Russian authorities: case history

Grigory Yavlinsky's new book, Peripheral Authoritarianism, answers the key question: why did the reforms of the 1990s, which were considered democratic, result in the establishment of authoritarian power.

Yavlinsky's explanation, given with almost mathematical precision (in terms of clarity of formulation, this is probably the best of his books), will not be to everyone's liking.

It will not please the supporters of the "new course" of the Russian authorities, taken by it in the last 2 years, when the aggressive denial of European values, isolation from the outside world, the generation of new restrictions on the rights of citizens, equating opposition activities with betrayal and hysterical praise of the head of state have become key features of the state. politicians.

But it will not please those who believe in the myth that Boris Yeltsin led the country on the right path, and then Vladimir Putin came and turned it in the opposite direction. Because Yavlinsky clearly proves (he spoke about this before, only he was rarely listened to): Putin's regime is a continuation of Yeltsin's, and not a distortion of it.

Yavlinsky begins his “case history” with the destruction of the mentioned myth about the “turn of the century”, as a “turning point”, when the trend of curtailing competition in the economy and politics, restricting the rights of citizens, statehood of the media and degradation of party and parliamentary activity replaced the opposite, allegedly dominating in the previous decade. In his opinion, this milestone was not a turning point, but the entry of the system into the stage of maturity after the most important choice in the entire political history of the 1990s was made - between a political system of a competitive or authoritarian type.

This choice, according to Yavlinsky, "was determined when the Constitution of the Russian Federation was adopted in October-December 1993, and then finally confirmed during the presidential elections of 1996 and the period following them." Because the ruling team, formed around the president, “even having decided to hold elections, proceeded from the acceptability of only one of their outcomes”: the preservation of their power. Those who today present the 1990s as the heyday of democracy tend to keep silent about this.

In fact, it is precisely this - the principled attitude to the irremovability of power - that is the first and main sign of an authoritarian system, Yavlinsky notes. The impossibility "from below", in a peaceful and legal way, to ensure the involuntary removal of one team from power and its replacement with another.

What made it possible to realize just such a scenario? That, Yavlinsky believes, is that both the ruling team and society as a whole "by default" consider the natural monopoly of power on the distribution of all the main resources in the state. And the desire to create a real separation of powers is perceived as an attempt to weaken the government and make it helpless. Yavlinsky recalls that the current humiliating position of the parliament is largely the result of a campaign to discredit the legislature in the 1990s. When journalists, who considered themselves supporters of the “democratic choice”, enthusiastically depicted the Supreme Council, and then the State Duma, as heavy and useless fetters that hung on the “hero” Yeltsin and allegedly prevented him from carrying out the socio-economic reforms necessary for the country.

The difference between the System of the 90s and the System of the 2000s and 10s, according to Yavlinsky, is only that in the 90s there were people in power and around it who were “closer to the liberal part of the Soviet intelligentsia than the team that replaced them in 2000 years".

Yavlinsky notes three sources of the authoritarian system. This is a fusion of power and property rights: the hyperinflation of 1992 - criminal privatization (loan auctions), 1995-1997. - election fraud and subjugation of the media 1996-1998. These are the Bolshevik methods of carrying out reforms - "the end justifies the means." And, finally, the refusal to rethink the Soviet period, the state assessment of Stalinism and Bolshevism.

By the end of the 1990s, people were frustrated. It was under these conditions that Vladimir Putin appeared. And if, as Yavlinsky states, in the 1990s the system went through the first fork - between the competitive and authoritarian model - and made a choice in favor of the second, then in the early 2000s the second one turned out to be passed: between authoritarianism of the modernization type and authoritarian power of the conservative-stagnant type.

To retell Yavlinsky's analysis further is to deprive the reader of pleasure. Let us quote only the headlines that speak for themselves: "Elections without choice", "Administrative rent", "Corruption as a system", "The outside world as an enemy", "From peripheral authoritarianism to provincial authoritarianism".

And the conclusion: two decades after the collapse of the Soviet system led our country to a political system based on the monopoly irremovable power of one group of the highest bureaucracy.

A system that excludes the replacement of the ruling group without a simultaneous breakdown of the system and a deep political crisis. A system that works for its reproduction and excludes the possibility of natural evolution or self-reformation. A system whose basis is the distribution of administrative rent and which is interested in preserving the economic and social conditions that allow this rent to be preserved and extracted. A system in which it is possible to express oppositional sentiments only in information resources that are limited in their potential, “marginal” (according to the authorities), and any political ambitions of individuals or groups that are not sanctioned and not controlled by the authorities cannot be legally financed.

What is happening, Yavlinsky calls the hard word "demodernization". Leading to a dead end. To the archaic, irreversible lagging behind developed countries, degradation and decay.

So, the diagnosis is made, the medical history is described - but how to treat it?

Yavlinsky does not offer a miracle recipe, leaving open the answer to the question of whether there is a way out of "today's tragic farce towards modernization and development."

But he is sure of one thing: it is the duty of all healthy political forces in the country to try to develop and offer "a realistic alternative, a plan for getting out of the current crisis and, if necessary, to impose it on the frightened and disoriented Russian political elite."