The Snow Fronde
By Israel Shamir
After interminably long delay, the
grey Moscow heavens were at long last generous with
snow, dispensing heaps and heaps of the white stuff,
turning cars into snow mountains and making sidewalks
impassable. This is a nice time of year: bare trees are
covered with white foliage, skating rinks flash with
skaters, girls sport their favorite minks. Snow
mitigates the bitter frost, and kids are busy throwing
snowballs. The big and rather well-tempered demo on
Saturday Dec 24 was probably the last splash of public
activity before snow-bound Russia enters its long
Christmas recess for some three weeks. Usually Russians
prepare for New Year's starting with Western Christmas
Day and then stay away from work skiing, boozing, or
roaming overseas until their peculiar Old New Year feast
in mid-January.
The big demo confirmed a new Fronde
in the heart of Russia. The original Fronde was a series
of anti-absolutist uprisings caused by the personal
ambitions of discontented nobles; and by the grievances
of the people against the financial burdens in France
that lasted from 1648 to 1653. The Frondeurs came
from various social strata and at times pursued
divergent goals, says the encyclopaedia, and this
definition fits Russia's new Snow Fronde to a tee. The
Russian Frondeurs are a varied lot:
-
bright young men and women
looking for more participation in the run of their
country;
-
sincere professionals worried by
the lack of development;
-
anarchists and the gay community;
-
political figures from the 90's,
once defeated and trashed by Putin and now looking
for revanche;
-
like the Fronde of old, this on
included princes and nobles: ex-president Mikhail
Gorbachev (he did not come to the rally for health
reasons), ex-Deputy Prime Minister Nemtsov and
ex-Prime Minister Kasyanov;
-
professional rebels like Edward
Limonov and
Sergey Udaltsov;
-
best-selling writers Boris Akunin
and Dmitry Bykov;
-
oligarchs Prokhorov and
Berezovsky of London;
-
Vanity Fair, high fashion and
gossip personalities Xenia Sobchak and Bozhena
Rynska;
-
nationalists and racialists
Vladimir Tor and Constantine Krylov;
-
and last but not least powerful new protest leader
Alexei Navalny, whose rabble-rousing unnerved more
timid protesters.
The most senior attendee and speaker at the rally was
ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, recently fired by
Medvedev. Mr Kudrin is a favourite of the IMF and of the
US Administration, the man who kept Russia's savings in
US treasury notes. He is competing for the title of
“most hated” with Anatoly Chubais, the man behind
Yeltsin’s privatisation and fake auctions. He is a
serious, powerful man, and his presence was an important
sign to young and not-so-young protesters alike. He can
be compared to Gadhafi’s Minister of Justice Mustafa
Abdel-Jalil, the most senior Libyan minister to switch
sides and legitimise the rebellion.
Now the authorities have a longish
time-out for month or two, until the revving up of
the March Presidential elections. Nor have they wasted
their time: after the unexpectedly large turnout at the
previous demo on December 10, protesting the results of
the Parliamentary elections, a flurry of government
activity was unleashed. This counterattack by Putin
consisted of promising more democracy, more
anti-corruption measures and more political manoeuvring
while blaming the US for the current unrest.
The administration took a few
practical steps:
·
the new Parliament was
sworn in, effectively closing off discussion of
electoral fraud;
·
almost all alternative
candidates for the Presidency were blocked and
de-listed, leaving the field to tired old politicians
with one exception:
·
Playboy oligarch
Prokhorov was given green light to run for the
presidency in hopes of placating and involving the
pro-Western electorate, eliminating the possibility of
electoral boycott;
·
the Russian envoy to
NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, was brought home and appointed
Deputy Prime Minister for Defence. Rogozin is a more
nationalist voice, and his appointment is supposed to
placate Russian anti-Western nationalists.
·
Vladislav Surkov, the éminence
grise of the Kremlin, became the head of the
presidential administration, a position of power. Surkov
is the smartest man at the top, and his stratagems will
be needed and heeded.
·
A dirty trick was
played on Boris Nemtsov, a leader of the Snow Frondeurs
– his phone was hacked and his calls were recorded and
made available on the web. They were extremely outspoken
and included curses heaped on his ostensible partners.
·
The post-election
campaign peaked with Putin’s live marathon TV
question-and-answer show. This time Putin broke his own
record by answering questions by Russians for over four
and half hours. He did not hesitate to answer even the
most awkward questions by callers from all over the vast
country – from the Pacific to the Baltic coast.
·
A few days later
incumbent president Medvedev made a speech to the nation
promising more democracy, a lowering of the electoral
threshold and an easing of restrictions on party
registration.
·
In a widely reported
meeting with the energy sector, Putin promised to
uproot corrupt officials and put a stop to their
practice of passing profitable contracts to their sons
or spouses.
Putin promised to make state
governors electable by popular vote instead of
appointing them, as is the rule now. He reminded people
that when state governors had been elected in the past,
these positions were snapped up by the oligarchs or
their protégés, who were often connected to organised
crime. Perhaps true, but at the moment all (but one) of
the appointed governors belong to the United Russia
party, and this does not seem right or fair. So the
promised freedom to elect governors (with some caveats)
went over well with the people. This was reiterated by
President Medvedev in his speech to the nation a few
days later.
Though the claim of fraudulent
elections has been somewhat exaggerated, Putin promised
to install a web camera at each polling station to
eliminate the possibility of fraud. Putin was rather
dismissive of the rally, saying that the white ribbons
of the participants looked like condoms – and some began
to style the emerging movement the “Condom Revolution”.
Putin answered the two questions I
asked, too ( probably they had been posted by many
others as well). He promised to stop one of the most
insidious developments in modern Russia: the
proliferation of offshore trusts and companies and their
active participation in Russia’s daily life.
These companies rip off the citizenry, pay no taxes and
busily take their ill-gotten gains away to tax-free
havens. Usually they operate the Enron-style racket
familiar to Americans : they take over existing systems
and fleece the
customers.
The weekly
Russian Reporter
published a story about a Cyprus-based offshore company
which took over municipal heating for a small Urals
township of Pervouralsk. They bought heat at a fixed
price from the producer and charged triple that price to
the customer. The Cyprus company belongs to oligarch Mr.
Victor Vexelberg who was able to ensure that their bid
for the contract would be accepted. Vladimir Putin
mentioned many similar cases of high-ranking state
officials who grant profitable contracts to offshore
companies closely connected to their friends or
relatives.
He also says he does not intend to raise the taxes or
make them progressive – like a right-wing utopia, Russia
has a flat rate (15%) tax. He also refused to deal with
the hated oligarchs. Putin openly admitted that they
obtained their assets by subterfuge and theft, but he
said it can’t be taken back. This was a big
disappointment for many listeners. Still, if Putin will
implement what he promised: restrict offshore companies
and give more power to the electorate, the bottom line
of the rallies will be positive. The authorities should
be pushed, otherwise they do not move. For this reason
I, for one, see these rallies as a positive
development.
Meanwhile, the parties called their supporters to
participate in separate demos on December 18; all – from
the Communists to the moderate Yabloko – had little
success with attendance about three thousand max.
Apparently people are not in the mood to join street
democracy; or perhaps they are not happy with these old
parties either.
Most probably there will be a Christmas recess timeout,
but trouble will come to the fore in March, if not
sooner. Ordinary Russians outside Moscow are quietly
accepting Putin without much enthusiasm, but his
position in Moscow is not secure. The top men of the
Fronde are well connected with wealthy and powerful
insiders who dislike Putin’s regim; they feel that he
limits their ambitions. They would like to have more.
It's not like they have too little: Russia is awash with
millionaires and billionaires, but they want to rule
too. This new super-rich class has its
representatives in the Kremlin, and apparently they have
working arrangements with state-owned and private-owned
media. Some Russian observers connect incumbent
president Medvedev with this submerged group; others see
Mr Prokhorov as its preferred leader.
While a plurality of voters voted for communists, the
people in power have quite different desires. In 1990,
the people who destroyed communism and the Soviet Union
were leading members of its own party cadres; it is
possible that the Putin regime will be undone in turn by
its own nomenclatura. This is likely to happen if
Putin fails to seize the initiative.
Some of the Putin regime's defences, namely the United
Russia party and its youth movements, appear weak. The
new structure, the Popular Front, is still untried.
People do not know how serious Putin is about power.
Putin’s true test will be in
deeds, not words.
If the heads of the hated and allegedly corrupt
officials (including Mr Anatoly Chubais) were to roll,
if the offshore companies were to be forced to reveal
its real owners and pay taxes, if resources were taken
away from the oligarchs and re-nationalised, people
would feel they have a reason to defend Putin. As things
now stand, though the Snow Fronde (aka “condom
revolutionaries”) are not well known outside of Moscow,
people in general would passively accept the fall of
Putin, just as they previously accepted the fall of the
Tsar and of Gorbachev, or indeed, as Alexandre Pouchkine
makes the point in his Boris Godunov (now made
into one helluva film), as they typically acquiesce to
the fall of any ruler.
Language editing: Ken Freeland