President Medvedev’s message clearly fell short of a reform of the Russian political system, and that was precisely what it was proclaimed to be by experts close to the government. Many of these were almost beside themselves with joy.
I could not join in this chorus of praise, not least because it was obvious that Vladimir Putin had his own views on the situation and his opinion would now be decisive.
After the long New Year holidays, the situation began to become clearer. My apprehensions proved justified. The detailed implementation of Medvedev’s proposals showed up their inadequacy, even weakness, and the positive elements in them were increasingly sidelined. Something very different came to the foreground, and that was the tone adopted in his speeches by Vladimir Putin and his attitude towards the impending presidential campaign. There was a whiff of the stale breath of the past. Russia’s prime minister refused to take part in debates with his rivals. Television programmes showed how busy he was, directing the situation in one area, then in another, ‘restoring order’. Except that nobody interviewed him rigorously, nobody asked awkward questions. On the TV screens, the other candidates appeared inconsequential and fussy. Viewers were surreptitiously being indoctrinated to wonder who these people thought they were, what had they to offer against this person who was resolving problems every day? Putin’s frontmen went to great lengths to emphasize the absence of alternatives and, what was even worse, to insinuate that any opposition to Putin was wicked, the act of enemies. At the final election campaign rally, when Putin did finally appear as a candidate, he spoke along those lines himself.
The slogan for the rally was ‘Defend Russia!’. In his speech, Putin compared the situation in Russia to that during the 1812 war against Napoleon. ‘The battle for Russia continues’, the prime minister announced. ‘Victory will be ours! How in this connection can we not recall Lermontov and his wondrous heroes who before the Battle for Moscow swore to be faithful to the fatherland and desired only to die for it.’ At this point he quoted from Lermontov’s ‘Borodino’: ‘We shall die before Moscow, as died our brothers! To die we swore, and our oath of fealty kept on the field of Borodino.’
I found the whole tone of the thing distasteful, and did not hide the fact:
Lately one of the candidates has been urging us to die for the fatherland. We need to live for the motherland, to fight for her democratic future. We need to safeguard our citizens’ right to further develop peaceful ways of expressing protest.
And we will have fair elections!
Unfortunately, the rally in support of Putin was the harbinger of a strategy of confrontation with the substantial section of society that was demanding change. The entire first year of Vladimir Putin’s third presidential term was overshadowed by that confrontation.
Putin’s positive proposals were outlined in a series of his articles published in various press outlets. Much in them was good, although there were also questionable provisions. What remained obscure was what resources would be available to realize the programme’s objectives, what public support the president expected to draw on. Judging by his actions, he had decided to rely primarily on the support of the passive, conservatively inclined ‘silent majority’, while increasingly alienating the critically thinking section of society.
Speaking on Echo of Moscow radio, I said I considered Vladimir Putin’s decision to run for a third presidential term to be a mistake. A regular changeover, a periodical renewal of the political establishment, was essential and Putin could set an example of the principle in action. ‘New people would appear who could move the process on. He would be leaving a legacy with much that was positive.’
Oh, dear, that put the cat among the pigeons! United Russia stalwarts, rancorous Internet trolls, professional political fixers, the whole motley crew took as one to berating Gorbachev, as if I had said something subversive, something ‘un-Russian’, something damaging to the state. The first months of 2012 persuaded me that the state authorities were incapable, scared of conducting an honest election campaign. I presented my conclusions in a talk I gave to students and lecturers at Moscow International University.
After the mass protests that began in December, the government did at last sense that its hope that everything would just blow over was not going to be realized. In spite of that, it has made only token efforts to mollify society, and wants to leave unchanged the things that matter most.
I considered it my civic duty to speak out, and in a number of articles and interviews said, loud and clear, that this was unacceptable.
What is needed is not cosmetic, but radical changes. We need to change the constitutional provisions governing the structure of state power relations so as to prevent any individual or group from gaining a monopoly of power.
We need to ensure independence of the judiciary from the executive branch and freedom of the media.
And finally, and very importantly, we need political parties that reflect the real interests of people and the intellectual and political trends in society, social democratic, liberal, conservative and others.
It is impossible to accomplish all these tasks overnight, but neither can we afford to waste time, because without a thoroughgoing reform and demonopolization of our political system, there will be no modernization. We shall be unable to put an end to corruption, the overdependence of the economy on natural resources, and social inequality.
The outcome of the presidential election and what happened in society in the weeks preceding it called for detailed analysis. I gave my first impressions in an interview for the Euronews television channeclass="underline"
I think this election has differed from the last elections in that it became evident during the campaign that society is emerging from a state of, I would say, torpor. The voters are beginning to participate in shaping the agenda. If the president really intends to implement the programme and obligations he accepted before being elected, if it is not a sham and we are to take the president seriously, we are going to need some very hard work on the part of the executive, the legislature, the citizens and the public as a whole… he is not going to be able to carry on acting in the old way, even if he wants to. Moreover, I think the question will very soon arise of the need to elect a new parliament, because we know all about how the present one got elected. If we are to have an active, effective parliament, then, frankly, this one needs to be replaced.
In the course of a few weeks, a protest movement sprang up. I was asked what would happen to it. How would this new force operate and how would the state authorities behave? These really were crucial questions. I gave my reply in an interview for Radio Liberty.
RL: They took to the streets, to Bolotnaya Square, to Sakharov Prospekt, then again to Bolotnaya… Now what?
MG: They carry right on. They come back out on the streets to reaffirm their demands, and when this whole election saga is over, to insist on implementation of all that was promised in the course of the election campaign. Let Putin explain himself. Let him be held to account. The pressure may be much greater than the government expects, and greater even than we expect.
RL: Will the movement that began on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Prospekt develop, or run out of steam after the election?