Roller coaster of Russian elections

The one who crept up unnoticed on Europe and the USA,

never left Russia.

Anecdote from the Internet

The history of presidential elections in Russia is quite interesting and deserves a separate study. But there is one interesting circumstance in it that should be especially considered. In all elections, the candidate who suited the United States won. This began back in Soviet times, when the first presidential elections of the RSFSR took place. Mikhail Gorbachev wanted to push through Ryzhkov, but Yeltsin won. And this happened under Soviet control of the electoral process.

Yeltsin justified the trust and set a course for the isolation of Russia from the union leadership. The 1991 putsch was a consequence of a managerial crisis: who should the army and other security forces obey in a situation where the question was at stake? The Alpha group refused to storm the White House and thereby solved this dilemma. Power passed into the hands of the Russian president. The President of the USSR became a figurehead and was forced to resign along with the Soviet Union.

Yeltsin began to rapidly introduce capitalism in Russia according to American recipes. American capitalism is oligarchic capitalism. Therefore, the creation of a class of oligarchs was the initial task of the Americanization of Russia. Anatoly Chubais, the father of all Russian oligarchs, was engaged in this noble cause.

In 1993 there was a political crisis. The chair under Yeltsin was shaking, but the United States was categorically not happy with the alternative (Rutskoy and Khasbulatov). Therefore, Clinton supported Yeltsin’s shooting of the same White House. CNN presented this action to the whole world as a victory of the forces of democracy over the restorers of the “Evil Empire”. A new Constitution was adopted, which is still in force. According to it, the “power of the Soviets” was abolished and the destruction of the Soviet political system was completed. The new system gave carte blanche to the “great reformer” to implement American economic recipes. But the Soviet system was so tightly knit together that even the redrawing of the political structure could not break the resistance to the “reforms.” In 1996, Yeltsin was literally dragged into power. However, Yeltsin’s second term was marked by a default, and the very word “reform” became dirty. By 1999, a social trend of returning to “Soviet origins” had clearly emerged. He was successfully saddled by Yevgeny Primakov, who looked somewhat similar to Brezhnev, and quickly gained popularity after his appointment as Prime Minister of the Russian Federation. His famous plane turn over the Atlantic increased this popularity, but became a signal to the Americans: Primakov is not ours. The “Putin” project was launched in order to prevent the presidency of Primakov, who already as prime minister began to rely on Soviet personnel (Yu. Maslyukov, G. Kulik). American political technologies were applied on a cowboy scale. They began to sculpt the image of “their guy” out of Putin, using all the well-known Hollywood techniques. The people’s longing for “Soviet greatness” was quenched by imitative methods - the restoration of the Soviet anthem, sovereign rhetoric, propaganda of Russia’s military power, etc.

Putin began to fall out with the “Washington regional committee” over the war in Iraq. Today, few people remember how Putin rushed between George W. Bush. and the Chirac-Schroeder tandem on the eve of the war. Bush urged Putin to support the war, Schröder and Chirac persuaded him to oppose it. Putin made contradictory statements, trying to please both. But the situation required a clear choice. Ultimately, the pro-European vector won. Economically, Russia is connected to a greater extent with Europe, since Europe is the main buyer of Russian raw materials. Russia is connected to the USA to a greater extent politically, because Russian “Westerners” and “liberals” in power are pro-American, not pro-European creatures. Europeans do not have such a well-oiled machine for conducting political special operations in other countries as the United States does. The appointment of Dmitry Medvedev as president in 2008 was Putin's concession to America. The mechanism of the crisis clearly began to unwind in 2007, and it was clear that it would soon go boom. Putin was forced to go for the “tandem” design in order to stay in power, because the financial trump cards of the global economy are in the hands of the Americans.

The current crisis clearly demonstrates that the dollar and the euro are not complementary, but competing currencies. After the formation of the “euro zone,” the West, in our usual understanding, ceased to be united. American experts recommend that the EU exclude Greece from the “euro zone” and declare a default there. Very good advice, which will lead to a decline in confidence in the euro and the collapse of the “eurozone”. But this is the only way the dollar system can survive. As General Lebed said, “two birds cannot get along in one den.”

Let's return to our presidents. The war in Iraq marked the boundary between the interests of Europe and the United States and forced Putin to make decisions not only on military issues, but also, more importantly, on economic ones. The cooling of relations with the United States was accompanied by a rapprochement of positions with the EU, primarily with Germany. The Russian-German alliance is growing stronger day by day, causing historical concern for the Anglo-Saxons. When Putin says that gas pipelines to Germany will allow Russia not to depend on Ukraine, he thereby confirms that the Germans are more “brotherly people” than the Ukrainians. They can be trusted, but the Ukrainians cannot. Even the “Slavic brotherhood” turned out to be weaker than the economic ties between Russia and Germany.

This is a serious problem for the United States, as American analysts write openly about in their comments. This is generally a distinctive feature of Americans - they discuss things in public that in Russia are called “non-telephone conversations.” Therefore, it is easier to analyze their global movements than the Byzantine patterns of Russian politics.

Economic forecasts regarding the further development of the global crisis are divided into bad and very bad. The famous crisis forecaster Nouriel Roubini promises a “second wave” that will be a “real tsunami”, that is, much more destructive than the first. Chairman of the Board of Renaissance Group Stephen Jennings in a lengthy interview with the Kommersant newspaper on August 23 of this year. described the collapse of the dollar system and the bright prospects for emerging markets (including Russian). Putin relies precisely on this theory, as follows from his economic statements. According to this theory, it is necessary to stop focusing on the United States with its dollars and strengthen Russia’s ties with the “euro zone” and Asian economies (primarily China).

This theory was developed in a radical form by Mikhail Prokhorov (by the way, 50%-1/2 shares in the investment company Renaissance Capital belongs to the ONEXIM group). In the manifesto of his former Right Cause party, Prokhorov proposed withdrawing Russian budget money from American securities, that is, to stop supporting the hopeless American economy. Prokhorov also came up with the idea of ​​a “Greater Europe”. The billionaire’s proposal for Russia’s entry into the “euro zone” was treated as exotic. But it was a kind of “trial balloon”. The idea is quite reasonable. Paper money must have real backing. The euro is currently backed by the industrial might of Germany and, to a lesser extent, France. The rest of the EU countries hung on the “eurozone” as subsidized subjects. If Russia joins the eurozone, its contribution will be expressed in raw materials. The industrial and technological potential of Germany and the raw materials resources of Russia could become the basis of a new world currency (even if the “euro” retains its previous name, it will be a different “euro”). Could the Americans tolerate such insolence? Of course no. They easily drove away the IMF director, who doubted the prospects of the dollar. Prokhorov's statements were recognized as seditious, and one of the members of the Surkov-McFaul commission carried out a special operation to expel Prokhorov from Right Cause.

But Prokhorov decided to play by his own rules. For those who were in the thick of things, the main shock was that the Presidential Administration had agreed on everything with Prokhorov (the oligarch was quietly leaving the party and going to Courchevel to rest after hard work), and in the morning he “violated the agreement” and organized an alternative get-together, which he called a “high meeting.” Moreover, he called for Surkov to resign. From which it follows that pro-American and pro-European lobbyists went head to head.

If the problem is formulated in a simplified way, then it is as follows: who will Russia save - the dollar or the euro? The Russian economy is too dependent on external economic factors to take its favorite “special path.” Prokhorov, by the way, said at one of the press conferences that “the Russian ruble is not sovereign,” since it is provided only with raw materials. This is a very apt statement of the fact of the total dependence of the Russian economy on the games of the “big men” of the world market. But the “uncles” have a conflict, and Russia finds itself between the hammer of the dollar and the anvil of the euro.

In the current situation, Putin, as always, is trying to please both ours and yours. Now the construction of the future Russian government by President Putin and Prime Minister Kudrin is being broadcast through the media. A couple of years ago, one American magazine declared Kudrin “the best finance minister of the year.” For Americans, Kudrin is “one of their own.” Putin himself is focused on Europe and, to a lesser extent, China. In other words, Putin is again trying to evade a clear decision by proposing another “tandem” for the next six years. The President will be drawn to Europe, the Prime Minister to America. Taking into account the fact that the rule of the “second tandem” will occur during the phase of the collision of the dollar and the euro in the struggle for world domination, it will simply be impossible for the Russian leadership to make independent strategic decisions. The President and the Prime Minister will pull in different directions and break not only the “tandem”. With their games they can drive Russia into such a historical impasse that will result in the collapse of the country. Then Russia will simply be divided between competing “uncles”, and voila!

After leaving Right Cause, Mikhail Prokhorov wrote on his blog: “In what happened, for me there is no personal conflict with anyone. Despite the personalization. Usually in such cases they say: nothing personal, just business. In essence, it was a conflict of ideologies and development paradigms. At this historical stage, conservatism has won. I proposed changes. The system is not ready." We can only add to this that the System’s unpreparedness for change, expressed in the inability of the country’s leadership to make strategic decisions, will ultimately lead to the collapse of the System itself. The only question is whether the System will not drag the country along with it, as happened in the case of the USSR. This is the main question today.

The Americans have always managed to push through a candidate favorable to them for the post of President of Russia. The new US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul is not a career diplomat, but a political scientist and political strategist. He will oversee the election process from the “Washington Regional Committee”. The very fact of this appointment indicates how seriously the United States takes the Russian elections. Will they succeed this time too?