The Putin
Does Putinism require Vladimir Putin?Putin announced today that he’s prepared to stand beside Dmitri Medvedev as his prime minister. He also says there’s no plan to transfer presidential powers to the prime minister's office.
I personally think that Putin will exercise much more power than any Russian prime minister in the post-Soviet period after the March elections. After all, he only said that there are no plans to change the law – Medvedev needn’t formally change any rules to allow his mentor to govern, for instance, the ultra-powerful military and intelligence services.
So let’s take Putin at his word and consider whether Putin is a requirement for the current system to go on.
The prevailing wisdom is yes. Putin failed to build up Russian stable institutions of governance during his almost eight-year tenure, but instead erected power around himself, the argument goes. In an editorial Saturday, my former newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, wrote, “Putinism hangs on a single man.”That's an enormous categorical assumption. And I think it's wrong. Putin did build up an institution, and it’s hiding in plain sight: The people all around him, in public and behind closed doors, who run the Kremlin, Gazprom, Rosneft and the rest of the economy are that institution. Heirs to the fortunes wrested in part from Russia's powerful oligarchs of the 1990s, they aren't going anywhere.
Putin has just bequeathed one of the most powerful parts of that institution to Medvedev, and that's his political brain trust. Russia's Vedomosti newspaper says Medvedev's presidential campaign will be run by Putin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin and possibly also his main strategist, prince of darkness Vladislav Surkov.
Yes, I think my Moscow friend had a point. Though it can seem otherwise, what's been built up in Russia is bigger than one man. Still, Putin will be around a long time. From close in, he can ensure that his successor is getting along well. He can reassure the many people counting on this institution for their fortunes. He can continue to help balance these forces. And he can step in forcefully should Medvedev unexpectedly falter.
Many people call Putin’s practices “Putinism.” So what shall we denote the institutional proper noun for those who practice Putinism?
I suggest The Putin.
Photo: asphaltasphaltRights: Creative Commons
Labels: Caspian, central asia, kremlin, medvedev, oil book, Putin, Russia, russia book
10 Comments:
Given the Russian language's lack of articles, the institutional proper noun should be, not "The Putin", but...ahem..."Putin." And, like the WSJ, I think that's probably right. To say there is a large gang of individuals highly dependent upon his authority is not the same thing as saying governance has been institutionalized. The reality, as the Journal argues, is otherwise. Having stripped authority from local and regional governors and legislative bodies, and then from the Duma, Putin is about to do the same to the presidency itself. In other words, sovereign authority has in fact been de-institutionalized in Russia, and personalized. The people running Gazprom, Rosneft and the rest that you cite are simply courtiers dependent to a greater or lesser extent on the sovereign.
Welcome back FH. Yes the pronoun it seems could be used only in languages with articles.
That said, I think you have walked around the exercise.
The question is not whether Putin created a gang (of course he did). It's rather whether Putinism is so structured and powerful now to have become an organ in itself. That is, is Putinism sufficiently organic to exist outside of Putin himself?
What if Putin disappears? Will Putinism survive?
I'm not getting cute here FH. Let's think from THEIR perspective. What do Putin and the folks around him think they are doing? I'd venture to say that it's creating an institution of long-standing.
Thanks again and best.
What do young Aliyev and his gang in Baku think they're doing. Or Kim Jong-il in N. Korea, for that matter. I make no comment (here) about the relative worthiness of any of these guys to run their countries. But they are all, along with Putin, in the Great Leader mould. If Putin really felt he'd built a sustainable institution, with no risk that its inheritors might turn on him subsequently, I think he would just go. He can't.
FH: you are arguing my point. The Aliyev, Kim Jong-il and Putin institutions have something -- they are sustainable as long as the current constituent parts (not a single individual) is around.
Aliyev's case is illustrative. Few believed he would survive after his father's death; most gave him six months at the outset. But Heydar Aliyev had created a balance of forces -- meaning a sharing of spoils -- that existed outside his own running the show. In his case, he created it in a way that Ilham is the essential ingredient to making the whole work for all parties. If it were not in everyone's interest for him to be president, he wouldn't be. Together, they are an organism.
I agree with your point on sustainability -- we aren't talking long-term here. Putin's guys think perhaps through 2030. That, as you suggest, is a short-sighted view --
what will keep Russia, Azerbaijan and North Korea sustainable for the subsequent decades?
But it is inaccurate to state that the system relies on a single individual. It does now -- Putin has to be around to nurture his creation. But at some point he intends to stand back. His "institution" will be around for awhile, at least if all its constituents have a say in the matter.
Think Deng.
Thanks to Bob Amsterdam for the following link to a highly relevant piece by David Satter: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=14461&R=116312D27
As Satter tells Amsterdam:
"Given the overt signs of tension in the Russian leadership, it’s a little premature for anyone to draw conclusions about the succession. Unexpected events are still possible. This is really a system without rules, and provocation is not out of the question."
Apologies. I should have included a link to Bob's piece: http://www.robertamsterdam.com/2007/12/david_satter_russia_incorporat.htm
This piece by David Satter, one of the most admired voices on Russia, is sensible and accurate. The house could fall down. Putin remains -- and may always be -- an essential day-to-day player.
But I fear we may be conflating an evaluation of the virtues of institutionalized Putinism with the fact of its existence and its longevity.
By western standards The Putin is not virtuous. Bu it does exist. And it may be around for a long time.
I also think that Satter's piece is making too much of the infighting. All these systems have their murders. There is so much at stake. Look at the politics from Kazakhstan west through Georgia and up into Ukraine.
Steve - What exactly is "institutionalized Putinism"? What is Putinism? Just because someone rules, is there always an ism attached? Was there a Henry VIIIism?
Putin rules because he can. Abramovich, Berezovsky and a few others wheeled him in as their best possible candidate acceptable to the spooks. At the time, they didn't realize how right they were. He was more than acceptable.
Now he and those close to him also need to find a successor. They've obviously decided to prolong the search, and he'll stick around as a failsafe mechanism in the meantime.
Is this institutionalized governance? Call it what you will, but most people would call it feudalism. Now THAT may be around for a long time, but it's not something warranting a new label.
FH: I think we are pretty far adrift from satire, which is the original piece.
However, as you know I did not invent the term Putinism, and that political scientists are using it to describe the style of leadership that might follow his.
I've merely pointed out that some of these politologs, as the Russians call them, may be getting a bit high-falutin in their search to describe what is missing in Russia (and elsewhere). As we've seen by experience, even if there were powerful institutions, they wouldn't resemble the western models in practice.
In the end, we are arguing the same thing.
Perhaps to be picked up in the morning.
Best Steve
Steve - Yeah, you're right. I'm taking it all too seriously, and no doubt getting a bit too high-falutin' myself. And I do understand that we basically agree.
But this issue -- the nature of power in Russia – is important. Given the degree to which we're having to speculate about it, it's clear we don't know enough about how it works, what its limits are and, critically, how those who wield it protect themselves from their successors. Is it a system which can be perpetuated without destroying its creators? I just don't think we know. I don't think they know.
All the best
Fred
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