Putin’s victory had been widely predicted both in Russia and throughout the world, especially after the humiliation of such democratic, liberal opposition parties as the country possessed in the parliamentary elections of December 7, 2003. Accordingly, the March 14 result surprised few. We had international observers in, but everything was low key. Voting day itself was a contemporary remake of the authoritarian, bureaucratic, Soviet-style pantomime of “the people expressing its will,” which many still remember only too well, myself included. In those days the procedure was that you went to the polling station and dropped your slip in the ballot box without caring whose names were on it because the result was a foregone conclusion.
How did people react this time? Did the Soviet parallel rouse anybody from inertia on March 14, 2004? No. Voters went obediently to the polling stations, dropped their papers into the ballot boxes, and shrugged: “What can we do about it?” Everyone is convinced that the Soviet Union has returned, and that it no longer matters what we think.
On March 14, I stood outside the polling station on my own Dolgoruky Street in Moscow. With the advent of Yeltsin, its name had been changed from Kalyaev Street. Kalyaev, a terrorist in czarist times, was later regarded as a revolutionary. It became Dolgoruky Street in honor of the prince who had his estate there in Kalyaev’s time, before the Bolsheviks came.
I talked to people going in to vote and coming quickly out again after participating in the charade. They were apathetic, indifferent to the process of electing Putin for a second term. “It’s what ‘they’ want us to do? Well, then. Big deal.” That was the majority sentiment. A minority joked, “Perhaps now they’ll name it Kalyaev Street again.”
The return of the Soviet system with the consolidation of Putin’s power is obvious.
It has to be said that this outcome has been made possible not only by our negligence, apathy, and weariness after too much revolutionary change. It has happened to choruses of encouragement from the West, primarily from Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian leader, who appears to have fallen in love with Putin. He is Putin’s main European champion, but Putin also enjoys the support of Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, and Jacques Chirac, and receives no discouragement from the junior Bush across the Atlantic.
So nothing stood in the way of our KGB man’s return to the Kremlin, neither the West nor any serious opposition within Russia. Throughout the so-called election campaign, from December 7, 2003, until March 14, 2004, Putin openly derided the electorate.
The main feature of his contempt was his refusal to debate anything with anyone. He declined to expand on a single point of his own policies in the last four years. His contempt extended not only to representatives of the opposition parties but to the very concept of an opposition. He made no promises about future policy and disdained campaigning of any kind. Instead, as under the Soviet regime, he was shown on television every day, receiving top-ranking officials in his Kremlin office and dispensing his highly competent advice on how to conduct whichever ministry or department they came from.
There was, of course, a certain amount of tittering among members of the public: he was behaving just like Stalin. Putin, too, was simultaneously “the friend of all children” and “the nation’s first pig farmer,” “the best miner,” the “comrade of all athletes,” and the “leading filmmaker.”
None of it went further than tittering, however. Any real emotion drained away into the sand. There was no serious protest over the rejection of debates.
Meeting no resistance, Putin naturally became bolder. It is a mistake to suppose he takes no notice of anything, never reacts and only, as we’re encouraged to believe, forges ahead in pursuit of power.
He pays a lot of attention and takes account of what he sees. He keeps a close eye on us, this nation he controls.
In this way he is behaving exactly like a member of Lenin’s Cheka, or secret police. The approach is entirely that of a KGB officer. First there is the trial balloon of information released through a narrow circle of individuals. In today’s Russia, that is the political elite of the capital. The aim is to probe likely reaction to policies. If there is none, or if it has the dynamism of a jellyfish, all is well. Putin can push his policy forward, spread his ideas or act as he sees fit without having to look over his shoulder.
A brief digression is in order here, less about Putin than about us, the Russian public. Putin has backers and helpers, people with a vested interest in his second ascent of the throne, people now concentrated in the president’s office. This is the institution that today rules the country, not the government that implements the president’s decisions, not the parliament that rubber-stamps whichever laws he wants passed. His people follow society’s responses very attentively. It is wrong to imagine they aren’t bothered. It is we who are responsible for Putin’s policies, we first and foremost, not Putin. The fact that our reactions to him and his cynical manipulation of Russia have been confined to gossiping in the kitchen has enabled him to do all the things he had done in the past four years. Society has shown limitless apathy, and this is what has given Putin the indulgence he requires. We have responded to his actions and speeches not just lethargically but fearfully. As the Chekists have become entrenched in power, we have let them see our fear, and thereby have only intensified their urge to treat us like cattle. The KGB respects only the strong. The weak it devours. We of all people ought to know that.
Let us now go back to late February 2004. At some moment the Kremlin techniques for sounding out opinion warned that the public was beginning to tire of Putin’s insolent refusal either to debate or to campaign and of the absence of any recognizable preelection campaign.
To reinvigorate the languishing electorate, the Kremlin announced that Putin had decided to take firm measures. These proved to be a Cabinet reshuffle three weeks before election day.
At first, everyone was taken aback by what appeared to be an act of lunacy. In accordance with the constitution, the entire Cabinet does, in any case, resign after an election. The newly elected president announces his choice of prime minister, who, in turn, proposes ministers for the president to confirm. What sense could it possibly make to appoint all the Cabinet members now, only to have to reappoint them after the inauguration? What was the point of a senseless activity that could only further paralyze the functioning of a government riddled with corruption, which already spent a good proportion of its working days taking care of personal, commercial interests?
However, although replacing the Cabinet a month before the constitution required was entirely daft, it did indeed serve to reinvigorate the election process. The political elite was stirred, the guessing game about whom Putin would appoint occupied the television channels, the political pundits were provided with news to pontificate about, and the press finally got something it could cover during the election campaign.
But this reinvigoration of politics lasted one week at best. Putin’s spin doctors daily intoned on television that the president had made the appointments because he wanted to be “absolutely honest with you”; he did not want to “enter the election with a pig in a poke” (by which evidently was meant following the constitutional procedure for replacing the Cabinet). He wanted to present his future course before March 14.
It has to be said, alas, that people believed him: probably just over half the electorate. The half that fell for and hailed this dishonest, absurd line of argument has an important distinguishing feature. They are people who love and trust Putin without reservation, irrationally, uncritically; fanatically. They believe in Putin. End of story.
In the week preceding the appointment of a new prime minister, the media images were all of the now-familiar love for Putin. Those with faith in the genuineness of his proclaimed reasons for changing the Cabinet ignored the obvious non sequiturs.