Putin’s Brand is Still Crisis
Ever since the streets of Moscow filled up in waves of protests following the controversial December 4th Duma elections, the Kremlin has been rather quiet regarding its perception of the protests and its strategy for dealing with such public unrest in the new year.
That all changed on Monday, after Vladimir Putin published what amounted to "a treatise" of sorts on the protests and an affirmation of the future of his political party, United Russia, in the Russian daily Izvestia.
The 3,300-word article, "Russia Concentrates - Challenges We Must Answer," lays out Putin's political platform for his upcoming presidential bid. There isn't too much new in the document - mostly it rehashes old arguments about why Putin believes his authoritarian control is best for the public interest. But still, it's fascinating to read the diversity of opinions among peoples' reactions, who are quickly tiring of the weak arguments.
Even the title is recycled from a 19th century letter by Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Gorchakov, written shortly after Russia's defeat in the Crimean war. As one commentator wrote, "It reflects Putin's argument that Russia is now at a turning point; no longer on the brink of ruin, which he claims to have saved the country from when he took power, yet looking to develop a healthy political system and oppose the endemic problems of corruption and poverty."
It's hard to imagine Putin proposing the continuation of his leadership without pitching himself as a valiant hero, rescuing Russia from crisis.
"In 1999 when I became prime minister and then president our state was in a deep systemic crisis," Putin writes. "(But) it was precisely the group of like-minded people who the author of this article was destined to gather together and lead that pulled Russia away from the dead end of civil war, broke the spine of terrorism, restored the country's territorial integrity and constitutional order, and revived the economy. (...) In the modern world, stability is an achievement that has to be earned."
Addressing the protests directly, Putin warned that the demonstrators shouldn't dare to throw out one thing without anything to replace it: "There can't be real democracy without policies accepted by the majority of the population and that reflect the interests of this majority...The middle class are the people who can engage in policy. As a rule, their education level allows them to take a responsible approach toward the candidates and to ‘vote from the heart."
The consensus is that in mentioning Russia's disillusioned middle class, Putin was far from issuing a throwaway comment. The Moscow Times devoted a column to the topic, quoting Yabloko party chairman Sergei Mitrokhin as saying that Putin's article was "...an overture to the middle class...a very intelligent publicity stunt."
Said Mitrokhin, "His advisers told him that the old program of United Russia would not work because it is aimed at pensioners."
But Putin's article only mentions the grievances of the protestors in a passing. In a way, this underscores one of Putin's biggest challenges. As The Economist put it, "...by paying lip service to their demands he has only drawn attention to his central dilemma: crack down and risk bigger demonstrations, or ease up and undermine the carefully cultivated perception of authoritarian dominance."
In Russia, concessions to public opinion are often interpreted as displays of weakness. In the words of journalist and political observer Yulia Latynina, "...you actually do show weakness when you compromise, something the public perceives just like a shark senses the blood of a wounded fish."
And yet another irony of the appeal to the middle class was articulate by Yuri Korganyuk, an analyst at the Indem think tank. "Who is this article aimed at?" Korgonyuk asked, as reported by Russia Profile. "Certainly anyone who was out on the square would not likely be reading Izvestia"-which is considered a conservative publication-"and they wouldn't trust Putin at this point anyway."
Such an appeal to a deaf audience, by Korgonyuk's logic, points to an element of desperation within United Russia that has steadily increased ever since Putin was (or was not, depending on one's interpretation) booed at a mixed martial arts event in Moscow.
"There is this sense that they have to do something to stop the slide, but they want to avoid any situation where uncomfortable questions might be raised, like at the debates," argues Korgonyuk. This is not the first time that Putin has used Izvestia as a mouthpiece for a controversial proposal: in early October last year, he selected the publication to promote his grand proposal of creating a Eurasian Union, an idea which seemed to strive towards nostalgia for the Soviet Union.
Putin knows one thing for sure-the most recent polls have between 45 and 48 percent of Russians voting for him in the presidential election. While the number has been slowly rising since bottoming out in mid-December, polls still suggest that he lacks enough votes to win the election in the opening round, which would require a winnable, but uncomfortable run-off vote. However, even this much uncertainty is intolerable for many of Putin's backers.
Clearly there are elements among the leadership that grasp what is happening. "This is the new situation. It is here to stay," said First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov, as reported by Reuters. "We should not be afraid of the current situation. The country will be very alive in a political sense, unlikely it will be possible to suppress it. We need to treat this as the new political reality."
But given the tone of Putin's treatise on the "stability" of consensual authoritarianism, this evolution of the system into something more representative is not going to happen without resistance.
By James Kimer, Guest Commentator to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Center