Putin vs. Putin
"Their policy is: blame the previous government. They seem not to realize that, after 11 years in power, they are the previous government."
This ironic quote posted by a Moscow correspondent on Twitter aptly summarizes the reaction of many Russia watchers to Vladimir Putin's most recent self-reflective writings on the failings of the Russian political system (in other words, his failings). The author of the quote, however, wasn't even talking about Russia. It comes from Venezuelan sociologist Roberto Briceno-Leon, who was in fact writing about Hugo Chavez.
The parallel with Venezuela, or any other country whose leadership has not changed in more than a decade, is interesting in that the leadership commonly chooses to express itself as a heroic opposition that rode into power to rescue the country from heading down a unimaginably terrible path. For Hugo Chavez, it is the banking crisis of former President Rafael Caldera and fantasies of imperialism, while for Putin, it is the well worn narrative of 1990s Yeltsinian boozy chaos and privatizations. But what happens when many of your voters can't even remember the bad old days, and instead, only see the current government as responsible for the country's problems?
This cognitive dissonance was most recently on display in Putin's article in Komsomolskaya Pravda (translated in an abridged version in the Independent).
In a terse, effective text, Putin manages to dissect everything that's wrong with Russia, including low social mobility and high income inequality, an economy too dependent on oil and gas, a demographic crisis in the making, a lack of affordable housing, and an education system that doesn't permit "social differentiation," among other issues.
"Political competition is the heartbeat of democracy," Putin writes. "Today, the quality of our state does not match civil society's readiness to participate in it."
As Fareed Zakaria wrote recently, "Putin seems to understand Russia's problems better than your average dictator. He doesn't seem to understand that he is the source of those problems in many people's eyes. In Putin's worldview, he is the savior of modern Russia, the man who stopped its descent into chaos and poverty in the 1990s."
The only thing Putin failed to mention was that his regime helped create, or at least solidify, several of the very problems he now aspires to fix.
Let's start with the issue of social mobility, which Putin clearly identifies as one of the main complaints of disgruntled voters. "Our citizens must have an opportunity to fulfil their potential, to grow professionally and socially," Putin writes. "Schools no longer give people a chance to move to a higher social group. Instead, they reproduce and perpetuate social differentiation."
However there's a strong argument that Putin's policies have actually exacerbated economic inequality and eliminated social mobility, thanks to soaring levels nepotism and corruption. It would be helpful if Putin could point to any political effort to increase employment opportunities for citizens who grow up outside the ruling elite, but that has never been a focus of his government.
And then there is his lament that Russian culture has deteriorated into tasteless, and that if elected president again, he would bring a sense of refinement back to Russia. "Programs on Russian TV have become too commercialized, or, as some put it bluntly, simply vulgar," he complains. This coming from a leader who at times has veered into Silvio Berlusconi territory of sleaze with the "strip-for-Putin" campaign and scatological humor.
But we had better get used to this confusing manner of sober diagnosis followed by continuation of all the same policies. We saw the exact same thing in Putin's article on the economy, which indicates that in this campaign, without the smooth veneer of someone like Vladislav Surkov writing the script, Putin is going to do his best to imitate Dmitry Medvedev's technique of "saying all the right things" about Russia's problems but never doing anything about them.
By James Kimer, Guest Commentator to the Khodorkovsky and Lebedev Center