Putinism
Encyclopedia
Putinism is the ideology, priorities, and policies of the system of government practiced by Russian politician Vladimir Putin
. The term is used in the Western press and by Russia analysts to criticize Putin, and often with a negative
connotation, to describe the political system
of Russia
under President (2000–2008) and, subsequently, Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin
, where much of political and financial powers are controlled by siloviki, i.e. people with state security background, coming from the total of 22 governmental security and intelligence agencies, such as the FSB, the Police and the Army. Many of these people share their career background with Putin, or are his personal friends. (See also Political groups during Vladimir Putin's presidency
)
The political system under Putin was primarily characterized by some elements of Economic liberalism
, a lack of transparency in governance, cronyism
and pervasive corruption
, which assumed in Putin's Russia "a systemic and institutionalized form", according to a report by Boris Nemtsov
as well as other sources. Between 1999 and autumn 2008 Russia's economy grew at a steady pace, which some experts attribute to the sharp rouble devaluation of 1998, Boris Yeltsin
-era structural reforms, rising oil price
and cheap credit from western banks. In Michael McFaul
's opinion (June 2004), Russia's "impressive" short-term economic growth
"came simultaneously with the destruction of free media, threats to civil society and an unmitigated corruption of justice."
During his two terms as president, Putin signed into law a series of liberal economic reforms, such as the flat income tax of 13 percent, a reduced profits tax, a new Land Code and a new edition (2006) of the Civil Code
. Within this period, poverty in Russia was cut by more than a half and real GDP has grown rapidly.
In foreign affairs
, the regime sought allegedly to emulate the former Soviet Union
's grandeur, belligerence and expansionism
. In November 2007, Simon Tisdall of The Guardian
pointed out that "just as Russia once exported Marxist
revolution, it may now be creating an international market for Putinism", as "more often than not, instinctively undemocratic, oligarchic and corrupt national elites find that an appearance of democracy, with parliamentary trappings and a pretence of pluralism, is much more attractive, and manageable, than the real thing."
The US
economist
Richard W. Rahn
(September 2007) called Putinism "a Russian
nationalistic
authoritarian form
of government that pretends to be a free market democracy", which "owes more of its lineage to fascism
than communism
;" noting that "Putinism depended on the Russian economy growing rapidly enough that most people had rising standards of living and, in exchange, were willing to put up with the existing soft repression", he predicted that "as Russia's economic fortunes changed, Putinism was likely to become more repressive."
Russian Doctor of history Andranik Migranyan saw the Putin regime as restoring what he believed were the natural functions of a government after period of the 1990s, when Russia was allegedly ruled by oligopolies expressing only their narrow interests. He said, "If democracy is the rule by a majority and the protection of the rights and opportunities of a minority, the current political regime can be described as democratic, at least formally. A multiparty political system exists in Russia, while several parties, most of them representing the opposition, have seats in the State Duma."
resigned. Under the Constitution of Russia, the then Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin became acting President.
The day before, a program article signed by Putin "Russia at the turn of the millennium" was published on the government web site. The potential head of the state expressed his views on the past and problems of the country. The first task in Putin's view was consolidation of Russia's society: "The fruitful and creative work, which our country needs so badly, is impossible
in a divided and internally atomised society". However, the author stressed that "There should be no forced civil accord in a democratic Russia. Social accord can only be voluntary."
The author stressed the importance of strengthening the state: "The key to Russia’s recovery and growth today lies in the state-political sphere. Russia needs strong state power and must have it." Detailing on his view Putin emphasized: "Strong state power in Russia is a democratic, law-based, workable federal state."
Regarding the economic problems, Putin pointed out the need to significantly improve the economy efficiency, the need of carrying out the coherent and result-based social policy aimed to battle the poverty and the need to provide the stable growth of people's well-being.
The article stated the importance of government support of science, education, culture, health care, since "A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilisation."
The article concluded with an alarmist statement that Russia was in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history: "For the first time in the past 200–300 years, it is facing the real threat of slipping down to the second, and possibly even third, rank of world states." To avoid that, there's a need of tremendous effort of all the intellectual, physical and moral forces of the nation. Because "Everything depends on us, and us alone, on our ability to recognise the scale of the threat, to unite and apply ourselves to lengthy and hard work."
As stated in the history course by Russian Doctors of History Barsenkov and Vdovin, the basic ideas of the article were represented in the election platform of Vladimir Putin and supported by the majority of country's citizens, leading to the victory of Vladimir Putin in the first round of the 2000 election
, with 52 per cent of the votes cast.
The outline of Russia's foreign policy was presented by Vladimir Putin in his Address to Russia's Federal Assembly in April 2002: "We are building constructive, normal relations with all the world’s nations — I want to emphasise, with all the world’s nations. However, I want to note something else: the norm in the international community, in the world today, is also harsh competition — for markets, for investment, for political and economic influence. And in this fight, Russia needs to be strong and competitive." "I want to stress that Russian foreign policy will in the future be organized in a strictly pragmatic way, based on our capabilities and national interests: military and strategic, economic and political. And also taking into account the interests of our partners, above all in the CIS
."
In his 2008 book, the Russian political commentator, the retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov
, noted that Putin's program article was barely noticed then and never revisited later - a fact that Leonov regretted, because "its content is most important for contrasting against his [Putin's] subsequent actions" and thus figuring out Putin's pattern, under which "words, more often than not, do not match his actions."
Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who carried out a sociological research in 2004, put the relative number of siloviki in the Russian political elite at 25%. In Putin's "inner circle" which constitutes about 20 people, amount of siloviks rises to 58%, and fades to 18-20% in Parliament and 34% in the Government. According to Kryshtanovskaya, there was no capture of power as Kremlin bureaucracy has called siloviks in order to "restore order". The process of siloviks coming into power has allegedly started since 1996, Boris Yeltsin
's second term. "Not personally Yeltsin, but the whole elite wished to stop the revolutionary process and consolidate the power." When silovik Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister in 1999, the process boosted. According to Olga, "Yes, Putin has brought siloviks with him. But that's not enough to understand the situation. Here's also an objective aspect: the whole political class wished them to come. They were called for service.... There was a need of a strong arm, capable from point of view of the elite to establish order in the country."
Kryshtanovskaya noted that there were also people who had worked in structures believed to be "affiliated" with the KGB
/FSB, such as the Soviet Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Governmental Communications Commission, Ministry of Foreign Trade
, Press Agency News and others; the work per se in such agencies would not necessarily involve contacts with security services, but would make it likely." Summing up the numbers of official and "affiliated" siloviki, she came up with an estimate of 77% of such in the power.
According to Russian Public Opinion Foundation 2005 investigation, 34% of respondents think "there is a lack of democracy in Russia because democratic rights and freedoms are not observed", and also point on the lack of law and order. In the same time, 21% of respondents are sure there's too much of democracy in Russia; many of them point on the same drawbacks as the previous group: "the lack of law and order, irresponsibility and non-accountability of politicians". According to the Foundation, "As we can see, Russians' negative opinions about democracy are based on their dissatisfaction with contemporary conditions, while some respondents think the democratic model is not suitable in principal." Considering the modern regime, "It is interesting that most respondents think Putin's government marks the most democratic epoch in Russian history (29%), while second place goes to Brezhnev's times (14%). Some people mentioned Gorbachev and Yeltsin in this context (11% and 9%, respectively)"
At the end of 2008, Lev Gudkov
, based on the Levada Center
polling data, pointed out the near-disappearance of public opinion
as a socio-political institution in Putin's Russia and its replacement with the still-efficacious state propaganda.
rate of 13%; the corporate rate of tax was also reduced from 35 percent to 24 percent; Small businesses also get better treatment. The old system with high tax rates has been replaced by a new system where companies can choose either a 6 percent tax on gross revenue or a 15 percent tax on profits.
In February 2009, Putin called for a single VAT
rate to be "as low as possible" (at the time it stood at an average rate of 18 percent): it could be reduced to between 12 percent and 13 percent. Overall tax burden was lower in Russia under Putin than in most European countries.
in the fields of health care, education
, housing and agriculture. In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin proposed increasing maternity benefits and prenatal care
for women. Putin was strident about the need to reform the judiciary considering the present federal judiciary "Sovietesque", wherein many of the judges hand down the same verdicts as they would under the old Soviet judiciary structure, and preferring instead a judiciary that interpreted and implemented the code to the current situation. In 2005, responsibility for federal prisons was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice.
The most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.
During Putin's government, poverty was cut more than half and real GDP has grown rapidly.
Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia
in 2007 article has emphasized the influence of American private investments for Russian democracy, as well as the amount of local support for them: "In a nutshell, the booming Russian economy is transforming that nation's outlook, standard of living and opportunities for its people in ways that were unimaginable only five years ago. More than 10 million Russian citizens have traveled abroad. Private enterprise is thriving. Russians are happier, healthier and more optimistic than ever in their lives. And, contrary to what you might hear, surveys show that the Russian people are as pro-American, if not more so, than the populations of many a European country, and most hope for closer relations with the United States." He also said: "I would argue that the American business community has played a not insignificant role in fostering these developments. By their willingness to invest in Russia's future, American companies have become effective ambassadors for the United States and its values, while creating new jobs and benefiting the economies of both our countries. And the Putin government has been supportive of these efforts in ways that some might find surprising. Russian officials go to considerable lengths to be cooperative and accommodate the needs of American business, while at the same time revising their regulations to align them more closely with international standards."
In 2006 chief of Business Weeks Moscow bureau Jason Bush commented on the condition of Russian middle class: "This group has grown from just 8 million in 2000 to 55 million today and now accounts for some 37% of the population, estimates Expert, a market research firm in Moscow. That's giving a lift to the mood in the country. The share of Russians who think life is 'not bad' has risen to 23% from just 7% in 1999, while those who find living conditions 'unacceptable' has dropped to 29% from 53%, according to a recent poll." However, "Not everyone has shared in the prosperity. Far from it. The average Russian earns $330 a month, just 10% of the U.S. average. Only a third of households own a car, and many—particularly the elderly—have been left behind."
At the end of Putin's second term Jonathan Steele
has commented on Putin's legacy: "What, then, is Putin's legacy? Stability and growth, for starters. After the chaos of the 90s, highlighted by Yeltsin's attack on the Russian parliament with tanks in 1993 and the collapse of almost every bank in 1998, Putin has delivered political calm and a 7% annual rate of growth. Inequalities have increased and many of the new rich are grotesquely crass and cruel, but not all the Kremlin's vast revenues from oil and gas have gone into private pockets or are being hoarded in the government's "stabilisation fund". Enough has gone into modernising schools and hospitals so that people notice a difference. Overall living standards are up. The second Chechen war, the major blight on Putin's record, is almost over."
" in the sense, that under him the Kremlin was interested in close ties with business organizations such as the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs
, Delovaya Rossiya, and the trade union federation (FNPR.) This was a part of the regime's attempts to involve broad sectors of society in the making and implementation of policy.
There is a school of thought, which says that a number of Putin's steps in the economy (notably the fate of Yukos
) were signs of a shift toward a system normally described as state capitalism
, where "the entirety of state-owned and controlled enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the cabal around Putin — a collection of former KGB colleagues, Saint Petersburg lawyers, and other political cronies."
According to Andrei Illarionov, advisor of Vladimir Putin
until 2005, Putin's regime was a new socio-political order, "distinct from any seen in our country before": members of the Corporation of Intelligence Service Collaborators had taken over the entire body of state power, followed an omerta
-like behavior code, and were "given instruments conferring power upon others – membership “perks”, such as the right to carry and use weapons". According to Illarionov, this "Corporation has seized key government agencies – the Tax Service, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Parliament
, and the government-controlled mass media – which are now used to advance the interests of [Corporation] members. Through those agencies, every significant resource in the country – security/intelligence, political, economic, informational and financial – is being monopolized in the hands of Corporation members"
Members of the Corporation formed an isolated caste
. According to an anonymous former KGB general cited by The Economist
, “A Chekist is a breed <…> A good KGB heritage—a father or grandfather, say, who worked for the service—is highly valued by today's silovik
i. Marriages between siloviki clans are also encouraged.
Jason Bush, chief of the Moscow bureau of the magazine Business Week has commented in December 2006 on troubling in his opinion growth of government's role: "The Kremlin has taken control of some two dozen Russian companies since 2004, including oil assets from Sibneft and Yukos, as well as banks, newspapers, and more. Despite his sporadic support for pro-market reforms, Putin has backed national champions such as energy concerns Gazprom and Rosneft. The private sector's share of output fell from 70% to 65% last year, while state-controlled companies now represent 38% of stock market capitalization, up from 22% a year ago."
The Financial Times on 20 September 2008, when the global financial crisis
had started to hit the well-being of Russia's top tycoons, said: "Putinism was built on the understanding that if tycoons played by Kremlin rules they would prosper."
Although Russia's state intervention in the economy had been usually criticized in the West, a study by Bank of Finland’s Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT) in 2008 showed that state intervention had had a positive impact to corporate governance
of many companies in Russia: the formal indications of the quality of corporate governance in Russia were higher in companies with state control or with a stake held by the government.
economists wrote that the 2000s had so far been an economic boon for Russia, with GDP rising about 7% a year; by the beginning of 2008, Russia had become one of the ten largest economies in the world.
In Putin's first term, many new economic reforms were implemented along the lines of the "Gref program." The multitude of reforms ranged from a flat income tax to bank reform, from land ownership to improvements in conditions for small businesses.
In 1998, over 60% of industrial turnover in Russia was based on barter and various monetary surrogates. The use of such alternatives to money now today fallen out of favour, which has boosted economic productivity significantly. Besides raising wages and consumption, Putin's government has received broad praise also for eliminating this problem.
In the opinion of the Finnish researchers, the most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.
The rise in the overall living standards further deepened Russia's social and geographical discrepancies. In July 2008, Edward Lucas
of The Economist wrote: "The colossal bribe-collecting opportunities created by Putinism have heightened the divide between big cities (particularly Moscow) and the rest of the country."
In November 2008, the retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov
, in assessing the overall results of Putin's economic policies for the period of 8 years, said: "Within this period, there has only been one positive thing, if you leave aside the trivia. And that thing is the price of oil and natural gas." In the closing paragraphs of his 2008 book, the retired general said: "Behind the gilded facade of Moscow and Saint Petersburg
, there lies a demolished country that, under the current characteristics of those in power, has no chance to restore itself as one of the developed states of the world."
On November 29, 2008, Gennady Zyuganov
, leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation (the largest opposition group within Russia with its 13% of seats in the national Parliament
) in his speech before the 13th Party Congress made these remarks about the state that Russia under Putin was in: "Objectively, Russia’s position remains complicated, not to say dismal. The population is dying out. Thanks to the “heroic efforts” of the Yeltsinites the country has lost 5 out of the 22 million square kilometers of its historical territory. Russia has lost half of its production capacity and has yet to reach the 1990 level of output. Our country is facing three mortal dangers: de-industrialization, de-population and mental debilitation. The ruling group has neither notable successes to boast of, nor a clear plan of action. All its activities are geared to a single goal: to stay in power at all costs. Until recently it has been able to keep in power due to the “windfall” high world prices for energy. Its social support rests on the notorious “vertical power structure” which is another way of saying intimidation and blackmail of the broad social strata and the handouts that power chips off the oil and gas pie and throws out to the population in crumbs, especially on the eve of elections.
To characterize the kind of state Putin had built in socio-economic terms, in early 2008, professor Marshall I. Goldman
coined the term "petrostate": Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia, where he inter alia argued that while Putin had followed the advice of economic advisers in implementing reforms such as a 13 percent flat tax and creating a stabilization fund to lessen inflationary pressure, his main personal contribution was the idea of creating "national champions" and the renationalization of major energy assets. In his June 2008 interview, Marshall Goldman said that, in his opinion, Putin had created a new class of oligarchs, whom some called "silogarchs", Russia having come in second in the Forbes magazine list of the world's billionaires after only the United States.
In December 2008, Anders Åslund
pointed out that Putin’s chief project had been "to develop huge, unmanageable state-owned mastodons, considered “national champions”", which had "stalemated large parts of the economy through their inertia and corruption while impeding diversification."
robbed the country and controlled its power institutions." In two years Putin has restored hierarchy of power, ending the omnipotence of regional elites as well as destroying political influence of "oligarchs and oligopolies in the federal center." The Family, Boris Yeltsin
-era non-institutional center of power, was ruined, which, according to Migranyan, in turn undercut the positions of the actors, such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky
, who had sought to privatize the Russian state "with all of its resources and institutions".
Migranyan said, Putin began establishing common rules of the game for all actors, and started with an attempt to restore the role of the government as the institution expressing combined interests of the citizens and "capable of controlling the state’s financial, administrative and media resources". According to Migranyan, "Naturally, in line with Russian traditions, any attempt to increase the state’s role causes an intense repulsion on the part of the liberal intellectuals, not to mention a segment of the business community that is not interested in the strengthening of state power until all of the most attractive state property has been seized." Migranyan claimed that oligopolies' view of democracy was set on a premise of whether they were close to the center of power, rather than "objective characteristics and estimates of the situation in the country". Migranyan said "free" media owned by e.g. Berezovsky and Gusinsky, were nothing similar to free media as understood by the West, but served their only economic and political interests, while "all other politicians and analysts were denied the right to go on the air."
Migranyan sees enhancement of the role of the law enforcement agencies as a trial to set barriers against criminals, "particularly those in big business".
Migranyan sees in 2004 fruition of the social revolution initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev
, whose aims were to rebuild the social system: "the absolute dominance of private ownership in Russia, recognized by all political forces today, has been the greatest achievement and result of this social revolution."
The major trouble of Russian democracy, according to Migranyan, is inability of civil society to rule the state, underdevelopment of public interests. He sees that as the consequence of Yeltsin's era Family-ruled state being unable to pursue "a favorable environment for mid-sized and small businesses". Migranyan sees modern Russia as democracy, at least formally. While "the state, having restored its effectiveness and control over its own resources, has become the largest corporation responsible for establishing the rules of the game", Migranyan wonders how much might this influence extend in future. In 2004 he saw two possibilities for the Putin regime: either transformation into a consolidated democracy, either bureaucratic authoritarianism. However, "if Russia is lagging behind the developed capitalist nations in regard to the consolidation of democracy, it is not the quality of democracy, but rather its amount and the balance between civil society and the state."
The Report by Andrew C. Kuchins
in November 2007 said: "Russia today is a hybrid regime that might best be termed “illiberal internationalism,” although neither word is fully accurate and requires considerable qualification. From being a weakly institutionalized, fragile, and in many ways distorted proto-democracy in the 1990s, Russia under Vladimir Putin has moved back in the direction of a highly centralized authoritarianism, which has characterized the state for most of its 1,000-year history. But it is an authoritarian state where the consent of the governed is essential. Given the experience of the 1990s and the Kremlin’s propaganda emphasizing this period as one of chaos, economic collapse, and international humiliation, the Russian people have no great enthusiasm for democracy and remain politically apathetic in light of the extraordinary economic recovery and improvement in lifestyles for so many over the last eight years. The emergent, highly centralized government, combined with a weak and submissive society, is the hallmark of traditional Russian paternalism."
In 2007 interview to Der Spiegel
, the most prominent Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn commented on the Putin regime: "Putin has inherited plundered and downthrodden country with demoralized and grown poor majority of the population. And he took on its possible — to be noted, gradual, slow — recovering. These efforts were not right at the moment noticed, not speaking about being appreciated. And can you point on examples in history when measures for recovering strength of governmental management would be benevolently meeted from beyond the country?"
According to 2007 article of Dimitri Simes, published in Foreign Affairs
, "With high energy prices, sound fiscal policies, and tamed oligarchs, the Putin regime no longer needs international loans or economic assistance and has no trouble attracting major foreign investment despite growing tension with Western governments. Within Russia, relative stability, prosperity, and a new sense of dignity have tempered popular disillusionment with growing state control and the heavy-handed manipulation of the political process."
Diplomatic correspondent for the BBC
Bridget Kendall
in her 2007 article, after describing the "scarred decade" of 1990s with "rampant hyperinflation", harsh Yeltsin's policies, population decrease rate like that for a nation in a war, the country turning "from superpower into beggar", wonders: "So who can blame Russians for welcoming the relative stability Putin has presided over during the past seven years, even if other aspects of his rule have cast an authoritarian shadow? In the back-to-front world of Russian politics, it is not too little democracy that many people fear, but too much of it. This, I discovered, is why some are calling for Putin to stay on for a third term. Not because they admire him — privately, many say that he and his cronies are just as corrupt and disdainful of others as their communist predecessors were — but because they mistrust the idea of democracy, resent the west for pushing it, and fear what might happen as a result of next year's elections. Recent experience has taught them that change is usually for the worse and best avoided."
and commentator Kara-Murza
define Putinism in Russia as "a one party system
, censorship
, a puppet parliament
, ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, and hypertrophied role of special services
and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business"
Russia's nascent middle class
showed few signs of political activism under the regime, as Masha Lipman reported: "As with the majority overall, those in the middle-income group have accepted the paternalism of Vladimir Putin's government and remained apolitical and apathetic."
In December 2007, the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman (VCIOM
) categorized the Putin regime as "the power of bureaucratic oligarchy
" which had "the traits of extreme right-wing dictatorship — the dominance of state-monopoly
capital in the economy, silovoki structures in governance, clericalism
and statism
in ideology".
In August 2008, The Economist wrote about the virtual demise of both Russian and Soviet intelligentsia
in post-Soviet Russia and noted: "Putinism was made strong by the absence of resistance from the part of society that was meant to provide intellectual opposition."
In early February 2009, Aleksander Auzan, an economist and board member at a research institute set up by Dmitry Medvedev
, said that in the Putin system, "there is not a relationship between the authorities and the people through Parliament or through nonprofit organizations or other structures. The relationship to the people is basically through television. And under the conditions of the crisis, that can no longer work."
About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov
pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma
in late January 2009, when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: "It is no coincidence that Medvedev has taken aim at the country's mayors. Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in 2005. Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia. Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country.
In April, 2005, in his formal address to Russia's Parliament
, President Putin famously said: "Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union
was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself."
In September 2003, Putin was quoted as saying, "The Soviet Union is a very complicated page in the history of our peoples. It was heroic and constructive, and it was also tragic. But it is a page that has been turned. It’s over, the boat has sailed. Now we need to think about the present and the future of our peoples."
In February 2004, Putin said: "It is my deep conviction that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy on a massive scale. I think the ordinary citizens of the former Soviet Union and the citizens in the post-Soviet space, the CIS countries, have gained nothing from it. On the contrary, people have been faced with a host of problems." He went on to say, "Incidentally, at that period, too, opinions varied, including among the leaders of the Union republics. For example, Nursultan Nazarbayev was categorically opposed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and he said so openly proposing various formulas for preserving the state within the common borders. But, I repeat, all that is in the past. Today we should look at the situation in which we live. One cannot keep looking back and fretting about it: we should look forward." In December 2007, he said in the interview to the Time
magazine: "Russia is an ancient country with historical, profound traditions and a very powerful moral foundation. And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people."
In August 2008, The Economist noted: "Russia today is ruled by the KGB elite, has a Soviet anthem, servile media, corrupt courts and a rubber-stamping parliament. A new history textbook proclaims that the Soviet Union, although not a democracy, was “an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society”."
In November, 2008, International Herald Tribune
stated:
"The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governance of the country. In seeking to restore Russia's standing, Putin and other officials have stoked a nationalism that glorifies Soviet triumphs while playing down or even whitewashing the system's horrors. As a result, throughout Russia, many archives detailing killings, persecution and other such acts committed by the Soviet authorities have become increasingly off-limits. The role of the security services seems especially delicate, perhaps because Putin is a former KGB agent who headed the agency's successor, the FSB, in the late 1990s."
in September 2004, Putin enhanced a Kremlin-sponsored program aimed at "improving Russia's image" abroad; according to an unnamed former Duma deputy, there existed a classified article in the RF federal budget that provided for financing measures to this purpose.
One of the major projects of the program was the creation in 2005 of Russia Today
- a rolling English-language
TV news channel providing 24 hour news coverage, modeled on CNN
. Towards its start-up budget, $30 million of public funds were allocated. A CBS News
story on the launch of Russia Today quoted Boris Kagarlitsky as saying it was "very much a continuation of the old Soviet propaganda
services". In 2007, Russia Today employed nearly 100 English-speaking special correspondents worldwide.
Russia's deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin
said in August 2008, in the context of the Russia-Georgia conflict
: "Western media is a well-organized machine, which is showing only those pictures that fit in well with their thoughts. We find it very difficult to squeeze our opinion into the pages of their newspapers." Similar views were expressed by some Western commentators.
William Dunbar, who was reporting then for Russia Today from Georgia
, said he had not been on air since he mentioned Russian bombing of targets inside Georgia on 9 August 2008, and had to resign over what he claimed was biased coverage by the outlet.
Variety
magazine quoted an unnamed "senior journalist" with Russia Today as saying: "My view is that Russia Today is not particularly biased at all. When you look at the Western media, there is a lot of genuflection towards the powers that be. Russian news coverage is largely pro-Russia, but that is to be expected."
The PR efforts notwithstanding, according to an opinion poll released in February 2009 by the BBC World Service, Russia's image around the world had taken a dramatic dive in 2008: forty-two percent of respondents said they had a "mainly negative" view of Russia, according to the poll, which surveyed more than 13,000 people in 21 countries in December and January.
In June 2007, Vedomosti
reported that the Kremlin had been intensifying its official lobbying
activities in the United States since 2003, among other things hiring such companies as Hannaford Enterprises and Ketchum
.
However, the negative image of Russia might be at least partly due to an alleged anti-Russian bias in the West's perceptions. According to Dr. Vlad Sobell, an example of the anti-Russian bias in the West was the fact that President Putin was widely assumed to be guilty of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, without any evidence being considered as necessary. The only proof the Western press needed for Putin's guilt was, that the victim said so himself on his deathbed. Sobell furthermore asks, why is Russia portrayed as a "“resurgent" and "aggressive" power, when it merely reacts defensively to encirclement by NATO? Why is Gazprom, and consequently the Kremlin, accused of "gas blackmail," when it merely withholds supplies due to the non-payment of debts? Why is Russia deemed to have no independent media, when in fact it has a very thriving free press? (Regarding this point, Sobbell adds he might argue that the limitations indirectly imposed by Putin are in some ways comparable to limitations in the Western countries.) Why is Russia’s spectacular economic recovery constantly ridiculed as being the result of little else but high hydrocarbon prices?
In April 2007 David Johnson
, founder of the Johnson's Russia List
, said in interview to the Moscow News
: "I am sympathetic to the view that these days Putin and Russia are perhaps getting too dark a portrayal in most Western media. Or at least that critical views need to be supplemented with other kinds of information and analysis. An openness to different views is still warranted."
, journalist of AntiWar.Com
in February 2009: "Illarionov seems to have slipped into an alternate timeline, a fantasy land in which Russia has reverted to the 1930s and a single party wields absolute power."
Justin Raimondo wrote as well:
wrote: "When a band of former Soviet dissidents declared in February that Putinism was nothing short of modernised Stalinism
, they were widely dismissed as hysterical prophets of doom. 'Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarised, the military budget is increasing,' they warned, before calling on the West to 're-examine its attitude towards the Kremlin leadership, to cease indulging it in its barbaric actions, its dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights.' In the light of Putin's actions during his first days in power, their warnings have gained an uneasy new resonance."
In February 2007, Arnold Beichman
, a conservative research fellow at the neo-conservative Hoover Institution
, wrote in the Washington Times that “Putinism in the 21st century has become as significant a watchword as Stalinism was in the 20th”.
Lionel Beehner, formerly a senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations
, also in 2007, maintained that on Putin’s watch, nostalgia
for Stalin had grown, even among young Russians; Russians’ neo-Stalinism
manifesting itself in several ways.
In February 2007, responding to a listener's assertion that "Putin had steered the country to Stalinism
" and "all entrepreneurs" were being jailed in Russia, the Russian opposition radio host Yevgeniya Albats said: "Come on, this is not true; there is no Stalinism, no concentration camps - thankfully <…>" She went on to say that if citizens of the country would not be critical of what was occurring around them, referring to the "orchestrated, or genuine," calls for the "tsar
to stay on", that "could blaze the trail for very ugly things and a very tough regime in our country".
In June 2001, the BBC
noted that a year after Putin took office, the Russian media had been reflecting on what some saw as a growing personality cult around him: Russia's TV-6 television had shown a vast choice of portraits of Putin on sale at a shopping mall in an underground passage near Moscow's Park of Culture.
Simultaneously, human rights groups voiced concerns about what they saw as a revival of the personality cult of Stalin, who became the subject of an exhibition that opened at a Moscow museum in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his death.
On 22 August 2007, The International Herald Tribune, in connection with the host of gossip and speculation that ensued after Putin stripped off his shirt for the cameras while on holiday with Prince Albert II
of Monaco
in the Altai Mountains, quoted Sergey Markov
, Kremlin-connected head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Research/ as saying: "He's cool. That's been the image throughout the presidency, cool."
In October 2007, the Russian weekly Obshchaya Gazeta reported that according to the polls there were an increasing number of people in Russia who either believed there existed Putin's personality cult, or saw the conditions for same; only 38% denied the existence of the personality cult in October, compared to 49% in April that year.
In October 2007, some scenes at the United Russia
congress caused Belarus
President
Alexander Lukashenko
, who was allied to Russia within the "Union State", to recall the Soviet times, complete with the official adoration towards the Communist Party leader; talking to Russia's regional press representatives he said that in Russia Putin's personality cult was being created.
About the same time, AFP
reported that ahead of the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, in which Putin, despite being required by the constitution to leave office, was widely expected to find some way to retain power, his personality cult was gathering pace.
After Medvedev was elected President in March 2008, Radio Liberty reported that during his eight-year presidency, Putin had managed to build a personality cult around himself similar to those created by Soviet leaders; although there had not been giant statues of Putin put up across the country (like those of Joseph Stalin
before), he had the honour of being the only Russian leader to have had a pop song written about him: "I want a man like Putin", which hit the charts in 2002.
In December 2008, the Russian magazine Vlast
published a catalogue of quotes of Russian politicians singing adulatory praises of Putin, such as Valentina Matviyenko
's "Your democracy knows no bounds."
In February 2009, former KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky
, CMG
, noted about Putin's periodic "three-hour 'impromptu press conferences' in the spirit and style of Fidel Castro
": "In Russia it is widely known that they are carefully rehearsed. Even implicitly critical questions are unacceptable in any circumstances."
According to some scholars, Russia under Putin had been transformed into the "FSB
state".
Shortly after becoming Russian prime minister, Putin was reported to have joked to a group of his KGB associates: "A group of FSB colleagues dispatched to work undercover in the government has successfully completed its first mission."
The Russian sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya believed in August 2004, that there had been no seizure of power on the part of the siloviki, but rather they had been called to "service" by Russia's political class, their rise to power having started in earnest in 1996, when Yeltsin was re-elected.
The former Securitate
Lieutenant General
and defector Ion Mihai Pacepa
said in his interview for conservative FrontPage Magazine in 2006 that "former KGB officers are running" Russia, and that FSB
, which he called "the KGB
successor" had the right to monitor the population electronically , control political process, search private property, cooperate with employees of the federal government, create front enterprises
, investigate cases, and run its own prisons.
Various 2006 estimates showed that Russia had above 200,000 members of FSB, or one FSB employee for every 700 citizens of Russia (the exact number of the overall FSB staff is classified
). The Russian Armed Forces General Staff
, as well as its subordinate structures, such as the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces
headquarters, are not submitted to the Federal Security Service, but the FSB might be interested in monitoring such structures, as they intrinsically involve state secrets and various degrees of admittance to them. The Law on Federal Security Service which defines its functions and establishes its structure does not involve such tasks as managing strategic branches of national industry, controlling political groups, or infiltrating the federal government.
The political scientist Julie Anderson in 2006 wrote: "Under Russian Federation President and former career foreign intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, an 'FSB State' composed of chekists
has been established and is consolidating its hold on the country. Its closest partners are organized criminals
. In a world marked by a globalized economy
and information infrastructure, and with transnational terrorism groups utilizing all available means to achieve their goals and further their interests, Russian intelligence
collaboration with these elements is potentially disastrous."
The Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky compared the takeover of the Russian State by the siloviki to an imaginary scenario of the Gestapo
coming to power in Germany
after World War II
. He pointed out a fundamental difference between the secret police
and ordinary political parties
, even totalitarian
ones, such as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
: Russia's secret police organizations are wont to employ the so called active measures
and extra-judicial killing
s. Hence, they killed Alexander Litvinenko
and directed Russian apartment bombings
and other terrorism acts in Russia to frighten the civilian population and achieve their political objectives, according to Felstinsky.
However, Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 2007 interview commented that "one should be surprised on how in few years which has passed since the times when the Church was totally submitted to the Communist state it has managed to gain sufficiently independent position".
Reuel Marc Gerecht
, a former Middle East
specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), in April 2006, presented a list of those who had 'mysteriously' died during Putin's presidency and wrote: "Vladimir Putin's Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe: a state defined and dominated by former and active-duty security and intelligence officers. Not even fascist
Italy
, Nazi Germany
, or the Soviet Union - all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia - were as top-heavy with intelligence talent. <…> There is no historical precedent for a society so dominated by former and active-duty internal-security and intelligence officials - men who rose up in a professional culture in which murder could be an acceptable, even obligatory, business practice. <…> Those who operated within the Soviet sphere were the most malevolent in their practices. These men mentored and shaped Putin and his closest friends and allies. It is therefore unsurprising that Putin's Russia has become an assassination
-happy state where detention, interrogation, and torture - all tried and true methods of the Soviet KGB - are used to silence the voices of untoward journalists and businessmen who annoy or threaten Putin's FSB state."
One of the leading members of Putin's ruling elite, Nikolai Patrushev, Director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (August 1999 - May 2008) and, subsequently, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia
, was known for his propagation of the idea of 'Chekists' as "neo-aristocrats" .
A Report by Andrew C. Kuchins
in November 2007 said: "The predominance of the intelligence services and mentality is a core feature of Putin’s Russia that marks a major and critical discontinuity from not only the 1990s but all of Soviet and Russian history. During the Soviet period, the Communist Party provided the glue holding the system together. During the 1990s, there was no central organizing institution or ideology. Now, with Putin, it is “former” KGB professionals who dominate the Russian ruling elite. This is a special kind of brotherhood, a mafia-like culture in which only a few can be trusted. The working culture is secretive and nontransparent."
In 2000, Russia's political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky called Putinism "the highest and culminating stage of bandit capitalism in Russia”. He said: "Russia is not corrupt. Corruption
is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people. They have privatized
the country’s wealth and taken control of its financial flows."
The Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya
, in concluding her book A Russian Diary (2007), said: "Our state authorities today are only interested in making money. That is literally all they are interested in".
Such views were shared by politologist Julie Anderson who said the same person can be a Russian intelligence officer, an organized criminal, and a businessman, who quoted the former CIA Director James Woolsey as saying: "I have been particularly concerned for some years, beginning during my tenure, with the interpenetration of Russian organized crime, Russian intelligence and law enforcement, and Russian business. I have often illustrated this point with the following hypothetical: If you should chance to strike up a conversation with an articulate, English-speaking Russian in, say, the restaurant of one of the luxury hotels along Lake Geneva, and he is wearing a $3,000 suit and a pair of Gucci loafers, and he tells you that he is an executive of a Russian trading company and wants to talk to you about a joint venture, then there are four possibilities. He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover. He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement."
According to the political scientist Dmitri Glinsky, "The idea of Russia, Inc. - or better, Russia, Ltd. - derives from the Russian brand of libertarian
anarchism
viewing the state as just another private armed gang claiming special rights on the basis of its unusual power"; "this is a state conceived as a stationary bandit imposing stability by eliminating the roving bandits of the previous era."
In April 2006, Putin himself expressed extreme irritation about the de facto privatization of the customs sphere, where smart officials and entrepreneurs "merged in ecstasy" (Moscow News, April 21).
According to the estimates published in "Putin and Gazprom" by Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, Putin and his friends pilfered assets of $80 billion from Gazprom during his second term as president.
On February 29, 2009, the Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev
claimed that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's strategy for economic recovery was based on cronyism and was fueling corruption; he also said: "We have two Putins. There are lots of words, but the system doesn't work."
were not merely a corporation of people united to expropriate financial assets; they had long-standing political objectives of transforming Moscow
to the Third Rome
and an ideology
of "containing" the United States. Columnist George Will
emphasized in 2003 the nationalistic nature
of Putinism: "Putinism is becoming a toxic brew of nationalism directed against neighboring nations, and populist envy, backed by assaults of state power, directed against private wealth. Putinism is a national socialism without the demonic element of its pioneer
". According to Illarionov, the ideology
of chekists
is Nashism
(“ours-ism”), the selective application of rights".
According to Dmitri Trenin (2004), Head of the Moscow Carnegie Center, the then Russia was one of the least ideological countries around the world: "Ideas hardly matter, whereas interests reign supreme. It is not surprising then that the worldview of Russian elites is focused on financial interests. Their practical deeds in fact declare In capital we trust." Trenin described Russia's elite involved in the process of policy-making as people who largely owned the country. Most of them were not public politicians, but the majority were bureaucratic capitalists. According to Trenin, "having survived in a ruthless domestic business and political environment, Russian leaders are well adjusted to rough competition and will take that mindset to the world stage." However, Trenin called Russian-Western relations, from Moscow’s perspective, "competitive, but not antagonistic". He said, "Russia does not crave world domination, and its leaders do not dream of restoring the Soviet Union. They plan to rebuild Russia as a great power with a global reach, organized as a supercorporation."
According to Trenin, Russians "no longer recognize U.S. or European moral authority", i.e. values gap. He said, "from the Russian perspective, there is no absolute freedom anywhere in the world, no perfect democracy, and no government that does not lie to its people. In essence, all are equal by virtue of sharing the same imperfections. Some are more powerful than others, however, and that is what really counts."
The Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky
believed (October 2007) that "Putin builds the world's Russia" as opposed to a nation state such as Alexander Lukashenko
's Belarus
. According to Pavlovsky, Russia's power had to be a model one, i.e. the power that would offer itself to others as a kind of a model to emulate (the USA being one such example).
Dmitry Medvedev
was elected President (head of the executive branch) with 73% of votes. He had been nominated as a candidate by four Russian political parties and made a promise to appoint Putin for the position of Prime Minister during the campaign.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while holding constitutionally less significant position, continues to be ranked as a somewhat more popular politician (83% of approval vote in January 2009) than President Dmitry Medvedev (75% of approval vote in January 2009).
According to opinion polls conducted by the Levada Center
, in January 2009, 11% of Russia's respondents believed it was Medvedev who had the real power in Russia, 32% believed it was Putin, 50% thought that both Medvedev and Putin had the real power, and 7% answered "did not know".
At the end of February 2009, the Levada Center released its polling data, which demonstrated that the number of people who thought that Medvedev was the number one had halved since February 2008 to 12% (23% in 2008); and Putin's approval rating had dropped to 48% from 62% for the same period. In February 2008, prior to the Presidential election, 23% people believed Medvedev had the real power in the country, 20% thought Putin had the real power, 41% thought Putin and Medvedev had equal shares of power, 16% did not answer.
being "Russia’s notional president".
Within the context of the ongoing Russia–Ukraine gas dispute in early January 2009, Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center said: "What we see right now is the dominant role of Putin. We see him as a real head of state (…) This is not surprising. We are still living in Putin's Russia."
On February 1, 2009, an analytical piece in The International Herald Tribune said: "Putin is still considered Russia's paramount leader
, but by taking the title of prime minister, he may have deprived himself of a fall-guy-in-waiting. That role traditionally has gone to Russia's prime ministers; Yeltsin repeatedly dismissed his during the 1998 default. So far, Putin has instead made a scapegoat of the United States, saying it was at the heart of Russia's crisis, rather than Moscow's over-reliance on the export of natural resources."
", or "Medvedev-Putin Tandemocracy".
Prior to the 2008 election, political scientists Gleb Pavlovsky
and Stanislav Belkovsky
discussed the future configuration of power. According to Mr. Pavlovsky, people would be very suited with the option of the union of Putin and Medvedev "alike two Consuls of Rome
". Belkovsky called Medvedev "President of a dream", referring to the early 1990s when people ostensibly dreamed of the time they "would live without the stranglehold of ubiquitous ideology, and a usual person would become the head of the state".
In August 2008 interview to Der Spiegel
former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder
expressed the view of Putin-Medvedev tandem: "There are enough internal problems in Russia that need to be solved. ... President (Dmitry) Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are addressing these problems — together, by the way, in friendship and mutual respect, not in competition with one another, as journalistic fortune-tellers often imply."
At the end of 2008, Nezavisimaya gazeta
in editorial "Tandem" expressed the view the country is led by the tandem. It's naive to guess who is a more important figure: because Medvedev and Putin are like-minded people. Both people are in tough position: Medvedev faced crisis and war, situation where it's hard to stay liberal; while Putin as head of Government is responsible for socially economical issues in the crisis, what is viewed to reduce his rating. Putin is yet the most experienced real politician in Russia with immense influence. None of the two people has to be afraid of future: Medvedev learns quickly, gathering a team around himself, with Constitution being immensely pro-Presidential; while nobody will push Putin from his position if he does not want to leave himself.
The newspaper pointed out this novelty in Russia's political life: the president is in no position to criticize the premier, the government, or ministers; the Duma, in turn, is in no position to criticize its leader's cabinet.
In mid-December 2008, Andrey Piontkovsky
believed that due to the farcical nature of Putinism, lack of any underpinning ideological project, its exceedingly narrow social base, the dismantling thereof may well occur without much pain; the first psychological step in this direction being the destruction of Putin's mythical image of Russia's "national leader". In late December, 2008, former Presidential aide Georgy Satarov said that, considering the crisis, the country was moving from the Putin era to a new phase - the collapse of the system.
In late December 2008, The Moscow Times
stated: "Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's reputation as a Teflon leader is showing scratches as some Russians start to see a growing disconnect between the realities of the financial crisis and Putin's public posture as the nation's savior. Posters openly insulting Putin were among those waved at a rally of thousands of motorists against a hike in import duties for used cars in Vladivostok
for the past two weekends. Earlier, only radical members from the banned National Bolshevik Party had dared to attack Putin in public." The newspaper also noted that Russia's political commentators who had earlier refrained from criticizing Putin were now openly attacking him in Russian print, radio and online media. The latter fact was interpreted by political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin as an indication of a ongoing cracking in the consensus of the elite.
On December 28, 2008, Catherine Belton of The Financial Times observed that the problems with Russia's economy, which had thitherto been largely fueled by the rising oil price, appeared to be denting the air of invincibility that Putin had taken on since 2000.
In mid-January 2009, Russia's liberal magazine The New Times
, citing unnamed Kremlin officials, maintained that there was a growing rift between Medvedev and Putin and that the former was seeking to distance himself from the latter.
On February 1, 2009, Clifford J. Levy
in The International Herald Tribune said: "Over the last eight years, as Vladimir Putin has amassed ever more power, Russians have often responded with a collective shrug, as if to say: Go ahead, control everything - as long as we can have our new cars and amply stocked supermarkets, our sturdy ruble and cheap vacations in the Turkish sun. But now the worldwide financial crisis is abruptly ending an oil-driven economic boom here, and the unspoken contract between Putin and his people is being thrown into doubt. In newspaper articles, among political analysts, even in corners of the Kremlin, questions can be heard. Will Russians admire Putin as much when oil is at $40 a barrel as they did when it was at $140 a barrel? And if Russia's economy seriously falters, will his system of hard, personal power prove to be a trap for him? Can it relieve public anger, and can he escape the blame?"
In early February 2009, Russian politician Vladimir Ryzhkov
, speaking of Russia's leadership's further anti-democracy steps, concluded: "Russia's near future is becoming increasingly unpredictable as the gap widens between reality and official rhetoric. As the federal budget deficit increases along with inflation, while the ruble falls to new levels against the dollar, the very existence of Putin's authoritarian power vertical is in danger of collapsing along with the economy."
About the same time Jim Rogers
, an international investor and co-founder, along with George Soros
, of the Quantum Fund, as a member of a panel of experts at the Russia Forum 2009, ventured this forecast: "I am not optimistic about the continuous stability of Russia. There's a good chance Russia will continue to disintegrate into more than one country."
On February 5, 2009, Russia
's liberal democratic
political movement (the movement comprises such opposition politicians as Garry Kasparov
, Boris Nemtsov
, Vladimir Milov
, Ilya Yashin
), citing the regime's "total helplessness and flagrant incompetence", maintained that "the dismantling of Putinism" and restoration of democracy in Russia were prerequisites for any successful anti-crisis measures and demanded that Putin's government resign.
Some analysts construed Medvedev's dismissal of Russia's four regional governors in February 2009, amidst the onset of recession, as well as some other of his steps, as signs of him "starting to stamp his authority on the presidential role". Izvestia
newspaper commented: "first, Medvedev makes it clear he is to be treated as a man of his word <…> Second, Medvedev demonstrates he is not going to 'freeze' the political elites and 'Putin's' regional staff may become more scarce in the future".
On February 18, 2009, Andrey Piontkovsky
said that the situation had drastically changed within the ruling elite: Putin's uselessness as a crisis manager and his exceeding attractiveness as a scapegoat had become evident to all the Kremlin clans, including his own one.
At the end of February, 2009, the Russian weekly Sobesednik ran an article presenting some experts' views (such as Georgy Satarov
, a former aide to Russia President Boris Yeltsin
in 1994-1997) that Putin may well resign in the autumn that year.
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
. The term is used in the Western press and by Russia analysts to criticize Putin, and often with a negative
Pejorative
Pejoratives , including name slurs, are words or grammatical forms that connote negativity and express contempt or distaste. A term can be regarded as pejorative in some social groups but not in others, e.g., hacker is a term used for computer criminals as well as quick and clever computer experts...
connotation, to describe the political system
Political system
A political system is a system of politics and government. It is usually compared to the legal system, economic system, cultural system, and other social systems...
of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
under President (2000–2008) and, subsequently, Prime-Minister Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
, where much of political and financial powers are controlled by siloviki, i.e. people with state security background, coming from the total of 22 governmental security and intelligence agencies, such as the FSB, the Police and the Army. Many of these people share their career background with Putin, or are his personal friends. (See also Political groups during Vladimir Putin's presidency
Political groups during Vladimir Putin's presidency
A diverse variety of informal political groups emerged during the presidency of Vladimir Putin. They include remnants of the so-called the Yeltsin Family, Sankt Petersburg lawyers and -economists, and security-intelligence elements called the siloviki.-Background:...
)
The political system under Putin was primarily characterized by some elements of Economic liberalism
Economic liberalism
Economic liberalism is the ideological belief in giving all people economic freedom, and as such granting people with more basis to control their own lives and make their own mistakes. It is an economic philosophy that supports and promotes individual liberty and choice in economic matters and...
, a lack of transparency in governance, cronyism
Cronyism
Cronyism is partiality to long-standing friends, especially by appointing them to positions of authority, regardless of their qualifications. Hence, cronyism is contrary in practice and principle to meritocracy....
and pervasive corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
, which assumed in Putin's Russia "a systemic and institutionalized form", according to a report by Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Efimovich Nemtsov is a Russian politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from 1997 to 1998. He was a co-founder of the Russian political party Union of Right Forces and is an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin.-Early life:...
as well as other sources. Between 1999 and autumn 2008 Russia's economy grew at a steady pace, which some experts attribute to the sharp rouble devaluation of 1998, Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
-era structural reforms, rising oil price
Price of petroleum
The price of petroleum as quoted in news generally refers to the spot price per barrel of either WTI/light crude as traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange for delivery at Cushing, Oklahoma, or of Brent as traded on the Intercontinental Exchange for delivery at Sullom Voe.The price...
and cheap credit from western banks. In Michael McFaul
Michael McFaul
Michael Anthony McFaul is a Stanford University professor and the nominee for United States Ambassador to Russia. Prior to his nomination to the ambassadorial position, McFaul worked for the U.S. National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director of Russian and...
's opinion (June 2004), Russia's "impressive" short-term economic growth
Economic growth
In economics, economic growth is defined as the increasing capacity of the economy to satisfy the wants of goods and services of the members of society. Economic growth is enabled by increases in productivity, which lowers the inputs for a given amount of output. Lowered costs increase demand...
"came simultaneously with the destruction of free media, threats to civil society and an unmitigated corruption of justice."
During his two terms as president, Putin signed into law a series of liberal economic reforms, such as the flat income tax of 13 percent, a reduced profits tax, a new Land Code and a new edition (2006) of the Civil Code
Civil code
A civil code is a systematic collection of laws designed to comprehensively deal with the core areas of private law. A jurisdiction that has a civil code generally also has a code of civil procedure...
. Within this period, poverty in Russia was cut by more than a half and real GDP has grown rapidly.
In foreign affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
, the regime sought allegedly to emulate the former Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's grandeur, belligerence and expansionism
Expansionism
In general, expansionism consists of expansionist policies of governments and states. While some have linked the term to promoting economic growth , more commonly expansionism refers to the doctrine of a state expanding its territorial base usually, though not necessarily, by means of military...
. In November 2007, Simon Tisdall of The Guardian
The Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
pointed out that "just as Russia once exported Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
revolution, it may now be creating an international market for Putinism", as "more often than not, instinctively undemocratic, oligarchic and corrupt national elites find that an appearance of democracy, with parliamentary trappings and a pretence of pluralism, is much more attractive, and manageable, than the real thing."
The US
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
economist
Economist
An economist is a professional in the social science discipline of economics. The individual may also study, develop, and apply theories and concepts from economics and write about economic policy...
Richard W. Rahn
Richard W. Rahn
Richard W. Rahn is an American economist who frequently writes for The Washington Times. He was the Vice President and Chief Economist of the United States Chamber of Commerce during the Reagan Administration and remains a staunch advocate of Supply-side economics, Small government, and Classical...
(September 2007) called Putinism "a Russian
Russian nationalism
Russian nationalism is a term referring to a Russian form of nationalism. Russian nationalism has a long history dating from the days of Muscovy to Russian Empire, and continued in some form in the Soviet Union. It is closely related to Pan-Slavism...
nationalistic
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
authoritarian form
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
of government that pretends to be a free market democracy", which "owes more of its lineage to fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
than communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
;" noting that "Putinism depended on the Russian economy growing rapidly enough that most people had rising standards of living and, in exchange, were willing to put up with the existing soft repression", he predicted that "as Russia's economic fortunes changed, Putinism was likely to become more repressive."
Russian Doctor of history Andranik Migranyan saw the Putin regime as restoring what he believed were the natural functions of a government after period of the 1990s, when Russia was allegedly ruled by oligopolies expressing only their narrow interests. He said, "If democracy is the rule by a majority and the protection of the rights and opportunities of a minority, the current political regime can be described as democratic, at least formally. A multiparty political system exists in Russia, while several parties, most of them representing the opposition, have seats in the State Duma."
Putin's campaign program
On December 31, 1999, President Boris YeltsinBoris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
resigned. Under the Constitution of Russia, the then Prime Minister of Russia Vladimir Putin became acting President.
The day before, a program article signed by Putin "Russia at the turn of the millennium" was published on the government web site. The potential head of the state expressed his views on the past and problems of the country. The first task in Putin's view was consolidation of Russia's society: "The fruitful and creative work, which our country needs so badly, is impossible
in a divided and internally atomised society". However, the author stressed that "There should be no forced civil accord in a democratic Russia. Social accord can only be voluntary."
The author stressed the importance of strengthening the state: "The key to Russia’s recovery and growth today lies in the state-political sphere. Russia needs strong state power and must have it." Detailing on his view Putin emphasized: "Strong state power in Russia is a democratic, law-based, workable federal state."
Regarding the economic problems, Putin pointed out the need to significantly improve the economy efficiency, the need of carrying out the coherent and result-based social policy aimed to battle the poverty and the need to provide the stable growth of people's well-being.
The article stated the importance of government support of science, education, culture, health care, since "A country in which the people are not healthy physically and psychologically, are poorly educated and illiterate, will never rise to the peaks of world civilisation."
The article concluded with an alarmist statement that Russia was in the midst of one of the most difficult periods in its history: "For the first time in the past 200–300 years, it is facing the real threat of slipping down to the second, and possibly even third, rank of world states." To avoid that, there's a need of tremendous effort of all the intellectual, physical and moral forces of the nation. Because "Everything depends on us, and us alone, on our ability to recognise the scale of the threat, to unite and apply ourselves to lengthy and hard work."
As stated in the history course by Russian Doctors of History Barsenkov and Vdovin, the basic ideas of the article were represented in the election platform of Vladimir Putin and supported by the majority of country's citizens, leading to the victory of Vladimir Putin in the first round of the 2000 election
Russian presidential election, 2000
Russian presidential elections were held on 26 March 2000. Incumbent Prime Minister, and acting President Vladimir Putin, who had succeeded Boris Yeltsin on his resignation December 31, 1999, was seeking a four-year term in his own right and won the elections in the first round. Polling stations...
, with 52 per cent of the votes cast.
The outline of Russia's foreign policy was presented by Vladimir Putin in his Address to Russia's Federal Assembly in April 2002: "We are building constructive, normal relations with all the world’s nations — I want to emphasise, with all the world’s nations. However, I want to note something else: the norm in the international community, in the world today, is also harsh competition — for markets, for investment, for political and economic influence. And in this fight, Russia needs to be strong and competitive." "I want to stress that Russian foreign policy will in the future be organized in a strictly pragmatic way, based on our capabilities and national interests: military and strategic, economic and political. And also taking into account the interests of our partners, above all in the CIS
Commonwealth of Independent States
The Commonwealth of Independent States is a regional organization whose participating countries are former Soviet Republics, formed during the breakup of the Soviet Union....
."
In his 2008 book, the Russian political commentator, the retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov
Nikolai Leonov
Nikolai Sergeyevich Leonov is a Russian nationalist politician and was a senior KGB officer and Latin America expert in the USSR. In 1953, at the age of 25, Leonov was posted to Mexico City, where he learned Spanish at the Autonomous University. In the course of the sea voyage, he met Raúl Castro,...
, noted that Putin's program article was barely noticed then and never revisited later - a fact that Leonov regretted, because "its content is most important for contrasting against his [Putin's] subsequent actions" and thus figuring out Putin's pattern, under which "words, more often than not, do not match his actions."
Definition
Putinism is the ideology, priorities, and policies of the Putin system of government. Sociologists, economists and political scientists emphasized different features of the system.Sociological data
According to Dr. Mark Smith (March 2003), some of the main features of Putin's regime were: development of a corporatist system by pursuing close ties with business organizations, social stability and co-optation of opposition parties. He determined three main groupings in Putin's early leadership: 1) the siloviki, 2) economic liberals and 3) supporters of "the Family", i.e. those who were close to Yeltsin.Olga Kryshtanovskaya, who carried out a sociological research in 2004, put the relative number of siloviki in the Russian political elite at 25%. In Putin's "inner circle" which constitutes about 20 people, amount of siloviks rises to 58%, and fades to 18-20% in Parliament and 34% in the Government. According to Kryshtanovskaya, there was no capture of power as Kremlin bureaucracy has called siloviks in order to "restore order". The process of siloviks coming into power has allegedly started since 1996, Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
's second term. "Not personally Yeltsin, but the whole elite wished to stop the revolutionary process and consolidate the power." When silovik Vladimir Putin was appointed Prime Minister in 1999, the process boosted. According to Olga, "Yes, Putin has brought siloviks with him. But that's not enough to understand the situation. Here's also an objective aspect: the whole political class wished them to come. They were called for service.... There was a need of a strong arm, capable from point of view of the elite to establish order in the country."
Kryshtanovskaya noted that there were also people who had worked in structures believed to be "affiliated" with the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
/FSB, such as the Soviet Union Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Governmental Communications Commission, Ministry of Foreign Trade
Foreign trade of the Soviet Union
Soviet foreign trade played only a minor role in the Soviet economy. In 1985, for example, exports and imports each accounted for only 4 percent of the Soviet gross national product. The Soviet Union maintained this low level because it could draw upon a large energy and raw material base, and...
, Press Agency News and others; the work per se in such agencies would not necessarily involve contacts with security services, but would make it likely." Summing up the numbers of official and "affiliated" siloviki, she came up with an estimate of 77% of such in the power.
According to Russian Public Opinion Foundation 2005 investigation, 34% of respondents think "there is a lack of democracy in Russia because democratic rights and freedoms are not observed", and also point on the lack of law and order. In the same time, 21% of respondents are sure there's too much of democracy in Russia; many of them point on the same drawbacks as the previous group: "the lack of law and order, irresponsibility and non-accountability of politicians". According to the Foundation, "As we can see, Russians' negative opinions about democracy are based on their dissatisfaction with contemporary conditions, while some respondents think the democratic model is not suitable in principal." Considering the modern regime, "It is interesting that most respondents think Putin's government marks the most democratic epoch in Russian history (29%), while second place goes to Brezhnev's times (14%). Some people mentioned Gorbachev and Yeltsin in this context (11% and 9%, respectively)"
At the end of 2008, Lev Gudkov
Lev Gudkov
Lev Dmitrievich Gudkov is a Russian sociologist, director of the analytical Levada Center and editor-in-chief of the journal The Russian Public Opinion Herald.-Scientific activity:...
, based on the Levada Center
Levada Center
Levada Center is a Russian independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organisation. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada . Levada Center traces back its history to 1987 when VCIOM was founded, originally headed by Academician...
polling data, pointed out the near-disappearance of public opinion
Public opinion
Public opinion is the aggregate of individual attitudes or beliefs held by the adult population. Public opinion can also be defined as the complex collection of opinions of many different people and the sum of all their views....
as a socio-political institution in Putin's Russia and its replacement with the still-efficacious state propaganda.
Liberal economic policies
July 9, 2000, in speaking to Parliament, Putin advocated liberal economy policies. In 2001 Putin introduced flat taxFlat tax
A flat tax is a tax system with a constant marginal tax rate. Typically the term flat tax is applied in the context of an individual or corporate income that will be taxed at one marginal rate...
rate of 13%; the corporate rate of tax was also reduced from 35 percent to 24 percent; Small businesses also get better treatment. The old system with high tax rates has been replaced by a new system where companies can choose either a 6 percent tax on gross revenue or a 15 percent tax on profits.
In February 2009, Putin called for a single VAT
Vat
Vat or VAT may refer to:* A type of container such as a barrel, storage tank, or tub, often constructed of welded sheet stainless steel, and used for holding, storing, and processing liquids such as milk, wine, and beer...
rate to be "as low as possible" (at the time it stood at an average rate of 18 percent): it could be reduced to between 12 percent and 13 percent. Overall tax burden was lower in Russia under Putin than in most European countries.
Rising living standards
In 2005, Putin launched National Priority ProjectsNational Priority Projects
The National Priority Projects of the Russian Federation is a program of the Russian government set out by Russian President Vladimir Putin in his speech on September 5, 2005. The program is aimed to develop social welfare in Russia by additional funding by the state of four selected projects...
in the fields of health care, education
Education in Russia
Education in Russia is provided predominantly by the state and is regulated by the federal Ministry of Education and Science. Regional authorities regulate education within their jurisdictions within the prevailing framework of federal laws. In 2004 state spending for education amounted to 3.6% of...
, housing and agriculture. In his May 2006 annual speech, Putin proposed increasing maternity benefits and prenatal care
Prenatal care
Prenatal care refers to the medical and nursing care recommended for women before and during pregnancy. The aim of good prenatal care is to detect any potential problems early, to prevent them if possible , and to direct the woman to appropriate specialists, hospitals, etc...
for women. Putin was strident about the need to reform the judiciary considering the present federal judiciary "Sovietesque", wherein many of the judges hand down the same verdicts as they would under the old Soviet judiciary structure, and preferring instead a judiciary that interpreted and implemented the code to the current situation. In 2005, responsibility for federal prisons was transferred from the Ministry of Internal Affairs to the Ministry of Justice.
The most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.
During Putin's government, poverty was cut more than half and real GDP has grown rapidly.
Andrew Somers, president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Russia
American Chamber of Commerce in Russia
American Chamber of Commerce in Russia is a non-government, non-for-profit, corporate-membership business association. Incorporated in the U.S., affiliated with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce , operates in Russia as a Representative Office accredited by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the...
in 2007 article has emphasized the influence of American private investments for Russian democracy, as well as the amount of local support for them: "In a nutshell, the booming Russian economy is transforming that nation's outlook, standard of living and opportunities for its people in ways that were unimaginable only five years ago. More than 10 million Russian citizens have traveled abroad. Private enterprise is thriving. Russians are happier, healthier and more optimistic than ever in their lives. And, contrary to what you might hear, surveys show that the Russian people are as pro-American, if not more so, than the populations of many a European country, and most hope for closer relations with the United States." He also said: "I would argue that the American business community has played a not insignificant role in fostering these developments. By their willingness to invest in Russia's future, American companies have become effective ambassadors for the United States and its values, while creating new jobs and benefiting the economies of both our countries. And the Putin government has been supportive of these efforts in ways that some might find surprising. Russian officials go to considerable lengths to be cooperative and accommodate the needs of American business, while at the same time revising their regulations to align them more closely with international standards."
In 2006 chief of Business Weeks Moscow bureau Jason Bush commented on the condition of Russian middle class: "This group has grown from just 8 million in 2000 to 55 million today and now accounts for some 37% of the population, estimates Expert, a market research firm in Moscow. That's giving a lift to the mood in the country. The share of Russians who think life is 'not bad' has risen to 23% from just 7% in 1999, while those who find living conditions 'unacceptable' has dropped to 29% from 53%, according to a recent poll." However, "Not everyone has shared in the prosperity. Far from it. The average Russian earns $330 a month, just 10% of the U.S. average. Only a third of households own a car, and many—particularly the elderly—have been left behind."
At the end of Putin's second term Jonathan Steele
Jonathan Steele
Jonathan Steele is a British journalist, author of several books on international affairs.Jonathan Steele was educated at King's College, Cambridge and Yale University . He has reported on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and other countries. He was Washington Bureau Chief, Moscow Bureau Chief, and...
has commented on Putin's legacy: "What, then, is Putin's legacy? Stability and growth, for starters. After the chaos of the 90s, highlighted by Yeltsin's attack on the Russian parliament with tanks in 1993 and the collapse of almost every bank in 1998, Putin has delivered political calm and a 7% annual rate of growth. Inequalities have increased and many of the new rich are grotesquely crass and cruel, but not all the Kremlin's vast revenues from oil and gas have gone into private pockets or are being hoarded in the government's "stabilisation fund". Enough has gone into modernising schools and hospitals so that people notice a difference. Overall living standards are up. The second Chechen war, the major blight on Putin's record, is almost over."
Corporatism and state intervention in economy
According to Dr Mark Smith (March 2003), Putin's regime had developed a "corporatist systemCorporatism
Corporatism, also known as corporativism, is a system of economic, political, or social organization that involves association of the people of society into corporate groups, such as agricultural, business, ethnic, labor, military, patronage, or scientific affiliations, on the basis of common...
" in the sense, that under him the Kremlin was interested in close ties with business organizations such as the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs
Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs
The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs is a lobby based in Moscow that promotes the interests of business in Russia. It has over 1,000 members, which include both private and state-owned companies, factories, and foreign and Russian plants....
, Delovaya Rossiya, and the trade union federation (FNPR.) This was a part of the regime's attempts to involve broad sectors of society in the making and implementation of policy.
There is a school of thought, which says that a number of Putin's steps in the economy (notably the fate of Yukos
YUKOS
OJSC "Yukos Oil Company" was a petroleum company in Russia which, until 2003, was controlled by Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and a number of other prominent Russian businessmen. After Yukos was bankrupted, Khodorkovsky was convicted and sent to prison.Yukos headquarters was located in...
) were signs of a shift toward a system normally described as state capitalism
State capitalism
The term State capitalism has various meanings, but is usually described as commercial economic activity undertaken by the state with management of the productive forces in a capitalist manner, even if the state is nominally socialist. State capitalism is usually characterized by the dominance or...
, where "the entirety of state-owned and controlled enterprises are run by and for the benefit of the cabal around Putin — a collection of former KGB colleagues, Saint Petersburg lawyers, and other political cronies."
According to Andrei Illarionov, advisor of Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
until 2005, Putin's regime was a new socio-political order, "distinct from any seen in our country before": members of the Corporation of Intelligence Service Collaborators had taken over the entire body of state power, followed an omerta
Omertà
Omertà is a popular attitude and code of honour and a common definition is the "code of silence". It is common in areas of southern Italy, such as Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and Campania, where criminal organizations defined as Mafia such as the Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and...
-like behavior code, and were "given instruments conferring power upon others – membership “perks”, such as the right to carry and use weapons". According to Illarionov, this "Corporation has seized key government agencies – the Tax Service, Ministry of Defense, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Parliament
Duma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
, and the government-controlled mass media – which are now used to advance the interests of [Corporation] members. Through those agencies, every significant resource in the country – security/intelligence, political, economic, informational and financial – is being monopolized in the hands of Corporation members"
Members of the Corporation formed an isolated caste
Caste
Caste is an elaborate and complex social system that combines elements of endogamy, occupation, culture, social class, tribal affiliation and political power. It should not be confused with race or social class, e.g. members of different castes in one society may belong to the same race, as in India...
. According to an anonymous former KGB general cited by The Economist
The Economist
The Economist is an English-language weekly news and international affairs publication owned by The Economist Newspaper Ltd. and edited in offices in the City of Westminster, London, England. Continuous publication began under founder James Wilson in September 1843...
, “A Chekist is a breed <…> A good KGB heritage—a father or grandfather, say, who worked for the service—is highly valued by today's silovik
Silovik
Silovik is a Russian word for politicians from the security or military services, often the officers of the former KGB, the FSB, the Federal Narcotics Control Service and military or other security services who came into power...
i. Marriages between siloviki clans are also encouraged.
Jason Bush, chief of the Moscow bureau of the magazine Business Week has commented in December 2006 on troubling in his opinion growth of government's role: "The Kremlin has taken control of some two dozen Russian companies since 2004, including oil assets from Sibneft and Yukos, as well as banks, newspapers, and more. Despite his sporadic support for pro-market reforms, Putin has backed national champions such as energy concerns Gazprom and Rosneft. The private sector's share of output fell from 70% to 65% last year, while state-controlled companies now represent 38% of stock market capitalization, up from 22% a year ago."
The Financial Times on 20 September 2008, when the global financial crisis
Late 2000s recession
The late-2000s recession, sometimes referred to as the Great Recession or Lesser Depression or Long Recession, is a severe ongoing global economic problem that began in December 2007 and took a particularly sharp downward turn in September 2008. The Great Recession has affected the entire world...
had started to hit the well-being of Russia's top tycoons, said: "Putinism was built on the understanding that if tycoons played by Kremlin rules they would prosper."
Although Russia's state intervention in the economy had been usually criticized in the West, a study by Bank of Finland’s Institute for Economies in Transition (BOFIT) in 2008 showed that state intervention had had a positive impact to corporate governance
Corporate governance
Corporate governance is a number of processes, customs, policies, laws, and institutions which have impact on the way a company is controlled...
of many companies in Russia: the formal indications of the quality of corporate governance in Russia were higher in companies with state control or with a stake held by the government.
Other economic developments and assessments
In June 2008, a group of FinnishFinland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
economists wrote that the 2000s had so far been an economic boon for Russia, with GDP rising about 7% a year; by the beginning of 2008, Russia had become one of the ten largest economies in the world.
In Putin's first term, many new economic reforms were implemented along the lines of the "Gref program." The multitude of reforms ranged from a flat income tax to bank reform, from land ownership to improvements in conditions for small businesses.
In 1998, over 60% of industrial turnover in Russia was based on barter and various monetary surrogates. The use of such alternatives to money now today fallen out of favour, which has boosted economic productivity significantly. Besides raising wages and consumption, Putin's government has received broad praise also for eliminating this problem.
In the opinion of the Finnish researchers, the most high-profile change within the national priority project frameworks was probably the 2006 across-the-board increase in wages in healthcare and education, as well as the decision to modernise equipment in both sectors in 2006 and 2007.
The rise in the overall living standards further deepened Russia's social and geographical discrepancies. In July 2008, Edward Lucas
Edward Lucas (journalist)
Edward Lucas is a British journalist.Lucas is International Editor of The Economist, the London-based global newsweekly and also oversees the paper’s political coverage of Central and Eastern Europe. He has been covering eastern Europe since 1986, and was the Moscow bureau chief from 1998-2002,...
of The Economist wrote: "The colossal bribe-collecting opportunities created by Putinism have heightened the divide between big cities (particularly Moscow) and the rest of the country."
In November 2008, the retired KGB lieutenant-general Nikolai Leonov
Nikolai Leonov
Nikolai Sergeyevich Leonov is a Russian nationalist politician and was a senior KGB officer and Latin America expert in the USSR. In 1953, at the age of 25, Leonov was posted to Mexico City, where he learned Spanish at the Autonomous University. In the course of the sea voyage, he met Raúl Castro,...
, in assessing the overall results of Putin's economic policies for the period of 8 years, said: "Within this period, there has only been one positive thing, if you leave aside the trivia. And that thing is the price of oil and natural gas." In the closing paragraphs of his 2008 book, the retired general said: "Behind the gilded facade of Moscow and Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
, there lies a demolished country that, under the current characteristics of those in power, has no chance to restore itself as one of the developed states of the world."
On November 29, 2008, Gennady Zyuganov
Gennady Zyuganov
Gennady Andreyevich Zyuganov is a Russian politician, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation , Chairman of the Union of Communist Parties - Communist Party of the Soviet Union , deputy of the State Duma , and a member of Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe...
, leader of the Communist Party of Russian Federation (the largest opposition group within Russia with its 13% of seats in the national Parliament
Duma
A Duma is any of various representative assemblies in modern Russia and Russian history. The State Duma in the Russian Empire and Russian Federation corresponds to the lower house of the parliament. Simply it is a form of Russian governmental institution, that was formed during the reign of the...
) in his speech before the 13th Party Congress made these remarks about the state that Russia under Putin was in: "Objectively, Russia’s position remains complicated, not to say dismal. The population is dying out. Thanks to the “heroic efforts” of the Yeltsinites the country has lost 5 out of the 22 million square kilometers of its historical territory. Russia has lost half of its production capacity and has yet to reach the 1990 level of output. Our country is facing three mortal dangers: de-industrialization, de-population and mental debilitation. The ruling group has neither notable successes to boast of, nor a clear plan of action. All its activities are geared to a single goal: to stay in power at all costs. Until recently it has been able to keep in power due to the “windfall” high world prices for energy. Its social support rests on the notorious “vertical power structure” which is another way of saying intimidation and blackmail of the broad social strata and the handouts that power chips off the oil and gas pie and throws out to the population in crumbs, especially on the eve of elections.
To characterize the kind of state Putin had built in socio-economic terms, in early 2008, professor Marshall I. Goldman
Marshall Goldman
Marshall Goldman is an expert on the economy of the former Soviet Union. Goldman is a Professor of Economics at Wellesley College and Associate Director of the Harvard Russian Research Center. Goldman received his Ph.D. in Russian studies from Harvard University in 1961.Goldman is well known for...
coined the term "petrostate": Petrostate: Putin, Power, and the New Russia, where he inter alia argued that while Putin had followed the advice of economic advisers in implementing reforms such as a 13 percent flat tax and creating a stabilization fund to lessen inflationary pressure, his main personal contribution was the idea of creating "national champions" and the renationalization of major energy assets. In his June 2008 interview, Marshall Goldman said that, in his opinion, Putin had created a new class of oligarchs, whom some called "silogarchs", Russia having come in second in the Forbes magazine list of the world's billionaires after only the United States.
In December 2008, Anders Åslund
Anders Åslund
Anders Åslund is a Swedish economist with a particular interest in economic transition from centrally planned to market economies. Åslund served as an economic adviser to the governments of Russia and Ukraine and from 2003 was director of the Russian and Eurasian Program at the Carnegie...
pointed out that Putin’s chief project had been "to develop huge, unmanageable state-owned mastodons, considered “national champions”", which had "stalemated large parts of the economy through their inertia and corruption while impeding diversification."
Restoring functionality of government
The concept of "Putinism" was described in a positive sense by Russian political scientist Andranik Migranyan. According to Migranyan, Putin came into office when the worst regime was established: the economy was "totally decentralized", and "the state had lost central authority, while the oligarchsOligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
robbed the country and controlled its power institutions." In two years Putin has restored hierarchy of power, ending the omnipotence of regional elites as well as destroying political influence of "oligarchs and oligopolies in the federal center." The Family, Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
-era non-institutional center of power, was ruined, which, according to Migranyan, in turn undercut the positions of the actors, such as Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky
Vladimir Gusinsky
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Gusinsky is a Russian media baron, is known as the founder of Media-Most holding that included Most Bank, the NTV channel, the newspaper Segodnya and magazines.-Life and career:Gusinsky was born in Moscow....
, who had sought to privatize the Russian state "with all of its resources and institutions".
Migranyan said, Putin began establishing common rules of the game for all actors, and started with an attempt to restore the role of the government as the institution expressing combined interests of the citizens and "capable of controlling the state’s financial, administrative and media resources". According to Migranyan, "Naturally, in line with Russian traditions, any attempt to increase the state’s role causes an intense repulsion on the part of the liberal intellectuals, not to mention a segment of the business community that is not interested in the strengthening of state power until all of the most attractive state property has been seized." Migranyan claimed that oligopolies' view of democracy was set on a premise of whether they were close to the center of power, rather than "objective characteristics and estimates of the situation in the country". Migranyan said "free" media owned by e.g. Berezovsky and Gusinsky, were nothing similar to free media as understood by the West, but served their only economic and political interests, while "all other politicians and analysts were denied the right to go on the air."
Migranyan sees enhancement of the role of the law enforcement agencies as a trial to set barriers against criminals, "particularly those in big business".
Migranyan sees in 2004 fruition of the social revolution initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
, whose aims were to rebuild the social system: "the absolute dominance of private ownership in Russia, recognized by all political forces today, has been the greatest achievement and result of this social revolution."
The major trouble of Russian democracy, according to Migranyan, is inability of civil society to rule the state, underdevelopment of public interests. He sees that as the consequence of Yeltsin's era Family-ruled state being unable to pursue "a favorable environment for mid-sized and small businesses". Migranyan sees modern Russia as democracy, at least formally. While "the state, having restored its effectiveness and control over its own resources, has become the largest corporation responsible for establishing the rules of the game", Migranyan wonders how much might this influence extend in future. In 2004 he saw two possibilities for the Putin regime: either transformation into a consolidated democracy, either bureaucratic authoritarianism. However, "if Russia is lagging behind the developed capitalist nations in regard to the consolidation of democracy, it is not the quality of democracy, but rather its amount and the balance between civil society and the state."
The Report by Andrew C. Kuchins
Andrew Kuchins
Andrew Carrigan Kuchins is an American political scientist, expert on Russian politics and Kremlinologist.He is an internationally renowned expert on Russian foreign and domestic policies who publishes widely and is frequently called on by business, government, media, and academic leaders for...
in November 2007 said: "Russia today is a hybrid regime that might best be termed “illiberal internationalism,” although neither word is fully accurate and requires considerable qualification. From being a weakly institutionalized, fragile, and in many ways distorted proto-democracy in the 1990s, Russia under Vladimir Putin has moved back in the direction of a highly centralized authoritarianism, which has characterized the state for most of its 1,000-year history. But it is an authoritarian state where the consent of the governed is essential. Given the experience of the 1990s and the Kremlin’s propaganda emphasizing this period as one of chaos, economic collapse, and international humiliation, the Russian people have no great enthusiasm for democracy and remain politically apathetic in light of the extraordinary economic recovery and improvement in lifestyles for so many over the last eight years. The emergent, highly centralized government, combined with a weak and submissive society, is the hallmark of traditional Russian paternalism."
In 2007 interview to Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
, the most prominent Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn commented on the Putin regime: "Putin has inherited plundered and downthrodden country with demoralized and grown poor majority of the population. And he took on its possible — to be noted, gradual, slow — recovering. These efforts were not right at the moment noticed, not speaking about being appreciated. And can you point on examples in history when measures for recovering strength of governmental management would be benevolently meeted from beyond the country?"
According to 2007 article of Dimitri Simes, published in Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
, "With high energy prices, sound fiscal policies, and tamed oligarchs, the Putin regime no longer needs international loans or economic assistance and has no trouble attracting major foreign investment despite growing tension with Western governments. Within Russia, relative stability, prosperity, and a new sense of dignity have tempered popular disillusionment with growing state control and the heavy-handed manipulation of the political process."
Diplomatic correspondent for the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
Bridget Kendall
Bridget Kendall
Bridget Kendall MBE is an English radio and television correspondent.-Early life:Kendall is a daughter of statistician David George Kendall and Diana...
in her 2007 article, after describing the "scarred decade" of 1990s with "rampant hyperinflation", harsh Yeltsin's policies, population decrease rate like that for a nation in a war, the country turning "from superpower into beggar", wonders: "So who can blame Russians for welcoming the relative stability Putin has presided over during the past seven years, even if other aspects of his rule have cast an authoritarian shadow? In the back-to-front world of Russian politics, it is not too little democracy that many people fear, but too much of it. This, I discovered, is why some are calling for Putin to stay on for a third term. Not because they admire him — privately, many say that he and his cronies are just as corrupt and disdainful of others as their communist predecessors were — but because they mistrust the idea of democracy, resent the west for pushing it, and fear what might happen as a result of next year's elections. Recent experience has taught them that change is usually for the worse and best avoided."
Single-party bureaucratic state
Russian politician Boris NemtsovBoris Nemtsov
Boris Efimovich Nemtsov is a Russian politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from 1997 to 1998. He was a co-founder of the Russian political party Union of Right Forces and is an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin.-Early life:...
and commentator Kara-Murza
Vladimir V. Kara-Murza
Vladimir V. Kara-Murza is a Russian journalist, historian and politician. He studied in Great Britain at the John Lyon School in Harrow, London, and graduated with an B.A. and M.A. in History from Cambridge University...
define Putinism in Russia as "a one party system
Single-party state
A single-party state, one-party system or single-party system is a type of party system government in which a single political party forms the government and no other parties are permitted to run candidates for election...
, censorship
Censorship
thumb|[[Book burning]] following the [[1973 Chilean coup d'état|1973 coup]] that installed the [[Military government of Chile |Pinochet regime]] in Chile...
, a puppet parliament
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
, ending of an independent judiciary, firm centralization of power and finances, and hypertrophied role of special services
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
and bureaucracy, in particular in relation to business"
Russia's nascent middle class
Middle class
The middle class is any class of people in the middle of a societal hierarchy. In Weberian socio-economic terms, the middle class is the broad group of people in contemporary society who fall socio-economically between the working class and upper class....
showed few signs of political activism under the regime, as Masha Lipman reported: "As with the majority overall, those in the middle-income group have accepted the paternalism of Vladimir Putin's government and remained apolitical and apathetic."
In December 2007, the Russian sociologist Igor Eidman (VCIOM
VCIOM
All-Russian Center for the Study of Public Opinion, VTsIOM, [established in 1987; till 1992 – All-Union Center for the Study of Public Opinion] is the oldest polling institution in the post-Soviet space and is one of the leading sociological and market research companies in Russia.-General...
) categorized the Putin regime as "the power of bureaucratic oligarchy
Oligarchy
Oligarchy is a form of power structure in which power effectively rests with an elite class distinguished by royalty, wealth, family ties, commercial, and/or military legitimacy...
" which had "the traits of extreme right-wing dictatorship — the dominance of state-monopoly
State monopoly capitalism
The theory of state monopoly capitalism was initially a Marxist doctrine popularised after World War II. Lenin had claimed in 1916 that World War I had transformed laissez-faire capitalism into monopoly capitalism, but he did not publish any extensive theory about the topic...
capital in the economy, silovoki structures in governance, clericalism
Clericalism
Clericalism is the application of the formal, church-based, leadership or opinion of ordained clergy in matters of either the church or broader political and sociocultural import...
and statism
Statism
Statism is a term usually describing a political philosophy, whether of the right or the left, that emphasises the role of the state in politics or supports the use of the state to achieve economic, military or social goals...
in ideology".
In August 2008, The Economist wrote about the virtual demise of both Russian and Soviet intelligentsia
Intelligentsia
The intelligentsia is a social class of people engaged in complex, mental and creative labor directed to the development and dissemination of culture, encompassing intellectuals and social groups close to them...
in post-Soviet Russia and noted: "Putinism was made strong by the absence of resistance from the part of society that was meant to provide intellectual opposition."
In early February 2009, Aleksander Auzan, an economist and board member at a research institute set up by Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
, said that in the Putin system, "there is not a relationship between the authorities and the people through Parliament or through nonprofit organizations or other structures. The relationship to the people is basically through television. And under the conditions of the crisis, that can no longer work."
About the same time, Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ryzhkov is a Russian Professor of the Higher School of Economics , Russian independent politician, Russian State Duma member ....
pointed out that a bill Medvedev had sent to the State Duma
State Duma
The State Duma , common abbreviation: Госду́ма ) in the Russian Federation is the lower house of the Federal Assembly of Russia , the upper house being the Federation Council of Russia. The Duma headquarters is located in central Moscow, a few steps from Manege Square. Its members are referred to...
in late January 2009, when signed into law, will allow Kremlin-friendly regional legislatures to remove opposition mayors who were elected by popular vote: "It is no coincidence that Medvedev has taken aim at the country's mayors. Mayoral elections were the last bastion of direct elections after the Duma cancelled the popular vote for governors in 2005. Independent mayors were the only source of political competition against governors who were loyal to the Kremlin and United Russia. Now one of the few remaining checks and balances against the monopoly on executive power in the regions will be removed. After the law is signed by Medvedev, the power vertical will be extended one step further to reach every mayor in the country.
Rehabilitation of the Soviet past/patriotism
The first politically controversial step made by Putin, then the FSB Director, was restoring in June 1999 a memorial plaque to Yury Andropov on the facade of the building, where the KGB had been headquartered.In April, 2005, in his formal address to Russia's Parliament
Federal Assembly of Russia
The Federal Assembly of Russia is the legislature of the Russian Federation, according to the Constitution of Russian Federation, 1993...
, President Putin famously said: "Above all, we should acknowledge that the collapse of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was a major geopolitical disaster of the century. As for the Russian nation, it became a genuine drama. Tens of millions of our co-citizens and compatriots found themselves outside Russian territory. Moreover, the epidemic of disintegration infected Russia itself."
In September 2003, Putin was quoted as saying, "The Soviet Union is a very complicated page in the history of our peoples. It was heroic and constructive, and it was also tragic. But it is a page that has been turned. It’s over, the boat has sailed. Now we need to think about the present and the future of our peoples."
In February 2004, Putin said: "It is my deep conviction that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy on a massive scale. I think the ordinary citizens of the former Soviet Union and the citizens in the post-Soviet space, the CIS countries, have gained nothing from it. On the contrary, people have been faced with a host of problems." He went on to say, "Incidentally, at that period, too, opinions varied, including among the leaders of the Union republics. For example, Nursultan Nazarbayev was categorically opposed to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and he said so openly proposing various formulas for preserving the state within the common borders. But, I repeat, all that is in the past. Today we should look at the situation in which we live. One cannot keep looking back and fretting about it: we should look forward." In December 2007, he said in the interview to the Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine: "Russia is an ancient country with historical, profound traditions and a very powerful moral foundation. And this foundation is a love for the Motherland and patriotism. Patriotism in the best sense of that word. Incidentally, I think that to a certain extent, to a significant extent, this is also attributable to the American people."
In August 2008, The Economist noted: "Russia today is ruled by the KGB elite, has a Soviet anthem, servile media, corrupt courts and a rubber-stamping parliament. A new history textbook proclaims that the Soviet Union, although not a democracy, was “an example for millions of people around the world of the best and fairest society”."
In November, 2008, International Herald Tribune
International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
stated:
"The Kremlin in the Putin era has often sought to maintain as much sway over the portrayal of history as over the governance of the country. In seeking to restore Russia's standing, Putin and other officials have stoked a nationalism that glorifies Soviet triumphs while playing down or even whitewashing the system's horrors. As a result, throughout Russia, many archives detailing killings, persecution and other such acts committed by the Soviet authorities have become increasingly off-limits. The role of the security services seems especially delicate, perhaps because Putin is a former KGB agent who headed the agency's successor, the FSB, in the late 1990s."
State-sponsored global PR effort
Shortly after the Beslan terror actBeslan school hostage crisis
The Beslan school hostage crisis of early September 2004 was a three-day hostage-taking of over 1,100 people which ended in the deaths of over 380...
in September 2004, Putin enhanced a Kremlin-sponsored program aimed at "improving Russia's image" abroad; according to an unnamed former Duma deputy, there existed a classified article in the RF federal budget that provided for financing measures to this purpose.
One of the major projects of the program was the creation in 2005 of Russia Today
Russia Today
Russia Today may refer to:* Russia Today, an English language 24-hour television news channel from Russia. It was launched in 2005 and is not related to an online news service of the similar name operated by EIN News...
- a rolling English-language
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
TV news channel providing 24 hour news coverage, modeled on CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
. Towards its start-up budget, $30 million of public funds were allocated. A CBS News
CBS News
CBS News is the news division of American television and radio network CBS. The current chairman is Jeff Fager who is also the executive producer of 60 Minutes, while the current president of CBS News is David Rhodes. CBS News' flagship program is the CBS Evening News, hosted by the network's main...
story on the launch of Russia Today quoted Boris Kagarlitsky as saying it was "very much a continuation of the old Soviet propaganda
Propaganda in the Soviet Union
Communist propaganda in the Soviet Union was extensively based on the Marxism-Leninism ideology to promote the Communist Party line. In societies with pervasive censorship, the propaganda was omnipresent and very efficient...
services". In 2007, Russia Today employed nearly 100 English-speaking special correspondents worldwide.
Russia's deputy foreign minister Grigory Karasin
Grigory Karasin
Grigory Borisovich Karasin is a career diplomat and is currently the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russia,...
said in August 2008, in the context of the Russia-Georgia conflict
2008 South Ossetia war
The 2008 South Ossetia War or Russo-Georgian War was an armed conflict in August 2008 between Georgia on one side, and Russia and separatist governments of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on the other....
: "Western media is a well-organized machine, which is showing only those pictures that fit in well with their thoughts. We find it very difficult to squeeze our opinion into the pages of their newspapers." Similar views were expressed by some Western commentators.
William Dunbar, who was reporting then for Russia Today from Georgia
Georgia (country)
Georgia is a sovereign state in the Caucasus region of Eurasia. Located at the crossroads of Western Asia and Eastern Europe, it is bounded to the west by the Black Sea, to the north by Russia, to the southwest by Turkey, to the south by Armenia, and to the southeast by Azerbaijan. The capital of...
, said he had not been on air since he mentioned Russian bombing of targets inside Georgia on 9 August 2008, and had to resign over what he claimed was biased coverage by the outlet.
Variety
Variety (magazine)
Variety is an American weekly entertainment-trade magazine founded in New York City, New York, in 1905 by Sime Silverman. With the rise of the importance of the motion-picture industry, Daily Variety, a daily edition based in Los Angeles, California, was founded by Silverman in 1933. In 1998, the...
magazine quoted an unnamed "senior journalist" with Russia Today as saying: "My view is that Russia Today is not particularly biased at all. When you look at the Western media, there is a lot of genuflection towards the powers that be. Russian news coverage is largely pro-Russia, but that is to be expected."
The PR efforts notwithstanding, according to an opinion poll released in February 2009 by the BBC World Service, Russia's image around the world had taken a dramatic dive in 2008: forty-two percent of respondents said they had a "mainly negative" view of Russia, according to the poll, which surveyed more than 13,000 people in 21 countries in December and January.
In June 2007, Vedomosti
Vedomosti
Vedomosti is a Russian language business daily. It is a joint venture between Dow Jones, the Financial Times and Sanoma, publishers of The Moscow Times....
reported that the Kremlin had been intensifying its official lobbying
Lobbying
Lobbying is the act of attempting to influence decisions made by officials in the government, most often legislators or members of regulatory agencies. Lobbying is done by various people or groups, from private-sector individuals or corporations, fellow legislators or government officials, or...
activities in the United States since 2003, among other things hiring such companies as Hannaford Enterprises and Ketchum
Ketchum
-Towns, cities, and lakes:* Ketchum, Idaho* Ketchum, Oklahoma* Lake Ketchum, Washington-Companies and corporations:* Ketchum Inc., a large public relations agency within Omnicom Group-People:...
.
However, the negative image of Russia might be at least partly due to an alleged anti-Russian bias in the West's perceptions. According to Dr. Vlad Sobell, an example of the anti-Russian bias in the West was the fact that President Putin was widely assumed to be guilty of the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, without any evidence being considered as necessary. The only proof the Western press needed for Putin's guilt was, that the victim said so himself on his deathbed. Sobell furthermore asks, why is Russia portrayed as a "“resurgent" and "aggressive" power, when it merely reacts defensively to encirclement by NATO? Why is Gazprom, and consequently the Kremlin, accused of "gas blackmail," when it merely withholds supplies due to the non-payment of debts? Why is Russia deemed to have no independent media, when in fact it has a very thriving free press? (Regarding this point, Sobbell adds he might argue that the limitations indirectly imposed by Putin are in some ways comparable to limitations in the Western countries.) Why is Russia’s spectacular economic recovery constantly ridiculed as being the result of little else but high hydrocarbon prices?
In April 2007 David Johnson
David Johnson
David Johnson may refer to:* C. David Johnson , Canadian actor* David Johnson , American painter* David Johnson , American former college football quarterback...
, founder of the Johnson's Russia List
Johnson's Russia List
Johnson's Russia List is an email newsletter containing Russia-related news and analysis in English. David Johnson is the list's editor. The JRL generally comes out one or more times per day. JRL's content includes articles syndicated from other media outlets, as well as comments contributed by...
, said in interview to the Moscow News
Moscow News
The Moscow News, which began publication in 1930, is Russia’s oldest English-language publication newspaper. Many of its feature articles used to be translated from the now defunct Russian Moskovskiye Novosti.-History:...
: "I am sympathetic to the view that these days Putin and Russia are perhaps getting too dark a portrayal in most Western media. Or at least that critical views need to be supplemented with other kinds of information and analysis. An openness to different views is still warranted."
Criticism
Illarionov's views were criticised by Justin RaimondoJustin Raimondo
Justin Raimondo is an American author and the editorial director of the website Antiwar.com. He describes himself as a "conservative-paleo-libertarian."-Background:...
, journalist of AntiWar.Com
Antiwar.com
Antiwar.com is a website devoted to opposing aggressive war, imperialism, and assaults on freedom associated with both. The editors describe their politics as libertarian. Their stated motiviation is, "to show how the imperialistic tendencies of the American government lead to a loss of civil...
in February 2009: "Illarionov seems to have slipped into an alternate timeline, a fantasy land in which Russia has reverted to the 1930s and a single party wields absolute power."
Justin Raimondo wrote as well:
- "Russia is emerging from the nightmare of Communism astonishingly intact. It's a miracle the country survived the Yeltsin years, when the nation was looted by "former" communist apparatchiks who seized control of the nation's resources in a series of rigged "privatizations." There is hardly any democratic tradition in Russia, and liberalism is a minority viewpoint rather than the majority mindset: long-standing habits die hard, particularly in a nation as mired in history and tragedy as Russia. Given all this, it's amazing they have elections – relatively free and open ones – in Russia at all. It wasn't so long ago that Stalin's gulags held millions. Now Illarionov wants us to go to war with the Kremlin over a grand total of 80 "political prisoners" of dubious provenance. What a joke – except nobody's laughing."
Comparisons with Stalinism
In May 2000, The GuardianThe Guardian
The Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
wrote: "When a band of former Soviet dissidents declared in February that Putinism was nothing short of modernised Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
, they were widely dismissed as hysterical prophets of doom. 'Authoritarianism is growing harsher, society is being militarised, the military budget is increasing,' they warned, before calling on the West to 're-examine its attitude towards the Kremlin leadership, to cease indulging it in its barbaric actions, its dismantlement of democracy and suppression of human rights.' In the light of Putin's actions during his first days in power, their warnings have gained an uneasy new resonance."
In February 2007, Arnold Beichman
Arnold Beichman
Arnold Beichman Arnold Beichman Arnold Beichman (May 17, 1913, New York City – February 17, 2010, Pasadena, California was an author, scholar, and anti-communist polemicist. At the time of his death, he was a Hoover Institution research fellow and a columnist for The Washington Times...
, a conservative research fellow at the neo-conservative Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
, wrote in the Washington Times that “Putinism in the 21st century has become as significant a watchword as Stalinism was in the 20th”.
Lionel Beehner, formerly a senior writer for the Council on Foreign Relations
Council on Foreign Relations
The Council on Foreign Relations is an American nonprofit nonpartisan membership organization, publisher, and think tank specializing in U.S. foreign policy and international affairs...
, also in 2007, maintained that on Putin’s watch, nostalgia
Nostalgia
The term nostalgia describes a yearning for the past, often in idealized form.The word is a learned formation of a Greek compound, consisting of , meaning "returning home", a Homeric word, and , meaning "pain, ache"...
for Stalin had grown, even among young Russians; Russians’ neo-Stalinism
Neo-Stalinism
Neo-Stalinism is a political term referring to attempts at rehabilitating the role of Joseph Stalin in history and re-establishing the political course of Stalin, at least partially. The term is also used to designate the modern political regimes in some states, political and social life of which...
manifesting itself in several ways.
In February 2007, responding to a listener's assertion that "Putin had steered the country to Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
" and "all entrepreneurs" were being jailed in Russia, the Russian opposition radio host Yevgeniya Albats said: "Come on, this is not true; there is no Stalinism, no concentration camps - thankfully <…>" She went on to say that if citizens of the country would not be critical of what was occurring around them, referring to the "orchestrated, or genuine," calls for the "tsar
Tsar
Tsar is a title used to designate certain European Slavic monarchs or supreme rulers. As a system of government in the Tsardom of Russia and Russian Empire, it is known as Tsarist autocracy, or Tsarism...
to stay on", that "could blaze the trail for very ugly things and a very tough regime in our country".
Alleged personality cult
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
noted that a year after Putin took office, the Russian media had been reflecting on what some saw as a growing personality cult around him: Russia's TV-6 television had shown a vast choice of portraits of Putin on sale at a shopping mall in an underground passage near Moscow's Park of Culture.
Simultaneously, human rights groups voiced concerns about what they saw as a revival of the personality cult of Stalin, who became the subject of an exhibition that opened at a Moscow museum in 2003 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his death.
On 22 August 2007, The International Herald Tribune, in connection with the host of gossip and speculation that ensued after Putin stripped off his shirt for the cameras while on holiday with Prince Albert II
Albert II, Prince of Monaco
Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco is the head of the House of Grimaldi and the ruler of the Principality of Monaco. He is the son of Rainier III, Prince of Monaco, and the American actress Grace Kelly...
of Monaco
Monaco
Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
in the Altai Mountains, quoted Sergey Markov
Sergey Alexandrovich Markov
Sergei Alexandrovich Markov is a Russian political scientist, journalist, social activist. Doctor of Political Science, assistant professor of Public Policy department of Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University, professor of Faculty of Political Science of Moscow State Institute of...
, Kremlin-connected head of the Moscow-based Institute for Political Research/ as saying: "He's cool. That's been the image throughout the presidency, cool."
In October 2007, some scenes at the United Russia
United Russia
United Russia is a centrist political party in Russia and the largest party in the country, currently holding 315 of the 450 seats in the State Duma. The party was founded in December 2001, through a merger of the Unity and Fatherland-All Russia parties...
congress caused Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
President
President of Belarus
The office of President of Belarus is the head of state of Belarus. The office was created in 1994 with the passing of the Constitution of Belarus by the Supreme Soviet. This replaced the office of Chairman of the Supreme Soviet as the head of state...
Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko has been serving as the President of Belarus since 20 July 1994. Before his career as a politician, Lukashenko worked as director of a state-owned agricultural farm. Under Lukashenko's rule, Belarus has come to be viewed as a state whose conduct is out of line...
, who was allied to Russia within the "Union State", to recall the Soviet times, complete with the official adoration towards the Communist Party leader; talking to Russia's regional press representatives he said that in Russia Putin's personality cult was being created.
About the same time, AFP
Agence France-Presse
Agence France-Presse is a French news agency, the oldest one in the world, and one of the three largest with Associated Press and Reuters. It is also the largest French news agency. Currently, its CEO is Emmanuel Hoog and its news director Philippe Massonnet...
reported that ahead of the December parliamentary and March presidential elections, in which Putin, despite being required by the constitution to leave office, was widely expected to find some way to retain power, his personality cult was gathering pace.
After Medvedev was elected President in March 2008, Radio Liberty reported that during his eight-year presidency, Putin had managed to build a personality cult around himself similar to those created by Soviet leaders; although there had not been giant statues of Putin put up across the country (like those of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
before), he had the honour of being the only Russian leader to have had a pop song written about him: "I want a man like Putin", which hit the charts in 2002.
In December 2008, the Russian magazine Vlast
Kommersant
Kommersant is a commerce-oriented newspaper published in Russia. , the circulation was 131,000.- History :The newspaper was initially published in 1909, and it was closed down following the Bolshevik seizure of power and the introduction of censorship in 1917.In 1989, with the onset of press...
published a catalogue of quotes of Russian politicians singing adulatory praises of Putin, such as Valentina Matviyenko
Valentina Matviyenko
Valentina Ivanovna Matviyenko , born 7 April 1949 in the Ukrainian SSR), is currently the highest-ranking female politician in Russia, the former governor of Saint Petersburg and the current Chairman of the Federation Council of the Russian Federation...
's "Your democracy knows no bounds."
In February 2009, former KGB colonel Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Gordievsky
Oleg Antonovich Gordievsky , CMG , is a former Colonel of the KGB and KGB Resident-designate and bureau chief in London, who was a secret agent of the British Secret Intelligence Service from 1974 to 1985.-Early career:Oleg Gordievsky attended the Moscow State Institute of International...
, CMG
Order of St Michael and St George
The Most Distinguished Order of Saint Michael and Saint George is an order of chivalry founded on 28 April 1818 by George, Prince Regent, later George IV of the United Kingdom, while he was acting as Prince Regent for his father, George III....
, noted about Putin's periodic "three-hour 'impromptu press conferences' in the spirit and style of Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
": "In Russia it is widely known that they are carefully rehearsed. Even implicitly critical questions are unacceptable in any circumstances."
FSB influence
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
state".
Shortly after becoming Russian prime minister, Putin was reported to have joked to a group of his KGB associates: "A group of FSB colleagues dispatched to work undercover in the government has successfully completed its first mission."
The Russian sociologist Olga Kryshtanovskaya believed in August 2004, that there had been no seizure of power on the part of the siloviki, but rather they had been called to "service" by Russia's political class, their rise to power having started in earnest in 1996, when Yeltsin was re-elected.
The former Securitate
Securitate
The Securitate was the secret police agency of Communist Romania. Previously, the Romanian secret police was called Siguranţa Statului. Founded on August 30, 1948, with help from the Soviet NKVD, the Securitate was abolished in December 1989, shortly after President Nicolae Ceaușescu was...
Lieutenant General
Lieutenant General
Lieutenant General is a military rank used in many countries. The rank traces its origins to the Middle Ages where the title of Lieutenant General was held by the second in command on the battlefield, who was normally subordinate to a Captain General....
and defector Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa
Ion Mihai Pacepa is the highest-ranking intelligence official ever to have defected from the former Eastern Bloc. He is now a United States citizen, a writer, and a columnist....
said in his interview for conservative FrontPage Magazine in 2006 that "former KGB officers are running" Russia, and that FSB
FSB (Russia)
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the main domestic security agency of the Russian Federation and the main successor agency of the Soviet Committee of State Security . Its main responsibilities are counter-intelligence, internal and border security, counter-terrorism, and...
, which he called "the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
successor" had the right to monitor the population electronically , control political process, search private property, cooperate with employees of the federal government, create front enterprises
Front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy groups, or corporations...
, investigate cases, and run its own prisons.
Various 2006 estimates showed that Russia had above 200,000 members of FSB, or one FSB employee for every 700 citizens of Russia (the exact number of the overall FSB staff is classified
State Secret
State Secret is a 1950 British drama film directed by Sidney Gilliat and starring Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Jack Hawkins, Glynis Johns and Herbert Lom. It was released in the United States under the title The Great Manhunt.-Cast:...
). The Russian Armed Forces General Staff
General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation
The General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation is the military staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. It is the central organ of the Armed Forces Administration and oversees operational management of the armed forces under the Russian Ministry of Defence.The staff is...
, as well as its subordinate structures, such as the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces
Strategic Rocket Forces
The Strategic Missile Troops or Strategic Rocket Forces of the Russian Federation or RVSN RF , transliteration: Raketnye voyska strategicheskogo naznacheniya Rossiyskoy Federatsii, literally Missile Troops of Strategic Designation of the Russian Federation) are a military branch of the Russian...
headquarters, are not submitted to the Federal Security Service, but the FSB might be interested in monitoring such structures, as they intrinsically involve state secrets and various degrees of admittance to them. The Law on Federal Security Service which defines its functions and establishes its structure does not involve such tasks as managing strategic branches of national industry, controlling political groups, or infiltrating the federal government.
The political scientist Julie Anderson in 2006 wrote: "Under Russian Federation President and former career foreign intelligence officer Vladimir Putin, an 'FSB State' composed of chekists
Chekism
Chekism is a term used by some historians and political scientists to emphasize the omnipotence and omnipresence of secret political police in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia...
has been established and is consolidating its hold on the country. Its closest partners are organized criminals
Organized crime
Organized crime or criminal organizations are transnational, national, or local groupings of highly centralized enterprises run by criminals for the purpose of engaging in illegal activity, most commonly for monetary profit. Some criminal organizations, such as terrorist organizations, are...
. In a world marked by a globalized economy
Globalization
Globalization refers to the increasingly global relationships of culture, people and economic activity. Most often, it refers to economics: the global distribution of the production of goods and services, through reduction of barriers to international trade such as tariffs, export fees, and import...
and information infrastructure, and with transnational terrorism groups utilizing all available means to achieve their goals and further their interests, Russian intelligence
Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia)
The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service is Russia's primary external intelligence agency. The SVR is the successor of the First Chief Directorate of the KGB since December 1991...
collaboration with these elements is potentially disastrous."
The Russian historian Yuri Felshtinsky compared the takeover of the Russian State by the siloviki to an imaginary scenario of the Gestapo
Gestapo
The Gestapo was the official secret police of Nazi Germany. Beginning on 20 April 1934, it was under the administration of the SS leader Heinrich Himmler in his position as Chief of German Police...
coming to power in Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
. He pointed out a fundamental difference between the secret police
Secret police
Secret police are a police agency which operates in secrecy and beyond the law to protect the political power of an individual dictator or an authoritarian political regime....
and ordinary political parties
Political Parties
Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy is a book by sociologist Robert Michels, published in 1911 , and first introducing the concept of iron law of oligarchy...
, even totalitarian
Totalitarianism
Totalitarianism is a political system where the state recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible...
ones, such as the Communist Party of the Soviet Union
Communist Party of the Soviet Union
The Communist Party of the Soviet Union was the only legal, ruling political party in the Soviet Union and one of the largest communist organizations in the world...
: Russia's secret police organizations are wont to employ the so called active measures
Active measures
Active Measures were a form of political warfare conducted by the Soviet security services to influence the course of world events, "in addition to collecting intelligence and producing politically correct assessment of it". Active measures ranged "from media manipulations to special actions...
and extra-judicial killing
Extra-judicial killing
An extrajudicial killing is the killing of a person by governmental authorities without the sanction of any judicial proceeding or legal process. Extrajudicial punishments are by their nature unlawful, since they bypass the due process of the legal jurisdiction in which they occur...
s. Hence, they killed Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Litvinenko
Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko was an officer who served in the Soviet KGB and its Russian successor, the Federal Security Service ....
and directed Russian apartment bombings
Russian apartment bombings
The Russian apartment bombings were a series of explosions that hit four apartment blocks in the Russian cities of Buynaksk, Moscow, and Volgodonsk in September 1999, killing 293 people and injuring 651. The explosions occurred in Buynaksk on 4 September, Moscow on 9 and 13 September, and...
and other terrorism acts in Russia to frighten the civilian population and achieve their political objectives, according to Felstinsky.
However, Alexander Solzhenitsyn in 2007 interview commented that "one should be surprised on how in few years which has passed since the times when the Church was totally submitted to the Communist state it has managed to gain sufficiently independent position".
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht
Reuel Marc Gerecht is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing primarily on the Middle East, Islamic militancy, counterterrorism, and intelligence. He is a former director of the Project for the New American Century's Middle East Initiative and a former resident...
, a former Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
specialist at the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
(CIA), in April 2006, presented a list of those who had 'mysteriously' died during Putin's presidency and wrote: "Vladimir Putin's Russia is a new phenomenon in Europe: a state defined and dominated by former and active-duty security and intelligence officers. Not even fascist
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, or the Soviet Union - all undoubtedly much worse creations than Russia - were as top-heavy with intelligence talent. <…> There is no historical precedent for a society so dominated by former and active-duty internal-security and intelligence officials - men who rose up in a professional culture in which murder could be an acceptable, even obligatory, business practice. <…> Those who operated within the Soviet sphere were the most malevolent in their practices. These men mentored and shaped Putin and his closest friends and allies. It is therefore unsurprising that Putin's Russia has become an assassination
Assassination
To carry out an assassination is "to murder by a sudden and/or secret attack, often for political reasons." Alternatively, assassination may be defined as "the act of deliberately killing someone, especially a public figure, usually for hire or for political reasons."An assassination may be...
-happy state where detention, interrogation, and torture - all tried and true methods of the Soviet KGB - are used to silence the voices of untoward journalists and businessmen who annoy or threaten Putin's FSB state."
One of the leading members of Putin's ruling elite, Nikolai Patrushev, Director of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (August 1999 - May 2008) and, subsequently, Secretary of the Security Council of Russia
Security Council of Russia
The Security Council of the Russian Federation is a consultative body of the Russian President that works out the President's decisions on national security affairs...
, was known for his propagation of the idea of 'Chekists' as "neo-aristocrats" .
A Report by Andrew C. Kuchins
Andrew Kuchins
Andrew Carrigan Kuchins is an American political scientist, expert on Russian politics and Kremlinologist.He is an internationally renowned expert on Russian foreign and domestic policies who publishes widely and is frequently called on by business, government, media, and academic leaders for...
in November 2007 said: "The predominance of the intelligence services and mentality is a core feature of Putin’s Russia that marks a major and critical discontinuity from not only the 1990s but all of Soviet and Russian history. During the Soviet period, the Communist Party provided the glue holding the system together. During the 1990s, there was no central organizing institution or ideology. Now, with Putin, it is “former” KGB professionals who dominate the Russian ruling elite. This is a special kind of brotherhood, a mafia-like culture in which only a few can be trusted. The working culture is secretive and nontransparent."
Cronyism and corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
is what happens in all countries when businessmen offer officials large bribes for favors. Today’s Russia is unique. The businessmen, the politicians, and the bureaucrats are the same people. They have privatized
Privatization
Privatization is the incidence or process of transferring ownership of a business, enterprise, agency or public service from the public sector to the private sector or to private non-profit organizations...
the country’s wealth and taken control of its financial flows."
The Russian investigative journalist Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Politkovskaya
Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya was a Russian journalist, author, and human rights activist known for her opposition to the Chechen conflict and then-President of Russia Vladimir Putin...
, in concluding her book A Russian Diary (2007), said: "Our state authorities today are only interested in making money. That is literally all they are interested in".
Such views were shared by politologist Julie Anderson who said the same person can be a Russian intelligence officer, an organized criminal, and a businessman, who quoted the former CIA Director James Woolsey as saying: "I have been particularly concerned for some years, beginning during my tenure, with the interpenetration of Russian organized crime, Russian intelligence and law enforcement, and Russian business. I have often illustrated this point with the following hypothetical: If you should chance to strike up a conversation with an articulate, English-speaking Russian in, say, the restaurant of one of the luxury hotels along Lake Geneva, and he is wearing a $3,000 suit and a pair of Gucci loafers, and he tells you that he is an executive of a Russian trading company and wants to talk to you about a joint venture, then there are four possibilities. He may be what he says he is. He may be a Russian intelligence officer working under commercial cover. He may be part of a Russian organized crime group. But the really interesting possibility is that he may be all three and that none of those three institutions have any problem with the arrangement."
According to the political scientist Dmitri Glinsky, "The idea of Russia, Inc. - or better, Russia, Ltd. - derives from the Russian brand of libertarian
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
anarchism
Anarchism
Anarchism is generally defined as the political philosophy which holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, or alternatively as opposing authority in the conduct of human relations...
viewing the state as just another private armed gang claiming special rights on the basis of its unusual power"; "this is a state conceived as a stationary bandit imposing stability by eliminating the roving bandits of the previous era."
In April 2006, Putin himself expressed extreme irritation about the de facto privatization of the customs sphere, where smart officials and entrepreneurs "merged in ecstasy" (Moscow News, April 21).
According to the estimates published in "Putin and Gazprom" by Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov, Putin and his friends pilfered assets of $80 billion from Gazprom during his second term as president.
On February 29, 2009, the Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev
Alexander Lebedev
Alexander Yevgenievich Lebedev is a Russian businessman, referred to as one of the Russian oligarchs.In May 2008, he was listed by Forbes magazine as one of the richest Russians and as the 358th richest person in the world with an estimated fortune of $3.1 billion...
claimed that Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's strategy for economic recovery was based on cronyism and was fueling corruption; he also said: "We have two Putins. There are lots of words, but the system doesn't work."
Ideology
Political scientist Irina Pavlova said that chekistsChekism
Chekism is a term used by some historians and political scientists to emphasize the omnipotence and omnipresence of secret political police in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia...
were not merely a corporation of people united to expropriate financial assets; they had long-standing political objectives of transforming Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
to the Third Rome
Third Rome
The term Third Rome describes the idea that some European city, state, or country is the successor to the legacy of the Roman Empire and its successor state, the Byzantine Empire ....
and an ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
of "containing" the United States. Columnist George Will
George Will
George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist, journalist, and author. He is a Pulitzer Prize-winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics...
emphasized in 2003 the nationalistic nature
Nationalism
Nationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
of Putinism: "Putinism is becoming a toxic brew of nationalism directed against neighboring nations, and populist envy, backed by assaults of state power, directed against private wealth. Putinism is a national socialism without the demonic element of its pioneer
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
". According to Illarionov, the ideology
Ideology
An ideology is a set of ideas that constitutes one's goals, expectations, and actions. An ideology can be thought of as a comprehensive vision, as a way of looking at things , as in common sense and several philosophical tendencies , or a set of ideas proposed by the dominant class of a society to...
of chekists
Chekism
Chekism is a term used by some historians and political scientists to emphasize the omnipotence and omnipresence of secret political police in the Soviet Union and contemporary Russia...
is Nashism
Nashism
Nashism and Nashists are post-Soviet Russian political neologisms derived from the word "наши" . The word is used to refer to various forms of worldview based on the primacy of "ours" over the "outsiders". Various Russian journalists, politicians and politologists put different meanings into this...
(“ours-ism”), the selective application of rights".
According to Dmitri Trenin (2004), Head of the Moscow Carnegie Center, the then Russia was one of the least ideological countries around the world: "Ideas hardly matter, whereas interests reign supreme. It is not surprising then that the worldview of Russian elites is focused on financial interests. Their practical deeds in fact declare In capital we trust." Trenin described Russia's elite involved in the process of policy-making as people who largely owned the country. Most of them were not public politicians, but the majority were bureaucratic capitalists. According to Trenin, "having survived in a ruthless domestic business and political environment, Russian leaders are well adjusted to rough competition and will take that mindset to the world stage." However, Trenin called Russian-Western relations, from Moscow’s perspective, "competitive, but not antagonistic". He said, "Russia does not crave world domination, and its leaders do not dream of restoring the Soviet Union. They plan to rebuild Russia as a great power with a global reach, organized as a supercorporation."
According to Trenin, Russians "no longer recognize U.S. or European moral authority", i.e. values gap. He said, "from the Russian perspective, there is no absolute freedom anywhere in the world, no perfect democracy, and no government that does not lie to its people. In essence, all are equal by virtue of sharing the same imperfections. Some are more powerful than others, however, and that is what really counts."
The Russian political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky is a Russian national, political scientist . He was an adviser of the Presidential Administration of Russia until April 2011. During the Soviet times he was prosecuted as a dissident....
believed (October 2007) that "Putin builds the world's Russia" as opposed to a nation state such as Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Lukashenko
Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko has been serving as the President of Belarus since 20 July 1994. Before his career as a politician, Lukashenko worked as director of a state-owned agricultural farm. Under Lukashenko's rule, Belarus has come to be viewed as a state whose conduct is out of line...
's Belarus
Belarus
Belarus , officially the Republic of Belarus, is a landlocked country in Eastern Europe, bordered clockwise by Russia to the northeast, Ukraine to the south, Poland to the west, and Lithuania and Latvia to the northwest. Its capital is Minsk; other major cities include Brest, Grodno , Gomel ,...
. According to Pavlovsky, Russia's power had to be a model one, i.e. the power that would offer itself to others as a kind of a model to emulate (the USA being one such example).
Background
In 2008 during Russian Presidential electionRussian presidential election, 2008
The Russian Presidential election of 2008, held on March 2, 2008 resulted in the election of Dmitry Medvedev as the third President of Russia. Medvedev, whose candidacy was supported by incumbent president Vladimir Putin and five political parties , received 71% of the vote, and defeated...
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
was elected President (head of the executive branch) with 73% of votes. He had been nominated as a candidate by four Russian political parties and made a promise to appoint Putin for the position of Prime Minister during the campaign.
Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while holding constitutionally less significant position, continues to be ranked as a somewhat more popular politician (83% of approval vote in January 2009) than President Dmitry Medvedev (75% of approval vote in January 2009).
According to opinion polls conducted by the Levada Center
Levada Center
Levada Center is a Russian independent, non-governmental polling and sociological research organisation. It is named after its founder, the first Russian professor of sociology Yuri Levada . Levada Center traces back its history to 1987 when VCIOM was founded, originally headed by Academician...
, in January 2009, 11% of Russia's respondents believed it was Medvedev who had the real power in Russia, 32% believed it was Putin, 50% thought that both Medvedev and Putin had the real power, and 7% answered "did not know".
At the end of February 2009, the Levada Center released its polling data, which demonstrated that the number of people who thought that Medvedev was the number one had halved since February 2008 to 12% (23% in 2008); and Putin's approval rating had dropped to 48% from 62% for the same period. In February 2008, prior to the Presidential election, 23% people believed Medvedev had the real power in the country, 20% thought Putin had the real power, 41% thought Putin and Medvedev had equal shares of power, 16% did not answer.
Opinion: Putin is in charge
Commentators, analysts and some politicians concurred in 2008 and early 2009, that the transfer of presidential powers that took place on May 7, 2008, was in name only and Putin continued to retain the number one position in Russia's effective power hierarchy, with Dmitry MedvedevDmitry Medvedev
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is the third President of the Russian Federation.Born to a family of academics, Medvedev graduated from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987. He defended his dissertation in 1990 and worked as a docent at his alma mater, now renamed to Saint...
being "Russia’s notional president".
Within the context of the ongoing Russia–Ukraine gas dispute in early January 2009, Nikolai Petrov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center said: "What we see right now is the dominant role of Putin. We see him as a real head of state (…) This is not surprising. We are still living in Putin's Russia."
On February 1, 2009, an analytical piece in The International Herald Tribune said: "Putin is still considered Russia's paramount leader
Paramount leader
Paramount leader literally "the highest leader of the party and the state ", in modern Chinese political science, unofficially refers to the political leader of the People's Republic of China....
, but by taking the title of prime minister, he may have deprived himself of a fall-guy-in-waiting. That role traditionally has gone to Russia's prime ministers; Yeltsin repeatedly dismissed his during the 1998 default. So far, Putin has instead made a scapegoat of the United States, saying it was at the heart of Russia's crisis, rather than Moscow's over-reliance on the export of natural resources."
Opinion: Medvedev and Putin share the power
Some Russian commentators and analysts spoke of "Medvedev-Putin TandemTandem
Tandem is an arrangement where a team of machines, animals or people are lined up one behind another, all facing in the same direction....
", or "Medvedev-Putin Tandemocracy".
Prior to the 2008 election, political scientists Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Pavlovsky
Gleb Olegovich Pavlovsky is a Russian national, political scientist . He was an adviser of the Presidential Administration of Russia until April 2011. During the Soviet times he was prosecuted as a dissident....
and Stanislav Belkovsky
Stanislav Belkovsky
Stanislav Alexandrovich Belkovsky is a Russian political analyst and communication specialist. A political conservative, he is said to be very close to Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky...
discussed the future configuration of power. According to Mr. Pavlovsky, people would be very suited with the option of the union of Putin and Medvedev "alike two Consuls of Rome
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
". Belkovsky called Medvedev "President of a dream", referring to the early 1990s when people ostensibly dreamed of the time they "would live without the stranglehold of ubiquitous ideology, and a usual person would become the head of the state".
In August 2008 interview to Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
former Chancellor of Germany Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Schröder
Gerhard Fritz Kurt Schröder is a German politician, and was Chancellor of Germany from 1998 to 2005. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany , he led a coalition government of the SPD and the Greens. Before becoming a full-time politician, he was a lawyer, and before becoming Chancellor...
expressed the view of Putin-Medvedev tandem: "There are enough internal problems in Russia that need to be solved. ... President (Dmitry) Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin are addressing these problems — together, by the way, in friendship and mutual respect, not in competition with one another, as journalistic fortune-tellers often imply."
At the end of 2008, Nezavisimaya gazeta
Nezavisimaya Gazeta
Nezavisimaya Gazeta is a Russian daily newspaper. Published since December 21, 1990.Information ranging from a wide variety of sources, such as reporters, political scientists, historians, art historians, as well as critics are published in the newspaper...
in editorial "Tandem" expressed the view the country is led by the tandem. It's naive to guess who is a more important figure: because Medvedev and Putin are like-minded people. Both people are in tough position: Medvedev faced crisis and war, situation where it's hard to stay liberal; while Putin as head of Government is responsible for socially economical issues in the crisis, what is viewed to reduce his rating. Putin is yet the most experienced real politician in Russia with immense influence. None of the two people has to be afraid of future: Medvedev learns quickly, gathering a team around himself, with Constitution being immensely pro-Presidential; while nobody will push Putin from his position if he does not want to leave himself.
The newspaper pointed out this novelty in Russia's political life: the president is in no position to criticize the premier, the government, or ministers; the Duma, in turn, is in no position to criticize its leader's cabinet.
Prognosis and aftermath: 2009 onwards
According to World Bank Russia Economic Report from November 2008, prudent fiscal management and substantial financial reserves have protected Russia from deeper consequences of this external shock. The government’s policy response so far—swift, comprehensive, and coordinated—has helped limit the impact.In mid-December 2008, Andrey Piontkovsky
Andrey Piontkovsky
Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky is Russian scientist and political writer and analyst.He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Moscow State University and has published more than a hundred scientific papers on applied mathematics.He was an Executive Director of the Strategic Studies Center ...
believed that due to the farcical nature of Putinism, lack of any underpinning ideological project, its exceedingly narrow social base, the dismantling thereof may well occur without much pain; the first psychological step in this direction being the destruction of Putin's mythical image of Russia's "national leader". In late December, 2008, former Presidential aide Georgy Satarov said that, considering the crisis, the country was moving from the Putin era to a new phase - the collapse of the system.
In late December 2008, The Moscow Times
The Moscow Times
The Moscow Times is an English-language daily newspaper published in Moscow, Russia since 1992. The circulation in 2008 stood at 35,000 copies and the newspaper is typically given out for free at places English-language "expats" attend, including hotels, cafés and restaurants, as well as by...
stated: "Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's reputation as a Teflon leader is showing scratches as some Russians start to see a growing disconnect between the realities of the financial crisis and Putin's public posture as the nation's savior. Posters openly insulting Putin were among those waved at a rally of thousands of motorists against a hike in import duties for used cars in Vladivostok
Vladivostok
The city is located in the southern extremity of Muravyov-Amursky Peninsula, which is about 30 km long and approximately 12 km wide.The highest point is Mount Kholodilnik, the height of which is 257 m...
for the past two weekends. Earlier, only radical members from the banned National Bolshevik Party had dared to attack Putin in public." The newspaper also noted that Russia's political commentators who had earlier refrained from criticizing Putin were now openly attacking him in Russian print, radio and online media. The latter fact was interpreted by political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin as an indication of a ongoing cracking in the consensus of the elite.
On December 28, 2008, Catherine Belton of The Financial Times observed that the problems with Russia's economy, which had thitherto been largely fueled by the rising oil price, appeared to be denting the air of invincibility that Putin had taken on since 2000.
In mid-January 2009, Russia's liberal magazine The New Times
The New Times (Russia)
The New Times, or Novoye Vremya , is a Russian language magazine in Russia established in 1943 in the Soviet Union. It is a small, liberal, independent Russian weekly news magazine, publishing for Russia and Armenia. During the Soviet times it followed the official line...
, citing unnamed Kremlin officials, maintained that there was a growing rift between Medvedev and Putin and that the former was seeking to distance himself from the latter.
On February 1, 2009, Clifford J. Levy
Clifford J. Levy
Clifford J. Levy is an investigative journalist for The New York Times.Levy is a graduate of New Rochelle High School and Princeton University in 1989....
in The International Herald Tribune said: "Over the last eight years, as Vladimir Putin has amassed ever more power, Russians have often responded with a collective shrug, as if to say: Go ahead, control everything - as long as we can have our new cars and amply stocked supermarkets, our sturdy ruble and cheap vacations in the Turkish sun. But now the worldwide financial crisis is abruptly ending an oil-driven economic boom here, and the unspoken contract between Putin and his people is being thrown into doubt. In newspaper articles, among political analysts, even in corners of the Kremlin, questions can be heard. Will Russians admire Putin as much when oil is at $40 a barrel as they did when it was at $140 a barrel? And if Russia's economy seriously falters, will his system of hard, personal power prove to be a trap for him? Can it relieve public anger, and can he escape the blame?"
In early February 2009, Russian politician Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Ryzhkov
Vladimir Aleksandrovich Ryzhkov is a Russian Professor of the Higher School of Economics , Russian independent politician, Russian State Duma member ....
, speaking of Russia's leadership's further anti-democracy steps, concluded: "Russia's near future is becoming increasingly unpredictable as the gap widens between reality and official rhetoric. As the federal budget deficit increases along with inflation, while the ruble falls to new levels against the dollar, the very existence of Putin's authoritarian power vertical is in danger of collapsing along with the economy."
About the same time Jim Rogers
Jim Rogers
James Beeland Rogers, Jr. is an American investor, author, and occasional financial commentator. He is currently based in Singapore. Rogers is the Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc...
, an international investor and co-founder, along with George Soros
George Soros
George Soros is a Hungarian-American business magnate, investor, philosopher, and philanthropist. He is the chairman of Soros Fund Management. Soros supports progressive-liberal causes...
, of the Quantum Fund, as a member of a panel of experts at the Russia Forum 2009, ventured this forecast: "I am not optimistic about the continuous stability of Russia. There's a good chance Russia will continue to disintegrate into more than one country."
On February 5, 2009, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
's liberal democratic
Liberal democracy
Liberal democracy, also known as constitutional democracy, is a common form of representative democracy. According to the principles of liberal democracy, elections should be free and fair, and the political process should be competitive...
political movement (the movement comprises such opposition politicians as Garry Kasparov
Garry Kasparov
Garry Kimovich Kasparov is a Russian chess grandmaster, a former World Chess Champion, writer, political activist, and one of the greatest chess players of all time....
, Boris Nemtsov
Boris Nemtsov
Boris Efimovich Nemtsov is a Russian politician who was Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from 1997 to 1998. He was a co-founder of the Russian political party Union of Right Forces and is an outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin.-Early life:...
, Vladimir Milov
Vladimir Milov
Vladimir Milov is a Russian politician and the president of the Institute of Energy Policy,a Moscow-based independent think tank. He is the former Deputy Energy Minister of the Russian Federation....
, Ilya Yashin
Ilya Yashin
Ilya Yashin is one of the key leaders of the Russian political movement Solidarnost. He is also the leader of the Moscow branch of the People's Freedom Party, in which the Solidarnost participates....
), citing the regime's "total helplessness and flagrant incompetence", maintained that "the dismantling of Putinism" and restoration of democracy in Russia were prerequisites for any successful anti-crisis measures and demanded that Putin's government resign.
Some analysts construed Medvedev's dismissal of Russia's four regional governors in February 2009, amidst the onset of recession, as well as some other of his steps, as signs of him "starting to stamp his authority on the presidential role". Izvestia
Izvestia
Izvestia is a long-running high-circulation daily newspaper in Russia. The word "izvestiya" in Russian means "delivered messages", derived from the verb izveshchat . In the context of newspapers it is usually translated as "news" or "reports".-Origin:The newspaper began as the News of the...
newspaper commented: "first, Medvedev makes it clear he is to be treated as a man of his word <…> Second, Medvedev demonstrates he is not going to 'freeze' the political elites and 'Putin's' regional staff may become more scarce in the future".
On February 18, 2009, Andrey Piontkovsky
Andrey Piontkovsky
Andrey Andreyevich Piontkovsky is Russian scientist and political writer and analyst.He graduated from the Mathematics Department of Moscow State University and has published more than a hundred scientific papers on applied mathematics.He was an Executive Director of the Strategic Studies Center ...
said that the situation had drastically changed within the ruling elite: Putin's uselessness as a crisis manager and his exceeding attractiveness as a scapegoat had become evident to all the Kremlin clans, including his own one.
At the end of February, 2009, the Russian weekly Sobesednik ran an article presenting some experts' views (such as Georgy Satarov
Georgy Satarov
Georgy Alexandrovich Satarov , is a Russian mathematician, politician, political scientist and a former aide to Russia President Boris Yeltsin...
, a former aide to Russia President Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
in 1994-1997) that Putin may well resign in the autumn that year.