Andrey N. Okara. One hundred years of solitude of Putin

One hundred years of solitude of Putin
Part 1. Catastrophic inertia of choice

Andrey N. Okara

Publication date: December 4, 2003

The last question on the topic "Who is Mr. Putin?"

At some marginal bookstore, the author of these lines caught the eye of two tattered brochures lying next to each other. Judging by the names of the authors, the names of the publishing houses, the design of the covers, the format, layout and even the color of the paper, they had nothing to do with each other - they were related by a certain existentially sharpened sense of political existence. One was called: “Will Putin save Russia?”, the other was called “Will Putin ruin Russia?” . It’s interesting, because it is precisely between these two maxims that lie all the countless interpretive schemes that explain the Putin phenomenon and the secret springs of the Putin regime.

One “ultimate” scheme looks something like this: Putin is the happy chosen one of Providence ( “Man of Destiny”, according to the definition of the French geopolitician Jean Parvulesco), who has been reborn from Sobchak’s comrade-in-arms and Yeltsin’s “successor” into the savior of not only his own Fatherland, but also almost half the world . He is not just a local politician, he is a figure of historical proportions who restored the “vertical of power”, saved the country from collapse and desolation, and forced the main international “players” to take it into account. In other words, Putin is like anti-Yeltsin .

Another extreme point of view is this: Putin is a brilliant invention of political strategists, a “collective pseudonym for a group of comrades”, created to manipulate public opinion and ensure social peace by exploiting the phenomenon of “extended waiting”, to preserve the results of Yeltsin’s privatization and conservation of oligarchic capitalism, in order so that representatives of the “oligarchy” are confident in the future. Putin is the chairman of the board of directors of the Great Russia Recycling Corporation (as defined by the Russian geopolitician Vadim Tsymbursky ), whose main task is the integration of the remains of Russia into globalization processes taking place according to American models. In other words, Putin is like the new Gorbachev .

During his first term, he, of course, did not “rescue” Russia, but he did not “ruin” it either, although there are many arguments in favor of both interpretations. The judoka Putin played, rather, political aikido, where the main point is not to strike, but to avoid the enemy’s strike. During his first presidential term, he was the face of the consensus called “Putin” - it is not for nothing that the authors of notes on modern Russian power groups in the magazine “Vlast” and the television program “Namedni”, where each clan is designated as a separate card suit, identified Putin as an ace in all four suits at once . Representatives of various groups still consider him “one of their own,” although in the “political casino” the Russian president is a “croupier” and not a “player.”

"Manager" or "anointed"?

The Russian understanding of power has one important feature, thanks to which in recent years it has become obvious not only the functional and technological necessity of the presence in politics of a personality like Putin, but also its ontological significance in the context of Russian history. The central place in Russian political culture is occupied by the idea of ​​transcendence and the sacred nature of supreme power. The absence of an “anointed one” surprisingly makes Russian life meaningless and deprives it of historical perspective. The experience of characters like Yeltsin and his colleagues in the CIS countries - Leonid Kuchma or Eduard Shevardnadze - testifies to the fact that the desacralization of power and the degeneration of important statist meanings are the cause, and not the consequence, of social problems.

We can say that Putin came to power thanks to refined political technology under conditions of a “managed” crisis. But it is difficult to argue with the fact that it was during his first presidential term that the collapse of most Russian infrastructures and the country as a whole was stopped.

Mass consciousness “imputed” Putin I, Putin 1999-2003, with a considerable number of positive charismatic and “state-centric” qualities, which, perhaps, the real Putin did not possess. Putin II, Putin of 2004-2008, will have to live up to this ideal vision, otherwise in the near future, when the resource of expectations is exhausted, a real “devaluation of Putin” may occur, fraught with very real and unpredictable social upheavals. After all, the liberal idea of ​​the origin of power not from above, but from the “social contract”, according to which the same president is viewed as a hired manager, devoid of superhuman properties, in Russia works only for destruction. Power structures and consolidates the Russian political and geographical space, which is why it is conceived not contractually, but charismatically - the figure of the “anointed one” is the absolute reference point for any political processes. Including for the repressive rotation of elites, carried out through reprisals by the head of state (the tsar, the secretary general of the ruling party, the president) and his “guards” (oprichnina, NKVD, “siloviks”) over the “ruling stratum” (boyars, “Leninist guards”, oligarchs). Hence the desire of the “ruling layer” to control the bearer of supreme power, in every possible way demystifying its source, the desire to position the head of state as part of the “ruling layer” - as a manager, but not as an “anointed one.”

Who will become the screenwriter and director of the elections?

Both election campaigns - parliamentary and presidential - can have at least three main development scenarios: catastrophic, mobilization and inertial.

The catastrophic scenario “turns on” with the simultaneous intensification of internal and external challenges to Russian statehood: the collapse of world oil prices, the monetary and financial crisis, large-scale man-made disasters, terrorist attacks like the events of September 11, 2001 in New York, a major military conflict not far from the Russian border ( for example, between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan), winter “freezing out” of half of Russian regions, etc. Such a scenario could have unpredictable consequences both for the current parity between oligarchic clans and the highest state power, and for the president personally. By seeking to "collapse" Putin's rating on the eve of the presidential elections in March 2004, there will be many who want to provoke a large-scale all-Russian crisis.

After the recent “velvet” revolution in Georgia, many are beginning to think that a similar “Yugoslav-Georgian” catastrophic scenario of a change of power can easily be “turned on” in Russia. However, Russia exercises state sovereignty over the entire state territory, the supreme power controls the security agencies, so it is not so easy to provoke a systemic challenge to the Putin regime. In economically disadvantaged, politically and sub-ethnically fragmented Georgia, where the central government does not control most of the territory, the current state of this country itself is a systemic challenge.

However, creative thought does not sleep. Boris Berezovsky in one of his interviews explained how it is possible to “bring down” the rating of the current president within 24 hours: a gang of terrorists captures a large group of especially vulnerable people - a maternity hospital, musical spectators, a school, a kindergarten, etc., and puts forward ultimatum demands to the president ( the minimum of which would be resignation) and to demonstrate the seriousness of his intentions, almost on live television, he shoots several hostages every hour.

Political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky predicted an equally bloody, but slightly more drawn-out scenario. Revanchist oligarchs provoke an energy crisis, literally freezing out 20-25 regions of Russia, after which they organize and pay for a trip to Moscow for 50 thousand dissatisfied people. There they are joined by another 10-15 thousand “persons of non-Russian nationality” from the Moscow region. And this entire crowd of thousands is gathering around the Kremlin for an open-ended rally demanding the resignation of the president. The leaders of the Union of Right Forces, Yabloko and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation with their supporters join the people, the oligarch-controlled media begin a ruthless information war, Collin Powell comes to Moscow and offers Putin to resolve the crisis peacefully, that is, to voluntarily resign. The crowd goes to "Matrosskaya Silence", frees Khodorkovsky and crowns the "martyr of conscience". The screenwriter estimated the cost of producing such a show at $106 million.

If one of the oligarchic groups, opposing itself to the current government, decides to develop the pre-election situation according to a catastrophic scenario, the likelihood of the physical elimination of the president will also increase with the appearance of a new potential “charismatic” on the horizon. Political or physical neutralization of Putin can be carried out exclusively “for” a specific candidate. In the current situation, there are only two people worthy of the attention of revenge-seekers in the coming months: Mikhail Kasyanov, who, like Alexander I after the assassination of Paul I, will say: “With me everything will be like with my grandmother” (that is, under Yeltsin; it’s not for nothing that the current president most often are compared precisely with Pavel and with the heroes of “One Hundred Years of Solitude” by Marquez), and Sergei Shoigu - as a “tough guy”, accustomed to “saving”, like, by the way, “Putin’s man”, but, unlike the latter, completely devoid of an ideological component and goal setting. This kind of good-natured and charismatic “Olympic Bear” is an ideal object for political “puppeteers”.

The mobilization scenario becomes relevant in the event of the intensification of any one local destabilizing factor - a high-profile terrorist attack, a military campaign similar to the Chechen one, the assassination of a major political figure (as in 1934, the elimination of Kirov), a natural disaster, raising the issue of nationalization of natural resource rent from oil production and gas. It was the mobilization scenario in 1999 that allowed Unity to flourish in the parliamentary elections, and Putin to be elected in the first round of the presidential elections.

Such a scenario is more “stable” than a catastrophic one - it does not threaten the current government with a serious redistribution of property and power, but it may lead to the rise of some aggressive group that wants to restore “order” in the country, because “it’s a shame for the state.” If a similar scenario comes to fruition, society will once again be in demand for the president who once promised to “wash himself in the toilets.”

But a Third Chechen War is not expected; the relevance of the Iraqi crisis as a consolidating factor subsided a month and a half after the start of the American aggression. The conflict with Ukraine around the island of Tuzla was considered by some characters from Putin’s circle precisely as a possible external challenge, around which a partial mobilization of the electorate could occur in the State Duma elections (it is no coincidence that the “frontmen” of the conflict on the Russian side were Dmitry Rogozin from the pro-presidential bloc “Rodina” and the Krasnodar Governor Alexander Tkachev from United Russia), but the topic itself with the deterioration of Russian-Ukrainian relations turned out to be unpromising.

But the “fight against the oligarchs” in the current conditions is an ideal scenario for modeling an internal threat, in opposition to which the absolute majority of Russian society is ready to morally unite, around which a consensus called “Putin” can again arise. The demonization of oligarchic capitalism, coupled with information actively broadcast on state media about the political and financial symbiosis of the oligarchs and the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, reduces the electorate of left-wing anti-Putin political forces. The Rodina bloc was also designed for the same purpose, which, however, takes away votes not so much from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation as from the LDPR and United Russia, but this is a production cost.

In turn, neither the “left” nor the “right” opposition have the information resources to significantly strengthen the “mobilization” component in their anti-Putin election rhetoric and invective addressed to either the “anti-people” (Communist Party of the Russian Federation) or the “illiberal one engaged in repression” business" (SPS, Yabloko), the Putin regime.

The inertial scenario is considered the mildest - it is accompanied by the neutralization of external and internal threats to the existing political regime and is realized, figuratively speaking, with a “small ringing of a bell.” This is exactly how the re-election of Alexander Lukashenko took place in Belarus in 2002. The current election campaign to the State Duma followed the same scenario - it is no coincidence that the party in power, United Russia, deliberately withdrew from debates on television. This is exactly the case when silence is golden. Especially if the “silent people” control the television airwaves and decide where, when and how to “shine in the box” of their competitors. When the 1999 elections took place according to a mobilization scenario, Unity “spoke and showed” much more and louder than other parties and blocs. True, United Russia has exhausted the electorate to such an extent with its non-verbal advertising that on election day this will certainly work to its detriment.

Since the inertial scenario does not involve repelling any external aggression, the ideological factor is much less involved in it, but the theory of small deeds and the corresponding election slogans and messages are exploited: “More deeds - less words”, “Not in words, but in deeds”, “Deeds” we need to do it, not talk,” etc.

Elections to the State Duma are held according to a scheme that combines largely inertial signs (relative public calm, apathy of the population, low turnout for voting, a significant number of people willing to vote against everyone, maximum use of administrative resources by the party in power, use of “legal” technologies by both the authorities and election participants, a limited amount of money for campaigns, narrowing opportunities to campaign according to the 2002 election law) with mobilization features (promoting an anti-oligarchic brand, fighting “werewolves in uniform,” fighting for the “dictatorship of the law,” etc.). We can say that the Kremlin, in the guise of the party in power, generally dominates elections, but does not control them completely.

In the same plane lies the main question being decided on the approaches to the Duma: will the president and the party in power in the lower house of parliament gain a simple majority (226-299 votes) or a constitutional majority (from 300 votes), allowing amendments to the Constitution and adoption of constitutional laws. And what will be the methods of consolidating the president’s supporters. The presence of a “hard” constitutional majority, which, however, does not seem possible in the current conditions, threatens elite stagnation, demoralization of deputies, a decrease in the role of the legislative branch of government, and a decrease in the intensity of the political process - as happened in Belarus. Despite the apparent preference of a permanent constitutional majority, from the point of view of the functioning of the system, such a mechanism is ultimately less stable and subject to self-destruction (and at this point, as we see, the “inertial” scenario subtly merges with the “catastrophic” one). The presence of a relative majority presupposes compromises and coordination of actions between factions. This is a lower level of political opportunities, but a higher level of guarantees for the political system as a whole, including against arbitrariness on the part of the presidential government in the event that, for example, a new unexpected figure suddenly appears in the most important chair.