MG: Let me finish. I don’t agree with the political scientists, or with other academics who are making the same case. I think they are jumping the gun. I think they are in a panic. The only way to avoid policy mistakes and miscalculations, both nationally and internationally, is within a framework of democracy. The main argument is that nowhere (and we have only to look back in history), nowhere have totalitarian methods proved efficient.
As far as Russia is concerned, we are in a difficult situation, but we will be able to solve even the most difficult problems if we keep to the path of democracy. No doubt our national peculiarities, our mentality, culture, history, experience, religion, will make their mark on democratic processes, but that is the case everywhere. Everybody accepts that nowadays. I have just come back from a forum on Okinawa attended by representatives of countries that profess Christianity, Islam and Buddhism. They included politicians like Zbigniew Brzezinski, former prime ministers of Japan and Malaysia, and representatives of China and South Korea. They were well-qualified people, and everyone was in agreement that you cannot install a democratic regime in a country by sending in the tanks. Mankind’s strategic path to the future can be successful only on a basis of freedom and democracy.
DM: I don’t understand, Mikhail Sergeyevich. You seem to be saying democracy cannot be imposed, but that it is indispensable. Please explain.
MG: I’m just saying that where we are dealing with states in transition, we need to remember that it will take not ‘10 days’ or ‘500 days’, but decades, and perhaps the whole of the twenty-first century. That is key to understanding the context in which Vladimir Putin is operating.
I do not think that President Putin’s top priority today is suppressing public opinion and subordinating Russia, society and the state, to himself. In the first place, it would be unrealistic and, in the second, I believe it would be contrary to his views. As a warning that we need to prevent a slide into authoritarianism I consider that what the press is saying is justified, but to accuse President Putin of that sin is unfounded.
DM: But the bureaucratic apparatus of government and the way it functions does nevertheless depend on subjective aspects of what the leader does. There is no getting away from that. You tried to dismantle the authoritarian system of appointments to allow society itself to generate new ideas and learn new values. The present government has practically monopolized politics.
MG: But at that time society had been crushed. What did Putin inherit? A state of anarchy, chaos, and a risk that the state might disintegrate.
DM: So what does that mean, that we needed to reinvent a party of bureaucratic officialdom?
MG: No, it means only that I had one problem and he has a different one: to rescue and stabilize the situation and restore the right conditions for moving along the road of democratic changes.
DM: But do you not think that there is a systematic re-establishment of control over civil rights and liberties? If you open the constitution and then look out the window to see which rights are being observed and which not, we see an extraordinary picture: there is only one party, television has been monopolized and the press is under pressure.
MG: You are exaggerating on every count.
DM: How so?
MG: Because there are parties like Yabloko, the Union of Right Forces, Zhirinovsky’s party. And, of course, the Communist Party, the Social Democratic Party of Russia and so on.
DM: That is not what I was referring to. I mean that, as far as television access is concerned, with the exception of the debates, there is effectively only one party, United Russia. Everybody has noticed. People find it laughable.
MG: You are largely right about that. The introduction of new requirements of the press just before the election is a mistake. People do not want to be deprived of free access to information. They want to know as much as possible about all the candidates.
DM: I agree with you there.
MG: People do not want to be deprived of the freedom to choose, either, and when they are pressured and have a single party imposed on them, they begin to have doubts about bothering to vote.
People support the president because he presents new policies and tries to act in the national interest. The social situation is in fact improving, if only slowly. That is the main thing. As regards the president’s methods, people have a different attitude.
When I read that dialogue today, I detect a lot of anxiety and a lot of criticism, not only on the part of my younger, eternally restive companion, but on my part too. There were good reasons for that, but I considered the only correct strategy was support for the president, albeit not unconditional, albeit critical.
In December 2003, the State Duma elections were held. The candidates on United Russia’s party list gained 37.6 per cent of the vote, not all that much for a party presenting itself as the ‘party of Putin’. Naturally, the president’s popularity and beginnings of an improvement in people’s lives favoured the party in power. Half the deputies, however, were elected in contested constituencies, without party lists, and most of them were elected as independents. Immediately after the election they were dragooned en masse into United Russia. As a result, United Russia almost doubled their representation in parliament and obtained a constitutional majority. But, I asked, what about the will of voters? There was a lot of information to the effect that certain ‘fixes’ were systematically employed in elections to inflate the turnout figures and the number of votes, until eventually people lost patience and in 2011 took to the streets. I increasingly had a feeling that the government had committed itself to creating a subordinate, emasculated parliament.
In an interview on the eve of the presidential election, I said:
I believe the president has cause for concern, including the results of the parliamentary election. The United Russia party behaved shamelessly, like a usurper, abusing the goodwill of the president. We can have a rubber-stamping Duma, a malleable Duma, but that is likely to have dire consequences for democracy.
The crucial question, I continued, was what President Putin would do after he won the election on 14 March. ‘If he only wants to gain power for the sake of it and not in order to bring about a new phase of democratic reforms, that may have serious consequences for Russia.’ A lot would depend on what kind of team he chose:
Putin inherited a very mixed government. It is essential for him to create his own government, a team that shares his priorities and will implement his programme, which should aim to modernize the economy, reduce its dependence on oil and encourage small and medium businesses.
A second presidential term: what for?
The March 2004 election confirmed my prediction: Putin was re-elected in the first round. Reacting to the result, I said in an interview for Interfax:
On the basis of the preliminary voting data, many pundits are saying that everything should now continue as before and that everything will be peaceful and stable. I think they are wrong.
The high share of the vote obtained by Putin is a kind of advance payment that tells us people are still full of hope and eager for change, and that is why the president must now deliver what it would have been irresponsible to demand of him during his first term.