The government tried to win friends by increasing payments to pensioners and others who depended on state welfare. This helped to lower the proportion of people living below subsistence level, which continued to fall – if only by a little, from one in seven in 2008 to one in eight by 2010 – despite the general economic emergency.1 There was no change, however, in the social structure and income inequalities in Russia remained among the widest in the entire world.2
Medvedev saw nothing wrong with the proliferation of billionaires but did want a cleaner business environment. To this end he promoted the principle of judicial independence. He issued a ban on anyone heading a business company while serving as a minister. Claiming to aspire to a more open society, he overruled a Duma bill that sought to limit freedom of expression on the internet.3 He started to close the country’s labour colonies which he saw as an undesirable vestige of the Soviet Gulag. Obstruction came from interest groups that campaigned against reform, and there were hints that Putin was uneasy about some of Medvedev’s initiatives. The two of them could at least agree on the necessity of political control. In 2010 he cut down some of the tallest local poppies. In the space of a few months Tatarstan’s Mintimer Shaimiev, Murtaza Rakhimov of Bashkortostan and Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov were forced out of office. All had presided over administrations of notorious venality and occasional challenge to the Kremlin; and when Sergei Mironov, Chairman of the Federation Council as well as head of the Just Russia party, pointed to infringements of democratic procedures, a petition was quickly arranged to deprive him of his seat.
Neither Medvedev nor Putin liked the way that many Duma deputies sought pay-offs for voting for the government. But deputies did not only line their own pockets. They knew that if they wanted to keep their seats, they also had to work for the economic benefit of their constituencies. The preponderance of active lobbying fell on agriculture, finance, energy and mining – sectors that bulked large in the growth of the country’s output.4 The Duma legislated very little about the armed forces. This reflected the fact that the government could pursue military modernization through allocations from the state budget without the need for parliamentary approval. The Kremlin continually amended the electoral rules; there were dozens of changes from the start of Putin’s first Presidential term onwards.5 The goal was to gain a comprehensive victory while keeping a sprinkling of ineffectual oppositionists in the chamber for the sake of international security. As things turned out, however, the liberals failed to gain a single seat; and only three parties entered the Duma with a mandate to oppose United Russia. These were Zhirinovski’s Liberal-Democrats, Zyuganov’s Communist Party and a caucus from Just Russia which espoused social-democratic ideas – admittedly they together held 212 out of the 450 seats, but their mutual hostility precluded parliamentary co-operation.6
From his Siberian prison cell Khodorkovski kept up a philippic against Putin. His own tumultuous career had taught him new values. Khodorkovski called for the rule of law in commerce and politics with greater consistency than had been shown in his practice as a financial tycoon.7 His old business rivals took a different path from him and refrained from telling Putin how to run the country.
Russia’s balance of trade had remained in surplus despite the financial tempest of 2008–2009. The situation was facilitated by ministers who diverted subsidies to sectors that appeared likely winners. Russian arms exports roared ahead. Microelectronics became a growing success as firms took on contracts for large foreign corporations – the benefits of the schooling system’s accent on mathematical competence made themselves felt. The aerospace sector developed the Sukhoi Superjet 100 and aimed to challenge the big American civilian airliners on the world market. Car production grew, led by the AvtoVAZ company that produced Ladas. Agricultural output quietly improved even though reform was patchy and the transition to independent small holdings was slow. Through to the end of the Soviet years and into the 1990s, the country had depended on grain imports. Farms boosted production and Russia became the world’s fifth largest exporter of wheat. It also sold barley, sunflower oil and tobacco in growing quantities abroad. Meat became the main annual food import.8
In August 2012, after two decades of talks, the country entered the World Trade Organization; and the American Congress at last repealed its own Jackson-Vanick amendment, which since 1975 had penalised the USSR for its discrimination against Jews. The economy was again on the rise. Gross domestic product rose to a point that placed Russia eighth in the world according to World Bank calculations.
Prosperous Moscow had almost turned into a separate city-state and people continued to scramble to get a job and a home there. St Petersburg was not far behind as Putin and Medvedev sponsored architectural renovation schemes and attracted investment to the area. Other cities lagged far behind unless they happened to have an economic base that flourished after the USSR’s collapse. Some regions went into steep decline. Whereas Saratov could boast of success in exports of civilian aircraft, the surrounding towns like Pugachëv languished in poverty and neglect – and instances of violent unrest were not uncommon. The average monthly salary in Pugachëv in 2013 was an eighth of the mean income of Moscow residents. Unemployment spread after the milk and concrete factories closed down.9 Depopulation affected parts of Siberia after the state withdrew its salary subsidies and people found work elsewhere. Putin called on businessmen to help by showing a sense of civic duty. Roman Abramovich served as governor of Chukotka from 2000 to 2008 and thereafter as speaker of its regional duma, diverting some of his huge income from Siberian oil and nickel into local philanthropy.
Russian literary writers continued to examine the travails of Russia past and present. Stalinism was unremittingly exposed despite the government’s plea for the achievements of the 1930s to obtain recognition. The poet Elena Shvarts did this glancingly as she spoke out for artistic autonomy:
But I am different, I am a bird, I am in ferment
And until the last crystals of my song-singing
Have dissolved in the murk
I will sing.
Shvarts rejected the fashionable slang of contemporary writing. Her language had a mystical brilliance that evoked the trauma of life on the margins of survival:
The dead of St Petersburg
Cleave to the living like thin snow,
Like tight fish to the spawning run
They swim the back streets’ upper flow …10
Once upon a time, such lyrics would have drawn crowds to a stadium. Now they appeared in small print runs.
Nikita Mikhalkov worked on a sequel to his popular anti-Stalin film Burnt By The Sun. The new film depicted how the USSR recovered from the Great Terror and defeated the Nazi invasion. In the closing image, a butterfly flitted gently over the corpses strewn across the snow. Mikhalkov was portraying the pity of war and the endurance of Russian people in a way that drew approval from the Kremlin; but audiences found the scenes of routine nastiness distasteful. Despite being the costliest film ever produced in Russia, it was a flop at home and abroad.
Television channels gave people what they wanted. Whereas the government asked for dignity and decency, the public wanted excitement. There were noisy game shows, ‘reality TV’ contests and rock music spectaculars. Russia’s entry for the Eurovision song contest in 2012 was an amateur group of grannies from Buranovo in the Volga region’s Udmurtia; they were hardly typical of daily programming in Moscow, where scantily dressed young female dancers and raucous male singers were normal fare. Russian channels were following a path marked out by American contemporary culture. The language was Russian, the influence Western. The authorities felt no need to intervene. For them, the important thing was political loyalty; and they knew that channel owners no longer dared to cross swords with Putin. News broadcasters reproduced the official line and cheered for the government during times of political tension. Since most Russians took their information about current affairs from television, the Kremlin had less and less reason for worr
y about criticism by investigative print journalists.
The media were anyway eager to talk up Russia’s resurgent international status. With the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty of 1991 being due to expire in December 2009, talks were held about its replacement. President Obama wanted a ‘reset’ in relations with Moscow, and he and Medvedev signed a new treaty in April 2010 and proceeded to get it ratified. The New START Treaty, as it became known, entailed a further halving of the stocks of long-range nuclear weapons. Medvedev obtained consent despite some unfavourable mutterings inside the Duma’s International Committee. Both Medvedev and Putin wanted better ties with all foreign powers whenever there was no harm to the Russian national interest. Putin initiated a commemoration of the 1940 massacre of Polish officers at Katyn. This was an extraordinary event. Nothing like it had occurred as regards the Great Terror of 1937–8. Disaster, however, struck when the air plane carrying dozens of Poland’s political and military leaders crashed in bad weather on its way to the venue. President Lech Kaczyński perished on board. Several Polish nationalists claimed that the Russian authorities had connived in the disaster. For once, Putin had tried to do the right thing in Eastern Europe and yet was incurring suspicion and blame.
The ruling ‘tandem’ of Medvedev and Putin empowered the Federal Security Service (FSB) to intensify preventive measures against terrorist outbreaks in Russia. They were proud of the increased security in most regions and enhanced the prominence of intelligence agencies in public life. When in 2010 ‘Anna Chapman’, living in New York, was exposed as one of the Foreign Intelligence Service’s ‘sleeper’ agents, she received acclaim in Moscow for her efforts. On release from captivity, she briefly hosted a television programme. With her good looks, she became a favourite for pieces in glossy magazines. She endorsed a brand of couture that played up the traditional colours and patterns of Russian dress. Even Andrei Lugovoi, one of the suspects in the London killing of Litvinenko, appeared on chat shows; he also gained election to the State Duma as a candidate of Zhirinovski’s Liberal-Democratic Party. The Russian administration appeared to approve; for Lugovoi endorsed the official idea that Russia was surrounded by foreign enemies and was always going to require the patriotic vigilance of its spy network.
Putin denounced all those groups which disturbed the established order: ‘They represent a kind of Amoral International, which comprises rowdy, insolent people from certain southern Russian regions, corrupt law enforcement officials who cover for ethnic mafias, so-called Russian nationalists, various kinds of separatists who are ready to turn any common tragedy into an excuse for vandalism and bloody rampage.’11 Chechnya lay tranquillised by the Russian Army. Putin increased the subsidies to restore the urban landscape of Grozny and turned a blind eye to the brutalities of local ruler Ramzan Kadyrov. The rest of the north Caucasus seethed with religious and ethnic challenges to Moscow, and jihadi terrorism was rife in Dagestan.
Medvedev and Putin intended to produce an army, navy and air force that at least Russia’s neighbouring countries would fear; they were particularly concerned about territories that had once belonged to the USSR. The government was shocked by the signs of bungling by the armed forces in the Georgian campaign of 2008. The plan was to enhance professionalism by reducing the size of the Russian Army from 1.13 million to a million and cutting the reservists from 20 million to 700,000. The military budget was boosted. Weaponry and communication equipment were improved. The size of the officer corps was cut by a third. Although the pill was sugared by a rise in salaries, it was not a smooth process and Defence Minister Anatoli Serdyukov had to work hard to make the reforms irreversible. When public scandal grew about how he had embezzled money intended for the armed forces, Putin replaced him with Sergei Shoigu from the Emergency Situation Ministry.12
Medvedev recognised better than Putin that it was the ruling élite’s urgent duty to diversify the Russian economy. In June 2010 he visited Silicon Valley in California and inspected the Apple company campus, being visibly delighted when Steve Jobs presented him with the latest iPad. He talked of turning the Skolkovo science cantonment outside Moscow into the Russian version of what he had witnessed. He acknowledged that technological inventiveness alone was not enough and that a new framework for trade and justice was urgently required.13 Productivity lagged behind the other advanced economies in most economic sectors. The ‘flight’ of financial capital from Russia stayed on a rising line as businessmen invested their profits abroad. Bright graduates who were fed up with the blockages to meritocratic advance were leaving for California, New York and London. Although the external draining of human talent slowed down, those who had left seldom returned. Whereas Spaniards, Portuguese and Irish were going into exile because of mass unemployment, Russians departed in frustration about the prevailing corruption, maladministration and criminality.
Four years as Prime Minister were more than enough for Putin, who in September 2011 announced his intention to make yet another bid for the Presidency. Nothing in the Constitution prohibited a third term after an intervening gap, but he nevertheless asked the Federal Assembly to pass an amendment extending each term to six years: he wanted to rule and rule. There had been tensions between him and Medvedev. For a while it appeared that Medvedev would run against Putin to put the case for overdue reforms. But Medvedev had second thoughts and announced support for Putin’s candidacy.
In November 2011, despite being the front-runner in the Presidential campaign, Putin was booed for making a complacent speech at a martial arts competition. His difficulties increased in December with the Duma elections. Whereas United Russia won an absolute majority, it won seventy-seven fewer seats than at the previous contest in 2007. The communists came second, a long way back, followed by Zhirinovski’s liberal-democrats and Just Russia’s social-democrats. The two main liberal parties, Yabloko and Right Cause, failed to gain seven per cent of the vote and, under the electoral code, lost their entitlement to seats. Putin’s team were guilty of systematic fraud, perhaps boosting the real support for United Russia by fifteen per cent.14 Street protests quickly broke out in Moscow and other big cities. Informed young citizens had no faith in the established parties. Instead they wrote internet blogs and formulated plans through the social media. Crowds were fired up with anger about the governing élite’s oppressive, fraudulent and self-enriching techniques. Discontent was strong in those sections of society which had suffered in the global economic collapse of 2008 – traders and professional people were in the forefront.15
Alexei Navalny, a fresh-faced lawyer born in 1976, emerged as the unofficial spokesman of the Moscow protesters. Thousands turned out to hear his tirades against United Russia as ‘a party of crooks and thieves’. When the authorities harassed and threatened him, the effect was to stiffen his resolve and build his status as a tribune of the people. His main demand was for clean new politics. His other ideas were on the vague side except for an affirmation of Russia’s greatness – he called himself a ‘nationalist democrat’. But he kept his profile as an unflinching adversary of the administration.
Medvedev, faithfully supporting Putin’s campaign for the Presidency, tried to quieten the protests by promising to reintroduce elections to regional governorships and to make the Duma electoral law less crippling for oppositionist parties. The rallies died away but did not entirely disappear. In February 2012, the women’s punk rock group Pussy Riot burst into the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in central Moscow and performed a song against Putin and the support he received from the Orthodox Church. The singers wore their usual stage gear, including brightly coloured balaclavas; and one of their verses included the line: ‘Shit, shit, shit of our Lord’. Clergy and government denounced the performance as sacrilegious. The group members were tried and sentenced to terms of imprisonment. Foreign media organizations raised objections and Paul McCartney and others issued a plea on the group’s behalf; but a survey of public opinion suggested that over half of Russian society felt disgust at Pussy Riot’s
intrusion into a consecrated precinct.
Putin saw need for drastic measures if he was to win the Presidential ballot in the first round. To regain the initiative he pledged to raise the level of pensions and to increase the wages of state employees; and he presented himself as the sole guarantor of stability and security in Russia. His image held precedence in TV reports. The electoral process had an old familiar air as Zyuganov and Zhirinovski registered themselves as contenders. Yavlinski’s attempt to stand was barred on spurious technical grounds. The businessman Mikhail Prokhorov secured permission but hardly raised his political gloves in earnest. The result was a foregone conclusion: Putin won sixty-two per cent of the votes cast in the first round in March 2012, obviating the need for a second one. He expressed his delight in a restrained manner. It came as no surprise when he nominated Medvedev as Prime Minister. The ruling ‘tandem’ was confirmed in place with the roles reversed, and Putin was no longer merely the power behind the throne as he gained a renewed freedom to rule as he pleased.
His style had become paternalistic when he explained his objectives. He appeared on TV once a year for a questions-and-answers phone-in – every questioner spoke respectfully and the questions were scrutinised so as to obviate embarrassment. He aimed at acceptance as father of the nation. He kept his private life private, but a light shone briefly on his domestic circumstances when he separated from his wife Lyudmila in mid-2013. He was embarrassed by talk that his newly puffy face was the result of botox injections. Potentially more dangerous was the story that he was accumulating a vast personal fortune. He had preferred it when the media simpered over his Labrador dog Koni.16
The Penguin History of Modern Russia Page 66
