Evgeny Kuznetsov. Two-faced Putin

Two-faced Putin
Touches to the portrait

Evgeny Kuznetsov

Publication date: November 28, 2000

thoughts and plans The duality of perception and attempts to understand Putin’s has become a common problem for both experts and society. Out of desperation to combine the incompatible - statism and liberalism, support for the army and tightening budget policy - the “pre-election model” of describing Putin’s actions has become fashionable: these are all “different signals” addressed to both, in order to increase the electoral base. I hasten to disappoint. This is not temporary - it is forever. Because Putin is duality. Putin is a conflict.

We all grew out of the main conflict of “Soviet reality” - the striking discrepancy between the official ideology, its ideals and prototypes and the reality and needs of the people. The worldview of the “builders of communism”, comfortable within the framework of books, films or party meetings, was broken not even by “pitfalls”, but by the elementary “three pines” of the wild garden of an unsettled way of life. The dilemma “communism-anti-communism”, formed within the framework of equally utopian ideas, became the basis for the first energy release of the straightening spring of protest against the unreality of the world - a spring that had long ago lost energy in ever-subsiding vibrations. The spark of clarity about what the main evil is has passed. But the discrepancy remains. By the way, apparently - forever. Like that very “national idea” that is usually sought in the area of ​​greatest correspondence with the interests of grant givers. And only people who fully live in both worlds become the focus of power or financial flows in our reality. Which is exactly what happened.

By choosing our president, we brought to power two people who were interesting and worthy of attention in their own way. Trying to explain the actions of one, we do not take into account the desires and motives of the other. Trying to build a personality model based on his biography, we inevitably come to the inadequacy of the path and the acquired opportunities. We just don't know who is who. Watching the “External Putin” , with all the contradictions of his career growth, we do not see the “Internal Putin” , another person unfamiliar to us.

Something, some kind of fuel, must fuel the engine of life's aspiration. The more “nuclear” it is and the more explosive it is, the greater the likelihood of success. But there is a risk of not being able to handle this fuel, spraying it and burning out. The balance of “energy”/“self-control” is perhaps the most fundamental criterion for the possibility of achieving success; the more flexible the motor is tuned, the more finely a person will fit into the twists and turns of fate. And therefore it is important to understand what kind of fuel feeds nature and what kind of reins limit it.

If we try to formulate the basic principle of “Inner Putin,” then, by analogy with Yeltsin’s key first principle—the “thirst for power”—it can be called a colossal “thirst for victory.” “I will prove, I will be the first, I will attract everyone’s attention” - how many teenagers raved about these simple spells. Some were hooligans, some worked - most of them were ruined by life. But those obsessed with the “thirst for victory” easily cross the line when laziness or caution forces them to stop and not take risks. And in order to better understand the essence of this worldview, we will have to look at the world through his eyes and speak his language.

The cult concepts of the world of the possessed are influence, power and victory. These are words that are usually perceived as something single, undivided, “real manhood.” But that's not true. These are different tools and technologies for solving one problem - satisfying the internal thirst for expansion, capturing and redividing the world to suit your own idea of ​​it. It is very difficult to combine them in real life, and something inevitably has to be sacrificed. Yeltsin ruled with influence, but without winning beautiful victories; power fell into his hands not as a result of his efforts, but because he was simply more mobile than others. Putin doesn’t need power; since childhood, what he needed was victory and influence on people through their recognition of his success. Therefore, he does not need to hypertrophy the attributes of power - he will not give direct instructions or interfere in important decisions. He will always be able to present defeat as the fault of the perpetrators, but turn out to be the inspirer or “political cover” of the winners - as happened with the second Chechen war, which, unlike the first, became a springboard for the presidential elections, and not a core on the leg.

The character of Vova Putin was formed in the now forgotten atmosphere of glorification of “willpower”. The system skillfully bridled the cosmic scale of what was possible and achievable with the cult of faithful service and fulfillment of duty. A cold shower or jog in the morning, working out at practice and cramming for school. Confronting difficulties at all costs, fulfilling one's duty at any cost - these cornerstones of Soviet ideology were "too much for many", and they looked for other, warmer or calmer paths in life. But someone accepted these rules of the game, although in return they demanded the right to ride an airplane or even a rocket. And this was their only way to get the most out of themselves in the absence of talent, connections or heredity. Putin began to compensate for the difference in external brightness or other boyish attributes of leadership through judo, which was fully consistent with the desired image of a “Superman.” It is known that teenagers come to the “combat” sports section for two reasons - either an inferiority complex or a thirst for victory. The former, thanks to the acquired skills, become dangerous on the street, the latter - on the professional field.

Without becoming famous in the sports field, he gained something more important - the ability to work on himself and overcome obstacles. For most men, this is a familiar and passed stage - but you must be able and want to move on from it. Go without spending money on tinsel and momentary hobbies. But how could a guy from a family not rich in either money or traditions, who dreamed of “making it among the people”, care about them? It is likely that he went through not only the glamorous path of finding himself, tried different, rather dark options for achieving success, but the result was the choice of a respectable and real career - law school with an eye on government agencies or authorities.

Millions of his predecessors and peers have reached this point of development. Some ended up in prestigious troops, some in a generously subsidized laboratory, some in some kind of "-com". And the test of time began for them all. A time of slow fulfillment of desires, restrictions, attempts to speed up, overtake, jump out through intrigue or machinations. Someone nobly waved his hand and let those who were thirsty pass ahead, someone competed with them with talent or diligence. Sometimes they won and proved that you can’t buy intelligence - however, not so often. Putin managed to combine ability and luck. It didn’t turn sour, but it didn’t turn sour, didn’t spoil, or get lost. After failure at the beginning of his journey, he was lucky to start from scratch the second time - but this luck rested on the character of the fighter, who was ready to wait a long time for his chance to snatch victory. And this can hardly be considered a lottery.

It was “Inner Putin” who helped the “External” not to get lost and put the squeeze on the situation. Never doubting his right to success and victory. Never satisfied with what has been achieved. And the basis was the ability to win - a well-known skill, but obtained only through self-training.

"Inner Putin" is the standard of the "Soviet superman." Not a "meat breed", not a "macho" and not an "egghead". “An ordinary guy” who overcomes all obstacles with perseverance, perseverance and patience. In one literary parody of “The Hyperboloid of Engineer Garin”, such a hero “swims across two oceans like a dog” and in the end achieves his goal. The most interesting thing is that it was precisely these people who made history. True, precisely by its mass, and not in the first roles.

But “Inner Putin” has something else - “owls are not as simple as they want to seem.” There is always one true winner. He is always among strangers and therefore is calculating, cold and tries to seem simpler than he really is. This Nietzschean sense of self, faith in one’s otherness, is what erases many of the usual shortcomings that are inherent in people precisely because of the resentment of their commonness and lack of wings. But this running along the blade of a knife is a pleasure that is dear to life and inner well-being.

Such a person will never truly trust anyone - and therefore it is almost impossible to betray him. He will never give real power over himself to anyone - he will not fight someone he cannot defeat, but will always remove someone who is already weak but still dangerous. However, if the defeated one goes over to his camp, he will accept him, although he will always treat him as a lower being. This is a well-known principle of the intelligence services - clans based on a sense of superiority over others. People of this kind understand perfectly well that psychological and moral victory always surpasses physical victory in reliability. And that's why they win.

But this path always leads to increased tension and responsibility. Sooner or later, both the internal psychological mechanism and events get out of control. You can only maintain the pace in such a race for a limited time - and you can only learn to solve a certain class of problems. Psychologically, Putin is ready for power and will be able to retain it, but he will not be able to resist the need to change, he will become a hostage to affairs and a slave to the generated mechanisms.

In addition, the complexity of the situation now lies in the fact that Putin’s current position is not yet his personal victory. It was achieved by methods unacceptable to him, “not moral” and is not the result of the fact that “people saw in him his real strength.” Putin cannot fail to understand this. And this spurs him on much more than the mythical threats of the oligarchs and the world behind the scenes. He doesn't need a "victory on points", he needs a triumph. The question is whether it is possible to achieve it at least in some way in a destroyed country with a destroyed potential for not just a breakthrough, but simply adequate to the modern pace of development.

This is him - “Inner Putin”, a man who lives only in one place - in the mirror. He is the main adviser and assistant to the one who has now settled on our televisions. He is also his main critic. Much tougher than the media. And therefore it is unlikely that they will have the same unjustifiably gigantic power over him and the country that they had over their vain and proud predecessor.

However, this is perhaps the only reason for optimism so far.

The main problem of the personnel situation in the Russian government is not so much that there are not enough professionals, but that in the absence of a clear state policy, they primarily follow their personal interests. By them we must understand not only banal self-interest, but also the desire to defend personal convictions, often of a messianic kind, and the desire to move forward one’s clan or “like-minded people.” The strength of personal or corporate ideologies is much higher than that of the state after the ideological Chernobyl. The main problem is that the “correct” or most adequate ideology does not exist; society is fragmented and scattered across zones of stability with mutually exclusive values. Therefore, the problem of unifying the official’s motivations will have to be solved not by assigning any ideology as the main one.

In historically organized societies, this conflict is resolved by the centuries-old mechanism of competition between large management corporations - parties, which take upon themselves the development of complex ideologies, motivational and value systems, and develop development programs, and educate competent managers. In our country, cartoon clubs based on interests and misconceptions, which have neither organization, nor experience, nor a comprehensive understanding of all the problems and obstacles to the implementation of their “bright ideas,” are engaged in nothing more than imitation of this process. It is quite obvious that the fall of real power into the hands of organizationally wretched parties will lead to the inevitable degradation of the country, and therefore the sick and dilapidated state still has to perform those functions that society has long learned to take upon itself.

Primakov was the first to solve the problem of restoring the state machine not on the basis of a single space of goals and values. The essence of his policy was the de-ideologization of management decision-making at the same time as an attempt to build both a tactical and strategic development program. However, it immediately became clear that the framework of perestroika discourse with its ideological chimeras was aggressively hostile to such a professional-pragmatic approach. The inconsistency between election tasks and the need to lead society out of the absurd media space led to a loss of time and the inability to resist the aggression of political intrigue. But it became clear that there was no other way out of the crisis.

Putin has neither the opportunity nor the motivation to go beyond Primakov’s “common sense” policy. The fact that it was formed in a more free-thinking and broad-minded atmosphere of public views allows it to “set up its supports” even wider. By attracting representatives of a wide variety of political ideas to power, he does not so much “give signals” as forces them to compete fiercely with each other, to compete not within the framework of defending personal interests and the struggle for power, but within the framework of personal responsibility for steps and decisions. Now almost anyone can come to power with his own program - but he will be subjected to daily cruel criticism in words and deeds with the outward indifference of the one who is “watching over it.” As in times of repression, its main figures were not executioners, but voluntarily “knocking” loyal citizens, also in the new situation everyone will control everyone, thereby making the instinct of self-preservation the main decision-making mechanism. What our country vitally needs is not loans or a “rescue program,” but the absolute certainty that mistakes will result in a bullet in the head. And this is precisely the management technology on which all intelligence services are built.

In this situation, Putin has only one thing left to do - not fall into the illusion of easy solutions. His job, by his own definition, of a “specialist in the field of human relations” is not to carry out any consistent policy, but to create an efficient state machine in which it is customary to answer for the decisions made. His task is to make the failure of the state task a greater danger for the official, and not a “deviation from the principles” or interests of the clan. It's time to end the "kindergarten" of mutual accusations of creating obstacles and shifting the blame for personal mistakes onto opponents. Here it turns out that Putin has no like-minded people or friends. There are those who can solve problems and those who can come up with explanations.

At the very beginning of his political rise, Yeltsin’s main mistake was that he tried to “understand how it should be done,” make some decision, and then defend it at any cost. Not being a competent and experienced expert, he distorted the proposed models to suit his desires and did not what was needed, but what he wanted. This became the main tragedy for both him and the country - he did not understand why he was making certain decisions, or rather, he understood them in a picture divorced from reality. The only chance for the country and Putin to survive in its current critical state is not to go beyond technology, when a professional manager manages narrow-profile professionals. His task is to make only completed, mature decisions, to add resources and energy only to what has already begun to be successfully implemented. If he starts building bridges without waiting for the end of the earthquake, we will all lose the last thing.

But nowhere in the world, except in the heads of those who believe in some kind of panacea, is it clear what will become the foundations and priorities of the new world. What will become a technology of development, and what will become a path to the abyss. Therefore, the best strategy is a strategy for debugging the decision-making mechanism, and not a decision to go to the end in the name of one or another bright faith.

The results of the first year of the presidency (there is no reason to separate the months of power with the prefix acting from the subsequent ones) generally work towards a positive assessment of Putin’s actions, but not the general situation and trends. The course of events does not always allow a person to realize his best qualities, presenting him with tasks that reveal shortcomings rather than highlight his strengths. The most pressing problems of Putin's political nature have also become clear - the inability to quickly respond to complex situations and conflicts, in which he constantly delays the moment of inclusion and, as a result, does not so much control the flow of events as localize and neutralize negative consequences. Even in the story of more than a year ago - the scandal surrounding the change of leadership of Transneft - he behaved “strangely”, deliberately distancing himself from comments and interference in the controversial situation. Thus, he encourages rumors about his dependence, which, however, is far from reality, since subsequent events convincingly show that the most severe actions are directed precisely against those “friends” who began to plan to receive dividends from this status.

The problem was the lack of adequate managerial experience, which gave reason to doubt the effectiveness of the established government apparatus. These fears are still being confirmed, since the punctures of his subordinates and fellow travelers are directly personified by Putin, who has not yet found a form of governance in which the interests and actions of specific people, and not of an abstract and amorphous “state,” are visible. In fact, the tendency to take responsibility so far covers up the unprofessionalism or adventurous inclinations of subordinates, which ultimately does not contribute to the growth of the main thing - the self-awareness of society and the sanity and transparency of power at all levels.

Among the advantages is, first of all, the desire to find the broadest compromise on the issue of developing a model of the country's development, which strikingly distinguishes him from the leaders of the last decade, who considered their progressive role a sufficient reason to ignore the opinion of millions of victims of their actions. Constantly annoying self-proclaimed liberals, meetings with opposition leaders or ideologists are often interpreted either as “subtle deception of opponents” or as “totalitarian intentions.” The essentially simple idea that the speculations of a narrow circle of people are no longer perceived as sufficient to govern the state is completely out of character for those who want to maintain a monopoly on discussions about how we can organize Russia. Simple jealousy is clothed in terrible promises and threats, which ultimately illustrates the intellectual narrowness of this circle.

In itself, the willingness to distribute responsibility, demand from everyone an answer for their actions and suppression of attempts to make excuses and shift the blame to others can have a very positive effect. There has clearly been a tendency to suppress some kind of “favoritism”, when the competition of favorites is replaced by the creation of conciliation procedures and bodies, the work of which condemns the opposing groups to an obvious fight not over the head of the elder, but in the presence of interested observers. This position obviously gives the decision maker a free hand, since the decision has already been tested by fairly biased opponents and the range of possible gains and losses has been clearly specified. While at present these processes have not begun to be properly commented on, even the “court” media, in the absence of a direct order from above, tend to choose for themselves “who is the favorite,” trying to describe in the forms of certain theories why this group and not another won . The simple answer that the winner is the one who best represents the problem and methods for solving it does not yet come to mind, since the habit of ranking people by the degree of compliance with the “general line” was inherited by “young” journalists from their “totalitarian ancestors” practically unchanged.

A major success was the formation of the most positive foreign policy image of Putin. Fears about his rejection by the West were well founded; all the more gratifying is the fact that the image of the country and its leadership has clearly begun to improve. The first reason for this is the objective need of Europe to see Russia as a partner in the beginning of a long geopolitical maneuvering. The second is the striking contrast between the unidentifiable opportunistic and idealistic policies of their predecessors and the clearly articulated position of defining priorities and assumptions. This is already a personal achievement in many respects of the President, who took upon himself the courage not to go into the realm of vague formulations, but to clearly define his position.

As a matter of fact, one can see many parallels between the actions of early Putin and early Gorbachev - with all the striking personal and situational differences. This similarity lies in unstable domestic support, in the growth of positive attitudes abroad, and in the growth of natural problems, which, like Gorbachev’s Chernobyl and Putin’s Kursk, are capable of forming an idea of ​​​​the “collapse of everything” and strengthening the pessimism of the domestic average person who is accustomed to reading between the lines and interpret the signs. It will be interesting how the differences in the internal structure and managerial stereotypes of these politicians will manifest themselves in the form of concrete overcoming of various “difficult” tendencies. Will Putin be able to solve the problem of the nature of Russian power differently than Gorbachev, Yeltsin and their predecessors did (however, this topic deserves a separate article).

Will Putin be able to act within the framework of optimality, to become a professional for the third time - already in the art of supreme power - is an extremely pressing question. The country has virtually no time left to search for the “best model.” We need to restore what is vital and invest in the most promising.