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28.01.08
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The Task For The Successor
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Comment by Alexander Arkhangelsky
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There is no Template in Russian History for the Needed Changes
The departing master of the Kremlin continues to travel in the company of his prot?g? and rising political star Dmitry Medvedev. First, they went to the Bulgarian capital together. Now they are paying a visit to the Russian periphery. Medvedev grows more confident by the day, shedding, like a husk, his affected awkwardness, unease and diffidence. His road to power took a number of odd turns. In order to win, Medvedev had to shun the possibility of victory.
Sergei Ivanov, who could not conceal his burning desire to rule, has to pay for it now. Last week, he repented publicly by berating his feckless subordinates. The Global Navigation Satellite System (GLONASS), which was triumphantly presented to President Vladimir Putin at the end of last year, has not yet started working at full capacity. Regarding Medvedev, the people are silent and happy. More than 80 percent of voters like the successor, while 60 percent would vote for him if the elections were held next week.
Of course it would be nice if all Russians could remain silent and happy prior to voting in March since everyone wants to work together for a common end, at peace with the future and with the law. But bitter experience tells Russians to remain cautious. Only one thing is clear. Once again, there has been the chance to make political life more civilized and humane. The people have rested a little after the tumultuous 1990s; the state has accumulated some extra resources; the successor is sane; part of the elite realizes that it is impossible to keep postponing the resolution of our most urgent problems, to keep pretending that things are all right, that everything is good.
But soon it will be impossible to continue this pretending. The seven prosperous years of Russian history are over. The next seven years will be scanty. For the well-to-do, this will be a time of endless market fluctuations and unpredictable oil prices. For the poor, a time of price hikes. The most essential goods will become more expensive right after the elections, not because somebody wants to earn additional profit, but simply because bread and milk are becoming more expensive all over the world. This also pertains to oil and gas.
Even in better, more prosperous times, the leaders of the country could not control our secret services. We can only guess what might happen in a time when things are less certain, in a time when public discontent will spill out into the streets and turn to violence, when popular affection will mutate overnight into unforgiving hatred and when the mass-media mantra, “all is good, all is good, all is good,” will no longer be effective. In order to avoid disaster, the authorities will have to exchange the system of checks and balances for one of controlled violence, masterminded by a single person who won’t have second thoughts about using brute force.
Such a leader would be prepared to sacrifice human lives. Today nobody in a position of authority wants to do that. Therefore, it becomes much more likely that the successor will have to make critical decisions that will dramatically change the country.
The successor faces a daunting task. He has to carry out painful reforms in the most sensitive sectors: housing, pensions, the military. And he has to do this against a backdrop of inflation and in the wake of the mismanaged monetization reform. At the same time – slowly, but unflinchingly – he has to loosen the deathly grip of the state’s power structures on the society, which has only just started to come to life. But even as he does this, he must not offend or alienate the siloviki. He has to extinguish the meaningless conflicts with the West; to disband the militant youth groups without pushing them into the margins of political life; to set right the country’s geopolitical optics and to cure it of the pathological myopia, according to which tiny Georgia and Estonia were viewed as Russia’s most fierce enemies, while Venezuela and Iran were regarded as its friends; to prepare the country for a digital age in which the current primitive ideological control over the people will be technically impossible; to persuade Russia’s educated and successful minority to work for the country’s common good; to confront resurgent ethnic nationalism head-on without trying to stamp it out altogether or co-opting it for the state’s immediate or future needs; to provide Russia’s young talents with incentives not to flee their home country in search of a better life abroad; and most importantly, to help Russia regain a sense of dignity, cleansed of a superiority complex.
A single person cannot cope with such a task, even if he is backed by Vladimir Putin, even if the Duma takes his side and the siloviki back down. It is impossible to carry out this task within the current political framework, which is characterized by double-dealing and cynicism. One can only be successful in an atmosphere of mutual trust between the statists and the liberals, between moderate nationalists and Westernizers. Trust here does not mean unanimous consent; trust means that all parties involved are prepared to engage with each other in dialogue and to make compromises for the sake of their common homeland.
Is this altogether impossible? Does this look too much like a utopian depiction of political paradise? But remember that Russians have never before attempted to live as a single nation with opposites naturally living together in the same space. If we do not work together for the good of our land, if we do not retrieve the feeling of shared destiny, if we do not enter into a dialogue with each other – we will never be able to resolve the countless problems besetting our country. This holds true for all Russians, not just the elites. It often happens that in order to solve the problem that appears unsolvable, it is necessary to tackle an even greater and more complex issue. And for today's Russia, there are only two choices: the unpredictable future or the past, which is only too well known. |
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