Transit (5)

So, let's assess Russia's current political drift and imagine possible future movements. Since we are talking about a certain movement, then it is appropriate to think of it as movement in space, just as the route of a sailing ship can be represented in changes in latitude and longitude coordinates. Only the political space is more complex, it has more dimensions. And the more complex the situation, the greater the dimension.

Carrying out analytical work of this kind, we at the INDEM Foundation have been operating for quite some time with a political space “strung” on three axes. This is, of course, a simplification of political life, but not so terrible as to lose reasonable applicability.

We actually already talked about the first axis at the end of the previous article. We are talking about the opposition “adaptability - rigidity (rigidity)”, which characterizes the political regime, government structure, and political practice.

This is a very important axis. Excessive rigidity is dangerous, just as it is unacceptable for a bridge: a rigid bridge collapses. The bridge must be flexible, even complexly flexible, so as not to enter into dangerous resonant vibrations. Every engineer knows this. The same applies to modern states that claim to participate in the development of civilization. The Soviet Union collapsed primarily because of its harshness. It cracked, unable to withstand the external influences of the modern world, without finding internal reserves and mechanisms of adaptation to these challenges.

Democracy, for all its imperfections, is adaptive. Talcott Parsons, who at the beginning of the second half of the twentieth century was almost the same for Americans as Karl Marx was for the Bolsheviks, rightly wrote that democracy is a political structure that ensures “institutional adaptability.” This refers to the ability to self-restructure without self-destruction when the need arises, internal or external.

Monopoly vertical power is rigid. It can be effective for solving a limited range of problems over a short period of time. It becomes destructive in a large country, in difficult times, when it is necessary to solve many problems, among which there are contradictory and conflicting ones.

The Yeltsin regime was adaptive. He proved this with practice. But this was not yet real and working institutional adaptability. She was in embryo, in potency. I dare say that we have begun to move in this direction. In the meantime, it was the spontaneous adaptability of chaos, in which different political forces freely looked for new opportunities to solve emerging problems, and found what was important. Including using newly emerged legal institutions. And this is a natural way of establishing democracy.

We turned away from this path and turned back. The next two axes allow us to describe the reasons for the rollback. The first axis is defined by the opposition “Consolidation – Conflict”. This refers to the consolidation of the political elite or conflict within it. We remember that the Yeltsin era was accompanied by an acute conflict between political elites. Moreover, they conflicted to a large extent because of the basic principles of democracy, both values ​​and legal ones. Part of the elite privatized democratic values, while the other part, opposing the first, simultaneously opposed democracy. This was one of the reasons the rollback happened so easily.

The natural reaction of fatigue from the revolution contributed to the post-Yeltsin consolidation around the idea of ​​​​strengthening the state and its symbol - the new president, anti-Yeltsin in all respects. And after this, they consolidated across the entire political spectrum around the idea of ​​bureaucratic modernization, which I wrote about above. This was a deliberately chosen strategy that they tried to implement in 2000-2002.

The third axis is determined by the extremely important opposition for Russia, which can be described as “playing by the rules - playing with the rules.” It doesn't say what the rules are here. It is important, in the first case, that they are clear and followed. In the second case, the rules are arbitrarily changed and at the same time violated by the ruling group. The Yeltsin era was characterized by playing with rules, which was explained by a period of (as Durkheim or Merton would say) anomie. This is the name for the period when the old system of norms, formal and informal, is destroyed, but a new system of norms has not yet been built and has not begun to work. This always happens during a transition period. The first period of Putin's presidency (until 2002) was characterized by a shift toward the “playing by the rules” pole. True, these were the rules for the functioning of the bureaucratic vertical, and not autonomous legal and democratic institutions. The ideas of strengthening the state and establishing order strangely degenerated into the destruction of the emerging legal democratic institutions and the restoration of the old, Soviet bureaucratic order.

Let's try to depict this three-dimensional space with two flat projections. In the next two pictures you will see how Yeltsin’s Russia from 1991-1996 is located on these projections. and Putin's Russia 2001 (as a typical year of the first period of his eight-year presidency). In addition, you will see four more highlighted places on them. They correspond to four basic scenarios for Russia's political drift, which we will discuss below.

Figure 1. Projection onto the plane of the axes “Adaptability-rigidity” and “Playing by the rules - playing with the rules” of four basic political scenarios and points describing the political regime in Russia in 1991-1996. and in 2001

Now about the scenarios. Not all directions of movement and trajectories in the political space are equal. There are more probable paths and zones. They form the basic scenarios. A scenario is not a state, but a direction of movement, a developing “play”. Let's look at the six most likely scenarios.

The first, which in the works of the INDEM Foundation is called “Sluggish Russia”, is a typical inertial scenario for our country at the time of 2003-2005. Let's see what happened at the beginning of this period.

By the end of 2002, leaders of the Putin regime were already convinced that the strategy of bureaucratic modernization was untenable. There are two fundamental reasons for this. First: at the beginning of Putin’s presidency, there was no bureaucracy in Russia that could implement its intended mission. This applies equally to both civilian and security bureaucracies. Moreover, the latter turned out to be even more greedy, even less professional. The second reason: in such a large country as Russia, whose main resource is diversity, the primitive command method does not work in solving such complex problems as modernization.

In 2003, a turning point began: having discovered that they were unable to build capitalism in Russia, they simultaneously discovered that they could successfully build capitalism on the scale of one dacha cooperative. The Yukos case turned out to be a turning point. Business submitted, which means that a fantastically profitable method of enrichment and acquisition of property emerged - the illegitimate use of the “apparatus of legitimate violence” (according to Weber - the state). Theft, corruption, and the merging of government and business began to grow at an unprecedented pace. At the same time, modernization began to be replaced by its imitation. By this time, the autonomous constitutional institutions of power had already been suppressed: the Federal Assembly, courts, elections, federalism. For this purpose, in particular, the Beslan tragedy was used. The rapid rise in energy prices ensured an increase in income while the economy was degrading. Insane unearned incomes made it possible to throw money at management mistakes and social discontent. The bureaucratic chaos was covered up by a gigantic PR campaign called “Presidential Rating”. The people were silent. And here’s what’s also curious: as always, weakness and “lethargy” are hidden behind militant rhetoric, demonstrative machismo, which are all the more ridiculous the more they diverge from reality.

In this context, the inertial scenario is an attempt to preserve the regime in a state that is comfortable for it. This regime is rigid, because it does not have internal resources for modification (more precisely, their appearance is extremely unlikely). He is rigid, like a log flowing downstream. This regime for some time consolidates power (in this case, the bureaucracy) around the simple goal of enrichment. To do this, they establish for themselves the rules of the game (“concepts”), which they consider necessary to adhere to.

The second scenario is “Dictatorship of Development”. In short, this is a tightening of the regime in the name of modernization. Something like the Pinochet regime. In a sense, movement towards this scenario began in 2000, but was not continued. The reason is that in our case, a consistent dictatorship of development would mean a split in the bureaucracy, in which one (smaller) part of the bureaucracy (“pure”) takes on the function of reformers, while suppressing the other (“larger”) part of the bureaucracy (“impure” ). In some countries, the role of “clean” is taken on by the military, who often turn out to be “clean” without being allowed into the gravy train. In our case, the “Chekists” claimed this role, but they turned out to be both weak and “unclean.” And Putin himself did not risk splitting his bureaucracy and angering it. This pushed the regime onto the trajectory of the “Sluggish Russia” scenario.

The third scenario is “Security Dictatorship”. This is the trajectory of a sharp tightening of the regime in order to maintain the power of the current group or any part of it that defeats other competitors. In the sphere of modernization, the imitation of modernization and theft, which become the essence of the regime, continue and worsen. And tightening power is the only way not only to maintain power, but also to survive in general, and avoid punishment for crimes committed. As a rule, a security dictatorship arises in the wake of contradictions in the ruling group and is associated with the victory of one part of the bureaucracy, most likely the security forces, with harsh suppression of the rest. The conflict is being driven underground. The regime becomes completely non-adaptive.

The fourth scenario is “Smart Russia” (smart - strong, intense, energetic, agile, intelligent, quick-witted, witty). This term was coined by Mikhail Fedotov when we discussed, along with others, the scenario for building democracy in Russia. This is the trajectory of movement towards modernization along the “Western” model, the restoration of normal political competition, and increased efficiency of legal and economic institutions. This scenario is realized with the consolidation of elites around the principles and procedures of democracy while maintaining ideological differences. The rules are gradually becoming a matter of agreement. As a result, institutional adaptability is achieved.

The four scenarios listed easily find their place in the political space I have described. But we must consider two more scenarios that are quite relevant, if only because they are being actively discussed. However, they do not find their place in our space, since they are associated with its destruction.

So, the fifth scenario is “Revolution”. I apply this term to a situation of a sharp weakening of power, when an illegitimate or quasi-legitimate regime change occurs, relying on the street activity of significant groups of the population. At the same time, the real political coloring of the forces that ultimately seize power and the nature of the subsequently emerging regime are unimportant.

The sixth scenario, the most tragic, is “Disintegration”. The possibility of such a development of events has been talked about for the last two or three years due to the fact that the current regime is reproducing the conditions of the collapse of the USSR: inefficiency and decay of the bureaucracy, dependence of both the economy and the social sphere on the oil and gas drug.

Here you go. Next, we will discuss what is happening and can happen to us, thinking about the possible drifts of Russia in the political space described above.

Author - President of the INDEM Foundation

To be continued