Russia is waiting for the year of the dragon

According to Chinese tradition, the outgoing year is considered the Year of the Dragon. “I’m waiting for the Dragon to fly in,” says Lancelot in Schwartz’s tale. “I am a Dragon,” the Dragon calmly explains to him.

It seems that we have been waiting for the Dragon all year 2012. But he never showed up. Just like a year ago, we can only guess anxiously: will he appear and eat us all, or has he fallen asleep somewhere in a lethargic sleep and will never return to us?

A year ago, Moscow exploded with euphoria: after a wave of mass street protests, there was a smell of political spring. In kitchens, on the streets and in the press, people began to remember the late 1980s. It seemed that the regime, of which even those who made up its backbone and foundation were actually quite tired, was about to crack in half and fall apart - or, at least, begin to change. A little more and the hour of the Velvet Revolution will strike in Russia, after which it will begin its transition to a beautiful and flourishing democratic future anew, from a new page. People, who suddenly, after many years of political passivity, poured into Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue, felt like a collective Lancelot. And Putin, who returned to the presidency, was appointed Dragon. This was facilitated by the entire, and generally not particularly successful, dramaturgy of his return with the actual public humiliation of Medvedev, and outright violations in the Duma elections in December 2011, which, in fact, brought people to the streets.

But there were no further surprises: after Putin returned to the Kremlin, a reaction began. The promises made by the “tandem” in December 2011, in a situation where an immediate response was required to the challenge of the street, were fulfilled - but their initial volume was such that they in no way meant a real immediate start to institutional reforms. This can be seen in the example of the return of gubernatorial elections: where they took place, the governors are the same.

Whatever they say, gubernatorial elections are better than no elections, and three dozen parties are better than seven. But while these are purely formal changes, they do not affect the essence of the political system, which remains hermetic, in fact, little dependent on those who are usually called voters, and in reality concerned with two things: the reproduction of itself and its material well-being. The steps of the top leadership, which are supposedly aimed at democratizing the political system, are in fact perceived in retrospect of the entire Putin period, in the context of his first two presidential terms and the presidential term of Dmitry Medvedev.

And if you look at them in retrospect, they begin to resemble Krylov’s fable about the monkey and glasses: first, gubernatorial elections are removed from the political system, then they return. First, single-mandate constituencies in State Duma elections are abolished, then it is proposed to return them. This happens not only among monkeys with glasses. This also happens with institutions, the character of which from the very beginning was imitative. Nobody knows what to do with these simulacra. You can leave it on the dresser, or you can put it in the closet.

Be that as it may, the attempt to soften the rules was accompanied by such a striking series of tightening that it was completely lost against their background. This is not to say that this was unexpected: Vladimir Putin is clearly not the kind of person who is inclined to leave attempts to put pressure on him unanswered. At the height of the walks and Occupy Abays of the beginning of summer, the Duma, at the speed of a copying machine, issues several laws one after another, which are interpreted by the opposition as repressive. And after clashes between demonstrators and riot police on the Bolshoy Kamenny Bridge on May 6, a criminal trial begins against several civil activists who are accused of nothing less than organizing street riots.

At the same time, the trial of the year is taking place - the trial of Pussy Riot, actionist girls who, in the winter, sang the text of their own composition, which contained an appeal to higher powers to rid the country of Vladimir Putin. Formally, they are being tried not for their spoken words, but for hooliganism in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. But the process, of course, is perceived as significant: the authorities are too clearly trying to oppose the protest to the God-fearing loyal majority. The “two-room apartment,” which Putin talks about not without satisfaction, actually does him more harm than good—from outside the country and inside the so-called creative class. A powerful stream of obscurantism is added to the atmosphere of reaction.

Tightening legislation, the May 6 trial and the trial of Pussy demonized Putin in the eyes of the “creative class.” But the “class” itself did not consolidate; on the contrary, it successfully failed the next test of solidarity, maturity and overall capacity. The wave of protests died down to the accompaniment of a discussion about the Coordination Council. When the council was convened, it turned out that there was no one to coordinate. The sad action on December 15, 2012 was reminiscent of the speeches of “Strategy 31” on Triumphal Square, and the mood was reminiscent of a funeral procession.

This, however, does not mean at all that the protests are over: they simply temporarily left the streets, also because the leaders for the whole year did not formulate any political program other than the demand for Putin’s resignation. In reality, even in the most loyal segments of society, undisguised murmurs of disapproval can already be heard.

To express the general meaning of discontent in two or three words, it stems from a growing sense of the failure of the state and the paralysis of normal normative systems. The elementary regulations of everyday life - law and morality - cease to work, including because they are no longer supported by the state. Cossacks on city streets are not perceived as a return to roots. They are perceived as a sign of the powerlessness and incompetence of the police. This is the finish line of the state. For this mood to spill out onto the streets, a minimal reason is enough.

But those “at the top” still believe that protest is a phenomenon that lives within the “creative class.” Putin seems to have little interest in the opinions and sentiments of this part of society: he is trying to create new supports for himself in completely different social segments. The story of the appointment of Igor Kholmanskikh, a “simple guy” from Uralvagonzavod, as presidential plenipotentiary envoy in the Urals is about the same thing as the story of the All-Russian Popular Front, a supra-party political structure that should support Putin in a situation of the country’s growing distrust of the United Russia party. .

An appeal to the Popular Front (this is a term that arose on the periphery of the USSR during the period of its collapse - IS), like the rhetoric about a working man and the ride of an individual Kholmansky on a social elevator, is a test, a test of strength in the direction of a personalist dictatorship. That is, a regime whose legitimacy is ensured not by the consensus of elite groups draped in democratic procedures, but by the personal popularity of the authoritarian leader.

But Kholmanskikh remains almost the only one of its kind, and the Popular Front is almost invisible. So far these are not even steps, but namely tests in the direction of becoming a Dragon.

Meanwhile, at the end of the year there is a stable feeling of a “fork”. By and large, it doesn’t even matter whether this metaphor accurately reproduces the president’s ideas, moods and intentions: the “fork” is almost obvious.

One of its “prongs” is maintaining the “status quo”. That is, an attempt not to change anything in essence for as long as possible, to play for time, explaining this by the need to give Russia a few more years of stability, but in fact maintaining a more or less familiar configuration of power, allowing, if not all, then most of the interested participants to remain “within their own ".

The second “prong” is change. Their necessity is dictated not by protests, which spontaneously died out, and not at all as a result of repressive measures, but as a result of disappointment or organizational incapacity of the activists themselves. The need for change is dictated by what Putin cannot help but see even without any Bolotnaya Square: the state machine is cumbersome and expensive, but its efficiency has decreased so much that soon even the greatest optimists among the statists will admit: the mechanism does not work.

The implication is that these changes should affect not imitative institutions, not a canvas with a painted hearth, but the very essence of the system. Perhaps, being partly a populist, Putin realizes that this kind of change, such as, for example, a real consistent campaign against corruption within the state apparatus, could at the same time become an adequate response to the expectations of protesters who have gone home, and a gesture that is understandable and pleasant for those social circles on which he himself would like to rely. Changes are expected.

And he tests changes, just as he tests the tools of a personalist dictatorship: the end of the year is marked by an unprecedented number of high-profile anti-corruption trials. The accused include those who were considered untouchable just a year ago: for example, the top of the Ministry of Regional Development, who “saved” the preparations for the APEC summit in Vladivostok, or ex-Minister of Defense Serdyukov. These criminal cases seem to remind us that one fine (or not so fine) day a Dragon may appear in the place of a politician whose entire career is the result of a compromise between the elites.

But the risk of growing instability, inevitable at the moment when the Dragon breaks the tight leashes of informal connections and obligations that bind it, is very great. It would be easier for a politician of a different background to make such a risky bet, not an apparatchik, not a person who found himself at the political top as a result of a compromise between elite groups, but a charismatic one who relies on broad public support. The incumbent president is not like that - this was clearly demonstrated during the big elections in December 2011 and March 2012. The absolutely real personal popularity of Vladimir Putin would be enough for both the parliamentary majority of United Russia and his own victory in the presidential elections. However, he preferred completely different mechanics.

Large anti-corruption processes can be a test of a different model of behavior. The one who breaks the leashes of informal obligations. But you can’t stay in test mode for long. A figure that is the result of a compromise between the elites, even if it has gained unconditional weight of its own and ensures the conditional balance of elite groups by the very fact of its presence, becomes dangerous for the elites if it begins to play by its own rules. And then - one of two things: either the figure changes the rules overnight to suit himself (history knows such transformations, but they happen extremely rarely), or the elites change the figure. The general feeling of time pressure, the need to urgently start the idle engines of the Russian state, suggests that a choice between these two options can be made in the very near future.

At the same time, the ease with which the image of a country changes is sometimes truly frightening: who could, even after the spring-summer legislative exercises, seriously imagine that the wild law banning the adoption of children by Americans, adopted in response to the Magnitsky Act, would become a reality? But this is a story from the category of those that change the nature of our environment to such an extent that it is about to become incompatible with basic human dignity.

However, at the end of 2012, one cannot shake the feeling that approximately the same observations as now could, with minor amendments, apply, for example, to 1912. The authoritarian system, within which they realize that it is almost unsuitable for adequate responses to emerging challenges, is trying to reform itself, while at the same time resisting change with all its guts.

This is a story about Munchausen trying to pull himself out of the swamp along with his horse - only without a happy ending, with a realistic ending. 1912 was also a year of political stagnation with elements of reaction against the backdrop of relative economic stability. Neither 1914, nor 1917, much less 1937, were yet visible on the horizon. That, however, did not stop them from attacking.

When making comparisons, we must remember, however, that the country that existed in 1912 - and even the one that existed in 1982 - had significantly more options for the future than we do. History has picked up speed significantly. The beginning of the 20th century could still forgive the country for a failure in development for several years. The beginning of the 21st century will no longer forgive him: whoever doesn’t have time will be late forever.