Sergey Usoltsev. President's mistake

President's mistake
Sergey Usoltsev

Publication date: July 21, 2000

For the president today, the priority task is to restore controllability of the country. This task is obvious for the post-Yeltsin era. If Luzhkov, Primakov or anyone else had been in Putin’s place, he would have done the same thing, although perhaps using different methods. It’s just that a situation in which the leaders of the constituent entities of the Federation, the owners of privatized national infrastructures (transport, energy, financial, information, etc.) and corrupt officials of federal ministries are playing their own game - the federal center must pay for the costs - is slowly but surely transforming Russia into the category of fading states (according to Huntington), that is, non-subjects of their own domestic and foreign policies. By his actions, V.V. Putin demonstrates an excellent understanding of this situation. Hence the introduction of federal districts as a means of control over material, financial and information flows in the regions; reform of the Federation Council, designed to remove governors directly from the federal level of government; securing the right to remove heads of regional security forces exclusively to the Center. Hence the arrest of Gusinsky, opposition to Chubais’s attempts to “restructure” RAO UES (in reality, to privatize the energy transport infrastructure, while relegating the problems of electricity production to the federal and regional authorities), statements by Vyakhirev about his imminent resignation and Berezovsky about his readiness to transfer ORT shares to the state.

An equally important task is to restore the country’s controllability, preserve the integrity of the country itself, and prevent open confrontation between the elites and the international isolation of Russia. Putin also understands this very well, judging by the absence of massive attacks like those of 1993. A moderately accurate probing of the “enemy’s” positions is underway, identifying his weakest and most vulnerable spots. Hence the release of Gusinsky and the president’s willingness to compromise with the current composition of the Federation Council. In the end, no one is going to destroy governors either physically or as an institution. There's no point in this. It is much more effective and cheaper to pack them as gently as possible into a “cage” of powers and competencies in which they could freely express themselves as “strong business executives”, but would lose the opportunity to play independently at the federal and international levels. Plus, assign reliable guards so that they don’t try to get out of this cage (and so that they steal less). Restoring control over national infrastructures also does not require their total nationalization. Top managers can remain top managers, but again, within the limits of their assigned powers and competencies. And the whole epic with the arrest and release of Gusinsky and other troubles around Media-MOST looks more like an encouragement for the media tycoon to “feel the difference” between freedom of speech and freedom of information raid “You will answer for PR!”

All of Putin’s actions to restore the contours of government of the country indicate that a) these actions will continue and b) they will occur without mass terror and demonstrative executions, but rather will be accompanied by periodic actions of intimidation of individual intractable governors and oligarchs. This does not involve any dismantling of existing democratic institutions.

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So, is all the noise about the danger of a repeat of ’37, raised by liberals and near-liberal intelligentsia, just well-paid nostalgia for the times of dissident youth? Alas, this is not true.

The intelligentsia felt (from the experience of the early 90s) rather than understood the difference between the best intentions of the authorities and the reality that comes along the road paved with these intentions. She saw the possibility of a return to dictatorship in the very fact of creating the institution of force control (and the federal districts were conceived precisely as such an institution). There are grounds for such discretion.

In the normal course of events, the pacification of governors and the construction of a federal vertical of power will end by autumn-winter. What will the district structures created to act in the emergency situation of the creeping collapse of the country do after this? Will they be disbanded or greatly reduced? In Russia this is impossible. Most likely, as usually happens, they will come up with new functions for themselves, simply to justify their existence. And since they were formed purely for power tasks, new tasks will probably also be purely power ones.

This is where the mass appearance of “enemies of the people”, and confrontation between elites (real or imagined), and show trials becomes possible. We are talking, we especially note, not about someone’s malicious intent, but about the objective development of a situation in which there are power structures, but there are no clearly defined goals and objectives for these structures.

However, this is only one of the possible scenarios. It will be implemented if the district law enforcement agencies remain within the framework of law enforcement functions. Another scenario is possible if Putin, in the fight against governors and oligarchs, gives district chiefs additional powers related to the direct management of economic processes in the districts. This will lead to the degeneration of district leadership from the “sovereign’s eye” into a full-fledged bureaucracy, forming a new - district - level of power, and the districts will have significantly greater autonomy compared to the current regions. In this case, Russia will find itself in the situation of the late USSR in the second half of the 80s with similar prospects for collapse. Similar concerns have been repeatedly expressed, including by the president himself.

Thus, the president’s attempt to rely in the struggle to restore governance of the country on the formal bureaucratic institutions he creates (effective in tactical terms) leads to a strategic loss for the president and the entire country as a whole. A possible way out of this situation is in the direct appeal of the Supreme Ruler to the people of his country and the formation of a mass Presidential Movement as a political force capable of resisting governors and oligarchs - the way out that Gleb Pavlovsky persistently proposes. There are prerequisites for such a movement. However, if there is no direct presidential appeal to the population, it will remain only in the results of sociological surveys and in the imagination of Gleb Pavlovsky. Or, being formed by formal administrative methods, it will share the fate of “Unity”, localized in its activity at a purely parliamentary level and cut off from the country’s population itself, its specific needs and tasks.

But if we talk about the creation of a mass presidential movement, a key question arises: what will the president address to the people and, accordingly, what will the created movement be aimed at? If, as Pavlovsky suggests, the main task of the movement is to support the president in the fight against opposing political groups , then let me ask: how will this support be institutionalized? History knows examples of such design: in a soft form - this is the institution of proscriptions in Rome and the oprichnina in Russia, in a hard form - the “institute” of civil war. I am not discussing the impact of such institutions on public morality. Simply from a functional point of view, the first option is the same repression carried out at an “amateur” level, the second option is the loss of controllability of the country and the country itself. And no amount of talk about “intimidation potential” will help here. The Institute is not a nuclear bomb; it cannot be preserved for long-term storage. Either it works or it simply doesn't exist.

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The main mistake that Putin makes and which Gleb Pavlovsky repeats after him is an attempt to implement deep institutional changes solely to solve short-term, purely tactical problems. It is simply surprising that no one is trying to set or at least discuss goals and objectives for the proposed institutions that are commensurate with the institutions themselves. Conversely, when talking about Russia’s development strategy, the question of what institutional changes are necessary for this strategy to be implemented is completely missed. It seems that the president and the government are going to develop Russia alone, and for this they do not need the direct participation of entrepreneurs, governors, or the population. By the way, such a position has historically been characteristic of the central government in Russia since tsarist times. As a result, when implementing large-scale reforms, the authorities had to literally break through the resistance of existing institutions, which led to the inconsistent and half-hearted nature of the reforms.

I am not going to urge V.V. Putin to forget about the task of restoring governance of the country and focus exclusively on development. But if we consider management outside the context of the overall strategic task, it comes down solely to issues of subordination and loyalty, which can be resolved either through violence or through farming. We want to leave the second option, implemented under Yeltsin, but we don’t want to come to the first.

Only if strategic goals and priorities are clearly stated, only then does it become possible to discuss the mechanisms for their implementation, the division of powers of participants, and forms of control over execution. And then consolidate them institutionally. I note that through such a strategic move, the confrontation between the federal government on the one hand and governors and entrepreneurs on the other is removed, since the experience, knowledge and skills of both are in demand by the state. And then everything depends on how adequate the governors and entrepreneurs themselves are to the strategic goals and objectives.

Let me emphasize once again: the level of strategic objectives must be commensurate with the institutional changes being implemented. If changes are made at the level of the entire country, then the strategy should be addressed to the entire country, to representatives of all social and professional groups, and not to individual bodies and departments.

As an example, I want to highlight one (of course, not the only!) such strategic task - the task of restoring and developing the country’s full-scale productive forces in the interests of its entire population.

I am well aware that such a task is not perceived as necessary by everyone, both in our country and in the world. American economist and politician Lyndon LaRouche, who has been trying for twenty years, on the basis of the latest scientific achievements, to prove to US citizens the need to develop the “physical economy” (L. LaRouche’s term), remains a political marginal to this day. Domestic developments by P. Kuznetsova, S. Nikanorova, deputy. Minister of Defense N. Mikhailov (the latter’s book “Physical Economics” was published last year), former deputy. Minister of Industry M. Dvortsin (author of the economic theory of the development of technological processes - technodynamics) is also little known. However, the Russian and world experience of the last 10 years allows us to unequivocally state: without its own full-scale productive forces, including industrial, technological, educational and scientific complexes, the political and economic independence of the country is impossible. The country inevitably becomes dependent on the global political and economic situation. This means goodbye to one’s own political subjectivity, sustainable economic development, and social well-being of the population. Hopes for foreign investment are in vain: after the Asian, Russian and Latin American crises, no one will invest money in the economy of a country that does not have its own foundations for sustainable reproduction and development.

In Russia, at present, a full-scale industrial complex is torn between disparate regions and large business groups acting exclusively in their own interests. And it is the newly formed federal districts that could become the driving force for the reintegration of atomized Russian technological systems. Whether they will or not depends on whether they are offered a meaningful program of action in the interests of the entire country.

This program must first of all contain an analysis of the state of all existing physical infrastructures, enterprises and humanitarian resources in a particular region and their inventory in terms of the significance of the product being manufactured and their place in the structure of Russia's technological circuit. This is the first step. At the second stage, goals are set for the restoration and development of the country’s full-scale productive forces.

The actions of regional authorities and business owners should be assessed based on the analysis performed. For example, theft of enterprises producing technological products that are ahead of the curve (on a global scale) should be considered a grave crime.

Such an inventory and drawing up plans for the restoration and development of specific enterprises on its basis should be managed precisely at the level of federal districts. In other words, it is the district leaders who can present to the world and implement the notorious “Russian idea” - all subjects with different types of property can carry out the re-production of the country’s full-scale productive forces in a new socio-political contour based on their consistent and continuous development .

The role of the mass movement in the implementation of this strategy needs to be discussed separately. I will note only one circumstance. The development of production is impossible without the development of the social sphere (education, medicine, social security, culture, family policies) - and here the movement could act as a coordinator between district leadership, regional leaders and population groups to implement such development. For the majority of the population, this will mean a transition from a situation of survival due to the theft of severely dilapidated production complexes created during the Soviet period - to the process of forming national wealth.

The Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly did not put forward any strategic program. In many ways, fundamental and declaratively correct, the message did not fulfill its orientation task in relation to the population of the country, in relation to private business circles: it did not determine the demand for specific economic activities on the part of the state, did not demonstrate state priorities, work in the direction of which will be especially encouraged by the state. Unfortunately, the thinking of our power elite still remains at the level of managers of a private corporation, concerned mainly with ensuring that management signals and financial flows reach their destination.

One hundred days of President Putin have already passed. There is still time to correct the mistake. How many?