Systems analysis

In the news...two opposition leaders are released from prison after 15 days, but might face up to two more years if found guilty of 'inciting mass disorder'.

In December 2011, Vladimir Putin told the press that his government welcomes non-extremist opposition and is open to dialogue. When a journalist suggested to get the leaders of the opposition together, however, the then Prime Minister retorted that the opposition is too varied and does not present a united political platform, and so negotiating with each group about its specific demands needs to be thought through. Putin was riding high after the United Russia party with which he is associated ‘won’ the Parliamentary election earlier in December, so he could afford to be dismissive. He also had a point. Since the first mass protests took off, following allegations of wide-spread ballot-stuffing in December, three key figures began to dominate the marches. Alexei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and Boris Nemtsov have, in the past six months of protests, spent enough time in prison for Amnesty International to take notice. All call for electoral and political reform, control over the actions of the government, release of political prisoners and new, open elections. Admirable goals, which united hundreds of thousands of people. But, taken separately, the three men’s politics are so disparate, it is difficult to imagine them at the same party together, let alone on a political stage.  

Responsible for the catchy epithet ‘party of crooks and thieves’, now recognised by more than 2/3 of the population, Alexei Navalny came to prominence after launching in December 2010 of his RosPil project, which literally translates as ‘sawing apart’ – a website that discloses corruption by public officials by analysing financial documents available online. The project became a mass phenomenon, earning Navalny 6^th place in Time’s 100 most influential people of 2012 list. His approach is to tell it like it is and not take any prisoners, coupled with a background in law, make him for a formidable public figure. But aye, there is the rub.

In 2007, Navalny founded the ‘People’ movement, whose manifesto declares that Russia is facing a national catastrophe as the population ‘degrades and dies off’. To prevent this, the movement calls on national rehabilitation, freedom and justice, and asserts that the Russian people have earned their right to live in a democracy. But that is exactly the problem - the emphasis is on the ‘Russian’. Navalny’s ideal is that of a ‘nationalist democracy’, in which immigration policy is of paramount importance. When he talks about his nationalism, Navalny sounds very reasonable and convincing. He calls for assimilation of immigrants into the traditions and laws of Russia, and envisions it as a ‘bigger, more irrational and metaphysical Canada’. In his interviews, he is either purposely evasive, or he really believes that nationalist sentiments can be indeed have a ‘human face’. The problem jolts you in the face when, in answer to the question whether he agrees with the mission statement of the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) – Russia’s answer to the English Defense League that was banned in 2011 as extremist – he says ‘Yes, why, is something wrong with it?’ Navalny may truly fool himself into believing that by attending the Russian March rallies where slogans like ‘Russia for Russians!’ are a staple, he can somehow make them, in his own words, ‘better’. But he occupies an unfavourable public position: the far right sees him as too moderate while the liberal opposition shuns his nationalistic views and currently sees no political future for him. A real shame for someone who managed, so forcefully, to grab the attention and admiration of the Russian public.

Sergei Udaltsov, for all his admirable fervour and resilience in face of multiple arrests, really wants to turn Russia into one giant kibbutz. In 2008, Udaltsov, also a lawyer, was elected onto the executive committee of the Left Front – a political movements whose main goal is the creation of socialism in Russia. The list of grievances is familiar: corruption, disintegration of culture, science, education, health, army and  the police. The way to overcome these problems is to combine public property with true ‘people-power’ – a political and production democracy. Lenin’s call was ‘Land to the people, factories to the workers!’ In the new version, ‘each worker is an owner, and each owner, a worker’. As a side note, the manifesto states that small private property will not be expropriated in this fight against global bourgeois capitalism (oh yes, you heard right) as it must prove itself in free economic competition with public property – whatever that means. The raison d’être of this movement, is, no more not less, to ‘accelerate the movement of history!’

In 2010, Udaltsov founded ROT-Front – United Russian Workers’ Front (a holler back to 1917, again), based largely on the policies of the Left Front and calling specifically for social justice and protection for all – and not just the rich and powerful. There is a call to share the oil and gas wealth with the population, to introduce a luxury tax and access of each individual to objective and accurate information that ‘precludes manipulation of public consciousness’. Just how the movement plans to convince the unconvinced, then, remains a technical mystery. But while the Left Front strictly excludes cooperation with any reactionary ideology – such as nationalism, fascism or liberalism, the ROT-front announces its readiness to coordinate with any political party whose goal is democracy. If you are thinking these view are too weird to warrant cooperation, don’t: Russia’s Communist Party’s presidential candidate Gennady Zuganov, endorsed by Udaltsov, came in second after Putin with 17% of the vote.

Boris Nemtsov, a professional politician who was groomed by Boris Yeltsin as a potential successor before Putin, is probably the better known and most credible face of the three. He has a solid record as a liberal, becoming the first governor of the new Russia in 1991, and is perhaps best remembered by the public for being doused with mango juice by the eccentric leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (which is neither liberal, nor democratic) during a debate in the 1990s. At the moment, he is one of the 39 committee members of the Solidarnost’ Movement, founded in 2008, whose main goal is to create a competitive economic and political system in the country. The organisation’s 300 Steps to Freedom programme is the most extensive and conclusive, offering a course of European-style development and free parliamentary elections with full access by all parties to the public information systems. In 2010, Nemtsov along with ex-Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov a number of young politicians founded the Party of People’s Liberty – PARNAS, but the ministry of Justice refused to register it, citing contradictions to federal law. If anything, this bureaucratic snub is an indicator of the potential threat of the movement – which attracts many prominent public figures – to the Putin regime.

So far, however, the only idea uniting the three main strands of the opposition is the call to liberalise the electoral system to allow for fair elections and political competition. But with the Kremlin’s power undiminished, and the protest rigour in decline, what the opposition needs is a better focus and a realistic political platform to offer to the electorate. There needs to be a plan for when the protest party is over. Political competition is a great thing, but when there are too many little Davids facing different sides of Goliath, the pebbles might hurt, but most likely will not kill the current corrupt system in place. And this dilemma is what gives Russia’s ‘non-systemic’ opposition a flailing double meaning.

Yes, Prime Minister?

In the news...President Putin signs an ambitious set of decrees.

The Russian Central Election Committee announced on May 12 that the Presidential election has cost the federal budget 10,375,318,000 roubles – that is just under £211m. From the government’s perspective it was, without a doubt, money well spent, given the quick and efficient job swap performed on May 7 by the President and the Prime Minister. But on his first day (back) in office, Vladimir Putin signed a number of decrees that appear to give the people of Russia a run for their money. Reading through some of them, you get the impression that the President has in mind a brand new country, so all-encompassing is the sweep of his suggested reforms.

There is a number of improvements clearly geared at immediate public appeasement: increasing satisfaction with government and municipal services, lowering living costs, increasing government transparency through the use of the internet, creating a fairer system for selection of government official, etc. For instance, the law concerning the improvement of the governing system includes a paragraph that supports the ‘Russian public initiative’, through which suggestions signed by 100,000 citizens will be considered by the government. Keeping in mind the ease with which Russian officialdom rejects as ‘invalid’ signatures needed for registration by presidential candidates, there is little likelihood that the government will be forced into considering anything it doesn’t already want to.

Paragraph K of the same decree calls for a ‘punishment through disqualification’ for any government or municipal worker for ‘rude and multiple’ violations of the standards of the services. Russia is still a country where hot water is turned off for weeks in the summer because of the condition of the pipes – in Moscow, of all places. Either standards will have to be lowered ever further, or the majority of municipal services will soon find themselves ‘disqualified’. Paragraph T calls for an ‘increase of access by the people to the judicial system’ and a further improvement of administrative judicial practices. There is, however, no indication about how this will be done. It is safe to assume that none of the suggestions made by Mikhail Khodorkovski will make it into the amendments.

Then come the more interesting aspirations. The decree concerning the Russian demographic situation opens with a demand to raise the birth coefficient and extend life expectancy to 74. Given that in 2011 there were 11 births and 16 deaths per 1,000, the law that encourages support for working mothers and low-income families makes sense. But the health laws begin to get a little out of hand. By 2018, the government hopes to reduce deaths from tuberculosis, reduce infant mortality rate, deaths from and in car accidents. An increase in public awareness of healthy eating, dangers of alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse are also on the agenda. Increasing Russian publications in international scientific journals to 2.44% and guaranteeing at least five Russian universities to be included in world’s top 100 by 2020 complete this ambitious scientific initiative.

What these decrees demonstrate, apart from an apparent desire to pander to the waves of civil discontent that engulfed the election, is not so much where Russia wants to be, but where it is now. All these endless lists of improvements only highlight the lack of reliable government services, a non-existent health care system, an educational system where diplomas are bought outright, including medical and surgical degrees. Just today, a Russian super-jet crashed in Indonesia. It was on a show mission around Asia, hoping to bring in a lucrative aviation contract. Although the causes of the crash are not known, there is a suspicion that the computers on board failed. The ballistic missile program has become a running joke in Russia, with eight successful launches out of 15 since 1998. The missile kept crashing either into the sea or onto the launch pad, with the only consolation being the absence casualties. Unfortunately, that is not the case in other aspects of Russian society plagued by technical failures, incompetence and criminal negligence. Even crossing the street in Moscow has become a deadly gamble as motorists consistently ignore traffic lights.

When leaders come to power, there is always a rush of optimism, hopeful promises, good intentions, all curtailed by reality in due course. But Putin has been in power for the past twelve years. Nothing prevented him from pushing for these reforms and seeing them into fruition by now. At least some of them.  But although many may argue that the situation in Russia has improved since Boris Yeltsin’s chaotic years – and this is only one side of a long and complicated debate – it is still so very far from the country envisioned in Putin’s fresh batch of decrees. If this is the kind of liberal, democratic, functional state he wants to live in, in his lifetime, he might just have to move to London,  like the rest of those fleeing his regime.

Putin 3.0

In the news...Putin is sworn into his third term as President, amid continuing protests.

'Freedom – it is a unique feeling, which every person understands differently. You know, of course, there is always an element of objectivity in freedom, but generally it is just our own experiences’. If you are thinking I’m quoting Kant, you’re wrong. This is a line from President Medvedev’s last interview that he gave to five TV channels at once. He clearly wanted to be heard. Also, quite clearly, the irony of his philosophising was not lost on the thousands of protestors who came out on May 6 to contest the government’s usurpation of their freedom and right to vote - fairly, protest – peacefully, and think - differently. 

Again, it is hard to tell just how many people participated. The Moscow police place the figure at 8,000, while the organisers claim the ‘March of Millions’ as the protest was officially called, was not smaller than the election fraud rallies that gathered anywhere between 130,000 and 200,000. Ironically, (yes, again – there’s a lot of that today) the organisers filed for permission for 5,000 demonstrators with the city’s authorities. There have been detractions from the march, some from well-known figures, as they faced increasing futility of raging against the machine - so it is not just the government that likes to pretend.

Now, if the number of those in the opposition is debated, the number of police and special forces (OMON) shocked even the well-seasoned commentators. The police line blocking the way to the Kremlin looked like a fight scene straight out of Star Wars. Metal detectors blocked entrance to the main square where protests were meant to be held. However, everything was more or less peaceful when the march started. One journalist said a friend had brought his toddler along, as indeed have others, indicating that the plan was peaceful. Although it is still not quite clear how the clashes started – with protestors trying to break through the police line to get to the Kremlin, or with the police preventing the organisers from entering the main square – a large part of participants became isolated by the ‘Udarnik’ (‘hard-hitter’, nonetheless) cinema and things went awry.

There are numerous videos of police brutality, with OMON using batons to beat protestors unconscious, then leaving them on the ground. These images echo the footage that shocked the world in 2010, when Aleksandr Lukashenko – ‘Europe’s Last Dictator’, put down protests following a rigged election in Belarus. The government side (represented on Channel 1 news) claimed protestors were throwing bits of asphalt at them and, when these endangered the ‘passers-by’, they intervened. Maybe someone did actually decide to go for a walk in the middle of a rally, maybe…It was obvious that things got out of hand, with the media reporting tear gas being used – while state TV has OMON claiming it were fireworks lit by protestors to pass off as tear gas. Isn’t it a useful word, ‘allegedly’? In a moment of sweet revenge, the NTV van got showered with empty bottles and its tires were slashed – an answer to the shocking propaganda film ‘Anatomy of Protest’ the network aired right after the elections, ‘disclosing’ the protestors as fakes, ‘provocators’ etc. Having seen the film, and not condoning violence in the slightest, I think the slashed tires were totally deserved.

The Western media, even this morning, reported 120-150 detained protestors. I was wondering where they got the numbers from as even Channel 1 ran a figure of 250 last night, which it upgraded to 436 today. (The opposition claims 570 arrests). Twenty people were injured, along with twenty-nine police officers. (One of the OMON was interviewed on Channel 1, the reporter apologising for the man’s ‘slow speech’ as he had sustained a head injury. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the man. He was just struggling to string together a publishable sentence.) There have been no reports of deaths, aside from a photographer who fell to his death trying to get a better shot of the march. In an interview on TV Rain, Putin’s spokesman said the police were ‘too soft’. As Novaya Gezeta’s Yulia Latinina points out, people who have used less soft measures have had their foreign accounts frozen.

But, despite all these goings on, Putin was sworn into his third term this noon, in a ludicrously pompous ceremony performed for the first time at the Kremlin by no other but Ivan the Terrible himself. (I got this bit of trivia from Channel 1, so I apologise if it is misinformation, but I couldn’t resist pointing out the gaff.) There were Royal Guards, standing ovations, and a lot, a lot of gold. There were some very unexpected guests. For one, his wife, who Putin was widely rumoured to have divorced during his second term, and who has since been confined in wither a mental institution, a monastery, or both. (I remember catching the article about the divorce on the Washington Post website – the only official source I found carrying the information, only to discover it deleted an hour later.) His mistress – the former gymnast Alina Kabayeva, the mother of at least one of his children, was also photographed outside the Kremlin, though it is not clear from the official footage whether she was at the ceremony. Their affair, conducted in multi-million mansions throughout the country, is shrouded in secrecy. And though everyone expected Berlusconi to be there, Gorbachev was the real surprise. Does anyone remember him saying that Putin ‘castrated’ Russian democracy? Well, I don’t know what he was thinking. But he did not look happy, I can tell you that. The banquet that followed cost a $1million, according to Russia Today. The proceedings have been blessed by Archbishop of Russia Cyrill, who had been awarded a prestigious state medal last year – along with the head of the election committee Churov and the hated and corrupt head of the police, Nurgaliev. Pretty cosy, isn’t it?

And speaking of cosy: the first thing Putin did as President, aside from promising monetary benefits to World War II veterans (the elderly handful always comes in handy when public images need a lift) was to suggest Dmitry Medvedev for the position of Prime Minister. In case someone was wondering who might take over Putin’s old job, the new President did not even skip a beat on this one. And then, after yet another self-satisfied smirk, the President donned on his ice skates and scored the winning penalty in a hockey game against Russia’s Legends Team, a feat even less likely than Boris Johnson winning a cycle race against Team GB.

While the footage of the presidential journey to the Kremlin saw eerily deserted streets, there were more protests today throughout the city with around 300 detained and people were still being arrested while I was finishing researching this piece. Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Udaltsov – the organisers of the March of Millions, were released today and are due to pay either a 1,000 roubles (20GBP) or spend 15 days in prison. I don’t know, what would you do?

A number of opposition media, such as TV Rain and Slon.ru reported hacking attempts to bring down their sites yesterday. Today, while researching, the Echo Moscow website was suspended. Meanwhile, Sunday saw pro-Putin rallies as well as the dress rehearsal of the May 9 Victory Day parade, with the usually impressive show of military force. The way things are going, the administration should have scheduled the inauguration for the 9^th as well – to celebrate the government’s victory over freedom. But maybe that’s too subjective of me to say.