loaded with new connotations, the expression returned to politics: the image of Vladimir Putin as a boa constrictor, and theoppositionas banderlogs very soon became a fixture. Not only did it completely flood the internet, repeating thousands of times – it also penetrated newspaper titles!

Another curious expression, setevye homyachki (internet hamsters), has actually been known from around the 00s  – it was used to describe the mass of users of various social networks. On 5 December 2011 it acquired instant notoriety, when the influential Russian blogger and politician Alexey Navalny said at the first of the rallies on Chistye Prudy: 

‘They can call us microbloggers or internet hamsters.  I’m an internet hamster and I’ll be at the throats of those beasts.’

Later, on 24 December, he declared at the meeting on Prospekt akademika Sakharova: 

‘Greetings to all banderlogs from the internet hamsters!’

The expression was also used in the press and was repeated numerous times in  opposition posters and slogans such as ‘Homyak raspravil plechi’ [Rn. The hamster shrugged, a parody on the Russian name for Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas shrugged– Atlant raspravil plechi in Russian], and so on.

OccupyAbai

My favourite story, however, is that of the word ‘OccupyAbai’. This story started in early May 2012 as Vladimir Putin was being inaugurated. The protesters set up a makeshift camp in Chistye Prudy in central Moscow, right next to the monument to Kazakh poet Abai Kunanbayev. Following the worldwide ‘Occupy’ movement, the Russian protesters called their camp ‘OccupyAbai’. As the information was being disseminated via Twitter, a hashtag #оккупайабай appeared spontaneously. Within a week from the start of the action this hashtag had been used thousands of times.  And although the camp itself was soon dispersed, multiple actions under the same tag continued in many other cities. The name of Abai became one of the symbols of the new revolution. The number of jokes demonstrates that the image of Abai, now inevitably associated with grass-root activism, had become firmly entrenched in the mind and language of the marchers. 

Карантин  @FantozziVsAll
Based on Forbesestimates, Abai Kunanbayev is the most influential politician in Russia. #OccupyAbai

luk skywalker  @zoobeezoo
‘Abai’ in Kazakh means the same as ‘Navalny’ in Russian. #OccupyAbai

Saniya Serikava  @Serikava
From obscure Kazakh to  #occupyabai - the way of Abai

how could it happen?  @news2wonder
The next president of Russia will pronounce his inaugural oath on Mukhtar Auezov’s  two-volume ‘The way of Abai’ #occupyabai

Dina Sabyrova  @4114777
Who needs ABM systems or nuclear briefcases? An Abai monument in every NATO capital, and victory for democracy’s guaranteed! # occupyabai

The popularity of Abai and his poetry increased in step with the popularity of OccupyAbai. On the 167th anniversary of Abai’s birthday, the protesters ‘made an attempt to resurrect the spirit of Occupyabai.’ The event included a recital of Abai’s poetry in Kazakh. The protesters also founded an online magazine called ‘OccupyAbai as a symbol of revolution.’ Finally, following high demand among the protesters, a collection of Abai’s poetry was re-issued, readings of Abai were organized by the activists, and, as Sergei Shargunov wrote, the very name of ‘Abai’ turned into a call for actions. 

Far from mere jokes, these images – internet hamsters, banderlogs, Abai as a symbol of protest – served as a link between actual political events and their reflection in literature. Their role was that of an instant photograph: the creation of a quintessential image that would summarize all the developments up-to-date, conclude and synthesize them. 

And now?

The very fact that these seemingly funny, even ridiculous, images came to mean so much in this process, shows that the very idea of revolution is changing. It is no longer solely associated with rallies and pickets, but growing into different dimensions and turning into a metanarrative composed both of actual and literary realities. This is what is so fascinating about everything that is happening in Russia: the contrast between the seriousness of the official political discourse, the ironic, baroque nature of the protest, and the simultaneous conventionality of a clear border between the two. The situation in Russia today is like a big carnival which has suddenly turned real, being taken as serious, rather than funny, or weird, or eccentric - because in the context in which they have been placed, they actually are serious. 

There are parallels with the low-brow culture of the lower classes in the Middle Ages, described by Russian scholar Mikhail Bakhtin as the ‘carnivalesque culture of laughter’. This low-brow carnivalesque culture seems suddenly to have acquired a voice in Russia today, and yet it has the same purpose as described by Bakhtin: it is trying to subvert the otherwise impenetrable official discourse of Putin’s politics, or, in other words, is looking out for unconventional ways to fight it – through interaction with literature, in particular. 

In celebration of New Year 2012 and as a New Year's gift to political prisoners past and present, the radical art group Voina [Rn. War] set a police detention van on fire in Saint Petersburg. In an effort to resurrect a spirit of resistance against continuing state oppression, Voina dedicated its action to dissident writers who died in prison camps during the 1970s and 1980s, as well as to Sergey Magnitsky. The past year has seen an influx of historical images into Russian political and cultural life. Although they were present before, the protests have reinvigorated a range of historical symbols as opposition groups, their supporters and their opponents attempt to gain purchase on the situation at hand. Rightly or wrongly, for a range of different groups and individuals, the struggle of dissidents against Soviet power has become a historical source of experience, understanding and symbolism for contemporary protest. 

‘The rising profile of political prisoners, 'Stalinist'-style justice for protest figures, Brezhnevite stagnation and revolutionary romanticism has been met with a wave of interest in past dissident experiences.’

Perhaps unsurprisingly, as tempers cool and the screws tighten, New Year 2013 has seen a different kind of activity. The need for compassion, sincerity and ethical behaviour was evident on Novopushkinsky Square as people wrote to prisoners held in connection with the Bolotnaya protests, Pussy Riot and other opposition cases. The rising profile of political prisoners, 'Stalinist'-style justice for protest figures, Brezhnevite stagnation and revolutionary romanticism has been met with a wave of interest in past dissident experiences. 

December of our discontent 

The initial burst of activity in December 2011 on Bolotnaya Square and then Sakharov Avenue provided instant symbols to galvanise protest. For the demonstrators, the move out on to the public square to protest against the false elections and the Putin administration paralleled the 1825 Decembrist revolt against the accession of Nicholas I. The use of the term 'Decembrist' as justification and identification for those involved echoes a strong tradition of dissident interest in that ill-fated group of nobles. If the 'Decembrist' tag made the thirst for revolt clear, then the mass protests on Sakharov Avenue lent liberals a sense of destiny: demands for democracy made a symbolic return to their spiritual home in the form of human rights activist and nuclear physicist, Andrei Sakharov. In January 2012, the lament over the absence of the figure of Sakharov from public life was resumed. Later, in August 2012, Sakharov's statue in Saint Petersburg became a focal point for protesting the charges against those arrested during the violence on Bolotnaya Square in May: photographs, flowers, and candles were laid at the foot of the 'father' of modern Russian democracy. 

The location of the second mass protest - on an avenue named after human rights activist Andrei Sakharov - gave protestors a sense of destiny and an immediate link to the Soviet past. Photo (cc) flickr/simesimon

Moulded into a key part of Russian culture over the past 180 years, the Decembrists were important for 1960s intellectuals as practical and symbolic models of resistance. This took many forms, including the 1975 demonstration on Leningrad’s Senate Square in honour of the 150th anniversary of the revolt, which named the Decembrists as the 'First Dissidents of Russia.' One of the most famous incarnations was the 1968 verse 'Petersburg Romance' by the guitar-poet and playwright Alexander Galich. This song focuses on the inner torment of the conspirators before they went out on to Senate Square:

Our era is testing us.
Can you go out on the square?
Do you dare go out on the square 
At the agreed time?

Written a few days after Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Galich's verse came to evoke parallels between the Decembrists' move on to the square and the demonstration against the Soviet invasion by eight protesters on Red Square in Moscow. Galich's poem has since become a classic of Sixties bard [singer-songwriter] poetry, but it gained a fresh relevance as the Russian authorities continued to pressurise the opposition and their supporters while Putin resumed power for a third term. Its public performance [in Russian] by poetry-lovers in May 2012 in front of St. Isaac’s Cathedral in Saint Petersburg demonstrates the relevance of poetry for spreading a sense of common cause and feeling among the critically minded. 

Dissent past and present

Public poetry and dissent have something of a common history. Soon after the addition of a monument to the poet himself in 1958, Mayakovsky Square in Moscow became a hotbed of poetry-reading for rebellious youths. The sense of togetherness, the chance to find people with similar opinions and to exchange manuscripts made Mayakovsky Square an important meeting-ground for future dissidents and their supporters. The role of Mayakovsky Square in the creation of a generation of intellectuals who used poetry to engage critically with Soviet power remains relevant for rebellious youth today. The resumption of poetry readings at Mayakovsky Square began in 2009 alongside attempts to create a new opposition in the form of the Strategy-31 initiative which also meets on the square. The poetry meetings have increased in frequency since the December and May protests. Among other things, the reprise of the Mayakovsky Readings fused political with moral protest, as they did in the late 1950s, providing a platform for those disenchanted with consumer capitalism and its effects on Russian culture. 

Yet the continuing sense of legitimate rebellion saw the search for legitimacy dig deeper. The 200th anniversary of Alexander Herzen's birth in April 2012 stimulated reflections on the links between the progressive 19th century intelligentsia, dissidents and contemporary protests. (After all, as Lenin said,  'The Decembrists woke up Herzen. Herzen began the work of revolutionary agitation. This was taken up by the revolutionary raznochintsy[intellectuals not belonging to the aristocracy].') The search for legitimacy was largely provoked by accusations against the opposition of disloyalty and a lack of patriotism and it led to a concerted effort to reinforce the links between patriotism and dissent. Indeed, one has to take into account the propaganda linking dissidents and foreign-sponsored forces with the end and aftermath of the Soviet Union. In a strange way, 1991 becomes an indirect vindication of years of Soviet paranoia regarding outside threats. Responding to the loss of empire and economic guarantees during the 1990s, Lev Krasnopevtsev, a dissident Marxist historian who had been imprisoned in the late 1950s, said that his group 'never dreamed the Soviet Union would collapse.' As we can see, the image of dissidents (and particularly human rights defenders) is in need of rehabilitation for it to become palatable. 

In this vein, Andrei Loshak named Alexander Herzen 'Dissident Number One' on the front page of  Ogonyok magazine in April 2012.The television and print journalist went on to list the parallels between dissidents, protesters and Herzen: they were all linked by conscience, nobility of spirit, decisiveness and non-violence. The point was clear: regardless of whether you live under Tsarism or late Socialism, the anxieties over speaking out, emigration and co-operation with the 'system' remain the same. Loshak suggested direct parallels between prominent dissident figures and today's protest leaders. Yet the real similarity, he argued, was in the need for a 'conscious minority' (i.e. Herzen's 'educated minority') to act as mediators when the interests of the state and the people are out of sync. Here, though, the apparent lack of moral authority on the side of the protesters prevented their protest from achieving broader appeal. After all, the past two decades has seen democratic politics in opposition consistently undermined from within and without through scandal, fragmentation and defeat, at least, in the war of words. 

The crisis of authority  

Yet the problem with moral authority, as the writer Ol'ga Slavnikova pointed out during Oleg Shein's hunger strike against alleged electoral fraud in Astrakhan, might be that 'no one's word is authoritative'. Despite the Russian love of martyrs and a number of prominent cases, the idea of political martyrdom has become devalued as an effective form of resistance when cynicism prevails.  Consider the response to attempts at making Sergey Magnitsky into a figure of resistance against the apparent moral and economic corruption deep inside the Russian state: allegations of corruption against high-ranking bureaucrats were quickly transformed back into accusations against Magnitsky himself. In this instance, the 'blame game' rhetoric regarding Western-backed privatisation and economic collapse of the 1990s can quickly be adapted against many figures of the opposition. 

In 1966, writers Yury Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky were imprisoned for publishing their texts abroad. For many, the Pussy Riot trial was but an echo of these earlier times

At the same time, critics such as Ilya Budraitskis (link in Russian) have identified the exhaustion of political martyrdom as an internal problem for the liberal opposition. Martyrdom frequently arises out of a sense of political powerlessness, and has led the tradition of moral opposition into a vicious circle. In this scenario, only a select few have the necessary resolve to stand up against the authorities. The symbolic struggle of benign enlightenment against malicious cynicism creates impossible ideals in the romantic tradition of revolutionary activity. We can see signs of this in the attempts to dodge the increasingly fraught question of loyalty and patriotism, whereby the middle-ground is skewed in favour of marginal ethics.

‘The closing statements of Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova contain many direct and indirect references to dissident history, ideas and practices. The return of dissident courtroom speeches is itself striking.’

But this self-imposed exile to the margins means that ethical resistance is often the only option for the minority. The issue of concrete goals is rejected out of disdain for 'dirty politics': perhaps rightly, encounters with the political realm are often seen as a stain on the individual's moral character. Yet, aside from all the talk of civil society, some believe the intelligentsia still needs to understand that society is an equal power to, if not stronger than, the authorities. 

The trial of Pussy Riot is an interesting case for this contemporary entanglement of Soviet dissent and martyrdom. Indeed, according to Maria Alyokhina, the members of the group on trial were accused of being the 'heirs of dissidents' during their interrogation. The closing statements of Maria Alyokhina, Yekaterina Samutsevich and Nadezhda Tolokonnikova contain many direct and indirect references to dissident history, ideas and practices. The return of dissident courtroom speeches is itself striking. But, in short, three parallels are worth mentioning: 

• — Much like Lidiya Chukovskaya's description of the dissident trials of the 1960s as having the 'familiar stench of past ashes', Alyokhina stated that Pussy Riot was being persecuted by 'people without memory'; 
• — Yekaterina Samutsevich's criticism of the alliance between the FSB and Orthodox Church as the refusal of an aesthetic mirrors Andrei Sinyavsky's oft-quoted statement on 'stylistic differences with Soviet power', which is also referred to as a source of motivation for the opposition;
• — As if a paean to the tradition of dissident self-sacrifice, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova stated that their prison sentence was not a defeat but a 'judgment on the regime'.

The courtroom speeches reflect a deeply-felt engagement with dissident history and culture. The response of the critically-minded has seen a similar depth of engagement. The trial has been characterised as the Putin-era echo of the case against writers Yuly Daniel and Andrei Sinyavsky, who were imprisoned in February 1966 for publishing their texts abroad, or the trial of poet Joseph Brodsky for parasitism in 1964. For example, on the day of the Pussy Riot trial, the writer Dmitry Bykov stated on Kommersant Radio that 'The Pussy Riot case will enter Russian history as did the trial of Sinyavsky-Daniel’.

In the same way as Alyokhina's statement, the literary output of Sinyavsky and Daniel signalled a refusal to accept a society which they saw as having failed to remember the crimes of Stalinism. The application of the law to stifle public protest in various guises has been a strong source of historical comparison: the legalist demands of the Moscow dissidents in the 1960s such as 'Observe the Constitution!' are a significant part of the liberal opposition's current demands and concerns. In a similar fashion to samizdat during the 1970s, guides on legally and morally sound behaviour during interrogation have become a mainstay of protest-orientated news and comment platforms. 

And now?

The engagement with, and simultaneous formation of, a dissident past indicates the opposition's need for symbols and authority. Against the current background of systemic corruption, it also suggests a desire for sincerity associated with the Soviet underground. Yet in the return to dissent we can see signs of that 'mindset of martyrdom' mentioned by Budraitskis. The demonisation of the Putin regime as the rebirth of Soviet totalitarianism may have aesthetic and moral appeal, but it does not necessarily provide much in the way of political potential apart from the 'boomerang' effect via Western pressure. Some see the root of current problems in the lost window of opportunity in 1991-1993. The mass protests of that era are a convincing precedent and the issues of perestroika are eerily reminiscent of those expressed by opposition groups today. That period was preceded by a similar attempt by democrats to use dissidents as moral and political capital in their attempt to reform the Soviet political and economic system. The previous sense of stagnation, characterised by a retreat into private life and a rejection of politics, is shifting. For example, during the Pussy Riot trial, journalist Valery Panyushkin described himself moving from the edge of hysteria into an 'irrational absence of fear': a feeling he'd last had in the dark days (at least for the critically-minded) before perestroika. Political engagement is seen as increasingly necessary in order to change the situation.

‘The previous sense of stagnation, characterised by a retreat into private life and a rejection of politics, is shifting. Political engagement is seen as increasingly necessary in order to change the situation.’

But what is more important is that the previous sense of stagnation, characterised by a retreat into private life and a rejection of politics, is shifting. For example, during the Pussy Riot trial, journalist Valery Panyushkin described himself moving from the edge of hysteria into an 'irrational absence of fear': a feeling he'd last had in the dark days (at least for the critically-minded) before perestroika. Political engagement is seen as increasingly necessary in order to change the situation.

The formation of a usable dissident past has its pitfalls. Apart from Sakharov or Solzhenitsyn, it is quite difficult to identify any dissident with broad appeal amongst dissidents or their supporters, let alone the wider public. Indeed, these two figures have also drawn strident criticism in the past. In short, the parallels represent an unexpected engagement with the dissident past if the desired result is the removal of Putin because, although perhaps on the 'winning' side, dissidents did not directly bring down the Soviet Union. Yet the broad range of examples and parallels to be found in the late Soviet period is tempting, especially when it forms an important part of post-Soviet Russian artistic and literary traditions. Discussions on the resurgence of the critical Left in January last year touched on the problem of finding your own place in the dissident tradition. The difference between weight and ballast is a fine one. Something of a curse and a blessing, retrofitting a rich cultural legacy into a political one has never been harder. 

A culture war is raging in Belarus. The prize? The right to define the nation. Battle lines are being drawn across all aspects of everyday life, such that even one’s choice of language can rapidly become be a political statement. Belarusian-speakers are in an ever-dwindling minority, like islands gradually sinking into a rising sea of Russian. But linguistic heritage is not the only thing that is under threat. Many Belarusians have apparently ‘forgotten’ their history too.

Then Russian President Dmitry Medvedev meets Belarusian President Aliaksandr Lukashenko in 2010. Amidst international isolation, Russia has continued to provide support for Lukashenka (photo: (cc) www.kremlin.ru)

As linguistic Russification, ‘correct’ histories was a social effects of Soviet rule. Unusually for Sovietised history, given Marxist-Leninism’s aversion to national determinism, Belarus was given a status of ‘Partisan Republic’. Rich in forest and marshland, Belarus had provided the perfect terrain for guerilla resistance against the Nazi occupation in WWII. Reams of history and ubiquitous monuments were produced to glorify the Soviet patriotism of the partisans, at the expense of pre-Soviet history, which was whitewashed. While academics argue over whether this amounted to denationalisation or Soviet nation-building, the overall effect was the mass deletion of memory.

'Lukashenka's Belarus again has an official state ideology-although it is only loosely defined and has no name. According to the regime's narrative, the nation's 'flouring' owes most to its ties with the Russian people, especially as manifested in the Soviet period.'

Aliaksandr Lukashenka’s regime tries to draw its legitimacy from promoting the same Soviet myths about the Belarusian nation. Belarus is thus projected as a Russian-speaking, Russia-allied and anti-elitist nation, with a strong base in the proletariat. Lukashenka’s Belarus again has an official state ideology – although it is only loosely defined and has no name. According to the regime’s narrative, the nation’s ‘flourishing’ owes most to its ties with the Russian people, especially as manifested in the Soviet period.

Culture as resistance

In today’s Belarus, a country often called ‘Europe’s last dictatorship’, resistance is above all cultural. History writing, narrative fiction and poetry frequently equate to political subversion. Rock concerts are prone to turn into full-blown demonstrations. In the Soviet period, a small core of academics, writers, musicians, etc. maintained the autonomy of Belarusian language and culture. Perhaps counterintuitively, given the fact that their activities were often antithetic to the Soviet project, these dissidents usually worked for the state. They  ordinarily belonged to centrally-funded writers’ and artists’ unions and published in state-owned journals. Now, such material support has been largely withdrawn, and the state monopoly on culture has  completely withered away. Contemporary Belarusian literature, music, art and theatre have been freer than ever to develop into important vehicles of protest, de-Sovietisation and Belarusian identity. 

A scene from a 2010 opposition rally on Freedom Day, which marks the declaration of independence of the Belarusian People's Republic on March 25, 1918. (photo: Demotix/Ivan Uralsky. All rights reserved.) 

Because this cultural schism is, broadly speaking, a divide between an eastern and a western orientation,  it can even translate into a difference in faith. Thus the state has stronger ties with Orthodoxy, while Catholicism is more associated with dissidence. This is not to say that there are always clear divisions at the level of individuals: Russian-speakers abound in opposition circles, for example. But many of Belarus’ cultural symbols fall into one of two camps. There are even two national flags. The official flag is green and red (introduced in 1995 by Lukashenka and modelled on the old Soviet republic’s flag), while the symbol of protest and symbol of the pre-Soviet nationalist movement is a white-red-white horizontal tricolour. The latter is all but banned: in 2010 the activist Siarhei Kavalenka was even handed a prison sentence for placing the alternative Belarusian flag on a Christmas tree in his native city of Vitsebsk.

Negation of culture

While it struggles to keep hold of creative arts, the state has monopoly control over key material assets, such as the television and radio waves, newspaper distribution system, cinemas, concert halls, and education system. It has the police and special military forces at its disposal, and has shown repeatedly that it is not afraid to deploy them. Administrative violence is frequently aimed at cultural outlets and events. For example, the Union of Belarusian Writers, an organisation composed of the country’s leading liberal-minded novelists, poets and dramatists, had its state funding rescinded in 2001, and was evicted from its offices in 2006. In 2011, a ‘blacklist’ of cultural figures who could not be mentioned in the state-owned media was ‘leaked’ on opposition websites (official sources vehemently denied its existence). Several of the musical groups listed, such as the outspoken rock outfit Lyapis Trubetskoy, have had concerts in Belarus cancelled by the authorities. 

'The most recent victims of the war on culture were academics. On September 14 last year, in the western Belarusian city of Hrodna, one historian lost his job and another was arrested.'

The most recent victims of the war on culture were academics. On September 14 last year, in the western Belarusian city of Hrodna, one historian lost his job and another was arrested.The first was Andrey Charnyakevich, a co-author of a collective volume on Hrodna’s history. The book, ‘Hrodnology’ (Hrodnaznaustva), was rapidly pulled from the shelves and Charnyakevich was dismissed from his post at the local state university. Aimed at mass enlightenment, the work portrays Hrodna – and by implication, Belarus – as a thriving hub with strong ties to the great cultures of Central and Eastern Europe. The historian’s emphasis on Hrodna’s ‘European’ heritage clearly undermines the regime’s insistence on a ‘Eurasian’ version of Belarusian history.

The second target was Valer Bulhakau, the editor of Belarus’ leading independent scholarly journal ARCHE. Bulhakau was in the city presenting a new publication: a Belarusian translation of Polish historian Jan Szumski’s monograph, on Soviet terror in Western Belarus in the aftermath of the Second World War. The arrest was the beginning of a series of administrative assaults on ARCHE, as a result of which the journal has suspended publication and its editor has fled the country. As well as censuring Szumski’s book which debunks any lingering misconceptions about the Soviet ‘liberation’ of Western Belarus after the Nazi occupation, the authorities banned the release of a journal issue on the history of Belarus during the Second World War. The volume contained essays, many of which were translations of recent Western scholarship, on taboo issues such as local collaboration in Nazi crimes and Soviet military failures.

Occupation and resistance

In 2004, the first full-length independent Belarusian film was banned from being shown in the country’s cinemas. ‘Mysterium Occupation’, a film set during the Second World War, had already gained recognition at international film festivals. One of the key transgressions of the film was a suggestion that Belarus today is still under (Nazi) occupation. The makers called the film a ‘partisan film’ (as the name of its website shows), thereby making quite explicit the nature of cultural resistance in Belarus today. 

Embracing the underground, cultural activists have resurrected and inverted the concept of the ‘Partisan Republic’. A major opposition news resource is named Belarus Partizan, and the most popular cultural journal bears the name pARTisan. The internet, where identities are more hidden and sources are harder to track, is fast becoming the key medium where opposition activity can be discussed and distributed. The Budz’ma Belarusami! (‘Let’s Be Belarusian!’) website is a popular source of cultural products promoting national pride, featuring work by writers, musicians, artists and historians. The campaign also recently launched the first animated history of Belarus. In a similar vein to the ‘Hrodnology’ project, this short video aims to make the country’s history interesting, accessible, and in a manner that clearly contrasts with Soviet and neo-Soviet orthodoxies.

Supporters of the Polish-Belarussian journalist Andrzej Poczobut protest his 2011 trial on allegations of libeling President Aliaskandr Lukashenko. (photo: Demotix/RFE/RL. All rights reserved) 

Another important platform for alternative Belarusianness is emigration and the diaspora. A large contingent of students, artists and scholars are active in neighbouring countries including Lithuania,  Poland and Russia. Free from state intervention, various research initiatives and grassroots projects are able to operate. An important asset is Belsat, the Belarusian television station which is funded by the Polish state and based in Warsaw. Another is the European Humanities University in Vilnius, the Belarusian university-in-exile which was forced out of Minsk by the Lukashenka regime in 2005. This is where Andrey Charnyakevich now works, after losing his job in Hrodna.

'The dictatorship cannot, however, wipe out the vivacity of the Belarusian language as it appears in everyday speech, in music, in prose and poetry.'

Can a regime which fights against its own national culture survive? There are many reasons to suppose that Lukashenka’s rule cannot last very much longer – it is overly dependent on Russian patronage, promised improvements in living standards are not materialising, and the regime’s support among the population is dwindling. Nonetheless, that same regime has already lasted 18 years, prides itself on the ‘stability’ it delivers, and the president is still a relatively young man. The political opposition is divided and looked upon with suspicion by many.

The dictatorship cannot, however, wipe out the vivacity of the Belarusian language as it appears in everyday speech, in music, in prose and poetry. It cannot carry on denying that the Belarusian people have a history stretching back before 1917. It cannot do these things because they matter too much to too many people. It is not yet clear whether a journal such as ARCHE will return, or whether cultural resistance can gain enough political significance to pose a threat to Lukashenka. But should be little doubt that Belarusian culture will continue to fight.

One would not normally, perhaps, describe the President of Russia as ‘anti-Russian,’ but this is how not a few people described him, waving their banners, on the annual ‘Russian March’ that took place on National Unity Day, 4 November 2012. Some 6,000 Russian nationalists, from Moderate to Far Right, gathered in central Moscow. Alexander Belov, the leader of the (banned) ‘Movement Against Illegal Immigration’, was cheered when he called President Putin an, ‘Enemy.’ In what way, an enemy, on National Unity Day?

Taken to extremes, Russian nationalists would like to keep Russia only for the Russians; they think that the Russian Government has not done enough to establish a Russian nation state. Given Russia’s turbulent history, as a multi-ethnic Romanov empire and a multi-ethnic Soviet Union, such caution is understandable. In the same way that creating a Russian citizen out of an ethnic imperial melting pot defeated many a Romanov, so the Soviets, while they aimed for the creation of a homo sovieticus (whose ethnic consciousness would be overridden by Communism), settled for managing the ethnic diversity they had inherited.

Ethnic diversity management

'During the Soviet period, a citizen of the USSR was neither wholly ethnic, nor wholly Soviet'

What we might call ‘ethnic diversity management’ was incorporated into Soviet policy. It included the establishment of titular republics (Uzbekistan, Ukraine, Armenia…) where ethnic minorities were temporarily ‘assigned’ until, that is, they became model Soviet citizens. The American sociologist Rogers Brubaker described it as an, ‘irony of history’ that what should have been a temporary arrangement, however, turned into the consolidation of ethnic differences. And what of the Russians in the USSR? How were they assigned? That was never determined, perhaps because it was not thought necessary, or could it have been that the Soviets thought that it was much too difficult to define ‘Russianness?’ One might say that there was a marginalisation even at the Russian centre of the USSR; and that marginalisation included Russian Orthodoxy, hitherto a bastion of Russian national identity. 

Thus it was that, during the Soviet period, a citizen of the USSR was neither wholly ethnic, nor wholly Soviet. The national consciousness of the USSR’s many ethnic groups was never extinguished; and historic Russian identity – whatever had survived the Romanovs – was an ill-defined concept. 

Irony of ironies

When the USSR collapsed, what was left was an economic sinkhole, an ideological vacuum and an identity crisis; repairing the economy was one thing, but what was to be the ideology and identity of all the ‘new’ countries that had once been part of one big happy Soviet family? Irony of ironies, the ethnically-based former Soviet republics had something to build upon, but what about Russia, at the centre? Should one replace the vacuum in the new Russian nation with Russian nationalism? Yet what did being ‘Russian’ mean? Ethnic Russians living in the new Russian Federation; or ethnic Russians living in any country of the old Soviet Union; all Russian speakers? If everybody else was setting up their nation states on ethnic principles, then why not Russia? Because, even if one could come up with a formula for defining who is ‘Russian,’ the danger of creating an ethnic Russian identity – some sort of ‘Russianness’ – is that it marginalizes and alienates non-Russian ethnicities living in a multi-nation, multi-faith country.

A model Russian

In December 2012, Vladimir Putin signed his new Nationalities Policy Strategy, a presidential decree that replaced the 1996 Concept of State Nationality Policy. The new document is littered with references to patriotism, and talks of a ‘Russian [rossiiskii] political nation.’ In Putin’s Russia, a model Russian is defined by his or her embrace of civic values, and not by clinging to ethnic atavism. However, trying to take ethnicity out of what defines a Russian might be a tall order in a country with so many ethnic groups.

Russia – the Russian Federation - is exceptionally diverse, with over 170 ethnic minorities, from Koreans to Finns, from Tatars to Armenians. In the 2010 census, 80% of those who indicated an ethnic affiliation, declared themself to be Russian, followed by Tatar (3.9%), Ukrainian (1.41%), Bashkir (1.16%), Chuvash (1.05%), and Chechen (1.04%); with numerous smaller minorities making up the rest of the population. Over 100 languages are spoken in Russia, and although Russian is the only official language for the whole country, some minority languages are recognised as official at a regional level. As for religious affiliation, ethnic Russians profess their Russian Orthodoxy, but in 2010 there were also more than 16.4 million Muslims in Russia, as well as members of numerous other faiths.

On the surface, the Russian Government maintains the fiction of old Soviet policy, treating Russia as a multi-nation state rather than a ‘Russia for the Russians.’ However, in the post-Soviet period there has been a progressive shift of emphasis away from an ethnic identity to a civic identity: a balancing act whereby Russian patriotism is presented as being somehow non-nationalistic. Russian civic identity makes the fine, linguistic distinction between a Russianness that is rossiiskii (Russian citizen), and russkii (ethnic Russian), with the approved emphasis on the former. The Russian Constitution, written in 1993, begins with the declaration that, ‘We, the people of the Russian [rossiiskii] Federation.’ This civic patriotism looks for non-ethnic values that supposedly unify all nationalities living in Russia. In 2006, the Russian Government stated that it, ‘strives to follow the principle of de-ethnification of the domestic political scene.’ 

Civic values

What, then, are the most obvious civic values of this ‘new’ non-ethnic Russian patriotism? Well, they draw on symbolic elements of Russia’s history: the pre-Soviet Russian flag (reintroduced in 1991); an adaptation of the old Soviet anthem (reintroduced in 2000). And on state TV, and in state-financed films, the promotion of Russia’s cultural and historic successes is often visible. But that is not much of a foundation on which to build a proud nation state. 

'Anti-Western propaganda has always been a popular way of unifying Russia’s squabbling ethnic groups. Defining the foreigner, any foreigner, as a dangerous ‘other,’ has been going on since the time of Peter the Great’s father, Alexis I'

Anti-Western propaganda has always been a popular way of unifying Russia’s squabbling ethnic groups. Defining the foreigner, any foreigner, as a dangerous ‘other,’ has been going on since the time of Peter the Great’s father, Alexis I, who established the German Settlement (all foreigners were called ‘Germans’) outside Moscow. All foreigners had to live within the Settlement so as to protect the purity of Russia’s cultural values from contamination. Recent anti-western moves in Putin’s Russia have included: increasing restrictions on the activities of Russian NGOs, labelled as ‘foreign agents’; a law banning the adoption of Russian children by American families; sanctions against US citizens who commit crimes against Russian citizens; the suspension of activities by US-funded NGOs in Russia; banning membership of Russian NGOs by US citizens. 

Orthodoxy! Autocracy! Nationality! 

Reactionary, flag-waving politics have been a recurring theme in Russian history: Sergey Uvarov under Nicholas I; Pobedonostsev, under Alexander III; Plehve, under Nicholas II; the rallying cry (devised by Uvarov for Nicholas I in 1833) much the same: “Pravoslavie! Samoderzhavie! Narodnost!” – Orthodoxy! Autocracy! Nationality! In 2013, and with such a history, the question remains: can this novel form of Russian patriotism ever be entirely civic? 

Russia’s ethnic minorities could be forgiven for seeing this avowedly modern, neutral and civic patriotism, as nothing more than a covert process of old-fashioned Russification. The 1996 Concept of State Nationality Policy stressed the, ‘unifying role of the Russian [russkii] people.’ The 2012 Nationalities Policy Strategy says much the same thing, noting that the Russian people historically represent the ‘backbone’ of the union of peoples that constitute the present Russian state. There are numerous references to the protection of minority languages and cultures, but these are very vaguely phrased. Building a non-ethnic nation, apparently, takes time – the more time the better, perhaps: an initial meeting on the implementation of the Nationality Policy was convened by President Putin on 19th February 2013.  

Patriotic education

The Nationalities Policy Strategy unambiguously confirms the primacy of the Russian language, continuing a trend consolidated in recent years. New regulations on education, adopted in 2007, and revised in December 2012, have reduced the regions’ autonomy over the teaching of minority languages and cultures. A 2009 presidential decree removed the option for secondary school students to take their final exam in a minority language rather than in Russian, which is likely to stimulate a further shift towards education in Russian for members of national minorities. In 2007, the Russian Government also promoted the programme ‘2007: Year of the Russian Language in the Russian Federation,’ and talks in schools about ‘patriotic education’ were introduced in 2012. 

Over the years there have also been recurring calls from ideologues to ‘de-ethnify’ Russia’s federalist political structure by reducing some or all of its ethnic administrative units. Between 2005 and 2008 there was a series of mergers of ethnicity-based autonomous  (districts) with predominantly Russian super-regions; and discussions of the advisory committee drafting the Nationalities Policy Strategy reportedly floated the idea of abolishing all ethnic administrative units, including even ethnic republics. Ethnic minority groups have seen their decision-making powers curtailed: by the use of presidential decrees (by definition, undemocratic), and the notorious ‘power vertical,’ which makes it possible to rush laws through a rubber-stamp parliament,without any meaningful debate.

None of the above, however, pleases Russian ultra-nationalists. They are hostile towards all immigrants (particularly migrant workers from former Soviet states). Even the presidential decree on the Nationalities Policy Strategy angered the ultra-nationalists, with its references, however vague, to the protection of minority languages and cultures, which they interpret as not sufficiently affirming the primacy of Russian identity. 

Russian nationalist and xenophobic attitudes can be seen right across the political spectrum, and even among the general public. The recent crowning as Miss Russia 2013 of Elmira Abdrazakova, who is half Tatar, provoked strong reactions in the Russian blogosphere, with many bloggers saying that Russia should not have a beauty contest winner, ‘with a non-Slavic appearance.’  

'The Russian leadership seeks to maintain political stability through careful ethnic diversity management, forging a spurious civic identity rooted in flag-waving rhetoric and stage-managed opposition to the West. '

Notwithstanding all the talk from the Kremlin about plurality, the strengthening of the central state remains President Putin’s priority. Russia still retains an ethnically-based form of federalism, and yet, while schools might be able to operate in minority languages, political representation is strictly limited. Russian media colludes in this charade: presenting a superficial, watered down view of ethnic diversity. Ethnicity is becoming a purely cultural phenomenon, politically harmless and non-threatening to the federal centre. The trade-off is both menacing and farcical: ‘Don’t complain, and we’ll pay for your dancing.’

Like the Soviets, then, the Russian leadership seeks to maintain political stability through careful ethnic diversity management, forging a spurious civic identity rooted in flag-waving rhetoric and stage-managed opposition to the West. Yet, this policy satisfies neither Russian nationalists nor the advocates of ethnic minority rights. Moreover, playing the nationalist card, ethnic or otherwise, and making Russian people proud about themselves, can backfire: the recent ban on US adoptions, triggered by the death of a Russian child adopted by an American family, sparked large-scale anti-government public protests in January, with demonstrators outraged that children in overcrowded Russian orphanages should be used as pawns in an international political game. That is what is called civil society – the result of all that talk about civic values…. The government response was to up the ante: a pro-Kremlin demonstration on 2nd March urged the government to extend the adoption ban to all foreign nationals, and to ease domestic adoption rules. 

Homo sovieticus

President Putin has chosen statism as a strategy. Dissension, of whatever persuasion, is anathema: political parties, based on ethnicity or religion are banned; but so is the Movement Against Illegal Immigration, whose extreme, ultra-right message makes it a potentially destabilising element. To the annoyance of the nationalists, the marginalisation of minority cultures is not presented as a policy inspired by Russian neo-imperialist motives but rather by a management drive in head office to strengthen the state. To the annoyance of the ethnic minorities, there is no dialogue between cultures, only a dominant Russian culture around which other minority groups are allowed to dance but not to speak. 

The Soviet Union did manage to produce one homo sovieticus - Vladimir Putin. In a country with a managed democracy, should we be surprised that Russia also has a managed ideology? 

In the USSR there were very few official millionaires, and most of them were film actors and sports stars who earned enormous fees abroad. There were many more unofficial millionaires, but they were obliged to convert ill-gotten gains into legal income using money laundering schemes: in the cult 1968 film comedy ‘The Diamond Arm’, for example, this involved burying contraband gemstones in the ground and then ‘discovering’ them again, since the finders of treasure trove were entitled to part of its value.

Times have changed, and Russia is third in the global billionaire league (after the USA and China), with Moscow having more billionaire residents than any other city in the world. However, in a recent interview with the ‘Vedomosti’ newspaper, Sergei Ignatyev, outgoing head of Russia’s Central Bank (CB), revealed that money laundering schemes are as widespread as ever. According to Ignatyev, $49 billion (£32 bn) was lost to the economy in 2012 in this way: ‘this could include payments for drugs or other goods which may not be legally imported into Russia’, and he sees an all out war on tax evasion and money laundering as a priority for his successor Elvira Nabiullina. 

The 1968 Soviet comedy 'The Diamond Arm' follows an attempt to smuggle diamonds from Turkey into the Soviet Union in an arm cast. Photo: cloudcinema.ru

Ignatyev also told Vedomosti that in all other respects the Central Bank was doing a good job: its head evidently felt the need to create the image of an ‘enemy’ that was spoiling the otherwise perfect picture so carefully put together by the regulator. Apparently, all Russia’s financial problems boil down to people breaking the law; the law itself and other regulatory measures are perfectly fit for purpose and guarantee continued  economic growth. Ignatyev considers, for example, that the CB was responsible for steering the correct monetary policy line during the financial crisis of 2008-9.

'According to Ignatyev, $49 billion (£32 bn) was lost to the economy in 2012 in this way, and he sees an all out crackdown on tax evasion and money laundering as a priority for his successor.' 

But let us not forget that the bank lost an enormous amount of money by bailing out the medium sized Mezhprombank  (which has since gone into liquidation) and by artificially stimulating credit growth in 2008-9, when banks were forced to increase their credit portfolios every quarter despite a lack of sound borrowers, so producing new unsafe investments which will come to light in a future crisis. But all that, according to the bank’s outgoing head, is unimportant, and the main thing is to defeat the chosen ‘enemy’ – tax evasion by business. According to Ignatyev, the exchequer loses 450-600 billion roubles (£9-12 bn) a year in this way, and 11% of businesses pay no tax at all. Since 2004 Russia has in fact had a special government agency, ‘Rosfinmonitoring’, charged with combatting money laundering, but after nine years its lack of progress evidently demands that its function be handed over the megaregulator that is the Central Bank. 

I, however, believe that this is a misreading of the situation, and that there is another reason for the rise of Russia’s shadow economy.  

How does money laundering work?

The aim of money laundering is to legalise money acquired by illegal means. This can be achieved in a number of ways: fictitious transactions, often involving fake documents; the deposit of cash in bank accounts or using ATMs; the use of offshore accounts; the withdrawal of cash for illegal activities and so on.

'Why should a crackdown on money laundering be so crucial now? One reason is probably that even with the rise in gas and oil prices, the government can’t meet its financial commitments from existing income streams. And a campaign against the grey economy is also a potential source of extra income.'

The aim of the laundering is clear – to allow the owner of the money to use it without worrying about the authorities asking questions. It is worth mentioning that when Rosfinmonitoring was set up in 2004 financial analysts believed that there was little need of money laundering in Russia, because of the low incidence of non-cash operations coupled with the fact that any service could be paid for in cash. The situation has however changed radically in the last ten years, with the rapid growth of non-cash transactions among all sectors of the public. The Central Bank’s stated position is that illegal earnings in Russia arise from drug trafficking and as a result of crime. For some reason it does not include in its list income generated through the so-called ‘grey’ economy, but that doesn’t mean that all such earnings are crime related; some are completely legal.

Why should an anti-money laundering initiative be so crucial now? One reason is probably that even with the rise in gas and oil prices, the government can’t meet its financial commitments from existing income streams. There is active discussion of ways of making up this shortfall and of means of raising finance to complete planned projects. And a campaign against the grey economy is also a potential source of extra income.

German Gref, then Russia's minister of economic development and trade, at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2007. Gref, who now heads Russia's Sberbank estimates that around 20% of Russian banks act as 'launderies'. Photo (cc) World Economic Forum. Some rights reserved 

Here, it is true, one aspect of cause and effect is not being taken into account. The tax burden on Russian business has been rising significantly over the last few years, especially in 2011, when the employers’ social insurance contribution for small businesses was tripled (it has recently been increased yet again). The investment environment is also not good; the World Bank’s‘ease of doing business’ index puts Russia at No.112 out of 185 countries. As a result there is a drain of capital and a retreat into the ‘shadow’ economy which is extending to wages and salaries. The rising cost of corruption that has followed the expansion of the state has also had a negative effect on the quality of the institutional environment. The question arises of how business can go on existing in Russia at all. One answer is to go into the ‘shadows’, and minimise your tax bill. 

The Cyprus option ...

One of the most popular ways of minimising your taxes in Russia is to take your money abroad to an offshore tax haven. Low taxation and a high level of protection of property rights attract financial institutions from all over the world to so-called free economic zones, and although Cyprus was formally struck off the Russian offshore list on 1st January 2013, it is still being used as a tax shelter. According to the head of its central bank, Cyprus holds deposits from Russian citizens totalling €5-10 billion (£4-8bn) – a third of all deposits on an island with no tax on dividends or stock transactions, a very low rate of corporation tax and agreements with every country in the world not to levy double taxation (Moody’s, the US credit rating agency, puts the value of Russian deposits in banks and loans to Cypriot companies much higher, at $70 billion (£60bn), or about 4 percent of Russia’s GDP). The EU’s attempt to expropriate depositors’ cash through a ‘stabilisation tax’ triggered an extreme reaction from the Russian government, which has led many analysts to suspect that our rulers have a personal financial interest in the island.

'According to the head of its central bank, Cyprus holds deposits from Russian citizens totalling €5-10 billion (£4-8bn) – a third of all deposits on the island. Moody’s, the US credit rating agency, puts the value of Russian deposits and loans to Cypriot companies much higher, at $70 billion (£60bn), or about 4 percent of Russia’s GDP.'

Everyone imagines that all the Russian money in Cyprian bank vaults derives from criminal activity, but this has never been proved. To say that all the money deposited by Russians on Cyprus is connected with crime is the same as saying that all Russian money is dodgy and that all Russians are crooks. Offshore tax havens are a way of protecting one’s capital, although these days many governments regard this as a crime in itself. It is after all easier to take from those whose property rights are limited and those who have no right to protect these rights, and move the money to places where property rights are protected.

... but you can also do it at home

Money laundering facilities are, however, not just available to billionaires, and not only in overseas tax havens.  There are plenty of opportunities for it in Russia itself. One widespread way of laundering money is to use a bank to transfer, for a fee, a sum of money from a cash to a non-cash form, or vice versa, in such a way as to disguise its origins. German Gref, the head of Russia’s Sberbank (Savings Bank) recently estimated that 20% of Russian banks act as ‘launderies’, and called for their licences to be revoked. Gref’s interest here is of course not entirely altruistic: his bank already accounts for 50% of the market, and the removal of other similar financial institutions would lead to its further expansion. 

Credit cards can also be used to launder unofficial earnings. Money can be paid into an ATM or a bank, and if it needs to stay below the radar, it can be credited to a card account. If it’s only a small sum there won’t be any fee involved; if large, depositing and cashing services will cost between 3-10% of the amount. In Russia there are more than 3000 organisations offering these services, and only part of the fee involved goes to them: the rest goes to officials as protection money. 

All clean--for now. Banknotes are checked before cutting in the Goznak factory in Perm. Photo (cc) RIA Novosti archive/Alexey Kudenko. Some rights reserved

From back in the 90s scams involving fictitious contracts and other documents have also been very popular. A business is paid for producing goods that either don’t exist or are worth much less than stated on its invoice, and the money is perfectly legal even if the goods are fictitious. For example, a high level official organises a contract for a company and is owed a kickback. He is given an envelope full of cash, which he needs to launder. The money is distributed to various third parties and comes back to the company through various fictitious operations, and the official is then paid a perfectly legal consultancy fee. Such high ranking officials are often behind illegal business, pocketing illegal cash.

What goes around, comes around

A high level official organises a contract for a company and is owed a kickback. He is given an envelope full of cash, which he needs to launder. The money is distributed to various third parties, returns to the company via various fictitious operations, and the official receives it again in the guise of a perfectly legal consultancy fee.'

2012 saw the release of Mikhail Segal’s film ‘Short Stories’, which consists of four narratives about life in Russia today. One of these, entitled ‘What goes around, comes around’, has corruption as its theme, and is an excellent illustration of how this works. At the start of the episode, a driver is trying to get a fake MOT certificate for his car, which will cost him 10,000 roubles (£200). The man who organises the certificate takes the cash to the passport office and uses it to jump the queue for an international passport. The manager of the passport office takes the money to a professor who can help his daughter get a university place. The professor in turn takes it to a doctor to get an operation for his wife, and the doctor then hands it over at the army recruitment office so that his son can avoid conscription. The officer in charge at the recruitment office gives the money to a builder who has promised to allocate him a council flat, and the process finishes at the top of the social ladder when the regional governor gives the builder a building plot in return for the council housing block. The governor goes on to meet the President himself, and keeps his job after guaranteeing the ‘right’ results in the regional elections, as well as promising to fight corruption. The story finishes with the driver coming to pick up his fake MOT and is amazed when he actually gets it. ‘What about all this stuff on TV?’ he asks. ‘The government’s cracking down on corruption. How did you wangle it?’ The reply? ‘Well, why do you think it used to cost 10,000, and it’s gone up to 15,000 now?’ 

'The government’s supposed crackdown on corruption has not reduced corruption, because there has been no reduction in demand. And the same goes for the anti-money laundering campaign: the only result can be inflation in the cost of dodgy deals and more cash lining the bureaucrats’ pockets.'

In other words, the only result of the government’s crackdown on corruption has been 50% inflation in the cost of dodgy deals. There has been no reduction in corruption, because there has been no reduction in demand. And the same goes for the anti-money laundering campaign: the only result can be a similar price inflation and more cash lining the bureaucrats’ pockets. This greying of the economy could also be itself a result of high business taxation: when this is the only way to preserve jobs and capital, paying all your taxes could mean your business going bust and your staff losing their jobs.

The real reason for the rising rate of money laundering is increased taxation and an expanding bureaucracy, and not the innate criminal tendencies of the Russian public. The continuing growth of the government sector will mean an increasing squeeze on the private sector, when the growing appetites of the officials can no longer be satisfied by business owners bent under the weight of taxation and bureaucracy. If the policy of increasing state control of the economy continues, money laundering will always be a profitable business.      

Alena Ledeneva’s new book continues her work on the role of informal practices in Russia. Her latest work, Can Russia Modernise? Sistema, Power Networks and Informal Governance, is a study of ‘sistema’ (The System), Russia’s unique system of government which combines formal rules and informal practices. At first glance the book’s question ‘can Russia modernise?’  looks trivial to somebody living there and familiar with how the country works. The author describes how The System functions in detail, but it is not immediately clear why it is worth documenting the everyday practices of those in control of the Russian system of government.

The System: rules and efficiency

The book aims to provide readers with a much better understanding of how The System’s informal rules are structured, where they come from and how they change. To achieve this, the author uses a wealth of material and an interdisciplinary approach, blending anthropological and sociological methods. The majority of the book is based on her interviews with about 40 former high-ranking sistema members. Most of these interviewees preferred to stay anonymous, though my own personal knowledge of those particularcadres enables me to recognize some of these people and see that her sample does indeed include very high-ranking members (or former members) of the Russian elite.

There are those who did not mind disclosing their names, including a high-ranking judge Olga Kudeshkina and a leading Russian businessman Mikhail Gutseriev. Using such interviews and publicly available information, the author also delves into the details of some specific cases – for example, the Abramovich-Berezovsky legal dispute in London in 2011. These hearings shed considerable light on how The System used to work in 1990s, as both sides (and their witnesses) had to testify under oath on the minute details of making and executing decisions that are usually not discussed in public.

Ledeneva also relies on a large-scale sociological survey of the Russian public (the Levada Centre Omnibus Survey). The problem is that a survey such as this can only capture outsiders’ perceptions of how The System functions, and these are not necessarily accurate.  One of the anonymous interviewees emphasizes, moreover, how shocked he is at the extent to which the outsiders misconstrue the microcosm of The System.

One of the book’s main questions is the author’s evaluation of the efficiency, or otherwise, of The System. She recognizes that sistema is neither modern nor efficient; it undermines long-term vision and not only does it not work in the national interest, it actually undermines its leaders’ ability to ensure their own survival at the top. The author clearly believes that a positive answer to the question ‘Can Russia modernize?’ would be tantamount to dismantling The System. ‘Modern’ implies ‘meritocratic’, ‘competitive’, ‘transparent’ and ‘rule-based’ –  everything that The System is not.

Ledeneva identifies both a formal and informal System. The formal rules of The System certainly exist and they are often applied, but whether the formal rules are to be applied or ignored in a specific case is eventually driven by the informal rules – which are (unsurprisingly) not written down anywhere.

Informal practices change over time. For example, both the structure of the power networks and the informal rules governing them certainly changed in 2012 after Vladimir Putin returned to presidency. This raises yet another meta-question: we know that informal rules matter; we know that the formal rules are applied selectively, according to the informal rules; we know that the informal rules are not explicitly codified, but do we have at least an approximate knowledge of these informal rules? Moreover, does anybody, including Vladimir Putin himself? Can we foresee how sistema will function in specific cases? For example, would an outside scholar – or indeed an insider– have been able to predictwhat the court verdict on Pussy Riot was going to be?

Ledeneva succeeds in showing that it is actually not at all obvious how or why The Systemworks. There is indeed a puzzle: it is neither fully informal nor fully formal, neither feudal nor modern. It is based on clans and networks, but these clans are not founded solely on blood relationships nor they are rigid. Informal rules play a very important role, but they are not written down anywhere. The very fact that informal rules are in general a deviation from the formal law on the statutes implies that they are hard to pin down.

Putin and his 'vertushka' telephone. A security service controlled network, the vertushka is an embodiment of the material culture of the state governance, revealing the formal hierarchy of privileges and concelaling the informal power of networks. Photo: RIA Novosti/ Dmitry Astakhov

Given The System’s obvious shortcomings, the reader comes close to sharing the author’s sense of awe that it actually works at all.  Somehow, decisions are being made, the economy is functioning, and not everybody wants to leave Russia. As an economist I know that this is because of oil revenues, which pay for all the embezzlement, corruption and inefficiency. If oil prices go down – as they did in the 1980s – The System will have to change or it will disintegrate (in the same way as its predecessor, the not dissimilar Soviet system).

The book tries to provide answers to the many questions that arise about The System, but for me its main message is how much we do not know. The System behaves differently in similar situations, which rules out any possibility of prediction, and is so complex that it is very unlikely anybody (even a person at the very top) can have a complete understanding of how it functions. It evolves over time, but we have only a limited understanding of how change occurs.

A possible way forward

Ledeneva points to three major forces which could help Russia to modernize (i.e. to move from sistema to a normal OECD-like meritocratic, formal rule-based economy and society). This trio includes technology, financial integration and development, and globalization (especially legal globalization).

Technological development would result in greater internet and smartphone market penetration. Censorship falls apart, transparency increases, the gap between the informal rules and the laws on the statutes becomes obvious to everybody.

Financial integration would lead to The System’s key members and their companies becoming more dependent on the global financial system. I should add that financial development delivers substantial economic benefits – but since these benefits require transparency and good government, financial development is eventually at odds with the System.

Legal globalization makes Russians aware of, and subject to, OECD’s rules of the game. Not surprisingly, Ledeneva pays special attention to the Abramovich-Berezovsky case in London. It is important that this case – in addition to unearthing innermost workings of The System – also showed how painful this process is for participants. In particular, after this case, Oleg Deripaska decided to settle his own soon after (also due to be held in London).

The System’s 2012-13 offensive against these three anti-sistema forces proves beyond reasonable doubt that it is right for Ledeneva to focus on them. The Russian state has now introduced major internet restrictions, as well as requiring top members of the elite to close their foreign bank accounts.

As a critical reviewer, I should like to highlight an issue which is accorded less prominence in the book than it should have been: while the Russian system of government deserves all the criticism it gets, some blame can also be apportioned to the Russian people. Country-wide studies show that Russian society is still lacking in trust and social capital. Russians are cynical; they suspect each other of anti-social behaviour and lack confidence that corruption can be eliminated. Economists know that these expectations may be self-fulfilling. If people know corruption is omnipresent, they do not attempt to fight it. If everybody believes that everybody else is corrupt, it is rational to think that the few honest investigators are outnumbered and will not be able to catch corrupt officials, thus making corruption indeed invincible.

There is, however, certainly some scope for optimism. The forest fires in August 2010 led to the birth of a substantial volunteer movement. Also, public support for various noble causes (e.g. Alexei Navalny’s anti-corruption campaigns) via the internet has become commonplace, with donors sending money to people they have never met. Such systemic activism gives us grounds for hope that The System might soon be on its last legs.

Can Russia modernise?: Sistema, power networks and informal governance by Alena Ledeneva is available from Cambridge University Press for £19.99. 

When the Levada Centre recently ran a poll asking members of the public who they thought were the richest members of Russia’s ruling elite, over half responded that the country’s fattest cats were the members of the Duma and the Federation Council, the lower and upper houses of the Russian Parliament. Government ministers, senior officials in the presidential administration and even the directors of state owned corporations were seen as much less well off.

Broadcaster Vladimir Posner has apologised for his 'slip of tongue' referring to the State Duma as the State Dura (fool). Angry MPs are looking to take their revenge by passing a law banning him from working for Russian state-owned TV channels. Photo (cc) Dmitry Rozhkov

The poll results do not in fact mean that Russian MPs are filthy rich, and corporate directors pretty poor – some of them have salaries comparable with those of their counterparts in the Western European private sector. But in the last few months Russians in general have come to believe that the legislature is the most corrupt part of government, because this is what they have been told by both the opposition and the pro-Kremlin media.    

‘When we leave, our places will be taken by boys’

The public’s perception is to some extent justified. There are indeed millionaires among MPs – take for example the soft drink baron Nikolai Bortsov, who in fact recently announced in an interview that he may be standing down from the Duma, and predicted that many other wealthy MPs would follow his example.

'In the last few months Russians have come to believe that the legislature is the most corrupt part of government, because this is what they have been told by both the opposition and the pro-Kremlin media.'

Bortsov became an MP in the mid 1990s, but is now saying he will not stand for re-election in 2016, for two reasons – the opposition media’s increased interest in MPs’ wealth and a fall in public respect for MPs. He described, for example, how when he arrived at the national farmers’ conference, the police made him park his car several blocks away, although it had a parliamentary pass on the windscreen. The police have also stopped answering official MPs’ questions. ‘It was never like that before’, said Bortsov, and warned that ’all the rich people will leave Parliament, and our places will be taken by boys who are only happy in front of a computer and who claim that the stupidest MP is cleverer than an average Russian. Let them sit in Parliament then.’  We’ll return to the boy with this high opinion of his own intellectual capacities below.  

The Russian parliament appeared in its present form in December 1993, after Boris Yeltsin dissolved the Supreme Soviet, the country’s highest legislative organ in Soviet times. But on the very day of elections to the new body, Yeltsin pushed through a constitution that made Russia a presidential, rather than a parliamentary, republic; the Duma was to have fewer powers than the Congress of People’s Deputies that it replaced.

The president, however, couldn’t exercise his own new sweeping powers, since his supporters failed to gain a majority in parliament, where the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, led by Vladimir Zhirinovsky, won the highest number of seats, followed by the Communist Party under Gennady Zyuganov. These two powerful fractions united to give the Kremlin a unpleasant surprise when at the very start of the parliamentary session they declared an amnesty for the leaders of both the attempted coup to overthrow Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991 and the bloody standoff between the Kremlin and the Supreme Soviet in 1993.

'The Duma had fewer powers than the Congress of People’s Deputies that it replaced, but MPs were not afraid to flex what muscle they had: rumours abounded about suitcases full of cash appearing in the Chamber before a vote on the latest budget.'

The new parliament didn’t attempt to seize control from the president, fearing it might meet the same fate as its predecessor. But the MPs were not afraid to flex what muscle they had: rumours abounded among the elite about suitcases full of money appearing in the Duma before a vote on the latest budget, to secure parliamentary approval.

Membership of the Duma also brought parliamentary immunity. The satirist Viktor Shenderovich even wrote a parody of the popular children’s poetry book ‘Bad Advice’, in which he gave MPs suggestions about infringing all kinds of public order regulations, and then, when the police turned up, showing their ID and getting off free. And indeed, even when members were accused of serious crimes, the Duma was extremely unwilling to withdraw their parliamentary privilege.

The Duma’s power was at its height in 1998, another crisis year in which Russia almost defaulted on its foreign debts and was forced to devalue the rouble. In the spring of that year, Yeltsin dismissed his Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and appointed in his place Sergei Kirienko. After the default crisis in August the president twice tried to bring back Chernomyrdin as PM, but both times parliament refused to confirm his appointment. If this happened a third time Yeltsin would have had to dissolve the Duma and call new elections, but public opinion polls were forecasting a landslide victory for the communists. The president gave in and a compromise figure,Yevgeny Primakov, was appointed instead.

A watered down United Russia party meeting

In the 1990s Russia’s MPs enjoyed real power, money and respect. But in the following years all this began to disappear. It all began with the unexpectedly successful debut of a new coalition bloc, ‘Yedinstvo’ (Unity) – the forerunner of United Russia (UR) – in the 1999 parliamentary elections. ‘The Bear’, as it was popularly dubbed (its initials spelt out the Russian  word for bear, Medved), lost no time in making its presence felt, concluding a secret pact with the Communists and  Zhirinovsky’s group against two liberal fractions, the SPS (Union of Rightist Forces) and ‘Yabloko’, as well as the ‘Fatherland’ fraction controlled by the Mayor of Moscow Yury Luzhkov.  As a result, the communists and United Russians seized most of the key positions in the Duma, though later on the communists, who had joined forces with the liberals, were forced to give up many of their posts, including the speakership.

'Changing the constitution was more difficult, but when Dmitry Medvedev, announced in 2008 that he wanted to extend the parliamentary term from four years to five, and the presidential term from four years to six, these significant changes were accepted almost without discussion'

After its election victories in 2003 and 2007, UR no longer needed to enter a coalition with any other fraction, apart from its traditional ally the Liberal Democrats. Debate, not to mention ‘lobbying’ with suitcases full of cash, became a thing of the past. Independent MPs also disappeared as single member constituencies were abolished and all MPS were elected by a proportional representation system based on closed party lists. So any legislation proposed by the Kremlin was passed without any problem.

Changing the constitution was more difficult, as it had to be approved by three quarters of MPs, but after the 2007 elections this problem disappeared as well. When the new president, Dmitry Medvedev, announced in 2008 that he wanted to extend the parliamentary term from four years to five, and the presidential term from four years to six, these significant changes were accepted almost without discussion. The opposition called the Duma ‘a United Russia party meeting, diluted a little by the Liberal Democrats, Communists and ‘A Just Russia’’ (legislation allows only four parties to be represented in the Russian parliament at once). And the opinions of the last two are worth practically nothing – the communists and ‘Just Russians’ abstained as a body from the vote, but it made no difference.

So it went on until 2011. It looked as though the elections that year would produce a similar parliament, happy to rubber stamp any decisions taken by the Kremlin or government.

The average intellectual level and the haywire printer

The first scandal connected with the Duma elected in December 2011 was the conduct of the election itself. The protest meetings at the time – at first forbidden and later permitted – were a direct reaction to the blatant rigging that had gone on. Muscovites in particular were incensed by the fact that despite all the pre-election polls showing that UR would win fewer votes in the capital than in regional centres, the official results claimed it was the most popular party in Moscow after all. The presidential election in March 2012 was also tainted by fraud, but protest was more muted. So from the start the new parliament looked less legitimate than either its  predecessor or President Putin. Its composition had also changed. Some veterans, including speaker Boris Gryzlov, resigned their seats, but there were also new young MPs, most of them functionaries of pro-Kremlin youth movements. It was one of these, Ilya Kostunov, who gave the infamous interview where he declared that the most stupid MP had a higher intellectual level than the average Russian. There was a furore and Kostunov apologised, but many older MPs said that nothing like this could have happened in the past.   

The Duma has also acquired a new nickname, ‘the haywire printer’, after the speed with which it passes the most scandalous new bits of legislation: the law imposing prohibitive fines on people who take part in protests; the ban on NGOs receiving donations from abroad; the punishment of prison hunger strikes; the increase in MPs’ perks and their aides’ salaries. In the 90s most such controversial bills would have been unlikely to get as far as a vote. During Putin’s first and second presidential terms at least a year would have passed between their first and second readings and by the third reading their content would have been toned down considerably. Now, however, even the most contentious bills are rushed through in less than a month and in the process their provisions become more, rather than less, harsh.

'The Duma has also acquired a new nickname, ‘the haywire printer’, after the speed with which it passes the most scandalous new bits of legislation.'

There were also losses among MPs. The ‘Just Russia’ member Gennady Gudkov, for example, was, on the advice of the Kremlin, expelled from the Duma, ostensibly for violating parliamentary rules by carrying on business activities while also holding his seat, but in fact for attending opposition rallies. In the past MPs would fight hard on the behalf of their colleagues, but now they happily threw out the ‘oppositionist’. To give an appearance of even-handedness a UR member, Alexei Knyshov, was also expelled for the same offence.

At the end of December 2012 the Duma broke its own record for rapidity in its legislative activity. After the US Congress passed the Magnitsky Law, the Kremlin ordered the Duma to come up with a tit-for-tat measure, and to do it by 31st December. At first the MPs wanted to simply mirror the US law by banning the entry of certain American officials into Russia, but at the second reading an amendment suddenly appeared forbidding the adoption of Russian orphans by citizens of the USA. Despite objections from some members of the government and even the usually biddable Foreign Ministry, the law was passed. Officially it was called the Dima Yakovlev Law, after a young boy who died after being adopted by Americans, but the public dubbed it the Bastards’ Law, and during a rally protesters carried placards with photos of MPs who had supported it.    

Enriching the language: the state fool, pekhting and political prostitution

The Duma tried not to notice the demonstrators with their placards, but it was much more difficult to ignore other unpleasant things that happened soon after. First, in one of his TV shows the veteran commentator Vladimir Posner said that that Russia had, not a State Duma, but a State Dura (literally, ‘fool’). Outraged MPs demanded a law forbidding people with multiple citizenship from working for Russian Federal TV (Posner holds passports from three countries: Russia, USA and France). He has apologised for this ‘slip of the tongue’, but not everyone is convinced that it was an accident, and, whatever the truth of the matter, the name ‘State Fool’ has stuck.

Better days...Vladimir Pekhtin, then leader of the Unity faction in the Duma, with Vladimir Putin in 2002. This February, Pekhtin, at the time head of the Duma Ethics Committee, was forced to resign after it became public that he had failed to declare property he owned in Florida to the tax authorities. Photo (cc) kremlin.ru

This incident was soon followed by another unpleasantness for MPs. The prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny published documents showing that Vladimir Pekhtin, head of the Duma Ethics Committee, owned property in Florida which he had not declared to the tax authorities. Pekhtin’s parliamentary colleagues initially tried to stand up for him, but the evidence was so conclusive that UR officials recommended he resign his seat. This has led to yet another new piece of Russian political terminology – ‘pekhting’ – meaning the search for and publication of evidence of MPs’ undisclosed property at home and abroad. This incident has astonished and shaken United Russia MPs, who never expected that one of them could be thrown out of politics on the initiative of an opposition figure.

'In one of his TV shows the veteran commentator Vladimir Posner said that that Russia had, not a State Duma, but a State Dura (literally, ‘fool’). He apologised for this ‘slip of the tongue’, but not everyone is convinced it was an accident, and in any case the name ‘State Fool’ for the Duma has stuck.'

The next blow came from the media. The popular tabloid ‘MK’ carried an article accusing three female United Russia MPs of ‘political prostitution’ - switching, according to the paper, their political positions according to the Kremlin’s needs. Their UR colleague Andrei Isayev waded into MK on their behalf, threatening to punish its journalists for this insult, and the paper’s editor Pavel Gusev complained about him to the police, but the case didn’t go further than mutual insults, and the MPs were forced to swallow their pique.       

Just the kind of parliament Putin needs

It’s becoming obvious why being an MP has few attractions for business people or even politicians. MPs may enjoy a large salary and lots of perks, but their work brings them endless hassles, investigations and insults. Even parliamentary immunity, so valuable in the 90s, has been devalued. Only a few days ago MP and businessman Konstantin Shirshov was advised to resign his seat, and another MP, Oleg Mikheyev, was stripped of his immunity and is about to be tried for corruption offences like an ordinary Russian citizen. Senator Anatoly Lysakov has introduced a bill minimalising the formalities around kicking an MP out of the Duma: previously this required a court order, but in future it will take a simple vote. 

The Duma’s authority is at a low ebb, and it is constantly under attack from both the opposition and much of the official media. But this is precisely why rumours about its premature dissolution are unfounded. The Russian parliament’s lower house continues to happily pass whatever laws are proposed by the Kremlin. A new set of MPs might not be so biddable. Besides, all the mud being thrown at the Duma distracts attention from the government and Vladimir Putin personally. The Kremlin has no objection to MPs being rated as the richest and most dishonest people in Russia. As long as it doesn’t bring down Putin’s own ratings.  

Thumbnail: kremlin.ru

Viktor Yanukovych is, it seems, trying to make the Granta list for aspiring new fiction writers. The author is not joking. His tax return for last year, just published, includes a figure of two million US dollars earned for ‘works of literature’. He declared a similarly large sum the previous year.

The Ukrainian president is indeed a wonder of our times, because he has earned the four million for books that have not even been written. JP Rowling herself should envy him. Or perhaps it’s just a money laundering exercise. Yanukovych is, after all, only ever called a great literary figure in anecdotes: he can’t even spell his self-appointed title of ‘professor’. 

Viktor Yanukovych’s imagination certainly knows few bounds. But in the political thriller that is taking form in his head, there is much more at stake than two million worth of royalties. We are talking about the future of a country with a population of 46 million, on the eastern borders of the EU and one step away from signing an Association Agreement with it.

Ukraine is increasingly focusing all its attention on 2015, when the next presidential elections will take place. The entire state apparatus is being deployed to ensure Yanukovych’s re-election, and recent events in the Ukrainian parliament have been planned to serve the same purpose.

Is it possible to imagine British MPs holding a plenary session, not in the House of Commons, but in government offices in Downing Street? Or that one member could vote for two, to ensure a majority – MPs, after all, have two hands they can raise. Or that the press would be excluded on the pretext that no one had the keys to the front door? And that afterwards the leaders of the ruling party would announce that democracy had triumphed.

'Is it possible to imagine British MPs holding a plenary session, not in the House of Commons, but in government offices in Downing Street? Or that one member could vote for two, to ensure a majority – MPs, after all, have two hands they can raise.'

This was not a Monty Python sketch; it really happened in Kyiv. This month brought an extra twist to the Ukrainian Parliament’s spiral of crisis. Viktor Yanukovych managed to retain a small majority after the parliamentary elections of October 2012, but Parliament has been in chaos ever since. The trigger was the problem of Kyiv’s mayoral election. The capital has been without a mayor for a year now, its administration run by Oleksandr Popov, a bureaucrat appointed by the president.  The reason – the city is a hotbed of opposition; not a single Yanukovych candidate won a Kyiv seat in October. So the mayor’s post is an important element in opposition plans to dethrone the president in 2015. Even optimists realise, of course, that it will not be enough simply to win the election. Viktor Yanukovych, who over the last three years has become the country’s oligarch-in-chief, isn’t going to just hand over power. The opposition needs to be ready for another Orange Revolution.   

Opposition leaders have already been hotting up the fight by touring the provinces. And having control of Kyiv would give them a useful power base if the political situation were to deteriorate even further. Control of public services would after all give anti- Yanukovych forces the means of thwarting police attempts to break up street protests.

'Even opposition optimists realise that it will not be enough simply to win the election. Viktor Yanukovych, who over the last three years has become the country’s oligarch-in-chief, isn’t going to just hand over power. The opposition needs to be ready for another Orange Revolution.'

Viktor Yanukovych is well aware of this, which is why his Party of Regions (PoR) defeated an opposition attempt to press for a mayoral election in June, and proposes delaying it until after the presidential election in autumn 2015. So this party, with no support in the capital, has deprived a city of three million people of the right to a legitimate local administration. Could this happen anywhere else in Europe?  

In response, the furious opposition has been holding up parliamentary business by blockading the speaker's rostrum, a form of protest as traditional here as the annual chestnut blossom season along the city’s streets. The PoR  itself, when in opposition, blockaded the rostrum for several weeks in 2008, demanding that the ‘Orange’ government of the time withdraw its application to join NATO. Now, however, the PoR is in power, and responded to opposition blocking by holding a parliamentary session outside parliament, on Kyiv’s Downing Street, as it were. It proclaimed itself quorate, and started passing laws on a simple show of hands. The opposition and the media were locked out and couldn’t check on the count, although even state TV channel cameras showed many empty seats, proving that there was in fact no quorum.

'Stop dictatorship!' Opposition MP protests have become a common sight in Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada parliament. Photo: (cc) Demotix/ukrafoto Ukrainian News

The referendum – a cudgel to beat the opposition

The three years that have passed since Viktor Yanukovych’s election as Ukraine’s president have not only destroyed the fragile gains of the Orange Revolution: they have allowed the president himself to lose any illusions he had about public support. So more and more calls can be heard from the Yanukovych camp to carry through a radical scenario that would simply eliminate the opposition from Ukrainian political life and ensure the president’s re-election in 2015. The plan involves several stages, the first of which was already put in place last autumn, when Yanukovych’s previous, puppet parliament passed a law enabling constitutional changes to be decided by referendum, so bypassing parliament. This may look like people power, but in fact in the right hands can be manipulated to make it a mere instrument of government policy.

'Last autumn Yanukovych’s previous, puppet parliament passed a law enabling constitutional changes to be decided by referendum, and removing the need for parliament to confirm referendum results.'

An earlier president, the authoritarian Leonid Kuchma, tried a similar game back in 2000 when faced with a dissenting parliament. A referendum on increasing presidential powers appeared to give Kuchma 90% support, although when experts looked at the results more closely it turned out that they were totally rigged. And at least then MPs refused to implement the results; today Yanukovych has insured himself against such an eventuality by removing the need for parliament to confirm referendum results. In his hands the referendum has turned into a cudgel to kill democracy; he can use the public to rewrite the constitution, allowing him to dissolve this insubordinate parliament and replace it with a two-chamber lapdog one. The lower house, moreover, will be elected on a one member constituency basis (at present 50% of MPs are elected in this way, and the other 50% from party lists), which means that most MPs will be business people, who will be dependent on the favour of the government.  With this new system in place the president can finally be guaranteed re-election.

The second stage of the Yanukovych plan is the discrediting of the present parliament, which the government is trying to portray as a body that does no work and only squanders voters’ money. Another recent incident only confirmed this view – after an opposition rally protesters pelted PoR members with snowballs, and one MP claimed that she had ended up in hospital with concussion. The referendum, which is to take place this summer, will not only change how MPs are elected, but the new parliament will also be smaller and its members will lose their parliamentary immunity, which will make the opposition more vulnerable to police harassment. After which the government, with the help of its lapdog parliament, can pass a new law on presidential elections.  Yanukovych’s aim here is to abandon the present two-round system, since even now, with two years to go, all the polls show that he would lose in the second round to any one of three opposition fraction leaders, with boxing champion Vitaly Klychko, leader of the UDAR party, posing a particular threat. With a single round system he could win, although this presupposes opposition votes being split among several candidates.   

One hostage released

Time is running out for Yanukovych. The EU will soon be taking a decision about whether to sign an Association Agreement with him. There are only two possible outcomes here: either the Agreement will be signed at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius in November, or it won’t be signed for several years at least. 2014 will be taken up with preparations for the 2015 presidential election, and the EU won’t want to conclude a treaty with that in the offing, since it would  look like an endorsement of  Yanukovych’s policies, which have systematically wiped out the democratic gains of the Orange Revolution.

In an attempt to gain some room for manoeuvre in talks with the European Union, Viktor Yanukovych agreed to a partial implementation of the recommendations made by the EU’s Cox-Kwasniewski mission. On 7th April he pardoned Yury Lutsenko, who served as Interior Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko’s  government, ostensibly on health grounds. His imprisonment, and that of Tymoshenko herself, have often been cited by European and American officials as examples of politically motivated ‘selective justice’. Lutsenko, the son of a former Soviet regional boss, came into the political limelight  at the time of the Orange Revolution, and became Interior Minister after Viktor Yushchenko’s presidential victory in 2004. He was regarded by Yushchenko’s team as a moderating influence on Tymoshenko, who despite their best efforts had become Prime Minister. However, he gradually went over to her side, and  was arrested in 2010 on criminal charges brought against him by Ukraine’s Prosecutor  General’s Office. The accusations against him included arranging for an illegal pension supplement (a sum amounting to less than $5000) for his driver, who also received a free government flat; the marking of National Militia Day in a crisis period when all official celebrations had been cancelled, and negligence during the search for a man wanted for questioning over the poisoning of the then presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko in 2004.  Charges like these might make an impression in a country with strong democratic traditions such as the UK, but they look ludicrous in Ukraine, where the president lives in an estate of 140 hectares that he stole from the state with the help of Liechtenstein offshore banks; where members of his party, former notorious criminals, flaunt wrist watches worth half a million Euros in Parliament, and where the president’s son has in the last three years become one of the wealthiest people in the country.  

Yury Lutsenko, the former Minister of Internal Affairs in Tymochenko's government, was released from prison on 7 April 2013. Photo: (cc) Demotix/ukrafoto unrainian news

'In an attempt to gain room for manoeuvre in talks with the EU, Yanukovych has pardoned Yury Lutsenko, who served as Interior Minister in Yulia Tymoshenko’s government.  But he won't release Tymoshenko herself.'

Lutsenko served two years and three months of his four year sentence, has twice since his release undergone surgery for stomach ulcers, and has now been pardoned by the president. His conviction was probably less the result of his ostensible abuse of power than of a vendetta on the part of the powerful ‘Donetsk clan’. During his time at the Interior Ministry Lutsenko ordered a raid on the home of Donetsk ‘godfather’ Rinat Akhmetov, involving an armoured vehicle and a SWAT team that left muddy boot prints on the billionaire’s bedspread.  The oligarch himself was in hiding in Monaco – he hadn’t yet bought his three storey penthouse at No1 Hyde Park in London, at a cost of £136m – a record price for a UK residence at the time.

Lutsenko’s release can’t however be taken as a precedent; it in no way means that  Yanukovych will bow to the western leaders’ main demand  and release Yulia Tymoshenko. That was made clear in January, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, when Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, asked him to allow Timoshenko to travel to Germany for medical treatment, to which Yanukovych’s only response was to initiate new charges against her.     

The opposition – a disaster area

The very thought of 2015 reduces Ukraine’s elites to a state of stupor. The oligarchs are afraid to criticise Yanukovych openly, but they secretly support opposition leaders. The gas lobby, which includes the co-owner of the RosUkrEnergo gas distributor Dmytro Firtash and the head of the presidential administration Serhiy Levochkin, is lining up behind Vitaly Klychko. Arseny Yatsenyuk, leader of the ‘Fatherland’ Party since Yulia Tymoshenko’s imprisonment, has the support of Rinat Akhmetov’s business partner Leonid Yurushev, while the nationalist ‘Svoboda’(Freedom) Party, which opposes both international Zionism and women’s right to abortion, is apparently bankrolled by the leader of the European Jewish Union Igor Kolomoisky.   

But although Yanukovych hasn’t managed to bring his wayward parliament round, the opposition has little to boast of either. The six months since the elections  have been a disaster for them. Immediately after the elections they failed to get their candidates’ wins confirmed in five constituencies.  Once in parliament, they didn’t manage to get fair representation in committees, and lost the Disciplinary and Regulatory  Committee. At the time, December 2012, this didn’t seem too serious, but two months later the committee expelled from parliament Serhiy Vlasenko, an MP who is also Yulia Tymoshenko’s lawyer. More recent defeats have included the opposition’s failure to get a date set for a mayoral election in Kyiv or to prevent the government holding its session outside parliament. The last straw has been the increasing incidence of opposition MPs leaving the ‘Fatherland’ fraction.

'Although Yanukovych hasn’t managed to bring his wayward parliament round, the opposition has little to boast of either. The six months since the elections  have brought them a string of defeats.'

The only positive feature of the last few months has been is that PoR MPs now have to cast their votes personally – in the past one MP could press seven members’ voting buttons. But this small victory is less down to the opposition than to Ukraine’s civil rights activists. The campaign for personal voting was begun by the ‘Chestno’ (Honestly) movement, and at first opposition politicians even refused to support it.    

Today Ukraine is entering a difficult time, with the opposition impotent and Viktor Yanukovych starting to cling to power, the loss of which would spell total disaster for him. The only possible way out of this situation is to find a formula which would satisfy both sides. The paradox is that such a formula could be a return from a presidential to a parliamentary republic, where there could be a balance of various interests. Ukraine did have a parliamentary republic, but it was wrecked three years ago, and it was Viktor Yanukovych who wrecked it, personally. Now is the time to start rebuilding.  

The main characteristic of Russian journalism, which both mirrors the public mood and distinguishes it from Western mentality, is fatalism. Russian journalists regularly conclude that the perpetrators of high-profile crimes, financial abuses or murders will never be found and columns with the message that the truth will never emerge are a more popular and better paid genre than investigative journalism. 

Marina Salye's 1992 inquiry into the 'oil for food' programme and other initiatives of Vladimir Putin, then chair of St Petersburg's Foreign Relations Committee, found that the shady dealings resulted in losses of 100 million USD to the city. Photo: RIA Novosti/Alexandr Makarov

This is a convenient philosophy in a world where the murder of journalists or legal proceedings against them, are a reality. Many media outlets no longer have an investigations section, which makes that kind of work quite difficult. This is not team work, as it should be, but the enthusiasm of dedicated individuals, who are regarded as out of their minds. Investigative journalists are not given much encouragement.

The work of Marina Salye shows how important investigative journalism can be in Russia. Her report was written some time ago, in 1992, but it will remain topical until at least 2018 because the subject of the enquiry, Vladimir Putin, is the elected omni-president of Russia until that time. 

The wild 90s

At the beginning of the 1990s, during the transition to a market economy, Russia had a food shortage crisis and St Petersburg was no exception. On 12 June 1991 Anatoly Sobchak was elected mayor of St Petersburg and he appointed Vladimir Putin to chair his Foreign Relations Committee.

'In 1992-3 a municipal casino was opened; it was controlled by Putin, and its revenues were supposed to be going to ‘poor people’.'

The solutions dreamed up by the Mayor’s Office, with the personal involvement of Vladimir Putin, to solve the city’s problems were very original. There was, for instance, the idea of prospecting for ‘red mercury’, a non-existent substance, which according to Putin was to be sold to the West with the resulting revenues being used to address the city’s food problems. In 1992-3 a municipal casino was opened; it was controlled by Putin, and its revenues were supposed to be going to ‘poor people’. The problem was, as Putin subsequently admitted, that the casino made illegal payments in cash, so the mayor’s office was powerless to do anything, and couldn’t collect the taxes. So the poor and the hungry once more remained just that. This is not idle chatter, but simply what could be gleaned from the official publications and documents, though the phrase current at the time ‘gangland St Petersburg’ is a very precise description of what was going on there. What was at issue was the role of Putin and his officials.

Oil for food

From 1990 the programme ‘oil for food’ i.e. bartering natural resources in return for food products was being discussed by local politicians. At that time Anatoly Chubais was working for the city authorities and the contents of a letter to him are interesting: apparently, the ‘bronze casting has been dispatched abroad, but the bananas, which are due in exchange, have not yet arrived.’ Chubais supported the idea of barter from an ideological viewpoint, but then he went to Moscow and his activities disappear from view.

At the end of 1991 and beginning of 1992, Vladimir Putin became involved in  food barter: he managed to get Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar to grant him the exclusive right to issue so-called export licences (under the Soviet system foreign trade was very tightly controlled), which enabled him to export hundreds of tonnes of oil products and rare metals.

Putin only received such permission after the customs had held up the first vessel ‘Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov’ with its load, and bearing papers issued personally by Putin.  It was on 15 January 1991. A month later the problem had been solved, Gaidar’s back-dated permission received and the process got under way.

According to one of the high-ranking witnesses, part of the proceeds stayed in accounts in the Austrian bank Kredinanstalt. Putin liked skiing in Austria at the time.

Putin on the carpet

Marina Salye led an anti-corruption enquiry, as a result of which she recommended to the mayor, Anatoly Sobchak, that he should dismiss Vladimir Putin.  She also submitted information to the office of the Prosecutor General, and to the Presidential Administration of Boris Yeltsin. Her investigations showed that Putin and his deputy had signed documents allowing the export of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of natural resources free, gratis and for nothing. Financial losses, according to conservative estimates, amounted to some 100 million USD (a huge sum at that time).

Salye's 'investigations showed that Putin and his deputy had signed documents allowing the export of hundreds of thousands of tonnes of natural resources free, gratis and for nothing.'

Salye’s heroic efforts managed to get the matter investigated, though not publicly: the Chief Government Inspectorate carried out some checks for the Presidential Administration. Witnesses remember that Putin was very nervous when a team of more than 30 inspectors turned up, as he was when summoned to Moscow by Yeltsin, for a carpeting. These days Yuri Boldyrev, Chief Government Inspector at the time, recommends that this affair should be consigned to oblivion. Not hard to guess why. During the course of his investigation he probably realised what Putin was capable of. But he did let slip that ‘some fairly serious misdemeanours’ had been discovered. He also hinted that both Vladimir Putin and his long-time friend Aleksey Kudrin had had a chance to destroy the documents turned up during the checks. Unsurprisingly, when Radio Liberty later became involved, the response they received from the Presidential Administration was that ‘these documents are no longer kept in the archive.’

Putin’s behaviour while the checks were being carried out was very different from his account to the St Petersburg Legislative Assembly the year before. At that time the gist of his response was ‘Yes, I’m guilty, but in Russia everyone’s on the take.’ Be that as it may, the affair was hushed up.  Otherwise Putin’s career clearly would not have been quite so brilliant.  Or could it be that his previous career in the KGB made it all possible? Putin was initially considered a ‘dummy candidate’ who could be controlled.

President Vladimir Putin at a ceremony unveiling a plaque honouring former mayor of St Petersburg Anatoly Sobchak in 2002. In spite of Marina Salye's recommendation that Putin be sacked for corruption, Sobchak stood by his protege. Photo (cc) kremlin.ru 

In 2000, when Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin (at the time Prime Minister) as his heir, Marina Salye decided to remind society of her report. She gave interviews to the press and published an article ‘Putin, president of a corrupt oligarchy’. But soon after that, when Putin was elected president, Salye abruptly moved to a remote village deep in the Pskov countryside, cutting off all contact with journalists.

For 10 years she lived an isolated life, but in 2010 she agreed to be interviewed by me for Radio Liberty. We then published the most revealing documents of the Salye report.

Timchenko

Documents from the inspection may have been destroyed, but we still have the Salye report. The export licences, the very existence of which is denied outright by Putin, grant permission for the export of oil and bear the name of the enterprise Kirishineftekhimexport, where Putin’s friend Gennady Timchenko was working at the time. Today he is an oligarch and one of the richest Russians, with dual citizenship, the co-owner of the biggest oil trader, Gunvor. His previous enterprise was exporting oil that had been refined at Kirishi Refinery near Petersburg. Oil was supplied by Surgutneftegaz, in the far north, who, in turn, received their supplies from Kogalym in the Khanty-Mansiisk district of Siberia. The mayor of this northern town was Sergey Sobyanin, who subsequently rose with breathtaking speed to attain the post of Mayor of Moscow in 2010.

'In 2000, when Boris Yeltsin appointed Putin (at the time Prime Minister) as his heir, Marina Salye decided to remind society of her report. She gave interviews to the press and published an article ‘Putin, president of a corrupt oligarchy’.' 

The information from Radio Liberty meant that Timchenko had to defend himself in an interview with other media outlets – had he, or had he not, been part of the infamous barter. He currently lives in Switzerland and the fact that he gave an interview at all was a considerable success, because before that he had categorically refused all requests. He said that things were not as described, but the documents don’t bear out what he says. In today’s Russia there is no government body that would put questions to Timchenko (or Putin) based on those documents.

At the end of 2011 Putin personally criticised Radio Liberty in one of his interviews. At approximately the same time he gave his first ever (somewhat hesitant) explanation of the friendship between him and Gennady Timchenko in response to a question from the writer Zakhar Prilepin.

Radio Liberty

At the beginning of 2012 Radio Liberty received two warnings from the government (a media outlet can be closed down after a third warning). The station’s new director, the well-known journalist Masha Gessen, had a meeting with Putin, then announced that content would have to be ‘normalised’ and in future the topics should be less controversial.

'Some people I interviewed, Salye and other deputies from the Legislative Assembly, are no longer afraid. Other witnesses are still nervous.' 

Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary, has stated that the Salye report was ‘old hat’ and ‘had on more than one occasion been discredited’ during the course of the ‘many checks.’

What I remember most of all, however, is the comment from a blogger to the effect that ‘the Putin regime is on the skids if they’ve started talking about Salye.’  There were thousands of comments and millions of hits on the interview. It’s one thing to know that Putin is a bad democrat, but quite another to start thinking about what he’s capable of. Perhaps the blogger had confused the reason for the investigation? I for one knew that the regime had nothing to do with it.  In 2008 when I first telephoned Salye, it was not on the skids, and nor was it in 2010. Russian journalists gave some column space to the question ‘to whose advantage would it be to start dragging this up again now?’ and someone telephoned me at Radio Liberty to say it looked like an order from higher up. There was a considerable fuss with the foreign press trying to find Salye.

A risky business

Some people I interviewed, Salye and other deputies from the Legislative Assembly, are no longer afraid. Other witnesses are still nervous. Yury Boldyrev tried to persuade me that no one is interested in Salye so there was no point in discussing the matter.  Another, talking through clenched teeth, hinted that the deaths of journalists and members of the opposition had not been due to natural causes.  That was the Petersburg representative of the Presidential Administration, Fyodor Shkrudnev. Others didn’t say everything they knew, of course, but hinted mysteriously that the early pages of the Putin biography were still awaiting serious study.

We’re all human and it’s quite natural to be afraid. But justifying fear by saying that we’ll never get to the real truth or that this truth is uninteresting is doubly pusillanimous and cowardly.  Russians must shake off their fatalism and say to themselves that we have a duty to do something.  This is true of journalists too.

PS.

openDemocracy Russia will be running two roundtables at the Perugia Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy on 26/27 April. For more details, visit: journalismfestival.com. 

When I return to Moscow every few months, I am hit either with a sense of exuberant optimism or outraged despair, sometimes combined, never much in between. I quiz myself about it a lot: is it a reflection of that peculiarly Russian state of being; the battle between the inner idealist and the outwardly cynical realist, egged on by a predilection for the strong stuff? Is it the depressing manifestation of genetic disorder found in all Russian journalists’ DNA — creative, thrusting, and simultaneously frustrated and politically impotent? Might it not be just a reflection of the Byzantine twists and turns of Russian politics? More likely, this soulful condition is a combination of all three heartaches.

Over the last eighteen months or so the journalistic twists and turns have been tortuous: controversial dismissals (Maxim Kovalsky from Vlast); unexpected resignations (Filipp Dzyadko from Bolshoi gorod); closures (openSpace and Russkaya zhizn); the shocking spectacle of a deputy editor being marched into a forest and threatened by the country’s lead prosecutor; the unexpected sight – even for Russia – of mainstream Moskovksy komsomolets newspaper becoming the target of attack from the country’s lawmakers. And, above all, the goings on at mighty Kommersant, owned by Russia’s reluctant answer to Rupert Murdoch – Alisher Usmanov.

Myth busting

Russian media is indeed being tortured, but not with the overtly painful, turn-the-screws methods one might imagine if all one had to go on were the inaccurate inanities of so many Western commentators — and they do so love their myths. Well, how about a touch of myth busting before we go back to the torture chamber?

Myth no. 1: There are just one or two independent media titles in Russia: Novaya gazeta, Ekho Moskvy, TV Rain– that’s all that there is, right?

No. While Novaya gazeta’s courageous journalists do merit our respect and attention, they are only one end of a spectrum of independent publications (and arguably the legacy end). TV and tabloids aside — these being lost to the dark side years ago — Russia has any number of bold, independent publications: Lenta.ru, gazeta.ru, Slon, Forbes, Bolshoi gorod, Russian Esquire, Vedomosti, Kommersant and TVRain lead the way. And this is not to mention the emergence of some regional publications, where, historically, things have been much more difficult.

Myth no. 2: The Kremlin manages news output in a way that Alistair Campbell could only dream of, exerting direct daily pressure on editors and journalists, vetting news articles and overseeing appointments.

TV, government and mass audience media aside – agreed, that’s a big aside – my conversations with career journalists tell me that such interventions are rare. Comprehensive oversight would require a level of sophistication not ordinarily attributed to the Russian government. Staying on the Kremlin message is more ordinarily achieved by a combination of self-serving managers, self-censorship and economic self-interest; and when direct interference does occur, it is usually reactive rather than active.

Myth no. 3: The situation has been getting worse with every terrible year of Tsar Putin’s reign.

This myth is more complicated. As an editor at Russian Esquire in the mid 2000s, I remember the efforts required to find interested and talented correspondents to write on social or political themes. Young Russians were not becoming journalists. Today, there is a new generation of motivated and professional young correspondents. The journalistic profession is moving on from the previously underhand and corrosive processes of paid-for journalism. Ethics and vocation are the new watchwords, taking over from the hunger-led corruption of the 1990s, and complicit pragmatism of the early 2000s.

Myth busting, then, helps us to understand better the grey tones of a situation many had thought was black and white; and yet it also sets up new questions: yes, there is pluralistic independent Russian journalism; and the quality is improving; yet the Kremlin is also now showing much more interest in what we might call the ‘intelligent media.’ This new conflict of interests is having an effect in all sorts of ways.

For a long time, the authorities hesitated about getting involved with such independent-minded publications. When it was still a marginal affair, what was the point? Besides, Novaya gazeta and Ekho Moscow had good propaganda value – to show the foreigners how critical voices still had a say in Russia.

‘They ruined Comrade Vlad’s party’

Today, that political calculation is not so clear. Putin’s team, visibly rattled after last December’s electoral embarrassment, has decisively rejected Vladislav Surkov’s clear-cut ideological manipulations – an ideology of confidence – in favour of something much more blunt and craven. The intelligent media are more numerous today, more listened-to and influential than they were a few years ago. There is another factor too: mutual resentment and anger. Putin was reportedly livid with the events of last May, when on the day of his inauguration, demonstrators dared to attack (were provoked by) OMON riot police on Bolotnaya Square. The enduring image of that day was the split screen coverage on TVRain— juxtaposing hyperactive police truncheons, and Putin’s motorcade blissfully cruising down emptied highways.

The enduring image of May 7 2012 — TVRain's splitscreen coverage of Putin's inauguration motorcade and riot police at work on protestors. Photo: TVRain

‘They ruined Comrade Vlad’s party, and that won’t be forgiven’, says Maxim Kovalsky, former editor of the political magazine Kommersant. Vlast (from where he was dismissed) and openspace.ru (project closed) ‘We might live in vegetarian times now, which means not everyone will get sent to the Gulag. But anybody who is ideologically aligned, anybody who publishes in support of protesters... these people will get their comeuppance.’

'There is another, economic, truth at work in Russia. Before, the Russian media was economical with the truth; now they have to be truthful about their economic situation.'

There is another, economic, truth at work in Russia. Before, the Russian media was economical with the truth; now they have to be truthful about their economic situation. Amid falling, post-crisis print advertising revenues (not to mention increasingly timid advertisers), independent media is struggling to find sustainable business models; and honest journalists are struggling to lead normal professional lives. This is not a million miles away from the problems that independent titles face in more democratic countries. But in Russia the media sector is particularly warped, with serious media caught between oligarchic vanity projects on the one hand, and a heavily subsidised state sector on the other.  ‘How can I hold on to leading staff when the competition is offering 120,000 roubles, and I can only offer 40,000?’ asked a leading independent broadsheet editor, when I met him recently.

The Russian media market is not a market of competing opportunities; there are not that many media groups competing to keep talented people at work. Faced with a moral quandary, many independent journalists understand there is no other job to go to. Some take PR jobs; others, like my former boss at Russian Esquire, Filipp Bakhtin, make the decision to leave the profession and start a children’s camp. A third option is to mope around in a depressed state. No problem, however, to find a post in the state sector, if one can stomach the compromise of professional ethics.

Viewing the independent Russian media market as both economically dysfunctional and morally challenged, rather than simply politically repressed, one starts to get a better understanding of some of the sparks that erupted last year. No doubt, some of the claimed ‘economic’ closedowns are more complicated than presented. Elena Nusinova’s CitizenK, which produced some good and radical journalism in the run up to last year’s protests, was conveniently closed by publishers Kommersant in the middle of the production process, with advertisers already signed and printing already paid for. Maxim Kovalsky’s openSpace political journalism project was also shut down abruptly ‘for economic reasons’, reportedly incurring substantial contractual penalty clauses. Both publications had sluggish readership, and perhaps the only unambiguous lesson we can draw from these episodes is that loss-making independent media are easy to close.

But perhaps not every media shake-up indicates overt Kremlin manipulation. When Alexander Vinokurov, the likeable investor behind hip weekly Bolshoi gorod (and also socio-political portal Slon.ru and TV station TVRain) tells me that controversial changes at Bolshoi gorod are driven by economic considerations, namely huge losses, I think that we must believe him. Nevertheless, Vinokurov’s actions, first to ask editor-in-chief Filipp Dzyadko to write less about politics and more lifestyle pieces (after which Filipp, a good friend, resigned); and then, last week, to close the web operation — have certainly split the Russian journalistic community. Some accuse Vinokurov of cowardice and weakness in the face of Kremlin pressure. Perhaps, but the bottom line is the bottom line.

'The freethinking Russian media’s best chance for survival is to create publications that are attractive to both reader and advertiser'

I do wonder whether such talk risks missing a bigger picture: loss-making media enterprises, be they cross-subsidised or held hostage by rich owners, are generally neither viable, relevant, nor particularly independent. The freethinking Russian media’s best chance for survival is to create publications that are attractive to both reader and advertiser. Creating such a sustainable ecosystem is a challenge for Russian journalists, editors and publishers, and it is probably as much a question of editorial content and profits as it is one of political manipulation.

The commerce of Kommersant

Vinokurov’s commendable attempts to make viable businesses out of his other media projects — and making them it a core division of his empire, rather than hostages to the fortune of other more lucrative business, is in contrast with the situation across town at Kommersant, one of the country’s two independent broadsheets. The newspaper’s hitherto strong reputation has in little over a year been undermined by more than a dozen dismissals and high-profile resignations, amid rumours of editorial interference from Alisher Usmanov, Britain’s richest man (according to the Sunday Times – a Murdoch publication), and the gentleman whose advisers edited his Wikipedia entry, to edit out his criminal record.

Alisher Usmanov, Britain's richest man and Russia's most unlikely press baron.  Photo: RIA Novosti/Sergey Guneyev

Kommersant occupies an important position in the Russian media landscape. A newspaper for the political elite (print run 100,000, readership mostly in Moscow), Kommersant is modern Russia’s first private newspaper. Established in the last period of the Soviet Union, the founding team had the idea to create a Russian New York Times. At that time no one really understood what that meant, so the result was something of a Russian fairytale: good, literary writing, a love of the ridiculous and contempt for politicians. The newspaper pioneered a line of playful article titles: ‘Moscow City Council orders the price of meat down: meat doesn’t agree’ (about attempts to regulate food prices); and ‘one woe discusses another’ (politicians debating Russia’s road building programme, in a wink to a famous adage ascribed to Gogol of there being two woes in Russia: fools and roads.) It revelled in revelry, and it took up an almost haughty position above the political fray. When, for example, in the run up to the 2003 Presidential elections, the paper’s sponsor, Boris Berezovsky, wanted to publish critical articles against Putin, editor-in-chief Andrei Vasilyev insisted on publishing the articles in the form of paid-for advertisements.

Vasilyev took on the role of a heavyweight go-between — protecting his journalists from the Kremlin on the one hand, and Berezovsky on the other. ‘The way Andrei was brought up, he just wouldn’t allow anybody to tell him what to do’, says Kirill Rogov, who was the paper’s deputy editor during its most radical spell in the mid 2000s. Vasilyev, however, did not last long under the Usmanov regime. ‘The two men just didn’t click’, says a Kommersant insider.

‘The guys in the Kremlin asked him to do them a favour,’

We can safely assume that Usmanov never intended to become a newspaper baron; unlike Rupert Murdoch, the newspaper business in Russia represents far more risk to Alisher Usmanov’s much more important business interests in natural resources than any political kudos to be gained from having a publishing business on the side. In a Russia where crossing the tsar can lead to the loss of one’s estates and banishment, owning a newspaper must seem like a gamble on Fortune’s wheel.

‘The guys in the Kremlin asked him to do them a favour,’ suggests Kovalsky. ‘And that was where the evil began — they asked, he agreed. You can always find a pile of shit at the beginning: what follows later are the consequences.’

Usmanov’s first meeting with the editorial staff was businesslike. ‘I remember his words very clearly’ says Kovalsky. ‘He said: ‘I’m not going to get involved in your editorial affairs, to insist that you remove something, change something or so on. As long as you promise not to touch on matters relating to my business or honour.’ An interesting position for a newspaper proprietor; how do you define honour? Kovalsky understands the finer points of the Russian honours system: ‘People define honour in different ways. For some, honour can mean loyalty to the ruling clan.’

‘Putin, f**k off’

In Kovalsky’s case, honour meant publishing a picture of a ballot paper with the words ‘Putin, f**k off’ written across it, straight after the December parliamentary elections. Kovalsky insists there was an editorial reason to publish the photo: the ballot was ruled inadmissible in contrary to electoral law. Of course, it was a provocation, and he would, or should, have realised the stakes involved. In conversation, he admitted to me that matters of family pride drove him on: the photograph had been taken by his son-in-law. ‘I couldn’t show I wasn’t man enough to publish it. He lives under my roof, and he should respect me.’ In a way, he put Usmanov in a similar position.

Kovalsky was also driven by some of the decisions being made by the then managing director Demian Kudryavtsev, in particular the decision to sign a memorandum of cooperation with the (state-run) Sochi Olympic Committee. ‘I was told to write about the Sochi Olympics objectively. You can’t understand how angry this made me - that the smelly, shitty Kremlin was telling me what principles Kommersant should have! The Kremlin - a teacher of ethics!! I’ve been living ethics my entire life ...  right from the day I stole Spinoza’s Ethics from the Pasternak library!’

Problems at Kommersant seem to have emerged around the time of the post-election protests in 2012. ‘Before the protests, we lived without a problem in the world’, a Kommersant veteran told me. ‘But then, the pressure began to grow, you could feel it. It was all around - you were told that they weren’t happy with Kommersant. There were lots of complaints: “this isn’t right, that isn’t right.” We had lots of new projects — we had the radio, we were starting a TV station — and naturally the only thing we wanted to talk about was the protests. Kudryavtsev at one point just stopped coping, and the majority shareholder [Usmanov] got cross with him.’

Since leaving Kommersant last year, and taking an active role in the opposition coordinating committee, Kudryavtsev has been unable to find another job. ‘In the course of ten months, he hasn’t received one serious job offer’ says another Kommersant editor. Has someone has decided he is unemployable? ‘What you’re seeing is quite simply a professional ban. Someone up there has taken the decision.’

I spoke to a number of rank-and-file Kommersant journalists about what things were like on the ground. Officially, they have been told not to speak to the media. But those that did speak agreed on the following: a) more articles are disappearing from the final edition without obvious explanation, b) the editor is seeing the owner more frequently than before, and c) there is an unwritten rule not to write about Usmanov and his friends (that includes Putin and Patriarch); and team spirit has been affected. There is less agreement on the cause: is it truly censorship, personality issues (e.g. general manager Dmitry Sergeyev’s inability to understand editorial etiquette), or editor Mikhail Mikhailin’s timidity and over-caution?

There is no doubt that personality issues and personal ambitions are an equally important driving force behind many of the departures at Kommersant. Some of those leaving their jobs were leaving behind poorly-implemented projects, others had simply worked there for too long, and have spoken frankly of their desire for something more rewarding elsewhere. It would seem naive to cry ‘repression’ in relation to those who left the paper — by most measures still a free publication — to join the state news agencies (ITAR-TASS or RIA Novosti). All the same, there are clearly problems at the paper, problems that are worrying the people who hold the publication close to their hearts. How far the malaise will continue is unclear, but it seems safe to assume that for as long as Kommersant has an owner so dependent on government whim for his bread and butter resources, everybody is going to be walking on eggshells.

Do we see in all this activity over the past year an effective muzzling of independent Russian journalists? Do we see them being called to heel and whipped into submission? Perhaps what is so terrible is not the shadow of the tsar darkening the keyboard, it is that the very thought of his displeasure is every bit as effective as a severed dog’s head and a broom.

Oliver Carroll, editor of openDemocracy Russia, was a founder editor of Russian Esquire. He will be speaking on Friday 26 April at the Perugia International Journalism Festival as part of the ‘Russian media and the protest movement’ round table discussion.

During recent months the talk has all been of how President Vladimir Putin has started to fight corruption in earnest, and there have been many unexpected revelations. What really interests everyone, however, is whether charges will be brought against the former Minister of Defence, Anatoly Serdyukov, until recently one of Putin’s most trusted and high-ranking cronies. Whatever actually happens, the volume of abuses discovered at the ministry he headed until recently beggars belief.

Has Putin actually realised, after many years in powers, that the question of corruption must be addressed?  Or is something else going on?  To find the answer to these questions, we should first have a look at Russian corruption.

Corruption runs the country

Corruption became an integral part of the system for governing Russia in the 90s. The reason for this was twofold: a weak state and no money.

The weakness of the state was evidenced in its inability to withstand pressure from the multiplicity of lobbying groups. The lobbyists in the 90s carved out tax breaks, government loans, excise-free import of goods, special conditions for privatisation and access to resources etc. The government was introducing unpopular reforms and terribly afraid of making more enemies, so it accepted any compromise which would enable it to remain in power.

The lack of money was a feature of the 90s. The government was not in a position to pay competent officials a decent salary to prevent them defecting to the private sector, where managerial salaries were increasing exponentially.  For this reason it was compelled to adopt the principle of ‘if you want officials to work for you, then you’ll have to allow them to steal.’

In the ten-year period between the economic crises of 1998 and 2008 the situation changed completely. Rapid economic growth strengthened the state and increased the range of what could be done with budgetary resources.

'The government couldn't pay competent officials a decent salary, so it adopted the principle that ‘if you want officials to work for you, then you’ll have to allow them to steal.’

Putin’s very high popularity rating meant that there was no longer any need to give the green light to the lobbying groups simply to hang on to power. The popular president appealed directly to the nation, which saw its standard of living improving and was prepared to support the person they saw as responsible for the dawning of changes for the better i.e. Putin personally. This meant that, as President of Russia he could, if he so wished, apply the brakes to any projects that were obviously corrupt.

The rapid growth of GDP led to a considerable increase in bureaucratic salary levels. The disparity between incomes in the business and the public sectors was still in evidence, of course, but was less critical than it had been previously. These were conditions in which the battle with corruption could have been taken up, but the Russian government chose not to do that. Putin’s position was so strong that there was no real need.

High oil prices meant there were sufficient funds for the needs of both society and the corrupt officials. Indeed, financial resources were so abundant that clashes of interests between various groups never resulted in serious conflict. Even those members of the elites who were not in favour of this system acknowledged that their personal prosperity was growing so fast that they had no appetite for a fight with the government, or for emigration.

Corruption prevented the system from functioning

After the 2008-09 crisis, however, the system started changing radically. The old GDP growth rates were not re-established and a full understanding that the prosperity of the 00s would not return came, as it seems to me, only 12 months ago, when Putin once more became president.  In this respect the comparison between GDP growth rates in 2007 (almost 8%) and the 1st quarter of 2013 (slightly more than 1%) is illuminating.

At about the time Putin re-ascended the presidential throne it became clear that the various lobby groups trying to feed off the budget were still living in the past and had not adjusted their growing appetites to post-crisis conditions.  Many young people decided to live off the income they could derive from bribes (if they were officials) or off the profit to be made from government protection (if they were in business). After university they found jobs offering a good income and today they are not prepared to curb their appetites to fit in with the deteriorating economic conditions.

In this situation clashes between groups of corrupt officials competing for resources inevitably intensify. What makes the state of affairs different from pre-crisis (1998-2008) is that there are not enough resources to go round, though by comparison with the mid 90 today’s government does have some ways of limiting the scale of corruption.

Putin supports the battle with corruption and the various groupings of corrupt officials attempt to deflect the blow from themselves on to other groups.  The more people involved in corruption are uncovered, the more resources there will be for other, undiscovered, groups and the greater will be their income.

In the immediate future the relatively weaker groups of corrupt officials will lose out to the stronger. The law enforcement system will start punishing the weaker, thus decreasing the number of contenders for slices of the government cake, but be unable to do anything with the stronger offenders who enjoy influential support from higher up.

This is the nub of the fight against corruption in today’s Russia. It’s not against corruption as such, but aimed at those officials who are on the take without having cleared it higher up.

In essence, what we are seeing is the elemental regulation of corruption.  Our own, Russian, invisible hand (as the master of economic science, Adam Smith, would have said) punishes the weak who are unable to compete in the corruption marketplace either because they have no strong support from higher up the pyramid of power or because they are simply unable to steal professionally. This second reason, incidentally, is very important, because the rapid growth in corrupt officials which we have seen under Putin reduces the average levels of both intellect and training and anyway, in the kind of ‘anything goes’ situation we have now, the elementary cautiousness button fails to operate.

Who can be considered corrupt?

In the struggle for survival, Putin naturally cannot permit completely free competition between corrupt officials. The disclosures that are about to start will reach as far as the very top of the political management structures. This is why the President will most likely demand that the most high-ranking officials are not under any circumstances obliged to face charges in court, though they can appear as witnesses (which is what happened with Serdyukov).

Within the space of a few weeks, ex-Defence minister Anatoly Serdyukov moved from being a trusted high-rank official to the centre of a corruption scandal. Photo: RIA Novosti/Sergey Guneyev

But deciding where to draw the line i.e. which hierarchical level is to be let off the hook for corruption in today’s Russia is no easy matter.  If only a small number of lower-ranking officials are handed over to the law enforcement agencies, then corruption will continue to flourish and the country’s resources will be plundered in such a short time that Putin will find it difficult to maintain a standard of living for ordinary Russians. This, in its turn, could result in a loss of voter support for Putin and his ‘United Russia’ party at the next election.

But if only Putin’s immediate entourage is going to be let off, then the bureaucracy could decide not to protect the interests of the current regime any longer. Officials have become accustomed to stealing, so too tough a crackdown on corruption could act as a signal for rebellion. Putin needs the loyalty of a great many officials to preserve his political regime and losing it could present him with a few painful surprises. The police, for instance, could refuse to suppress protest rallies; electoral officials could refuse to rig the voting in favour of the government; housing authorites could engineer large-scale ‘accidents’ just before the election.  And if voters were suddenly to find they had no heating in winter, they would almost certainly vote for the opposition.

It’s still not clear which bureacrats Putin will decide are untouchable, but it’s safe to assume that at federal level they will be of the rank of minister and above and in the regions, governors and above. If the law enforcement agencies discover that any of these people have been involved in corruption, then the worst that could happen is that he/she would be honourably moved to another post.

This approach might be convenient for Putin, but it’s hardly effective. In all probability it will be unable to halt the Putin regime’s slide down the popularity ratings in deteriorating economic conditions. As a result, Putin could decide to abandon the last traces of democracy in Russia and move his political system as close as possible to the late Soviet system under Brezhnev (1964-82) and Andropov (1982-84).

Here too, however, he will have problems because hitherto the whole system has been based on Putin’s personal charisma, which has guaranteed his indispensability. But if elections are totally rigged, as they were in the USSR, and order can only be maintained through force and repression, rather than the people’s respect for their president, then Putin will no longer be regarded as irreplaceable by the elite.  In this case the elite could well try to put forward other, more popular, leaders.

Konstantin Rubakhin, a poet and former state television analyst, always knew that his home village, deep in central Russia’s fertile Black Earth region, was sitting on top of massive nickel deposits. But like everyone else in the area, renowned for centuries as the country’s ‘bread basket,’ he believed the region’s agricultural significance and the presence of a nearby nature reserve meant the valuable deposits would go untapped. 

He was wrong.

Everything changed for the people of the Voronezh region in December 2011, when national leader Vladimir Putin signed a decree calling for a tender for the right to develop the deposits, believed to be the last major nickel reserves in Europe. That tender was won in May 2012 by the Ural Metal and Mining Company (UGMK), described this year by Russia’s respected Kommersant broadsheet as ‘one of Russia’s most secretive metals companies’. 

‘It was a massive shock,’ Rubakhin, 38, tells me when I meet him in a central Moscow cafe. ‘I’d been living away from the area for ten years, but I immediately returned to help fight against the project.’

Nickel extraction has blighted towns and cities across Russia, most notably north Siberia’s Norilsk, which has been transformed by nickel ore smelting into one of the most polluted places on Earth. In Norilsk, life expectancies are some ten years lower than Russia’s already unenviable average of just under 70 (64 for men). It is a fate the vast majority of people in the Voronezh region’s countryside do not wish to share. 

The Yelanskoye and Yelinskoye deposits were discovered in the east of the Voronezh region by Soviet geologists in the 1960s and are believed to jointly hold around 400,000 tons of nickel, on top of tens of thousands of tons of copper and cobalt. In 1977, the Kremlin abandoned plans to extract the metals, but placed them on the country’s list of strategic reserves. On today’s market, the deposits would be worth some $7 billion.

The week after meeting Rubakhin in Moscow, I take an overnight train to the Voronezh region, where he meets me on the platform before driving me to see the woman who has helped spearhead the anti-nickel campaign.

‘Nickel brings death. This is the heart of Russia, and these people are going to kill it’ Activist Nelly Rudchenko 

‘Nickel brings death,’ says Nelly Rudchenko, a jolly fifty-something housewife who sells headscarves for a living.  We are sitting in her one-story house in the village of Novokhopyorsk. ‘This is the heart of Russia, and these people are going to kill it,’ she says. 

Rudchenko is not alone among locals in being radicalised by the Nickel project. ‘Before, we would see all these people marching in Moscow against Putin, and we’d just be amazed. ‘Why would they do that?’ But now we know. Now we see that the authorities have no respect for the people,’ she tells me, as her husband brings us breakfast. Rubakhin, up all night planning the eco-activists’ next move, is snoring away loudly on a couch.

Opinion polls indicate some 98 percent of locals in the Voronezh region’s towns and villages are against the planned nickel extraction project and a series of well-attended protests have backed up the statistics. But regional officials aren’t listening — never mind the Kremlin. Not only have the authorities refused to hold a referendum on the project (against the advice of both Russia’s Public Chamber, which counsels the government, and the Kremlin’s own human rights council), but both Rubakhin and Rudchenko’s homes have been raided by officers from the Federal Security Agency (FSB) and the local anti-extremist centre. ‘My father told me this was actually the fourth time my house here has been raided since it was built – the other three times were by the KGB,’ Rubakhin told me. Shortly after my visit, Rudchenko was once again taken in again by police for questioning.

Voronezh residents fear their region will repeat the experience of SIberian industrial city Norilsk, which has been scourged by its metals industry and is listed among the top 10 most polluted cities in the world (Blacksmith Institute: 2007)

As mainly middle-class protests against Putin's long rule fade in Moscow in the face of disillusionment and a Kremlin clampdown, regional issues - environmental, economic and social – are slowly stirring dissent in Russia's heartland. Massive increases in payments for housing utilities, postponed ahead of last year's presidential elections, triggered demonstrations in central and north Russia this spring, signalling new dangers for the authorities. Much of this provincial discontent has been sparked by the newfound access to information, independent of tightly controlled state-run television channels, facilitated by the dramatic rise in Internet penetration across Russia.

‘Before, we would all have been isolated from one another, with no way of finding out if what they said on television was true,’ says Rudchenko. ‘Now almost every home in the village has a computer linked to the Internet. This makes it a lot easier to organise ourselves.’

From Rudchenko’s home, we drive deep into the countryside, towards the site of the planned mining project, already cordoned off and guarded round-the-clock by security guards employed by the UGMK mining company. We pass a nature reserve that is home to an extremely rare breed of water mammal called the Russian desman. Activists say the reserve will be threatened by the proposed mining project. 

‘The mentality of the local administration is just amazing,’ says Rubakhin. ‘I told an official any nickel mining in the region would kill the Russian desman off, and he said ‘Why do you want to worry about those animals, anyway? They are hardly any of them left.’’

The Russian Orthodox Church issued orders not to engage with the protestors; the region's Cossacks moved to fill the gap by erecting a cross to protect the land from the 'curse' of nickel. 

The Voronezh region’s Cossacks, the fierce horseman who guarded Tsarist-era Russia’s frontiers, have been among the most vocal opponents of the project and a group of them have been camped out in the area since the start of the year, keeping watch over the land. It was the Cossacks who helped erect a massive cross to ‘protect’ the local countryside from what one of them describes to me as the ‘curse’ of nickel, after what activists say was an order by the Orthodox Church barring local priests from becoming involved with the protests. The region is a deeply religious, conservative area, but the Orthodox Church’s ban sparked a crisis of faith for many locals. ‘Churches round here really started to empty after the priests were told to stay away from the protests,’ Rudchenko says. 

Around 100 anti-nickel activists – including elderly women, Cossacks in uniform, and activists from across the political spectrum – have gathered at the planned nickel mining site. As a light snow falls on the still frozen fields, Ataman Igor Zhitenyev, a regional Cossack leader, addresses them.

 ‘The Cossacks are in the vanguard of the struggle, as it has always been in Russia,’ Zhitenyev says. ‘They thought they could fool us, but you can’t fool the people.’

From the road opposite, a figure dressed all in black films the crowd for a good ten minutes, before driving off. ‘FSB,’ mutters someone behind me, as the protesters, many singing hymns or praying, make their way across the field to confront UGMK’s security guards.

‘What will you do when the mining starts and we come here to stop it?’ a middle-aged woman asks a security guard, as she throws dog hair and salt onto the cordoned-off land (’It’s a local curse! Witchcraft!’ she mutters to me, with a wink). ‘Will you shoot us?’ 

There is much talk of violence to come if the project goes ahead, and an emotional Zhitenyev claims it is only the presence of his Cossacks that has kept things from turning nasty so far. 

‘Those officials steal and build themselves mansions, and we always just thought, ah to hell with them. We just got on with our lives. But now they are even threatening our way of life. And our lives.’

Cossack leader Igor Zhitenyev 

‘I really don’t know what’s going to happen if they start mining here,’ he tells me. ‘Lots of people say, 'I’d give my life to stop the nickel. At least then I won’t have to feel ashamed in front of my kids’ after they destroy the land.’’

The Kremlin has supported a Cossack revival across Russia in recent months as part of its drive to reach out to the conservative heartland in the wake of last year’s unprecedented anti-Putin demonstrations. Zhitenyev, however, is largely scornful of both the regional and national authorities.

‘The authorities have sold out the people,’ he rages. ‘I was speaking to local administration officials recently and I said ‘The people are against the extraction of nickel.’ ‘What people?’ they laughed. ‘You lot aren’t the people.’’

‘But if we aren’t the people, then who is?’ he says to me, clearly baffled ‘We are a simple people, we don’t need much – those officials steal and build themselves mansions, and we always just thought, ah to hell with them. We just got on with our lives. But now they are even threatening our way of life. And our lives.’

The UGMK mining company sees things differently, stressing the jobs and money it says the project will bring the economically depressed region, where average monthly salaries stand at around 420 pounds ($640) a month. The company also insists any ecological fears are misplaced.

‘People’s concerns are linked to the fact that a group of so-called ecological activists has been running around frightening people,’ says Evgeny Bragin, UGMK’s deputy director general. ‘But these fears are ungrounded. First our company is only carrying out prospecting and evaluation work. The project will also be subject to expert evaluations, including an ecological one.’ Bragin insists the existence of the reserves still has to be proven and that any enrichment of nickel in the Voronezh region will cause no harm to the environment, including the local River Khoper. ‘It’s pretty large,’ he says.

UGMK’s arguments may have been resoundingly dismissed in the towns and villages around the potential nickel mines, but they have proven much more successful in the city of Voronezh, the region’s capital.

‘When I first heard about the nickel extraction project, I thought ‘well, that’s good, it will bring some money to the region,’’ admitted Roman Khabarov, an ex-police officer and local opposition activist. ‘That was before I looked into the consequences of the project, of course,’ he says. ‘But lots of people in the city have bought into UGMK’s arguments.’

Environmentalists believe that many of the approximately 2,500 jobs that UGMK says the project will create are likely to go to specialists from other regions and that the financial benefits will fade beside damage caused to the area’s agricultural sector. They also say UGMK has a less than perfect environmental record in other projects, pointing to alleged problems at its zinc processing factory in the North Caucasus region of Vladikavkaz.

‘If Moscow’s wealthy protesters are fighting for ‘abstract ideas, like freedom and a sense of worthiness,’ these newly-found dissenters are engaged in a battle for something much more tangible.’

Back in Novokhopyorsk, activists have gathered at a makeshift HQ in a local house to discuss further tactics. The fussy housewives, potbellied market traders and middle-aged Cossacks sitting around a table laden with sausage, vodka and fruit are a far cry from the Moscow hipsters at the heart of anti-Putin protests in the Russian capital, but there is no doubting their commitment to their cause. And if Moscow’s relatively wealthy protesters are fighting for what opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny called last autumn ‘abstract ideas, like freedom and a sense of worthiness,’ then these newly-found dissenters are engaged in a battle for something much more tangible. 

One thing, however, the Voronezh region anti-nickel movement has in common with the Moscow-based anti-Kremlin protesters is the presence of nationalist and far-right elements among its ranks. ‘There are people in our eco-movement who believe all that Kremlin propaganda, that the anti-Putin movement is funded by the US State Department, and so on,’ admits Rubakhin. 

The nickel development proposals have united locals of all persuasions — nationalist, liberal, communist - repeating many of the sensibilities of the 2011-2012 Moscow protests.

Anti-Semitic slogans are also common at anti-nickel rallies. ‘They were shouting ‘Kill the Jews and the Yids!’ at a recent protest,’ recalls Khabarov, shaking his head. ‘It’s a real dilemma for me to attend such protests. On one hand, I’m against any nickel mining, but on the other hand, do I really want anything to do with such people?’

But a smear campaign in both national and regional media has steered largely clear of demonizing the movement over the involvement of nationalists, choosing to focus instead of the figure of Rubakhin, an unpaid assistant to opposition MP Ilya Ponamaryov. Critics claim, variously, that Rubakhin is being financed by Norilsk Nickel, the company that lost the 2012 tender to UGMK, to discredit the project, or that he has been receiving money from Western-funded NGOs (‘foreign agents’ as such organizations have been ordered to label themselves under a new law).

‘Rubakhin has chosen a straightforward, but effective and dependable strategy – to brutally frighten the local population with [the prospect of] fatal and serious illnesses. It’s a method that has been applied in many countries, for example, North Korea, where millions of people bow down to a leader purely due to their fear of being conquered by ‘capitalists from the outside world,’’ read a recent article in the Voronezh Time online news portal.

Comparisons to North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty are probably the least of the anti-nickel movement’s worries. A number of environmental activists have been brutally beaten in recent years after standing up to Kremlin-backed projects, something Rubakhin is all too aware of. (’I’ve taken steps to defend myself,’ he tells me, flashing a traumatic pistol, a handgun that shoots rubber bullets at high velocities.)

While activists admit UGMK is unlikely to back down over the project — unless, of course,  nickel prices fall — many of them pin their hopes on Putin seizing the chance to make himself look good in the Voronezh region. ‘He could do with some popular decisions right now,’ says Rubakhin, pointing to the president’s slowly falling nationwide approval ratings. And there is precedent for a presidential about-turn. In 2006, Putin ordered changes to the planned route of an oil pipeline which would have passed close to Siberia’s Lake Baikal, the world's deepest body of fresh water, after local protests

But not everyone is optimistic that history is about to repeat itself. ‘What do you think?’ asks Oksana, a middle-aged housewife-turned-activist, as I set off to catch an early morning bus. ‘Do we have a chance of stopping the project?’

I tell her that if they can bring the issue to wider public attention, and get national – and even international – opinion on their side, then they have every chance of forcing a U-turn. After all, I assure her, Russia’s fragile democracy may be ‘managed,’ but the authorities are still relatively sensitive to public opinion.

Oksana doesn’t look convinced. ‘I’m not sure,’ she sighs, as she tidies up the dishes and bottles left over from another night of heated eco-debate. ‘Perhaps, if Putin was different. But he’s so stubborn. We all know he really hates to be seen to back down.’

The Presidential Administration is an unusual Russian government body in that the most important person is not the head of the organisation but his first deputy. Until 2011 this deputy was the now departed Vladislav Surkov; since 2011 Vyacheslav Volodin has been in charge.  Change of deputy, change of policy, or so it would seem. Under Surkov, say the experts, Putin would never have flown with the cranes, nor signed controversial laws like the Dima Yakovlev bill. 

The 'grey cardinal'

Vladislav Surkov only became first deputy to the head of the Presidential Administration in 2008; before that, from 1999, he was but a lowly Duma deputy.  In fact, his influence on government policy was immeasurably greater than merited by his official post. Surkov was regularly described as the regime's ‘grey cardinal’, or power behind the throne of Russian politics. However, he was never a grey cardinal to his own boss but to Putin – assistant to the king directly, rather than the cardinal. 

Surkov’s CV is reasonably typical for a Moscow politician, although he is not a Muscovite by birth. There has, incidentally, been some ideological wrangling over where exactly he was born. Surkov's opponents maintain that his father was Chechen and that he was born in the aul [village] of Dubai-Yurt; his supporters, or rather information team, that he was born in the Lipetsk region and any other assertions are false.

His birthplace may not be clear, but it was in Moscow that he made his career. In 1987 Surkov became head of the advertising department of the Research and Development Centre at the District Committee of the Komsomol, whose head was Mikhail Khodorkovsky. These bodies were set up during the first years of perestroika: their official purpose was to support youth initiatives, but they were actually a school for capitalist networks.

Vyacheslav Volodin (left) shares few of the crafty instincts of his predecessor Vladislav Surkov (right)  Photo (c) Ria Novosti / Vladimir Rodionov

In the 90s Surkov occupied various high-ranking posts in Khodorkovsky’s commercial organisations. Then he moved to TV and Russia’s Channel One; subsequently, in 1999, he became assistant to the head of the Presidential Administration. 

Surkov was one of the ideologues and organisers of the ‘United Russia’ party. The debate as to who proposed one of the most successful political projects in today’s Russia is still running, with some people considering that the part played by Boris Berezovsky was just as important.  But no one questions that it was Surkov who came up with the term ‘sovereign democracy.’

Surkov was also responsible for many other political projects and ideas. He thought up several spoiler parties to take votes away from the opposition – first and foremost  the‘Just Russia’ party.  He created the youth organisation Nashi, coordinated provocations against the opposition and is considered to have been behind the falling-out between various opposition politicians, including the attack on journalist Oleg Kashin.

When Dmitry Medvedev became president for a 4-year term, he inherited Surkov and promoted him to first deputy of the Administration. During this time, Surkov moderated his attitude towards the opposition, calling the December 2011 demonstrators ‘the best part of Russian society.’  Was it that Putin was outraged by this, or that Surkov failed to predict the unimpressive ‘United Russia’ result at the parliamentary election?  For whatever reason, Putin demoted Surkov from the Kremlin to join Medvedev in the White House. The fall from grace became complete today, with Surkov’s apparently forced resignation.

The Petersburger from Saratov

In Surkov’s place as grey cardinal came Vyacheslav Volodin. Like Surkov, Volodin was born in 1964. The two first deputies may have quite similar names – Vladislav and Vyacheslav – but they have very different CVs. In the 90s Surkov was a businessman, a bit of a chancer in the Moscow business world.  Volodin, on the other hand, is a classic politician from the regions.  He is also a businessman of sorts, but for him the political was always more important than the commercial.

Volodin was born in Saratov. As a young man he joined the Communist Party, though he soon managed to forget this ‘youthful indiscretion.’  In 1990, he was elected deputy to Saratov City Council and in 6 years he had become Deputy Governor of the Saratov Oblast.  From 1999 his career unfolded in Moscow, as a deputy to the State Duma. Initially he set up a coalition with Yury Luzhkov and regional leaders ‘Fatherland – All Russia’, and in 2001 he was even head of the faction.  But he very quickly realised that Vladimir Putin and his movement ‘Unity’ were the face of the future: a year after the election his ‘Fatherland – All Russia’ had joined forces with ‘Unity’. This was the birth of ‘United Russia’ and Volodin joined the party. 

More rapid upward movement meant that by 2005 he was Secretary to the Presidium of the party’s General Council. In 2007 he was appointed Deputy Chair of the State Duma and in 2010 he joined the government. From there he was appointed to his current post as first deputy to the head of the Presidential Administration.

In every job he has taken, Volodin has demonstrated energy and political intuition.  In the 90s he supported additional privileges for the regions, but he realised in good time that the alliance with Luzhkov and the heads of the national republics e.g. Tatarstan and Bashkiria was doomed. It wasn’t just him that went over to the rival party: he managed to take his whole party with him.

Friends and enemies call him the ‘Petersburger from Saratov’, in reference to the group of close and loyal confidants that Putin has promoted from his native St Petersburg.  Volodin’s image is indeed of a collected, disciplined, well-educated politician and bureaucrat, who stands out well from the politicians of Soviet times and the Moscow political village of today.  Many of his qualities mirror those of Vladimir Putin, which is why the President appointed him the helmsman of domestic politics. 

No compromises

Volodin seems to have realised that one of the reasons why Putin sidelined Surkov was because he had spoken sympathetically of the opposition leaders. Volodin had no patrons other than Putin, and is not intending to look for any. He grasped that Putin had no intention of striking any deals with the opposition – on the contrary, he wanted to conquer and crush it.

'Volodin had no patrons other than Putin ....  He grasped that Putin had no intention of striking any deals with the opposition – on the contrary, he wanted to conquer and crush it.'

Observers noticed that Volodin’s arrival at the Presidential Administration signalled a completely new attitude in the Kremlin to the leaders of the opposition.  Ex-Finance Minister Kudrin was at the rally on Sakharov Avenue and regarded by many as a kind of bridge between the government and the protest leaders. All such bridges have now been burnt. The Presidential Administration organised a multiplicity of rallies in favour of Putin’s candidature for the presidency and manufactured acts of provocation aimed at the opposition. It was Volodin who came up with the idea of contrasting the poor, loyal provinces with the ‘well-fed’ Moscow opposition. Surkov had become such an integral part of the Moscow elite that such a simple idea wouldn’t have occurred to him.

It would be untrue to assert that Volodin alone was responsible for Putin’s militant and aggressive style during the election campaign. But equally Surkov would never have advised his patron to compare his supporters with an army defending Moscow from an external enemy, which he did at an election rally. Volodin, who had approved Putin’s speech, found this comparison acceptable.

Volodin also had a part in Putin’s decision not to permit even the slightest protest on the day of his inauguration. As a result, the centre of Moscow was deserted on 7 May: half the metro stations were closed, with columns of vehicles full of soldiers standing outside them.  The police arrested members of the opposition, even if they were only sitting in a café, rather than protesting.

Surkov would never have recommended such a marked show of force.  But by that time he was not working in the Administration any more.

Volodin’s people

Volodin purged the Administration’s Internal Politics Section of Surkov’s people fairly quickly and rigorously, replacing them with his own people. The only one of Surkov’s men left was Radii Khabirov, who was in charge of Duma deputies and parties, but he had already started working with Volodin before Surkov’s departure. 

'There are no businessmen or cultural leaders among Volodin’s inner circle.  They have one thing in common: they are all party functionaries.' 

Deputies Andrey Isayev and Olga Batalina are two fairly typical members of the Volodin team.  Batalina comes from Saratov and has been a deputy for some time; Isayev has taken a complex ideological path from anarchist to rabid conservative.  It was they who drew up the toughest laws and presented them in the Duma: more severe punishments for involvement in protest rallies, more complicated working conditions for the NGOs, and censorship in the internet. When the so-called Dima Yakovlev bill was passed in December 2012, prohibiting US citizens from adopting Russian children, Batalina publicly criticised the Minister of Education, who had expressed doubts on the need for such a law.

There are no businessmen or cultural leaders among Volodin’s inner circle, as there were in Surkov’s day.  They have one thing in common: they are all party functionaries.  According to Russian criminal folklore, the traditional oath of the gangster’s moll is ‘I swear never to hold anything heavier than a glass in my hand.’ It could be said of Volodin’s people that over the last 10 years they have never held anything heavier than a ‘United Russia’ party ticket in their hands.

The tougher, the freer

Paradoxically, Volodin’s arrival at the Presidential Administration coincided with the appearance of some opposition figures on Russian TV screens, though on almost any show they were shouted down by loyal opponents. Volodin’s task was to show the opposition in the most unfavourable light possible, proving that enemies of the Kremlin have no ideas of their own. The government may be bad, but its opponents are far worse.

Duma deputies, especially those belonging to ‘United Russia’, are now subject to much tougher controls. During Surkov’s time they were given hints, quite insistent ones, about how they should vote. These relatively liberal times are now a thing of the past: ordinary members of the biggest faction are told straight out what to do and a vote ‘against’ or an abstention would be the end of their political career. Many Duma deputies did not, for instance, approve of the punishment meted out to their colleague Gennady Gudkov - he was expelled from the Duma – mainly from an instinct for self-preservation. But the deputies had it spelt out to them: it’s the Presidential Administration which decides who is to be a deputy and who not.

Under Volodin, however, the governors (heads of the regions) are having a slightly easier time. They are still required to guarantee political stability, but no longer have the ways they are to achieve this dictated to them. Under Surkov, the Administration was always sending political instructions to the regions; now all that’s required is the expected result.

A symbol of the new Putin

Keen observers of Russian domestic policy believe that Volodin is the embodiment of Putin’s new style — a clear and straightforward style that avoids cunning and multiple combinations. If, for example, it has to be drummed into public consciousness that NGOs are foreign agents, then this is done via legislation, rather than relying on propaganda.  Any reputational damage resulting from the adoption of these laws is not part of the calculation. 

Many commentators would no doubt consider that Surkov would not have permitted some things Putin has undertaken, which are not just a mistake but frankly comic. The flight with the cranes, for example: in the autumn of 2012, Putin, disguised as a Siberian white crane, flew on a hang-glider, acting as the leader for the flock, though the cranes didn’t actually get to the place where they winter.  In just the same way, Surkov would have put a swift end to the scandalous Dima Yakovlev bill which caused a brief split in the Russian elite.

It wasn’t in fact Volodin’s idea to let Putin loose with the cranes.  His ideas are so simple as to be quite primitive, aimed at achieving instant results.  As for longer-term outcomes, these interest neither Volodin nor Putin. With today’s events, the strategic plans so beloved of Surkov have resolutely disappeared into the past, and the Kremlin has become  little more than a regime of rapid reaction.