Kotkin Explains Russia

The answer to the question of today’s talk, “Russia: toward democracy or dictatorship?” is “neither.” Russia is not a democracy, and it is not a dictatorship. Russia, like most countries of the world, has a ramshackle authoritarian system with some democratic trappings (some of which are meaningful). Russia is not in transition to or from anything. Russia is what it is. . . .

Putin’s regime falls far short of being a dictatorship-in the chaotic conditions of the dysfunctional Russian state and of Russia’s relatively open society-but Putin’s ruling strategy comes straight out of Dictatorship 101. To outsiders, the strategy looks like centralization of all power in a disciplined pyramid, but on the inside the strategy looks like making sure that the ruling “team,” far from being united, is at each other’s throats. Thus, “Kremlin Inc.” is a political system of surface stability but turmoil underneath. Its members compete incessantly, and in Russian politics, offense is the best defense, so they proactively go after each other’s property and people (in a so-called naezd) before waiting for rivals to go after them.

What keeps this divided, turbulent, unstable, misnamed Kremlin Inc. from spinning violently out of control is dependence on Putin. Remove that one piece and pandemonium breaks loose in full view, rather than remaining mostly hidden. But Putin has promised, many times, that he will not seek a third consecutive term as president, which the 1993 Constitution prohibits. Putin has made this frequent promise even though he could have kept quiet. He has done it inside and outside the country, in public and in private. Many talking head commentators speculate that Putin is going to create a crisis and then use the crisis to remain in power. In truth, he doesn’t need a crisis. He has something like an 80 percent approval rating-as elected officials go across the world, that’s mind-blowing this deep into a governing cycle. Putin can essentially do whatever he wants. He doesn’t need to violate the constitution. If he wants, the Duma will change the constitution in a heartbeat and he can have his third term, with broad public support. But he keeps saying publicly that he doesn’t want a third term.

Putin’s insistence that he is stepping down has been frightening Russian business, international business, and even many international politicians. These people are sincerely afraid that the president is actually going to step aside in March 2008. If he does, the factions of the supposed Kremlin Inc.-a bunch of scorpions in a bottle-will go at each other publicly. Some of them will refuse to be subordinated to a new person. Some will want to be the new person. Many insiders want Putin to remain, to avoid the uncertainty of a struggle to establish a new primus inter pares, or leading figure. To be sure, far from everyone hopes the president will stay, but Putin has gotten an enormous swath of Russia’s population to pray, literally, that he engineers a smooth “transition.” Because Russia’s political system is so fractious and dependent on a single person, however, anything can happen in March 2008. Anything except democracy and rule of law.

The part of Russia that is stable is the society. Russian society is enormously dynamic. According to professional studies by the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, something like 20-25 percent of Russian society qualifies as solidly middle class. Other studies-similarly measuring everything from level of education, foreign language knowledge, travel and abroad to income, lifestyle and, most important, property ownership-confirm this general picture. But the Russian middle class is something we hear too little about (unlike the middle class in, say, China or India). Instead, we hear about “oligarchs.” The latter number in the dozens, while the middle class numbers in the dozens of millions.

Russia’s middle class is not limited to the capital, although it’s biggest there. You see it in all the regional centers that have a dynamic economy. You see it in western Siberia, in St. Petersburg and in the north around St. Petersburg, in pockets of central Russia, and in some border areas. That doesn’t mean that the society has no poverty, that there aren’t deep problems like an overall decline of the population at all ages -down to 142 million, and still shrinking, despite the immigration. But the country has a dynamic, stable society, and it owns property. We tend to assume that there cannot be property ownership without rule of law. But if that were true, Chinese society or Russian society would not exist. But they do exist. There is no rule of law. But there is widespread ownership of property. For all the deep social problems-from drug-resistant TB to persistent alcoholism-Russian society is simultaneously a source of dynamism and stability.

In the 1990s, NATO expansion should have been defended on the grounds that it would increase the strength and capacity of NATO. In the event, the expansion did no such thing. On the contrary, you could argue that expansion has weakened NATO because you have all these militaries that were brought into NATO that don’t meet NATO specifications and have little to contribute. One key argument against NATO expansion in the 1990s was “It will anger the Russians and make them really mad at us, and they’ll do some bad things. So placate the Russians and don’t expand NATO.” I found this argument to be wrongheaded. (I was against NATO expansion, but I was against it because I thought it was bad for NATO.) But that’s policy under the bridge, as they say. Still, today when people say “Now Russia is flexing its muscles, it’s again trying to be involved in all regions of the world, NATO shouldn’t have expanded,” my response is that had there been no NATO expansion, we would likely still have what we see now in Russia: a revived, assertive, resentful power.

The overall picture in Russia, therefore, is, first, a false stability in the regime but actual instability there. The 2008 problem (presidential elections) is one in which everyone sees Putin as a solution but he himself may actually upend their expectations. Second, Russia has a dynamic middle-class society that is stable, and mostly apolitical. The middle-class in Russia understands that for now being apolitical is a winning strategy, and so it is deeply apolitical, to the disappointment of human rights and democracy activists. Third, the world will have to get used to the newly assertive Russia. Russia is not what it was in the 1990s, when it was free-falling, in an ongoing post-Soviet collapse, but rather it is a strategic power in a very important location, with its own state interests, interests that are going to conflict with others’ interests sometimes. Still, there is no need to be alarmed. The problem with viewing Russia as a major threat is that the threat is mostly to itself, not to the outside world.

Russia is stepping on a rake in almost all foreign policy arenas. Russia is also remarkably friendless. The only true friend Russia has is U.S. foreign policy, which is enormously effective at increasing anti-Americanism. The anti-Americanism is there in the world already; U.S. foreign policy doesn’t create it. But the goal of American foreign policy should be to decrease anti-Americanism. Instead, Washington seems adept at increasing anti-Americanism. This is the basis of much of Russian diplomacy. Everywhere that anti-Americanism is increasing, Russia sees an opportunity for itself to push into the conversation and be involved in adjudicating global issues. So a policy of diminishing anti-Americanism is actually a policy of diminishing Russian influence in the world. Still, some considerable degree of Russian power-like Chinese or Indian or Japanese or German power-will continue to be felt.