May 16th 2021

Russia’s coming deputinization

 

All leaders eventually leave the historical stage, even those whose rule appears endless. President Vladimir Putin of Russia will be no exception to this truism. Whether his end comes in 2036, as he hopes, or earlier, is unknowable, but, when it does come, Russia will almost certainly embark on deputinization and attempt to rid itself of the worst features of his rule. That won’t be so as much of a choice as an imperative, for Putinism has been a disaster for the country. Russia’s survival will be directly dependent on its ability to deputinize and become, as many Russians put it, “normal.”

Consider what Putin did to Russia during his reign. He transformed a transitioning market economy into a stable statist project that rests on an alliance of his inner circle, the forces of coercion, the oligarchs, and organized crime. He institutionalized corruption, expropriated billions for himself and his allies, and eviscerated rule of law. He parlayed windfall profits from exploding energy prices into a vast military build-up that has terrified Russia’s neighbors, distorted the Russian economy, and left its people less well off. He inadvertently created a huge popular opposition to his rule among Russia’s professional classes and young people. He transformed Russia from a respected member of the international community into a rogue state that kills its opponents and tries to intimidate its neighbors. He lost Ukraine, the linchpin of his neo-imperialist dreams. He alienated the Czech Republic and Bulgaria, two of Russia’s staunchest friends. He energized NATO by providing it with the adversary it lacked after the end of the cold war, mobilized the United States against Russia, and reinforced the American relations with Europe. He befriended hopelessly corrupt, dysfunctional, and unstable dictatorships the world over. He forged a quasi-alliance with China, thereby enhancing Russia’s dependence on the one country that might have reason to appropriate those Russian territories inhabited by Chinese.

The list could easily be continued, but the moral is clear. Although Putin and his inner circle believe that they have saved Russia and made it great again, the fact is that he has weakened Russia to such a degree that its very survival as a coherent state may soon be in question. Indeed, twelve more years of Putinism could make Russia into a failed state.

At fault is less Putin the man than Putinism the system. Naturally, Putin was central to the emergence of Putinism, but, once created, Putinism acquired a life of its own. The system consists of several main strands: 1) the hyper-centralization of political power, 2) a cult of Putin’s hyper-masculine personality, 3) a neo-imperial policy toward Russia’s neighbors, 4) the attempt to make Russia a world-class great power, power, 5) paranoid style and an antidemocratic, chauvinist ideology, and 6) a rehabilitation and normalization of violence as a tool of internal and external politics. These six components hang together, forming a coherent syndrome that makes it possible to speak of a Putin system that resembles dictatorial authoritarian states and bears comparison with fascism.

These six elements emerged over time. In 1999, when Putin assumed power, one could only surmise that a lifelong agent of the notorious and bloody KGB would be no democrat, desire to restore Russia to its former strength, and view violence favorably. Sometime between his war against Georgia in 2008 and the Orange Revolution of 2004, however, most of these features had come to the fore and become mutually reinforcing. As a result, dismantling Putinism, like dismantling Hitlerism and Stalinism, will require that an entire system of rule and its ideological underpinnings be changed. That will be no easy task. But it will be imperative if post-Putin Russia truly wants to become both great and normal again.

Putin’s eventual departure—regardless of whether it is due to natural causes, a palace coup, or a colored revolution—will immediately put in question the first two components of the Putin system. His successor will not be able immediately to command as high a degree of hyper-centralization and create a persuasive cult of personality, especially if large swathes of the population brought down the regime and remain mobilized. If Russian history is a guide to the future, a vicious power struggle is likely to break out among his potential successors. It may take as long as five years for an heir apparent to emerge, but whoever he is, whether a mini-Putin or an anti-Putin, he will be in no position to sustain the Putin-centric system that Putin cultivated for some 20-30 years.

It is also quite likely that, at least in the immediate aftermath of Putin’s demise, his successor or successors will either abandon or moderate the third and fourth components of the Putin system, partly because the costs are huge (particularly for an economy the size of the Benelux countries), partly because a “new course” could look politically appealing, and partly because an attempt to emerge from rogue-state status and isolation could be advisable. Neo-imperialism and great-power status are policy choices and not ineluctable imperatives of Russian statehood. To be sure, geography and geopolitics do make a difference, sometimes an important one, but history demonstrates that Russia’s foreign-policy goals have always fluctuated—precisely because Russia has fluctuated in size and space, with the result that the Muscovy of the fourteenth century was a different geopolitical entity with different geopolitical interests from the Russian Empire of the eighteenth, the Soviet Union of the twentieth, and the Russian Federation of today or tomorrow.

This is not to say that a post-Putin Russia will inevitably turn into an ally of the West. But it is to say that the possibility of a de-escalation of tensions is at least as high as a continuation of the status quo. Because Russia has changed, and has been changing, since its beginnings in ancient Muscovy, there is no reason to think that it is doomed to be neo-imperialist, aggressive, and illiberal forever. Obviously, as a huge country, it will remain highly influential in Eurasia, but that influence can be benign or malign, depending on a slew of internal and external circumstances.

Although the post-Putin era is likely to look very different from its current incarnation under Putin, the fifth and sixth components of Putinism—a paranoid style, an antidemocratic, chauvinist ideology, and a normalization of violence—may cause trouble. What makes these components likelier to endure as a political culture is that they are shared by most Russian elites and by many ordinary Russians. Political cultures do change, of course, but in general slowly; rapid change may come about as a result of traumas such as wars and genocides. Despite the trauma of the Soviet Union’s collapse, a majority of Russians still view Stalin positively. A majority also looks favorably on Putin and quite likely will continue to do so after his departure.

What effect will their retrograde political culture have on deputinization? We don’t know, of course. All we can do is suggest that the stronger the culture is, the more it will serve as an obstacle to deputinizing Russia’s political system and foreign policy. That sounds like bad news, were it not for the fact that the politics and culture of the inhabitants of Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other major Russian cities are far more hostile to Putin and Putinism than those of the rest of the country. The demonstrations in Khabarovsk and in support of Aleksei Navalny are a case in point. And when it comes to major transformations of a country, it’s the views of the key cities that matter most.

In sum, post-Putin Russia is in for some big changes and chances are that they will serve to propel the country away from Putinism and toward some form of a more liberal, less aggressive, and more normal regime. The challenge before the West is to keep Putinism contained in Russia—which will require patience, a strong will, and a willingness and readiness to oppose Putin’s aggressions. For if Putin manages to impose Putinism on his non-Russian neighbors—Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, and Georgia—then deputinization will automatically assume the features of multiple national-liberation struggles and the outcome for Putin’s Russia could be, not a mellowing, but, as in the case of the USSR, collapse. Were that to transpire, all bets would be off, as the world would watch in horror as the largest country in the world descended into chaos.

 

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More Current Affairs

Apr 13th 2022
EXTRACTS" "Ukraine and Russia produce a substantial amount of grain and other food for export. Ukraine alone produces a whopping 6% of all food calories traded in the international market. At least it used to, before it was invaded by the world’s largest nuclear power." ...... "When it comes to cereals like wheat, corn, rice and barley, the big players talk about millions of metric tonnes, or MMTs. A single MMT of wheat contains about 3.4 trillion food calories,." ....."Ukraine produced about 80 MMT of grain (a category that includes wheat, corn and barley) in 2021, and is expected to harvest less than half of that this year. A shortfall of 40 MMT is enough missing calories that a country like the UK could only make it up by having everyone stop eating for three years. That’s the thing about tonnes of grain: a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’ve got a real issue on your plate."
Apr 11th 2022
EXTRACT: "I don’t even know the little girl’s name. All I do know is what a friend of a friend wrote on Viber: that her relative, a senior nurse in one of Kyiv’s hospitals, “saw in the morgue a child with 20 varieties of sperm on her small body.” Since this information was conveyed in a private conversation, there is no reason to doubt its veracity."
Apr 8th 2022
EXTRACT: "Russian society has so far failed to stop Putin, just as German society failed to stop Hitler. And so, like a poisoned chalice, that task has fallen to the West, as it did in 1939. The West must now treat Putin and his regime the same way that Winston Churchill treated Hitler: Don’t talk to him, just defeat him. Dead-enders such as Putin are too fanatical and desperate to be reliable negotiating partners."
Apr 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "From 1807 to 1814 on the Iberian peninsula, Napoleon had to fight Spanish, Portuguese and British armies while beset by ubiquitous, ferocious insurgents. He described this war as his “bleeding ulcer”, draining him of men and equipment. It is the west’s aim to make Ukraine for Putin what Spain was for Napoleon. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, Ukraine and Nato will continue to grind away at Russia’s army, digging away at that bleeding ulcer and prolonging Russia’s agony on the military front, as the west continues its parallel assault on its economy. If Putin’s plan is to proceed with the Korea model, he will fail. There is a strong possibility that Putin has only a limited idea of how badly his army is faring. So be it – he’ll find out soon enough that there is now no path for him to military victory."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Policymakers expected that the country would be able to secure its energy supply entirely from renewable sources, so they resolved to phase out coal and nuclear energy simultaneously. The last three of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants are set to be shut down this year." ---- ".... the share of wind and solar power in Germany’s total final energy consumption, which includes heating, industrial processing, and traffic, was a meager 6.7%. And while wind and solar generated 29% of the country’s electricity output, electricity itself accounted for only about a fifth of its final energy consumption." ----- "If Germany suddenly halted Russian gas imports, gas-based residential heating systems – on which half the German population, approximately 40 million people, rely – and industrial processes that rely heavily on gas imports would break down....."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "For Putin, the past that matters most is the one the dissident author and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exalted: the time when the Slavic peoples were united within the Orthodox Christian kingdom of Kievan Rus’. Kyiv formed its heart, making Ukraine central to Putin’s pan-Slavic vision. ---- But, for Putin, the Ukraine war is about preserving Russia, not just expanding it. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently made clear, Russia’s leaders believe that their country is locked in a “life-and-death battle to exist on the world’s geopolitical map.” That worldview reflects Putin’s longstanding obsession with works of other Russian emigrant philosophers, such as Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev, who described a struggle for the Eurasian (Russian) soul against the Atlanticists (the West) who would destroy it. ---- Yet Putin and his neo-Eurasianists seem to believe that the key to victory is to create the kind of regime those anti-Bolshevik philosophers most detested: one run by the security forces. A police state would fulfill the vision of another of Putin’s heroes: the KGB chief turned Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, is struggling to export last year’s harvest, and may be unable to produce much this year either. In addition, the war has caused a global fertiliser shortage, which will push up food prices around the world too. Coming at a time when the global pandemic had already increased food insecurity and depleted resources around the world, many countries may not be resilient to a major food crisis brought on by the war. Back-to-back global catastrophic events like this have not happened for close to 100 years." ----- "Another useful analogue is the case of Germany during the first world war. When war broke out in 1914, the German authorities had anticipated a short conflict – not too dissimilar to Russian assumptions a few weeks ago. Just like in Ukraine now, the first world war severely disrupted German farming."
Mar 31st 2022
EXTRACT: "The horrors of World War II – the death camps, slave labor, and inhumane experiments on people – produced a global commitment never to permit such crimes to be repeated. This began a transformation of international politics whereby appreciation of the value of every person’s life and dignity ensured that even most authoritarian governments at least paid lip service to human rights.  ----- But the Soviet Union and many of its successor states, particularly Russia, never internalized this change. More than three decades after the USSR collapsed, most post-Soviet countries are still governed according to the old “imperial” paradigm. So, it should come as no surprise that we are now witnessing a clash between fundamentally different sets of values and ultimate goals for statehood."
Mar 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Referencing past legacies as a justification for present-day political decisions is often effective – such appeals trigger emotional reflexes and contribute to thinking about politics in terms of rivalry and defence. The irony within the tragedy of the current situation is that Putin will assuredly go down in history as the figure that did more to unite the Ukrainian people (albeit against Russia) than any other in recent memory."
Mar 24th 2022
EXTRACT: " Despite the death and destruction that Russia rains down daily on them, the vast majority of Ukrainians are bullish about the future: 77% believe the country is moving in the right direction, 93% think they can beat back Russia, and 47% expect to win in the next few weeks.  Ukrainian policymakers are no less bullish, driving a hard bargain in negotiations with the Russians. Several factors account for this remarkable optimism."
Mar 21st 2022
EXTRACT: "As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, China’s role has been thrown into sharp relief. Prior to the war, some commentators suggested that China would openly side with Russia or seek to act as a mediator – so far Beijing appears to have resisted doing either. As Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the US, wrote recently in the Washington Post, Beijing has nothing to gain from this war, arguing “wielding the baton of sanctions at Chinese companies while seeking China’s support and cooperation simply won’t work”. Ambassador Qin also stressed that Beijing had no prior knowledge of the conflict,...."
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "The second source of Russian power is of course the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons would not deliver victory in a conventional war, but they could destroy a country in the blink of an eye. This brings us to a terrifying question: What will Putin do when he realizes that he cannot win his war in Ukraine by conventional means?"
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "An influential Shanghai-based academic commentator on international affairs, Hu Wei, recently advanced a cautionary argument that has been circulated widely in Chinese-language publications. In his commentary, which is unlikely to have been published without the approval of some of Xi’s senior courtiers, Hu wondered how Chinese communists would react if the war escalated beyond Ukraine, or if Russia was clearly defeated." ------- "For Hu, the answer for China’s leaders is simple. They should wash their hands of the relationship with Putin, ....."
Mar 12th 2022
EXTRACT: "Meanwhile, Xi seems to have realized that Putin has gone rogue. On March 8, one day after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had insisted that the friendship between China and Russia remained “rock solid,” Xi called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to say that he supported their peacemaking efforts."
Mar 7th 2022
EXTRACTS: "........Russia has been isolated by draconian Western sanctions that could devastate its economy for decades,...." ---- "Russia’s prospects are bleak, at best; without China, it has none at all. China holds the trump card in the ultimate survival of Putin’s Russia."
Mar 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "Although Ukraine’s armed forces are outnumbered by those of Russian President Vladimir Putin invading our country, we take heart from the growing support we are receiving from friends abroad. Nobody should forget that this is not just an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; it is an assault on the free world. ---- Putin has been at war with the free world for decades. "
Mar 2nd 2022
EXTRACT: "Moreover, with China sharing the Kremlin’s interest in containing the advance of liberal democracy around the world, Putin could count on the Chinese to provide an additional economic lifeline by purchasing Russian gas. But this new relationship will not be costless. As the world continues to divide into separate technological and economic blocs, Russia will become even more dependent on China, implying a loss of strategic autonomy. Russia may have a powerful military; but with a GDP similar to that of Spain and Italy, it is far from being an economic power."
Mar 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "The financial measures just announced against Russia are unprecedented for a country of its size. This of course means it’s impossible to predict exactly how their impacts will reverberate around the Russian – and global – economy. And we still need to see the exact details of the plan. But on their face they threaten the collapse of the Russian ruble, a run on Russian banks, hyperinflation, a sharp recession and high levels of unemployment in Russia, as well as turmoil in international financial markets."
Feb 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Putin apparently assumes that China will back him. But while he launched the invasion just weeks after concluding something akin to an alliance agreement with Xi in Beijing, Chinese officials’ reactions have been very distant with calls for “restraint.” Given Putin’s near-total reliance on China for support in challenging the US-led international order, lying to Xi would have no political or strategic advantage. That is what is so worrying: Putin no longer seems capable of the calculations that are supposed to guide a leader’s decision-making. Far from an equal partner, Russia is now on track to become a kind of Chinese vassal state."
Feb 25th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Russia’s ascent to global power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in numerous tragedies not only for the neighbors it subjugated and gradually absorbed, but also for its own people. China’s current leaders, in particular, should be mindful of this history, considering that imperial Russia seized more territory from China than from anyone else." ----- "Putin is taking Russia hurtling back toward the nineteenth century, in search of past greatness, whereas China is forging ahead to become the defining superpower of the twenty-first century. While China has achieved unprecedentedly rapid economic and technological modernization, Putin has been pouring Russia’s energy-export revenues into the military, once again cheating the Russian people out of their future."