After the fall of the Soviet Union, it became ever clear that the power and prestige of the USSR in its heyday was a myth, a charade of strength in order to keep an imbalanced system alive. Mikhail Gorbachev being a technocrat and not a ‘die-in-the-womb’ communist knew that the USSR could not legitimately match the American drive towards hegemonic superiority. He devised his reform plans that were both too slow and too ineffective to work and subsequently, the Soviet Union failed. The name may have changed, and the Cold War may have ended, but the men who ruled then rule now, and they haven’t changed all that much. In a scathing and timely attack by form of letter, Gorby went so far as to call the Kremlin now blatantly 'corrupt' and 'stupid'.
Since his ascendency, Vladimir Putin has more or less spurned all things democratic in Russia, making of its processes a show to dissuade international worry or civilian sentiments. It’s no wonder that Putin is so against the democratic process since he himself had on countless occasions lost positions of influence because of it. Now, the head of Russia is on the eve of standing for the presidency that he already controls, taken from the hands of a powerless Medvedev, and backed by a conglomerate of yes men.
Putin’s Russia is based on the redistribution of wealth, political and social corruption, corruption within government officials and finally an ever present disregard for Putin himself or his cronies to follow any assemblance of law. Putin is the law, and so what he wills is either followed or not spoken against. Putin and those close to him have appointed nearly every political figure in Russia that has any assemblance of strength, and it’s there that Putin feels that he is more needed than ever. Since these people have been appointed by Putin and not say, Medvedev, then they have no reason to respect or adhere to the authority of the current president and therefore cannot be trusted to have the best intentions of Russia (Putin) firmly in mind. (Vladislav 1) The system of governance in Russia is totally insufficient in reproducing itself over time and has been unable to be passed on and continued since Putin stepped away, hence his ‘reluctant’ climb back.
The political climate in Russia will not be challenged through a democratic process or the rise of a rival political party. The only way for the system to change is for the same ambivalence that Putin shows to law and process to be used against him when others, namely rivals, do the same. Eventually, because of the corrupt nature of Russian politics, the docile people there that are generally uninterested in Kremlin dealings will begin to lose trust and when Putin’s government loses its legitimacy, it’s dead. The rate of growth for the Russian modernization machine is likely to stall and decline under Putin’s second attempt at the presidency. State-controlled companies will grow, other industries therefore will stagnate, and production costs will increase by tariffs and taxes, all leading up to the fall of incoming state capital. The industrial sector of Russia will crumble under the weight of imports, since it would be counterproductive to waste money producing from inside Russia itself.
The election that will put Putin back on the throne is predicted to be numerically ridiculous, but recent studies have shown that his popularity may be in decline. In the recent parliamentary elections on December 4, 2011, the United Russia party headed by Putin won only a slight majority of the seats in the State Duma, the Russian power parliamentary house. Rivals and citizens of Russia, who likewise took to the streets in anger and frustration, hotly contested the slight majority won by Putin’s party. An example of blatant voter fraud to the Russian people is the 99.5 percent United Russia victory in Chechnya, a historically anti-Putin and Muslim area that wants nothing more than to break off from Russia and form it’s own sovereign islamist state, hard to do when king Putin receives 99.5 percent of the votes when the official voter turnout was found out to be 99.4 percent.
Sources:
- Grove, Thomas. "Russia's Chechnya: How did Putin's party win 99 percent?." Reuters UK, December 22, 2011.
- Inozemtsev, Vladislav. "The Hinge that Holds Russia Together." Foreign Affairs, September 30, 2011. http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/68312/vladislav-inozemtsev/the-hinge-that-holds-russia-together?page=2
Kaveh Farzad - Kaveh is an undergraduate student studying International Relations at the University of La Verne, CA.
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