“Putin is the late Gorbachev”

The past week and the first year of Putin's third presidency - through the eyes of a Znak.com expert

03/04/2013 18:00

Putin is not yet a lame duck, but he no longer controls the bureaucratic system. He has no time for strategy - to survive until 2018 without shocks. But doing this will be oh so difficult, says Vladimir Milov, chairman of the Democratic Choice party, author (together with Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov) of sensational reports on corruption in Putin’s Russia.

- Vladimir Stanislavovich, the first news, it seems to me, is worthy of discussion: the presidential administration did not have time to prepare a declaration form for State Duma deputies not only on income, but also on expenses, although this is required by the law adopted in November. As a result, deputies will report only on income. The news was seemingly insignificant. But this is an indicator of the attitude of the administration of the head of state towards his own declared anti-corruption campaign, what do you think?

- At one time, thanks to declarations, we learned that our officials and deputies own a large amount of real estate and cars, the cost of which does not correspond to their salaries. There were a lot of publications and requests - for example, where did First Deputy Director of the FSB Pronichev and his wife get several Lexuses from? But it didn’t go further than campaigning. The actions of the authorities are fragmentary - be it the “Serdyukov case” or the “Skrynnik case.” And this gives reason to believe that when these stories move into the investigative and judicial plane, this is nothing more than a reflection of intra-government, inter-clan conflicts. There is not a single example when the government takes up a corruption plot and brings it to the end, as they say, of its own free will. Each time these cases coincide exactly with the “map of military operations” of certain clans. Nothing happens until one group wins and begins to deal with another group, as is happening with Serdyukov. From this I cannot conclude that we are facing a systemic struggle for purity of the ranks. My interpretation: they act in their usual secret service style - they create hooks on representatives of the establishment (I cannot call these people an elite), additional reasons to keep them under control. If you want to live a normal life, be politically loyal and remain silent. Now the question of political loyalty has become very acute.

- What about the thesis about the “nationalization of the elites”?

- This is a phantom term. In fact, a completely different process is underway - to “bind” the establishment, to ensure even greater loyalty in a situation where Putin’s political positions have obviously been shaken. His ratings continue to fall, and opinion polls show that people in 2018 would like to see a different president. And this means that even more serious political events are ahead. He sees that part of the establishment is already raising the question: isn’t it time to change the system and the leadership in it? For him, this split is the main danger, the source of his fear. And attacks on representatives of the establishment with compromising materials are attempts to protect themselves from a future internal “rebellion.” This is where all the new ways of discrediting the establishment come from: we’ll declare foreign real estate illegal, if necessary, we’ll close our eyes, and if someone starts behaving incorrectly, we’ll get the daddy out and sort it out. This is exactly the same scheme that worked when Gennady Gudkov was expelled from the State Duma: the ban on doing business existed for more than ten years, and all these years lay dormant like the sword of Domocles, many deputies were engaged in business, but only Gudkov suffered. Over time, when it became necessary to spur their own people, the ban was applied to several United Russia members. By the way, I am generally against this ban.

Vladimir Milov

- In other words, the task is not to “nationalize” the elites, not to purge or replace them, but to make them pliable, like plasticine?

- Yes, the task is much more practical. And talking about national interests is demagoguery. The national interest is in improving people’s living standards, good roads and the absence of problems in housing and communal services.

- What else caught your attention last week? Searches at Oleg Deripaska's RUSAL, investigators' raid on Viktor Vekselberg's Metkombank, Britain granting political asylum to Andrei Borodin. It feels like big business is being made the “enemy of society” again.

- I wouldn't interpret it that way. These are yet another outburst of inter-clan struggle, and she is very impulsive. This struggle has intensified greatly in the last year. Firstly, they have become very fat, including due to the increase in budget expenditures to support them, due to the fact that they have swallowed various assets and have become huge, with large appetites (this also applies to state corporations). The second reason why these conflicts break out is, as I already said, a sign of the political weakening of the president. He can no longer control the situation so much that the consequences of the confrontation do not break out and become known to the media. Previously, Putin’s authority made it possible to contain conflicts; they smoldered somewhere inside. Now all this is happening online, and Putin is not strong enough to daily control and extinguish what is happening behind his back. I am sure that there will be many more episodes in this soap opera.

- Will Putin have to come to terms with the new situation or will he try to return to his former status?

- It is no longer possible to return his super dominance, for objective reasons. He can no longer provide the kind of dramatic improvement in living standards that he did during the first eight years of his presidency, when real incomes grew by an average of 12% per year. We have not yet emerged from the economic crisis, economic growth is weak, and household incomes are not growing. This stagnation, which has been going on since 2008, has cut off the wings of “Putin’s dream” that “you will always feel good with me.” Accordingly, its popularity is falling. It also falls because he’s simply tired of it. A leader in charge for so long cannot count on a sharp surge in popularity, especially when the economy is stagnating or even falling, this is the law. People’s disappointed economic expectations and fatigue with Putin’s persona are expressed in street protests, which have not happened since the time of Yeltsin, since 1993.

His third problem is precisely those powerful clans that he gave birth to and which grew up behind him and acquired their own interests. If earlier they were his accomplices, henchmen, now they have become institutionalized, corporatized, which is expressed in the specific shareholder value of companies, in the value of shareholders, in the volume of controlled budget flows. At the same time, all these people, Putin’s entourage, have already seen and felt how a year ago his positions were shaken, how “Akela missed.” It’s one thing to have a young and strong leader who wins all his fights, and another thing to have an old leader who misses. As soon as a leader shows weakness, the pack’s attitude towards him changes radically.

- But the president still has real levers of influence on specific people in his hands - someone can be fired, security forces can be sent to someone, or, as Vladimir Vladimirovich once put it, doctors.

- He has agreements and common interests with many. “Eating” your ally because he has contradictions with your other allies means weakening one clan and strengthening another, and who knows how this will all turn out for you? Take the same story with Serdyukov. Last summer, Serdyukov really won when he achieved victory over the United Shipbuilding Corporation, when Protsenko (Yuri Protsenko, former general director of USC - ed.) left as Sechin’s adviser to Rosneft. And then everything changed rapidly. And it was clear how Putin was terribly tossed around in this situation, very worried, because he, in general, liked what Serdyukov was doing, against the backdrop of everything else, it was at least some kind of movement forward. Putin is too connected by a web of friendships, mutual interests, obligations to take and start smashing everything, replicating the fate of Serdyukov, who was a fairly close and devoted person to him.

- Thus, the main thing for Vladimir Vladimirovich is to balance the system, keep it from self-destruction, from the destructive influence of the external environment, survive until 2018 without shocks and disasters, remain in history as a conservative, but not a stupid leader, and certainly not a dictator?

- These Putin tactics are visible in everything we have been observing over the past year. Its inertial formula can be described as follows: “Guys, you still have no one. Well, bear with me, I’m not that bad.” This, of course, is already very far from the previous messages, from the Munich and Luzhniki speeches, when he was truly macho. Now he is no longer macho. Not a lame duck, of course: he still has quite a lot of political power. But he is definitely no longer a bay horse of champion blood and can no longer make big leaps. There is practically no charge to move forward; it can only work to maintain the situation. Therefore, he is doing everything to drive the protest underground and, apparently, to calm himself down in this way. But the protest will still spill out, and the brighter the darker this very underground will be.

- In this regard, the question that I have been constantly asking lately is: why do they adopt and sign only prohibitive laws, why do they tease the people? The law on rallies will raise few people to their feet, but the law on registration will raise it.

- I will answer as a former practical bureaucrat (Vladimir Milov was Deputy Minister of Energy in the cabinet of Mikhail Kasyanov - ed.). The dramatic changes that we just talked about - the fall in Putin's rating, the increase in protest, and so on - these are all very dynamic things that are happening right before our eyes. But the state machine is very inert, calloused, and cannot quickly respond to these changes. She behaves as in the old days, as if she can still steer people left and right. After all, she grew up precisely for this, she cannot deny herself this and does not know how to do it any other way. Therefore, Putin’s task is to restrain the bureaucracy, realizing that today the authorities can no longer afford much. But to what extent he himself is aware of the danger of constant prohibitions and restrictions, to what extent he is able to control this “enraged printer”, this “magic pot” that will not stop “cooking”, this, I repeat, is a big question. It doesn't appear that he's capable of resisting yet.

- But he introduced a bill into the State Duma on the return of single-mandate constituencies in State Duma elections. Of course, it plays into the hands of United Russia and Putin candidates, but it also gives chances to the opposition.

- First of all, I want to emphasize that this bill appeared a year after the political events that caused it. This again speaks of the slowness of the system. The return of elections in single-member constituencies has been a demand of the opposition for many years. Because the proportional system leads to voting based on clan and group interests, and not on the interests of the population of regions and cities. And by introducing this bill, Putin admitted that his entire political reform in the form of the abolition of gubernatorial elections, the elimination of voting under the majoritarian system, these were “garbage” initiatives that lead to the degradation of the political system, to the concentration of “hot steam” in it, to the danger of explosion. He returned to the previous election scheme, admitting that his reforms had failed.

Of course, there are difficulties - they are that elections in a single-member district require a large contribution from the candidate, including financial. It is clear that, given the ability of our authorities to intimidate business, there are no queues of people willing to finance opposition parties, and United Russia with its “money bags” has much more financial opportunities. In addition, the candidate from the “party in power” can disguise himself as an independent, “people’s”, “business executive”. But this is the role of the opposition - to expose such “hidden” United Russia candidates who go to the polls under the guise of “people’s” self-nominated candidates.

Of course, the fight in single-mandate constituencies will not be easy, and tactically it is most likely in the interests of United Russia, which will thus extend its life for a short time. The good news is that constituency MPs (as well as governors and mayors) will have to answer to their constituents, and this will be a deterrent. Even though they are loyal to Putin, on the one hand, they have an additional, very powerful source of legitimacy, and on the other, a factor that determines their political fate: if they behave badly towards citizens, they will not be re-elected.

- Isn’t the return of single-mandate constituencies a mechanism for replacing the elites that are disgusted with Putin, at least at the parliamentary level?

- Yes, it can also be considered as a mechanism for rotation of the establishment. And so be it, that’s good. If you look at the composition of the State Duma today, it’s something of a horror. There are people sitting there who, in direct political competition, would never have been elected anywhere, but got on the party lists solely thanks to apparatus games.

- The bill prohibits the creation of party blocs. So he is pushing the opposition parties to unite?

- Banning blocks is bad, but not fatal. Everyone is already pretty tired of the old parties (the so-called systemic, parliamentary opposition, as well as, for example, Yabloko). For example, the LDPR did not pass in the October municipal elections in Yaroslavl, and the results of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and A Just Russia dropped significantly. But the Civic Platform faction appeared, and two more new parties were just a little short of passing the barrier. If among the new parties there appear those that can attract mass voters, the question of blocs will disappear by itself; it will not be of fundamental importance. If blocs are the addition of percentages of small parties: a percentage here, a percentage here - it’s all in favor of the poor. Such blocs are short-lived, and such parties have nothing to do in the political arena; they will disappear on their own as part of natural selection. Such opposition is simply not needed. The process of forming large parties, joining them with other organizations and supporters, and crystallizing leaders is much more important. And in this sense, I am an optimist; parties that can take 5-7-10%, or even more, will definitely appear.

- It turns out that Putin still cares about the political landscape not only for himself? How do you generally feel about the idea that he has become disillusioned with the West and is now gathering strength to revive an autonomous, independent, powerful Russia?

- After 13 years at the head of the state, have you finally thought about reviving your country? Considering that they didn’t even build a normal road from Moscow to their native St. Petersburg, only 700 km, this is reminiscent of jokes about “hot Finnish guys.” He is not in a position now to think about global prospects for revival. Here he was terribly indignant at the fact that utility tariffs suddenly increased by orders of magnitude (since people were “hung” with communal networks), and ordered that they should not be allowed to increase by more than 6% per year. And this despite the fact that over the last decade, housing and communal services tariffs have increased more than 10 times. Does he not know? Or does he seriously think that the problem can be solved by shouting, in the style of “train, stop, one-two”? He cannot offer anything as an agenda for moving forward and, naturally, resorts to directives that will achieve nothing.

- Well, how come there is no agenda? Advisor to the President, academician Sergei Glazyev proposed strengthening the role of the state in the economy. And observers talk about a conservative concept - with the dominance of the state, with a turn towards traditional, but uplifting values, including religious ones.

- You see, Putin is now in the position of the late Gorbachev, who began to understand that without cardinal political and economic reforms there will be nowhere. At that time, too, there were various academicians who insisted that we could not switch to market economics, we needed to try to make another planned breakthrough. What Glazyev says is simply ridiculous. It’s been 10 years now, since the “YUKOS case,” that the state has made a major return to the economy: nationalization of assets, increase in government spending. Russia is the only country in the post-Soviet space – from Macedonia to Mongolia – that has made this big turnaround. First, the share of the public sector in our country decreased to about 30% of GDP, and then grew to more than 50% at the moment. This did not happen even in Belarus and Turkmenistan, because the share of the private sector there is small, but it is increasing. My question is: where are the results? Tax burdens have risen sharply, economic growth has declined, and household income growth has declined. And what good will come from the purchase of YUKOS assets, from the acquisition of Sibneft, TNK-BP? Where can we further expand the role of the state? Select metallurgy? Buy out retail chains? And what will change from this? Where and how exactly will the breakthrough occur if the state returns everywhere? All these rotten approaches are a million years old. And the fact that Putin’s advisers speak with such old stuff, with such trash, is additional evidence of a crisis of thinking within the system, that they cannot give birth to anything other than the ideas of the 30s of the last century, which are irrelevant in the modern world. They have no modern strategic ideas.

As for Putin personally (and, by the way, some well-promoted players from the opposition), they are busy with the same thing - digesting the turbulent events that happened a year ago and for which they were completely unprepared. They are like a boa constrictor that has eaten too much. We see that both Putin and some opposition figures are unable to offer any plan for moving forward and only torment each other with false, fake news stories that are not worth a damn: Pekhtin, a play about Pussy Riot, and so on. And strategically - a vacuum, emptiness.

Interviewed by Alexander Zadorozhny

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Comments:

Nonron

Mining engineer, colleague - don’t simplify the complex...apparently, they didn’t teach you well. Did you work in the “field”? Three generations of normal men were knocked out by wars in Russia - do you want to argue with genetics? Wow - the phenotype is not the genotype... how tolerant it is. I am not a supporter of Putin and his “shobbles”... but what in return? Protectorate of "US" whores in the form of the IMF, Fed, WTO - I don't want to live with a debt "member"...North Korea - yes, it's not mine... flex your brains and don't waste your time at the physical department.

Diary

Is early Yeltsin Navalny or what? Then you need to get ready to watch Swan Lake.

Russian

It’s a strange feeling from what I read; you can’t compare Putin, neither with Andropov, nor with Gorbachev. Putin is who he is, his terrible past weighs heavily on him, his circle of assistants and his entourage also influence him. And Putin also has debts to the oligarchs who brought him to power, and all this weighs heavily on him. The environment is blowing into your ears about infallibility and individuality, they have licked their lips, in short. But sometimes Putin spontaneously breaks through, almost Freudian-style, emotions not clouded by a position of power. And since this is a deeply unhappy person, hooked on the needle of power, this can end badly for him mentally. His management of the country in manual mode looks ridiculous, manual statistics also play a bad role for him, I don’t want to advertise them, wishful thinking. But the rating is really lame, the government doesn’t know why, strange landings, stranger non-placings, thieves in the government, the Duma, the prosecutor’s office, investigative agencies, thieving officials at all levels. This is the legacy of 20 years of rule, there is something to think about, but there is no time, you need to act based on the opinion of not always honest, not always competent officials, assistants, most often lobbying the interests of their clans. Scorpios in the bank, who are only interested in money, the interests of the country come last. Destruction of all institutions of power, education, medicine, admission of managers to top positions. There are almost no professionals left, the old ones have survived, and no new ones are being trained. Full paragraph, as long as the people have the potential, the country lasts, it won’t last forever, the authorities have something to think about.

patriot

was a deputy minister under Kasyanov - this says a lot. We already know the price of Kasyanov and his liberal government!!! Glazyev is the only knowledgeable economist around Putin, and if they don’t listen to his advice, the end of Russia cannot be avoided

gizmo

Who proved that socialism is bad? What they had in the USSR was far from socialism, but even then the whole world was in good shape. And what now - the growing insanity of pseudo-democracy? There is an example of a dying Europe and a growing communist China.

the people

An article from our life. Everything is simple and clear. We see and understand. But WE CAN'T DO ANYTHING. We have been given the RIGHT TO SEE...

Dmitriy

Putin boldly leads Russia, like the captain of the Titanic leading the icebergs.

Unknown

"And who proved that socialism is bad? What they had in the USSR was far from socialism, but even then the whole world was in good shape. And what now - the growing insanity of pseudo-democracy? There is an example - the dying Europe and the growing communist China." But why is such excellent socialism/communism in the 70-80s mired in the same bureaucracy, bribery, nepotism, mischief and unprofessionalism??? If the system was strong, it would survive. China is certainly beautiful, but what do you know about China? If you really look at things, now are the best years of life for the majority in this country - a holiday of "consumerism", saturation - that's why everyone has become so smart. But if, at least the interviewee, was now digging the White Sea Canal, all the slag that was given out here would simply not have come into being from his head.

A lawyer

This tandem will lead first to a popular revolt, and then to the division of the Russian Federation.

I agree, there is something to take away from the article. I think many will agree with her. even if it was ordered by the opposition. anyway, well done, don’t be afraid, but what can I say about our Motherland? Many people know the history of Russia very well and still remember it, until historians have rewritten it... and it scares me, but apparently... there is another way..... it’s a pity . I also live in Russia and the future scares me

From Tagil

Everything is much worse. Putin has no time at all. And it is already useless to talk about changing policy. Uncontrolled protest is growing everywhere. Wages are being delayed everywhere (Surgut, Sochi, Alapaevsk), seemingly different cities geographically, but the picture is the same everywhere. People took out loans, and now everyone is in limbo. There is no point in working without pay, and no competition for “the best in the profession” will raise the prestige of blue-collar professions. That's it - the country has gone into chaos.

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