Commentary No. 38, Apr. 15, 2000
"Vladimir, Tsar of all the Russias?"
One year ago, Vladimir Putin was a name few people knew. Today, he is the President of Russia, having been elected by an overwhelming vote. And everyone seems to be discussing what this means: will he or will he not continue the so-called transition from Communism to a regime oriented to a free market, civil rights, and a representative, multiparty system? This is the wrong question.
The most obvious strength of Putin at the moment is that he is looking at the situation of Russia from a Russian point of view, unlike most of those who write about him. What has happened in Russia? The Communist regime, in existence for over 80 years, disintegrated totally in 1991. One reason was that it had lost popular legitimacy, and at the time only a minority of persons were actively unhappy about its collapse. Many more were genuinely hopeful that their situation and Russia's situation would improve as a result of the change.
What is the net balance after nine years of Yeltsin in power? I ask this question, without imputing either praise or blame for Yeltsin or even suggesting that he was primarily responsible for this net balance. Four things have changed radically in the past decade.
The first is that the U.S.S.R. no longer exists. That is, the fifteen constituent republics of the old Soviet Union are now independent states. The three Baltic states consider Russia a dangerous neighbor with whom they must deal, but in no sense a partner in anything. The other former Soviet republics have maintained somewhat more ambiguous relations with Russia, the details of which vary considerably. Up to a point, Russia continues to have considerable influence in Belorussia and the five states of Central Asia, and to a lesser degree in the Ukraine, Moldavia, and the three Caucasian republics. As for the former satellites in east/central Europe, they hold Russia at a distance, even formerly very loyal Bulgaria. They all believe rather that their future is linked to their putative ties to western Europe.
The second big change is the state of the armed forces. The Russian armed forces, once at least a match for those of the United States, seem to be limping very badly. While they may still be second in strength worldwide after the United States, it is now a distant second. Their morale is low, their technical capacity diminished, and their military hardware falling into disarray. Furthermore, they no longer have the solid infrastructure of a strong scientific establishment to enable them to keep up technologically with the United States, either on earth or in space.
The third big change is that of the economic institutions. Almost all of the state structures that undergirded the U.S.S.R. have been dismantled - sold off or rusting. They have been replaced by a mafia capitalism par excellence. The net result has been great economic uncertainty, the emergence of a very thin stratum of extremely wealthy persons who keep their money in Cyprus and own dachas on the Riviera. For most Russians, the consequence has either been extremely negative (especially for retired persons) or about the same. In the first years after 1991, most persons thought this was a temporary situation. Now, many are not so sure.
And the fourth big change is the strength of the state machinery. The Communist regime was extremely strong, far too strong according to many persons. Its word was law, at least most of the time. Its repressive machinery was very efficient and, even after the terror of the Stalinist era was ended, the power of the state remained unchecked. Today, we edging towards the other extreme. Non-Russian ethnic areas threaten secession. Chechnya is the most obvious and the most violent case. But even ethnically Russian areas are now organized into de facto autonomous "baronies," whose leaders do more or less what they want and not what the central government wants. The central government cannot collect serious taxes, which of course weakens it still more. And at the individual level, the fears individuals had of a repressive state have been replaced by the insecurities individuals necessarily have in a somewhat anarchic state.
Vladimir Putin is called upon to do something about all four changes: restore the international prestige and strength of Russia; reinvigorate the armed forces so that the world takes them very seriously again; establish an appropriate niche for Russia in the world-economy and improve the standard of living; and reestablish internal order and a reasonably strong central state. The list is formidable. What are his priorities?
These are questions not so different from those faced by Russian tsars in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Western commentators are hoping (against hope?) that Tsar Vladimir will be a new Peter the Great - Westernizing, modernizing, and relatively peaceful. Or perhaps they are hoping for Catherine the Great - enlightened despot, reorganizer of the bureaucracy, exporter of raw materials to Great Britain. I suspect that, if he is thinking in such analogies, Putin sees his problems more as those of Boris Goudonov or of Ivan the Terrible.
In 1992, in the U.S. Presidential elections that pitted the incumbent George Bush against Bill Clinton, Clinton's advisor, James Carville, is said to have launched the slogan "It's the economy, stupid." What he meant is that Bush was ignoring the fact that the U.S. economy was in bad shape, and that the economy was what the U.S. voters cared about most. As we know, and probably following this advice, Clinton won the election. In Russia, in 2000, the situation is very different. To Western commentators, one should say about Russia, "it's NOT the economy, stupid." The economy may be of primary concern to the Western world. But Putin, and probably the Russian people, do not think there is too much they can do about it in the next 10-20 years. They have more urgent problems.
The main concern of Tsar Vladimir is to hold the country together and make of the Kremlin once again the real center of political decisions. This will not be easy. Putin started off by conducting a vigorous, but so far not all that successful, military campaign in Chechnya. It is obvious that his electoral support derived largely from that. Shout as many people do about the violation of human rights by the Russians in Chechnya, the issue as most Russians see it is the survival of the Russian state. No doubt they are acting ruthlessly and without the least concern for human rights, and quite possibly their tactics may not achieve their objective, but there is no doubt about Putin's priority.
He will continue to move against Chechnya, although the tactics may possibly change. And more importantly, he will begin to move against the "baronies" in ethnically Russian areas. Here too one can predict his line will be a tough one, and one with an iron fist, if perhaps clothed in an occasional smile. But recreating a strong center is the single most important task for him. He may of course fail. More likely, he will succeed only partially. But try he will.
The second task, linked to the first, will be the restoration of the strength of the armed forces. The problem is that he needs money to do this, and it is not clear where he will get this money. He will probably do it by squeezing the Russian population, as did Stalin and the tsars. But the squeeze will not be unpopular if he gets the results. Patriotic pride has served many a ruthless ruler.
What he will not do too much about at first will be either foreign affairs or the economy. He knows well that, until he solves the first two problems, there is not too much he can do. So, if he is shrewd, and I think he is, he will try to hold these two arenas in neutral gear, neither moving forward nor backward, neither pleasing nor antagonizing the outsiders. Should he succeed in the first two tasks (a strong central state and a strong armed forces), then 10-20 years from now (he is still young), he can think again about foreign affairs and the economy. As for human rights, don't ask.
Immanuel Wallerstein
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen
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