A vast task of transformation lay ahead. The Kremlin elite was aware of its responsibilities to the nation and spoke often about them. Putin and Medvedev settled for a mixture of politics and economics which appeared to have worked elsewhere. Vigorous control over elections and policy-making was imposed. Big business was made to understand that its freedom to make money could and would be revoked if ever its leaders fell out of line with the government’s wishes. At the same time the Kremlin held back from censoring the Internet or closing down bookstores. Private dissent was tolerated so long as it stayed inside the apartments of the dissenters or was limited to a few eccentrics selling poorly produced pamphlets on street corners — this was more than what was allowed in China, Singapore or Indonesia.
The Russian economy after 1991 was immensely sensitive to shockwaves emitted by the global economy. When the global ‘credit crunch’ occurred in summer 2008 the Russian stock exchange had to suspend its operations several times before the end of the year. The decrease in oil and gas revenues in the same months aggravated problems. The budget had been written on the assumption that Russian energy products would continue to command high prices on foreign markets. There was a return to the difficulties of the 1990s with salary and pension arrears, job uncertainty and inflation. The Russian boom had failed to last a full decade. Closures of businesses became an epidemic. Even the mightiest Russian company, Gazprom, experienced an eighty per cent collapse in its share prices in the second half of the year. Many of the most successful entrepreneurs had accumulated their wealth by raising huge loans from foreign banks, and as the value of commodities fell on world markets they faced difficulty in servicing their debts. The solution for them was to sell off assets to the state. Once-mighty oligarchs felt the bruises of a deep recession and started to lose their grip on the country’s natural resources. The loans-for-shares débâcle of 1996 was repeated in reverse: this time it was the business elite going cap in hand to the government. The fragility of Russia’s decade-long economic upsurge was revealed.
Medvedev feared that the recession might lead to social unrest, and he warned political opponents against trying to exploit the situation. The security forces were held at the ready. Although they could maintain order on the streets there were worries amidst the political elites that this was not permanently guaranteeable. At the end of January 2009 a large protest demonstration was organized on the Pacific periphery of the Russian Federation, in Vladivostok, against the policies of the government. Security forces were put in readiness to deal with angry demonstrators in other cities. Placards were held high: ‘Down with capitalist slavery!’ and ‘Bring back the right to work!’ Communist party organizers were not the only militants. Putin’s rating in the opinion polls dipped for the first time since the Kursk disaster. Suddenly the political order appeared less than completely stable. The Kremlin leaders had always been nervous about popular opinion. This was one of the reasons why they took so much care to emasculate the electoral process. For years the containment of popular grievances had been effective. But when the material improvements made since the turn of the millennium were put under threat the patience of millions of Russians wore thin. The question arose: would the people continue to remain silent?
Afterword
Russia’s achievements since 1991 have not been unimpressive. Parliamentary and presidential elections have been held; they have been rough-and-ready processes but the fact that they took place at all has set precedents which it will be hard for Russian rulers to repudiate. Competition among political parties has continued. Social groups have continued to give voice to their aspirations and grievances. A market economy has been established. The heavy hand of the state military-industrial establishment has been weakened. Entrepreneurship has been fostered. The press has enjoyed much freedom. Police agencies invade the privacy of citizens to a lesser extent than at any time for decades, and Russian armed forces have rarely crossed the country’s international frontiers in anger. Economic recovery and development have got under way. Russia was a humbled vestige of its old self through to the end of the twentieth century. In the present millennium it is a great power again. Flattened Russia stands tall.
Gorbachëv did the groundwork and put up the scaffolding when reconstructing the USSR. Then Yeltsin built up the new Russian edifice. Russia ceased to be a serious threat to global peace. It is a great power possessing and brandishing nuclear weapons but is no longer a superpower which endangers the rest of the world. Eastern Europe, so long under the USSR’s heel, is not menaced by re-conquest. Even in the event of a return to power by the communist party it is hard to imagine that a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship would be re-created.
Not everything gave reason for cheer, and in some respects the situation was worse under Yeltsin and his successors than under Gorbachëv. In 1993 Yeltsin reintroduced violence to political struggle in Moscow; and in 1994 and 1999 he ordered the attacks on Chechnya. It is far from clear that Yeltsin and his group would have stood down if he had lost the election of 1996. Subsequent presidential elections have been conducted with gross unfairness. Enormous power is concentrated in the Russian presidency and it has not been exercised with restraint. Democratic and legal procedures have been treated with contempt by politicians in Moscow and the provinces. Public debates have been strident and unbecoming. Administration has been conducted on an arbitrary basis. The judiciary has lost much of its short-lived semi-autonomy. Criminality is rife. Ordinary citizens have little opportunity to defend themselves against the threats of the rich and powerful. Impoverishment remains widespread. Programmes of social and material welfare have been neglected and the economy has yet to surmount the effects of de-industrialization and environmental pollution.
There is also much apathy about current politics, and active membership of parties remains low. Russians agree more about what they dislike than about what they like. The price they are paying is that they have a diminishing impact on the government and other state agencies even at elections.
The burden of the past lies heavily upon Russia, but it is a burden which is not solely the product of the assumption of power by Lenin and his fellow revolutionaries. Under the tsars, the Russian Empire faced many problems; approval of the state’s purposes was largely absent from society. The gap in economic productivity was widening between Russia and other capitalist powers. Military security posed acute difficulties; administrative and educational co-ordination remained frail. Political parties in the State Duma had little impact on public life. Furthermore, the traditional propertied classes made little effort to engender a sense of civic community among the poorer members of society. And several non-Russian nations had a sharp sense of national resentment. The Russian Empire was a restless, unintegrated society.
Nicholas II, the last tsar, had put himself in double jeopardy. He had seriously annoyed the emergent elements of a civil society: the political parties, professional associations and trade unions. At the same time he stopped trying to suppress them entirely. The result was that there was constant challenge to the tsarist regime. The social and economic transformation before the First World War merely added to the problems. Those groups in society which had suffered from poverty were understandably hostile to the authorities. Other groups had enjoyed improvement in their material conditions; but several of these constituted a danger since they felt frustrated by the nature of the political order. It was in this situation that the Great War broke out and pulled down the remaining stays of the regime. The consequence was the February Revolution of 1917 in circumstances of economic collapse, administrative dislocation and military difficulty. Vent was given to a surge of local efforts at popular self-rule; and workers, peasants and military conscripts across the empire asserted their demands without impediment.