Foreboding of Storm
By Israel Shamir
Medvedev vs. Putin
The Arab Rebellion has polarized
Russia: some dream that the Spirit of Tahrir will visit
Moscow, even as others hope for a NATO crusade to spread
Western values all the way to the Volga; yet a third lot
prays fervently that nothing will change, now or ever.
The recent Russian abstention in the UN Security Council
has split the elites and made the growing rift visible
at last.
President Dmitri Medvedev has
declared Kaddafi persona non grata. He supported
the proposal to transfer Libya’s case to the ICC; he
then ordered his Ambassador in the Security Council to
abstain. A few days later, ex-strongman Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin roundly criticised Medvedev’s compliance;
he called the Western intervention “a new crusade”, and
suggested that the Western leaders should “pray for
their souls and ask the Lord’s forgiveness” for the
bloodshed. Medvedev shot back with a meaningless “don’t
you dare to speak of crusades” comment, and the pundits
made a lot of mileage from this exchange, eager to see
first light between the twain. Before this the President
and the PM had behaved like Siamese twins. Now it seems
they begin to pull apart.
We cannot know what Dmitri Medvedev’s
actual political views are, but in recent months he has
been promoted (by a clique of his advisers) as a
pro-Western and pro-liberal alternative to Putin. Such a
vision fits the traditional Russian duality of
pro-Western vs. Native thinking epitomised by
Turgenev and Dostoyevsky; to wit, Russia has always been
part of Europe and yet Russia has always set herself
apart. While this might drive a lesser species
schizophrenic, the Russians have memorialised this
health-giving tension in the two-headed eagle of their
coat-of-arms. There is the native head that identifies
itself with the non-European world and is strictly
against the Libyan war, and then there is the
pro-Western head that wants to collaborate with European
powers and shares the European system of values,
including those that have resulted in the bombardment of
Libya.
It is very possible that election
time will see Putin challenge Medvedev for the
Presidency. Will it be a choice between (a) An
independent, sovereign Russia going its own way, and (b)
Russia as a massive oil pipeline guarded by yes-men? So
say Putin’s followers. Medvedev’s clique declares that
the choice is between (a) Russia as a legitimate member
of the civilised world, and (b) A rogue Russia lost in
the wilderness, like Kaddafi’s Libya.
So far so good, at the very least it
sounds like a real choice; but there is a catch: the
double eagle is not a real beast. It is only a dream.
Putin is not really pro-native, and Medvedev has not
really sold his soul to the West. Both pretend to be
what they are hardly are.
If Putin were a real supporter of
Russian independence, Russia would not keep its money
invested in US shares and securities. If Putin really
cared about the future of Russia, the profits from the
sale of Russian oil would go to repair the country’s
infrastructure, not simply enrich a few oligarchs. The
storybook Putin would never allow Russia’s new-found
wealth to drain away into the pockets of Londoners like
Mr. Abramovich and his Chelsea football team.
On the other hand, if Medvedev were a
real supporter of Western values, his police would not
disperse every demonstration, and his electoral
commissions would not block opposition parties from
entering the fray. He certainly does not seem to be
trying too hard to allow real competition into Russian
politics.
Never forget that Medvedev is Putin’s
creation, and his ability to stand alone is as yet
unproven. That is why so many Russians doubt the
sincerity of their low-key, high profile confrontation.
The substitution of orchestrated media events in place
of real, competitive elections has condemned Russians to
demo-cracy: the demo version. Despite having an
unrestrained freedom of speech and a near total absence
of repression, Russians are unable to elect their rulers
according to their own desires. They are free to speak,
but their speeches cannot be translated into effective
political action.
The man at the helm in the Kremlin
isn’t elected by the general populace but is selected by
insiders, as it was in Brezhnev’s days. The rule over
post-Soviet Russia passes from leader to leader by some
elite arrangement rubber-stamped by a visibly fake
popular vote. Yeltsin came to power by a coup d’état and
then used tanks against the elected parliament after
being impeached. In 1996, he falsified the elections
beyond anything in Russia’s history. After that, Yeltsin
passed the power to Putin, and Putin has more or less
transferred it to Medvedev. The only question left to
the pundits in Moscow is whether Putin will allow
Medvedev to run again or whether he has decided to take
the steering wheel back. Pro-Western liberals would love
to see Medvedev lock Putin up and run alone. They are
afraid of Putin, but they are even more afraid of free
elections with their unpredictable results. They prefer
succession.
The Grey Eminence
The people who arrange succession are
called political technologists, and they are a
breed apart. In Russia they have wedded the brain of
Karl Rove with the brute force of the Teamsters. Russian
political technologists were described for a Western
audience by Andrew Wilson when he
wrote: “Post-Soviet political technologists see
themselves as political meta-programmers, system
designers, decision-makers and controllers all in one,
applying whatever technology they can to the
construction of politics as a whole.” Ivan Krastev
explained: “A political consultant works for one of
the parties in an election and does his best to help
that party win; the political technologist is not
interested in the victory of his party but in the
victory of ‘the system’. In other words, political
technologists are those in charge of maintaining the
illusion of competitiveness in Russian politics.”
The use of political technology in
the place of real politics has begun to make Russians
extremely cynical and fatalistic: whatever move we
make, they have already planned for it and it will be
only they who will enjoy the fruits. Russians have
begun to believe that political technologists are
practically omnipotent, and this belief has made them
very powerful indeed. For this reason, the
éminence
grise
of Russia is neither priest nor oligarch, but a
political technologist named
Vladislav Surkov, a gifted writer and a poet of
Russian-Jewish-Chechen stock.
Some observers consider him to be the real power behind
the cardboard figures of Putin the strongman and
Medvedev the liberal. This is the view presented in the
bestselling novel
Virtuoso by Alexander Prochanov, a man with some
first-hand knowledge of Surkov - a rarity for the great
man is media shy. There is a description of Surkov in
Wikileaks cable 10MOSCOW184, and we
attach this
yet-unpublished cable to this article.
A stage production based on Surkov’s
novel Okolonolya (“About Zero”) is now enjoying
an extremely successful run in the best Moscow theatres,
and is directed by one of the best Russian directors (Kirill
Serebrennikov). At $100 per seat, it is sold out for
months in advance. I have seen it - and it is scary, in
the Tarantino and
Hostel style, but Tarantino never meddled in
American politics. In the novel and in the play, Surkov
contrasts the omnipotence of some people with the total
impotence of the rest of us. Dmitri Bykov tipped his hat
to the writer in his new play The Bear, when he
says to the protagonist: “I can do with you whatever I
wish.”
This perfect wave of political
technologists, oligarchs, and former security officials
has derailed every attempt to bring real democracy into
Russian politics. This is a very common complaint of
Russian democrats (as liberal Westernisers are
called here). However, they rarely admit that there is
one reason behind all these political technologies, one
reason why the Russians are not allowed to practice
political freedoms as they wish and deserve: without all
these tricks, the Communists and other indigenous forces
would regain a foothold in Russia.
The Communist leader Gennady Zuganov
already said he will run for President in 2012, and a
very popular
Youtube (utilising 2012, the disaster movie
trailer) called this vote “an alternative to the
catastrophe”. They are still the biggest opposition
party, but people doubt they have enough oomph. The
Party is too timid, it made too many painful
compromises. In 1996 the Communists won the elections,
but the same Gennady Zuganov surrendered to Yeltsin’s
threats of ‘civil war’. He may submit again, people
fear. Putin considers him “harmless”.
The winning mixture would probably
include Nationalists and Christians, beside the
Communists; i.e. forces that value Russia’s uniqueness,
Russia’s Orthodox Christianity, its native solidarity
and strong social compassion. In fact, the mixture could
include nearly everyone except the extreme Westernisers.
“Le gouvernement est encore le seul Européen de la
Russie,” as Alexandre Pushkin wrote (in French) to his
pro-Western friend Chaadaev almost two hundred years
ago, and this saying is still frequently quoted here.
The pro-Western opposition of
Khodorkovsky fans, Novaya Gazeta readers, and the
Echo Moskwy listeners is loud and omnipresent,
but in fact they represent a tiny minority. They front
for a plethora of small right-wing parties and groups
calling for yet more neo-liberalism, though God knows
Russia has seen too much of that. They are united by
their loathing for the old Soviet system, by their
hatred of Putin, by Western grants, and by other
financial arrangements with the oligarchs.
They speak of human rights, but what
they really mean is their own rights. They supported
Israel’s bombing of Gaza, and now they support the
Western bombing of Libya. To them, the West cannot do
enough: Julia Latynina, a voice for the opposition,
glorified Kitchener’s slaughter of Egyptians as the
best way to deal with unruly Muslims. (Here
is a timid English version of her screed).The right-wing
opposition’s hatred of Muslims may engineer a break with
Muslim-populated Tatarstan and North Caucasus. Their
main political figure is the redheaded Anatoly Chubais,
the architect of Yeltsin’s privatisation, godfather of
all oligarchs and a Teflon man who always stands close
to the power and money. They speak of democracy but what
they really mean is managed democracy, enforced
by NATO tanks. Some eighty per cent of callers to their
radio station said they would welcome an operation like
Dawn Odyssey if it were aimed at Moscow.
Russia’s pro-native opposition is
numerically huge but is in disarray. The regime has
successfully broken it up and divided it against itself.
The last time it made a strong showing, it was under the
charismatic personality of Dmitri Rogozin. In 2005, his
very success caused his undoing: “Forgetting that he was
on a leash, Rogozin began to stray too far and
ultimately crossed Kremlin redlines, to the anger of
Putin,” in the words of the US Ambassador. A secret
Wikileaks cable from Moscow explains “Rogozin's real
sin: he stopped playing at being an opposition
politician and started acting like one.” (This cable
06MOSCOW10227 is also
attached). Rogozin was the only man capable of
scaring Putin: he out-Putined Putin. Soon after, Putin
stopped playing democracy and Rogozin’s party was
disbanded. After spending some time drifting through the
political wilderness, Dmitri Rogozin was eventually
exiled to Brussels as the Russian Ambassador to NATO,
where he was described in another secret Wikileaks cable
as “one of Russia's most charismatic, clever, and
potentially dangerous politicians”.
It is just possible that by undoing
Putin and trying to achieve a great liberal victory, the
right-wing pro-Western forces will rub the lamp of
freedom one too many times and free the indigenous
genie. This has been openly
admitted by PM Putin’s most venomous enemy,
right-winger Andrey Piontkovsky: “Our glamorous Eloi are
paralysed – not by fear of the ferocious Alfa-male, but
by dread of facing alien mass of Morlocks without this
Alfa male protection”. Indeed, only Putin stands between
the people’s anger and the fat cats of Moscow. Much as
they hate him, would they dare feed him to the wolves
even as he protects them? Perhaps they would, hoping to
finesse into place a leader they prefer, like Medvedev
or Chubais. That would be a very risky play indeed.
On the other hand, procrastination is
usually safe, but you never know when Russians will tire
of the games and demand the real thing. It could happen.
The Navalny phenomenon is an indication of the latent
power of the Russian people. Navalny is a blogger and
small-time political activist who became famous for
attacking the corrupt practices of the ruling party.
Political technologists accused him of being a US orange
agent aiming to undermine Russian sovereignty and sell
out Russia to NATO. These accusations caused him zero
harm. In his TV encounter with a leading member of the
ruling party, he won hands down: 99 per cent of
responding viewers supported him, with just one per cent
accepting the story about the bad Western wolf trying to
swallow the innocent flock. These Russians, frustrated
by the ballot box, voted with their pocketbooks –
thousands of Russians contributed a few roubles each to
his struggle against the ruling party until they had
built up a multi-million-dollar war chest.
It’s not that Russians don’t believe
in Western wolves embodied in NATO and Wall Street, but
they have come to the conclusion that their rulers are
also wolves - dressed in sheep’s clothing. Russians know
that the oligarchs and top Kremlin figures are perfectly
integrated into the Western capitalist scheme: they keep
their money in Bahamas, they send their children to
Oxford, they own houses on the Riviera and Hampstead,
they own shares in the transnational companies. And
together with their Western chums, they fleece Russians.
So Russia is ripe for change. But
which way will it go? Will it be another “managed
revolution”? Will the regime promote another pro-Western
party while blocking the Left, the Orthodox and the
nationalists? Or will the pro-native opposition finally
sort through its problems, rescue Rogozin from his
Brussels retreat and seriously try to win Russia? We
shall see.
Edited by Paul Bennett