Putin's Populist Sitcom
It's pretty hard to come by a good political satire in Russia these days, as demonstrated by that peculiarly vacuous New Year's Eve cartoon of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev dancing - the first comedic imitations of the Russian leadership allowed on Russian television since the censorship of Kukly. Instead we just have to wait around until the real political theatrics become so absurd, that the satire is inadvertently accomplished.
This week we were treated the pilot episode of a veritable populist sitcom, when Putin wanted to be seen as leaping into action on behalf of the unwashed masses to courageously assail and criticize the oligarchs of the energy sector. Like any good public humiliation of an under-performing public official, it was a made-for-media event, and the press ate it up.
"During the crisis we did everything we could to support you. The crisis is fading away so I ask you to fulfil your obligations," Putin declared during a meeting over the electricity sector, aiming his chest thumping toward billionaires Mikhail Prokhorov, Vladimir O. Potanin, Viktor Vekselberg and Leonid Lebedev. "We have helped you with credits, and guarantees and moral support. You can't have not noticed this. We were counting on a responsible position from the owners. But unfortunately far from all have shown responsibility and have preferred to search for excuses to avoid doing any real work."
If the typical references to "the example" made by the punitive, political, and arbitrary jailing of Mikhail Khodorkovsky were not clear enough, Putin took things a few steps further in specifically attacking Potanin, remarking, "he took giant assets for free in essence...But nothing has been done as far as his investment programme is concerned."
Leaving aside for just a moment the kind of barefaced state intervention these kinds of comments reflect and the damage it does to Russian business, there is an amusing level of fiction to the whole event.
For one, this public scolding of the oligarchs is a transparent attempt to shirk the state's responsibility over electricity generation policy, which was most recently highlighted by the tragic explosion at the Sayano-Shushenskaya hyrdro-electric plant which killed 75 people. Like the Kursk submarine tragedy, it was ultimately avoidable had better preparations and infrastructure decisions been made by the state-controlled owner. Furthermore, this tough-guy power play is a very appealing performance in the wake of last month's incredibly large protests in Kaliningrad, not to mention the crumbling of Gazprom as the company abandons long-term oil-priced contracts to sell gas on the spot market (which is nothing short of revolutionary).
Secondly, we already know how this sitcom ends. We saw Putin do the populist dog-and-pony show when he dragged the metals oligarch Oleg Deripaska out in front of the protesting people of Pikalyovo to give him a public scolding...only later did the state cut him an enormous bailout check and he's back in business, better than ever.
Lastly, what makes this latest encounter between Putin and the businessmen so fictional is that it reawakens one of the deepest and most enduring myths sustaining his grip on power: that when he jailed Khodorkovsky against all protections of the law, he did so to "assert his authority" over the oligarchs, or somehow "put them in their place" by making an example.
There could be nothing more absurdly false or misleading about this myth, as it obscures the HUGELY inconvenient fact that individuals within the Kremlin and parties related to the executive stole the largest and most successful Russian oil company from its shareholders in broad daylight. This was not a nationalization, nor did one ruble ever land in the public budget, but rather was an illegal forced seizure of property into private hands. How exactly does that account for "asserting authority" or "putting someone in their place" when in fact the YUKOS Affair brought about the greatest incorporation of oligarchs into the highest offices of government? How many state bailouts will we have to see to understand this? How many millionaire and billionaire bureaucrats will we have to count before we see that the state is a criminal enterprise?
So sit back, get some popcorn, and watch the ongoing populist sitcom that Russian politics is becoming, because you can rest assured that nothing serious will be happening to Putin's most cheerful loyalists - because obedience, political passivity, and a penchant for corruption are qualities that seem to be rewarded by this government.
By James Kimer, Guest Commentator to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Communications Center