ALEXEI NIKOLSKY/AFP/GETTY IMAGES - Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu (R) arrive for a meeting of senior military officials in Moscow on Feb. 27, 2013.
A nervous Russian elite is wary as Putin transforms his political edifice
By Will Englund,
MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin’s steady and seemingly solid political structure, under pressure from within and without, is undergoing a renovation that could remake the whole edifice, if it doesn’t crack open first. Few seem to understand how this will turn out, or what their places will be in it when it’s done.Ever since street protests broke out in December of 2011, rattling the ruling United Russia party just as Putin was preparing to retake the presidency, there have been widespread expectations that the system here would have to change. Now it’s happening, most obviously with almost daily public exposures of corruption and chiseling schemes, which for years were ignored.
The highly publicized investigations may be mostly for show, but they have left the political top rung nervously trying to discern the message and, analysts agree, figure out what the new rules are. Coupled with this is a sharp turn inward, away from the West, that promises to force some hard choices among an up-to-now comfortable cohort.
That suggests risks for Putin, as well — depending on how the people around him eventually make those choices.
Broadly speaking, the Kremlin appears to be dropping the most egregious offenders over the side, like so much excess ballast. An Olympic official whose own construction company was over budget by 900 percent on the construction of a ski jump, and way behind schedule, was exposed by Putin himself on national television. A member of the state Duma, Vladimir Pekhtin, was let go when he couldn’t come up with a satisfactory explanation for the undeclared Miami properties in his name.
Pekhtin, according to Dozhd TV, resigned his seat only after a meeting inside the Kremlin that lasted until 2 a.m. His departure — soon followed by those of three others, including a member of the upper house — appeared to send an especially strong signal: that the nationalist fervor Putin is stirring up comes with teeth, and it’s time for those who want to keep in his favor to remember the motherland, and bring that one foot that’s been out the door back inside.
With the most recent Levada Center poll showing 54 percent of the public disapproving of the government’s performance, Putin is demanding loyalty from those around him.
One way to ensure that loyalty is to cut off their access to financial security in the West, Tatyana Stanovaya, head of the analysis department at the Center for Political Technologies here, wrote in an essay for the group’s Web site.
But that changes the deal that for a decade has guided the upper echelon, said Gleb Pavlovsky, a prominent political consultant who was ousted from the Kremlin nearly two years ago. Obeisance to Putin meant his loyalists could have their pickings.
In fact, he said, “our ruling class is loyal to the extent that it is stealing.”
There was protection for those who went along, but now that protection has been drawn back for some, and the rest, feeling the heat from above, don’t know where the red lines are anymore.
‘Terrible revelations’
In November, a criminal investigation that involved the defense minister — unpopular with the generals but a longtime close associate of Putin’s — suddenly burst into the open. Putin let the probe evolve — and the minister, Anatoly Serdyukov, lost his job — and then it bogged down. Serdyukov had powerful opponents inside the Kremlin, among the “siloviki,” or those with a background in the security services. Putin may be keeping Serdyukov free from indictment, Pavlovsky said, so as to be sure that the siloviki don’t entirely surround him.
Serdyukov, implicated along with his mistress, has been called in for repeated questioning but dangles without charges. This doesn’t entirely reassure those at a similar level.
Naturally, the self-preserving instinct kicks in. “Every day,” Pavlovsky said of Putin, “he gets these terrible revelations. If he believed them all, he’d have to fire everyone or imprison them. They’re all accusing each other not only of theft but of espionage, of being American spies. He suspects them all, but he doesn’t understand the degree of rot.”
This sums up one of the main challenges facing Putin. His grip is not absolute. Factions within the Kremlin vie for supremacy, while Russia’s vast bureaucracy looks out, primarily, for itself. He has his own minefields to deal with.
Another unpopular former minister, Yelena Skrynnik, who was the agriculture chief until last year, has also been named in a corruption investigation. But in her case, too, prosecutors have been moving slowly, said Lilia Shevtsova, of the Carnegie Moscow Center, as if waiting for a signal from on high that hasn’t yet come.
No backward glances
Yet while these graft cases remain open and unresolved, two members of a presidential human rights council, appointed by then-President Dmitry Medvedev, have also come under official harassment, by police in one instance. Their apparent offense was to prepare a report last year, at Medvedev’s request, which found that no crimes had been committed in the notorious Yukos case. That was the 2003 crackdown that sent the oil baron Mikhail Khodorkovsky to prison and that cemented Putin’s grip on power.
The message now, said Kirill Rogov, who studies politics at the Gaidar Institute, is that there will be no turning back, no re-examination, no question of Putin’s control stemming from the case that was crucial to the creation of his “vertical of power” political system.
Plenty of people who prospered under the previous set-up won’t be eager to follow Putin into new territory, with its fundamentalism and xenophobia. Shevtsova, who has been sharply critical of Putin for years, said that the country’s leading business tycoons will tire of his leadership and eventually find a way to replace him.
But Putin may be betting that he can benefit from stirring up a new contentiousness in Russian politics. (This is a widely held belief, most forcefully put forward in an essay by Alexander Rubtsov, head of the Center for the Study of Ideological Processes, under the Russian Academy of Sciences.)
The president is not afraid of “catastrophes,” Pavlovsky said. He believes he came to power because of the catastrophe of the Boris Yeltsin years. Some stormy drama, of his own devising, may be beckoning.
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One of Russia's most important contemporary authors, Mikhail Shishkin, has pulled out of representing Russia in a major international literary event because he does not want to be the voice of "a country where power has been seized by a corrupt, criminal regime [and] where the state is a pyramid of thieves".
Shishkin, who has won Russia's three main literary awards including the Russian Booker, travelled with the Federal Agency for Press and Mass Communications to be part of its showcase of Russian writers at Book Expo America in 2012, one of the biggest publishing events of the year. A return to the book fair in 2013 would have cemented relationships with American publishers, readers and booksellers.
Shishkin initially accepted the invitation, but has now changed his mind, "not because 'my schedule doesn't permit it', but out of ethical considerations", he has written in a letter to the agency.
"Russia's political development, and the events of last year in particular, have created a situation in the country that is absolutely unacceptable and demeaning for its people and its great culture," writes Shishkin. "What is happening in my country makes me, as a Russian and a citizen of Russia, ashamed. By taking part in the book fair as part of the official delegation and taking advantage of the opportunities presented to me as a writer, I am simultaneously taking on the obligations of being a representative of a state whose policy I consider ruinous for the country and of an official system I reject."
He wrote that "a country where power has been seized by a corrupt, criminal regime, where the state is a pyramid of thieves, where elections have become farce, where courts serve the authorities, not the law, where there are political prisoners, where state television has become a prostitute, where packs of impostors pass insane laws that are returning everyone to the Middle Ages – such a country cannot be my Russia".
Shishkin wants instead to represent "another Russia, my Russia, a country free of impostors, a country with a state structure that defends the right of the individual, not the right to corruption, a country with a free media, free elections, and free people," he wrote in his letter.
The move, he said, was his alone, and had not been made in consultation with other writers invited to New York.
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Shishkin's UK publisher Quercus, which has just released the first of the author's novels to be published in the UK, The Light and the Dark, after acquiring it at last year's London Book Fair, said it supported his stance "absolutely".
"It's a question of conscience to him and his withdrawal is a serious act as it means he will no longer be promoted as one of their outstanding writers – despite the numerous literary prizes he's been awarded," said spokesperson Nicci Praca. "He's lucky because after many years of trying he's finally found both an American publisher as well as a UK one … but had he not secured publishers in the two most respected markets he would effectively be doing himself a disservice. And the question needs to be asked – what happens to those who don't have the luxury of having US or UK publishers and who are trying to break out into the English market?"
Authors' rights organisation International PEN also supported Shishkin's move. "Mikhail Shishkin's clear, thoughtful and principled stand highlights the challenges and choices writers face in Russia today. PEN International stands in solidarity with his desire to see 'another Russia', one that respects freedom of expression," said executive director Laura McVeigh.
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Targeted arrests, propaganda films, increased fines – nothing has yet brought an end to corruption in Russia. Now, the Kremlin is seeking to ban officials from using certain examples of apparently corruption-inducing language in its bid to overcome the endless scourge.
"Thank you doesn't butter my bread," "What are we going to do?" and "The question is difficult to solve, but possible" are among those terms that the ministry of labour and social security has recommended banning in a document published this week.
Other terms include: "You need a weightier argument," and the ubiquitous "dogovorimsya", which translates roughly as: "We'll sort it out."
The document also advises officials to avoid certain subjects when dealing with the public, including their low wages, relatives' unemployment and "the desire to acquire this or that property, receive this or that service, go on a tourist tour".
Corruption is a centuries-old problem in Russia, ingrained in its culture and its language. Nineteenth-century writers such as Nikolai Gogol poked fun at the problem with dark humour.
It continued in Soviet times, when Russians were expected to brings gifts – alcohol, chocolate, flowers – to everyone from doctors to teachers.
Under Vladimir Putin, corruption has grown to astronomical heights, infecting every aspect of life and growing ever more expensive for average Russians, who are expected to pay thousands of pounds in bribes to everyone from traffic police to tax officials. Government critics have highlighted corruption scandals reaching Putin's inner circle, and the president himself.
Russia ranked 133 out of 174 on Transparency International's corruption perceptions index last year – putting it well below the other emerging markets countries with which it hopes to compete.
Putin has devoted dozens of speeches to rooting out corruption. He has never addressed corruption accusations levelled against him, including the alleged existence of a lavish hidden palace on the Black Sea.
Critics have approached a recent Kremlin anti-corruption campaign with suspicion. Several MPs have resigned in recent weeks after it emerged that they owned property abroad. Putin has signalled his approval for a draft law that would ban Russian officials from keeping their funds in foreign bank accounts.
The labour ministry document is addressed to officials of all levels.
It fails to list all of the common terms associated with corruption in Russia, missing out such gems as: "We need to add legs [money] to your document."
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