COMMENTARY
by Gordon M. Hahn
Is Russia’s ruling tandem and its strategy of gradual reforms short on time? Is Russia inching towards another revolutionary moment? Could be. Revolutions typically begin as reforms and develop over long periods of time, in stages and waves. For example, Russia’s early 20th century revolution began in the 1860s and went through several stages before being hijacked by the Bolshevik coup in 1917. Even after that a four-year long civil war was needed to settle the issue. As in the late Soviet period that ended with Boris Yeltsin’s revolution from above, the first Russian revolution included several periods of limited reforms and two revolutionary crises: one in 1905 and another a full 12 years later.
In the late 1980s Mikhail Gorbachev began radical reforms of the decayed totalitarian Soviet system. Those reforms developed such that by 1991 they could have ended in revolution from below or a transition to democracy, but instead a peaceful revolution from below led by state bureaucrats took the lead in destroying what was left of the Soviet Party-state and constructing the new post-Soviet Russia.
Russian President Boris Yeltsin demobilized civil society and failed to institutionalize democracy. His successor Vladimir Putin sought to address the chaos by restoring elements of authoritarianism, emphasizing state development rather than civil society or democratic development. As we have covered in some detail, since the onset of Dmitrii Medvedev’s presidency, a new stage of reforms has begun, reflected by a gradual thaw or liberalization of domestic and foreign policy: a gradual, more cautious Perestroika 2.0. However, there are real limits to the thaw that risk another period of instability and regime transformation.
The reforms have so far barely touched or made any truly significant changes in the political system. Efforts to combat corruption, strengthen the courts, and democratize the MVD will take years. Prison and sentencing reforms are important, but they have limited domestic political repercussions. The same goes for the reduction in the number of siloviki in office. Other important changes with significant political implications are the enforcement of the law against ethnic Russian ultranationalist violence, a more liberal policy regarding demonstrations by the democratic opposition, and new emphasis on socioeconomic development and investment in the North Caucasus. But again, these cannot affect by themselves the fundamental workings of the political system. There are other reforms that have been implemented in the era of the tandem, but none of them as yet amount to cardinal changes in the political system, improvement in the political atmosphere, or functional state-society relations.
Real economic reforms are only on the drawing board, with a major revival of privatization planned. But it will take some time for the possible benefits of privatization to trickle down to the middle and lower classes, and therefore this may prove to be too little too late. On this background, public frustrations with the present system are high and perhaps growing.
A series of indicators make this evident. Russians appear to have the lowest happiness levels in all of Europe. In a poll of 13 European countries carried out by Germany’s Foundation for Future Studies, Russians indicated the least level of happiness, with only 37 percent saying they were happy. For comparison, Denmark had the most happiness with 96 percent of interviewees claiming they were happy, Greece was second with 80 percent, Germany was eleventh with 61 percent, and Poland was twelfth with 50 percent (“Russians the Unhappiest in Europe, Poll Says,” Moscow Times, 22 August 2011).
Large numbers of Russians are willing to emigrate to realize their personal and professional dreams. Less than half (48 percent) said they would definitely not emigrate, 7 percent definitely would, 15 percent probably would, and 25 percent probably would not. Thirty-one percent of those surveyed said, they were already applying to a foreign embassy to emigrate, had decided to apply, were thinking of applying, or sometimes think of applying (“Emigratsionnyie nastroeniya rossiyan,” Levada-tsentr, 21 June 2011). A May poll conducted by the Levada Center found that every third member of Russia’s middle class wants to emigrate. Twenty-two percent of those surveyed reported they want to leave Russia forever (Alex Chachkevitch, “Psychologists Are Happiest Workers,” Moscow Times, 13 July 2011).
Discontent with the Russian elite’s corruption, arbitrariness, and aloofness is growing. Only 12 percent of Russians believe that bureaucrats report all or most of their income and property on the declarations required under Medvedev’s laws for fighting corruption, while 43 percent believe a small part is reported and 34 percent “a miniscule portion” (“Rossiyane ne veryat deklaratsiyam chinovnikov,” Levada-tsentr, 3 May 2011). In March 2011 ‘only’ 42% of Russians regarded Russian politicians and bureaucrats as only concerned with their own economic and political self-aggrandizement. By July that figure had risen to 55%, according to the Levada Center (Tatiana Kosobokova, “Nesmotra na rybnuyu lovlyu i amfory, reiting tendema prodolzhaet snizhatsya,” RBC Daily, 22 August 2011).
The core of the leadership is becoming increasingly suspect as well. The tandem’s ratings are in a slow free-fall as well. In the same period, according to the Public Opinion Foundation (FOM), Medvedev’s trust rating fell from 59% to 46%, and Putin’s rating fell from 70% to 52% (Kosobokova, “Nesmotra na rybnuyu lovlyu i amfory, reiting tendema prodolzhaet snizhatsya”). Support for the leadership’s party, United Russia (YeR), is also falling. According to the Levada Center, in November 2007 the YeR was supported by 67 percent of Russians surveyed (“Politicheskie predpochteniya naseleniya,” Levada-tsentr, 23 November, 2007). By April 2009 its rating had fallen to 62 percent and in August 2011 it was 54 percent (“Reitingi partiy,” Levada-tsentr, 25 August 2011).
Meanwhile, a protest mood among Russians is growing. According to Russia’s FOM, in November 2009 only 27 percent of Russian were so dissatisfied that they were prepared to participate in opposition protests, but by August 2011 some 41 percent were (“Uroven protestnykh nastroeniy,” Fond Obshchestvennogo Mneniya, August 2011). According to a poll conducted by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences in spring 2011, 60 percent of Russia’s population experience a desire to shoot everyone. In sum, the poll registered “an increase in a sense of injustice about what is occurring, and shame about the current state of the country, and a sense of their own helplessness in relation to influencing what is happening. The rapid increase in the sense of aggression among Russians is also a natural consequence of this” (Irina Timofeyeva, “60% rossiyan ispytivayut zhelaniye vsekh perestrelyat’,” Novaya gazeta, No. 67, 24 June 2011).
The discontent could soon meet up with economic difficulties. High levels of social welfare spending and other investments are raising the price of oil Russia needs to balance its budget - $125/barrell on average annually - just as oil prices are expected to fall to an average of $100/barrel in 2012. All this is not good news with financial and economic crises stalking the globe and elections on the horizon. At the same time that the economic squeeze may be on, the regime will as usual be buying off large segments of the population – pensioners, labor, and students – in the run-up to the Duma and presidential elections, further complicating finances.
Moreover, given the declining poll numbers of Medvedev, Putin, and United Russia, the likelihood grows that in those elections the leadership will be forced to maximize the use of administrative resources and other methods of cheating in order to win. Any bold tilting of the electoral playing field risks provoking the growing segment of disatisfied citizens. Frustrations could peak after a series of fraudulent elections, as occurred in some of the colored revolutions so feared by the Russian leadership.
One such election already occurred recently in the effort to push St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko on a city district in a by-election in order to promote her to the post of Federation Council Chairwoman. The election was needed because Russian law requires that Russian senators already be elected officials from a legislative body at any level in order to be nominated as a senator by a regional legislature’s majority. Although Matvienko’s approval ratings in the city had fallen to 18 percent by July, she handily won election to the city legislature in two districts from which she did not hail, winning 97.92 percent of votes in the Krasnenskaya Rechka district and 95.61 in the Petrovsky district (“O deyatelnosti i karere V. Matvienko – piterskii opros,” Levada-tsentr, 15 August 2011, and Aleksandra Odynova, “Opposition Slams Election Landslide,” St. Petersburg Times, 24 August 2011).
In sum, the tandem may only have the next presidential term to set things straight, perhaps less. To avoid the kind of instability in many European countries or even the pre-revolutionary or revolutionary situations extant across the Muslim world, Russia must: (1) stridently enforce and accelerate de-regulation for small and medium-sized businesses, (2) lay out a detailed plan for full re-democratization and ensure clean elections as soon as possible; (3) sharply step up its fight against corruption; and take radical steps to greatly strengthen the rule of law, beginning with more high level indictments in the case of Sergei Magnitskii’s death in prison. Still, the question remains whether the regime can implement enough change to assuage this growing frustration?
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