I am confident that President Putin will not violate the constitution and will relinquish office at the time it specifies. He will see his biography as president through to a worthy conclusion. It would not surprise me if attempts are made to get him to agree to a different scenario, and it is not difficult to imagine the approach: ‘Vladimir Vladimirovich, the Russian people beg you…’ I do not think the president will succumb to that temptation. At all events, I have no reason to suspect that he will.
Today everyone is still talking about the November reshuffle of the Cabinet and Presidential Administration, and trying to guess which of the new appointees may take the place of Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. I do not think that merits serious discussion. I do not see the president following his predecessor’s example of resigning prematurely and appointing a new prime minister as acting president, with an endorsement of that individual as the future head of state.
As we were to see, one of my predictions proved accurate: Putin did not stand for a third term as president. I was mistaken, however, in the second. The government did once more embark on an Operation Successor, if in a slightly modified form. It was not much of an improvement, though, and I saw and warned of the danger that Russia might step by step turn aside from the path of democracy.
There is a serious risk that the election campaign will be a sham. In my opinion, there have been no fair and free elections in Russia since those of 1989, 1990 and the election of 1991 when Boris Yeltsin became the first president of Russia. All the other campaigns were flawed. The candidates did not face a level playing field, the administrative resources of the state were improperly exploited, and the results were blatantly rigged. I make that claim not from hearsay: during the 1996 campaign I had direct experience of it myself.
Can we compel the authorities to hold elections in accordance with democratic standards? We can and must. Nobody else will do it for us. Civil society must defend its rights. That is something we have to learn. Elections must not be privatized by the party in government.
There is, however, another point that troubles me. The elections will be genuine only if there are several strong political contenders. I am sure they will appear, and indeed some already have, but I refrain from naming them. I am only too familiar with the ways of the so-called elite, who will immediately crush them.
The last two paragraphs of the article reflected the complexity of the situation, my hopes and my doubts:
Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has repeatedly declared his intention to steer the country towards a democracy from which ordinary people will feel the benefit. I do not believe he is being disingenuous. If, before the end of his presidential term, he genuinely moves Russia in that direction, the 2008 elections will be conducted in accordance with the practice of any civilized country, with actively engaged voters, a fair and equitable campaign, genuine political competition, and no rigging of the results.
If his words remain mere words and in reality authoritarian tendencies prevail, we will have an ‘election’ with no choice. We need to be aware of that danger and do everything possible to prevent it.
Democracy in distress
In terms of economic growth, 2006 and 2007 were reasonably successful, but the nature of the expansion was very questionable. It was achieved, by and large, by an influx into the economy of oil revenues and an increase, as a result, of imports. There were no worthwhile structural changes in the economy, which continued its addiction to oil. No transition to an economy of innovation occurred. There was no sign of administrative action to implement the goals the president set out in his annual messages to the Federal Assembly.
I did not want to believe the presidential addresses were mere ritual, just another piece of PR, to be forgotten as soon as the occasion was over. When I said that I shared the vision of the latest address and supported the objectives set out by the president, I hoped to encourage him to introduce serious measures to implement them. In an interview for Interfax in May 2006, I said:
I do not believe the president wants to just walk away, to make a declaration and leave it at that. He has an opportunity in the next year or year and a half before the end of his term to initiate a process for realizing everything he outlined in his address. To achieve that, however, very major efforts are going to be needed. The question is, who is going to make them?
I could see no current machinery of government, I commented, capable of making those ideas a reality.
I was disturbed also by signs that the influence of people clearly allergic to democratic governance was increasing in the Russian government. These people had been scared by the ‘colour revolutions’, especially the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. What alarmed them was not so much the collateral damage and excesses accompanying the turbulent events in neighbouring countries (although they were real enough) as the possibility of a change of government through the ballot box. There began to be talk about ‘managed democracy’; sundry artificial groups were funded at public expense, youth groups along the lines of Nashi [Our Team] and Molodaya Gvardiya [the Young Guards] and the Yedinaya Rossiya [United Russia] party. I myself had started out as a member of the Komsomol [Young Communist League] and was only too familiar with youth policy in the Soviet period. I could not help drawing comparisons. If United Russia struck me as a mediocre imitation of the CPSU, the new youth organizations looked no better, as a tool for manipulation and, on occasion, intimidation. There was ever less sign of democracy in ‘managed democracy’ and ever more evidence of management, control and constraint. The Russian government clearly did not trust the people and wanted the election results always to be predictable, and in its favour.
At the Foundation and in numerous conversations with friends and colleagues, politicians and journalists, I talked about what was happening. We were not talking about rumours of a tightening of the screws, or pseudo-concepts like ‘Cheka-ism’ [esprit de corps of the secret police], but entirely real changes that were being made to legislation. Where would they lead, I wondered. In effect the entire first half of 2006 was spent mulling over these disturbing developments, and the result was an article published on 19 July 2006 in Rossiyskaya Gazeta. In it, I was outspokenly critical and alarming, and many people were surprised that the official newspaper of the Russian government agreed to publish it. I believe this was evidence that many others shared my concern. In the minds of many people, ordinary citizens and others close to the authorities, doubts and questions were achieving critical mass. I reprint the article here:
In the run-up to the recent G8 summit in St Petersburg, discussions about democracy, which were already taking place in Russia, became particularly pointed. Much of what Western politicians and commentators had to say met with outright rejection in Russia, mainly because people felt that it was our country that was being discussed and our democracy, and that it was for us, rather than the vice-president of the United States, to decide what it should be like and how we should arrive at it. It is high time the West recognized that attempts to put pressure on Russia are invariably counterproductive.