Year of the open fracture

2014 became a turning point. And the scale of the changes that have occurred, and their irreversibility, it seems, has not yet been fully realized by the political elites or citizens. Meanwhile, the regime, and with it, we all found ourselves in a hard corridor, which, thereby changing the country's development path, is no longer capable of the current government. It can still rush, sometimes taking steps in the opposite of the main vector direction, but the reality is that the country is now hostage to the regime, the regime is Putin’s hostage, and Putin is the hostage of the decisions that he made at the beginning of the year and the steps taken. In this sense, Vyacheslav Volodin is absolutely right: “There is Putin - there is Russia, there is no Putin - no Russia” - at least the one that we have gained over the past year.

In less than a year, counting from the Sochi Olympiad, we essentially ended up in a new country: with a qualitatively different leader, political elites, and citizens. The regime has become even more personalistic and even more authoritarian. A year ago, one could say that Putin is not a king who does what he wants, but rather the chairman of the board of directors of the Russia Inc. corporation, whose actions are determined by the sum of multidirectional vectors of the interests of elite groups and clans. Today he is largely the king - the dependence on him of political elites has increased, and their ability to influence him decreased. The source of legitimacy has one, and this is Putin, who replaced the role of a democratically chosen leader to the role of a military leader, around whom both elites and the whole nation should rally. The independence of political elites and the possibility of citizens to influence political elites decreased. If earlier the expression "Putin's regime" was rather hyperbola, now it very accurately reflects the situation.

2014 completed the transformation of the political system, the beginning of which is traced at least until May 2012. The main directions of this transformation: weakening of the already weak institutions; building a police state; completing the nomenclature system and essentially, Sovietization in various directions; nationalization of elites and personnel cleaning; the expansion of the state into different spheres of society and the private life of citizens; completion of the dismantling of "protection from the fool"; a sharp increase in control over the information space with the elimination of islands of relative autonomy; A significant weakening of the separation of powers and horizontally (with a particularly noticeable weakening of the judicial branch), and vertically (with the actual elimination of local self -government).

Along with the sliding into authoritarianism, the political system was primitivized. Demoterenization - in fact archaicization - leads to degradation not only of the state, but also of society. It was in a state of deep intoxication - they drank and did not bite. And the drunken sea is knee -deep, and the awareness of the problems facing the country - corruption, property stratification, tension in the Caucasus - sharply weakened. Together with the growing seriousness of the problems themselves, this increases the risks of inadequacy of actions and inaction.

In a situation where the preservation of power at all costs became both tactics and strategy, the state turned mainly into a coercion apparatus - growing and requiring more and more resources. The economy gives these resources less and less. Hence the growth of intra -elite conflicts - for the share of a contracting pie, and simply for a place in the sun.

The annexation of Crimea and the subsequent large-scale confrontation with the West made the fig sheets of “decorative democracy” unnecessary, whether it is any honest elections (hence the cutting of state financing, reducing the number of elections, rejection of demonstrative competitiveness), the independence of the court, observing human rights.

In a situation of breaking the rules, both internal and external, - namely, in this situation, the country was now - the reading of signals, by which we can judge what will happen next.

The signal "Yevtushenkov’s affairs": redistribution of property and the growth of the role of the state, the introduction of a surplus instead of a prodnalogue with the abandonment of the next NEP. The signal of the remaining elections after thinning: we can do without "Potemkin villages" and unnecessary difficulties. The signal of the "case of Navalny": a policy, albeit in the inquisitorial version, is preserved, the power is able to quickly respond, and the flywheel of repression does not yet start to a complete revolution.

The last weeks of the year with the “psychotherapeutic” sessions of the leader’s communication with different categories of elites and citizens confirmed the thesis that Vladimir Putin cannot change the trajectory - only the speed of movement in the funnel twisting down. For the first time in fifteen years of his reign, Putin fell into a situation of tough restrictions - simultaneously internal and external, blocking the possibility of maneuver. The year of hard confrontation with the West sharply increased the imbalance in the elites, extremely complicating the usual Putin's role of the arbitrator between the "security forces" and "liberals". Under these conditions, the inevitable palliative becomes the power of the security forces among themselves. This refers to repressions against elites and citizens, since the new Putin’s leadership legitimacy, namely, it is now kept on it, it is impossible to maintain a long time with military victories, or an increasingly rigid anti -Western rhetoric with the cultivation of the image of the besieged fortress.

The cold shower of the December financial crisis only partially cooled the “Crimean” fervor and the euphoria caused by him in the heads of citizens, but, presumably, forced the elites to think seriously. A drunken carrier begins to pass a little, and the hangover will be very painful. At the same time, the current regime, which is quite possible already in 2015 or radically transforms or even leave the political scene, leaves behind a political desert: without capable institutions, authoritative politicians (all the current, except, perhaps, Ramzan Kadyrov, legitimacy is not their own, but borrowed Putin), strong regional elites and with porridge in citizens' heads. In conditions of chaos, any, albeit small, but relatively well -organized power, which are perhaps, are perhaps, the nationalists, security forces and the Kadyrovites can come to power.