-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- Putin's passage to the Kremlin http://www.dawn.com/2000/01/25/op.htm#1 By Tanvir Ahmad Khan THE latest polls in Russia put support for Vladimir Putin in the forthcoming presidential election at more than 55 per cent. During the last presidential election in 1996, which I witnessed while serving in Moscow, the winning candidate, Boris Yeltsin, the founding father of the present Russian nation state, did not enjoy even a fraction of the public approval that new-comer Putin seems to enjoy today. The Putin phenomenon becomes even more remarkable as one begins to deconstruct it and relate its various elements to the forces at work in Russian politics. According to Russian sources, a mere two to four per cent Russians were prepared to vote for Putin in August-September 1999 were he to become a presidential candidate in the face of heavyweights like the redoubtable Yevgeny Primakov, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, the communist leader, Gennady Zyuganov, and even Grigory Yavlinsky, the Yabloko party leader often considered much too intellectual and principled for the rough and tumble of Russian electoral politics. During the last two months of the year that ended with Yeltsin's dramatic eve-of-the-millennium announcement of 'abdication', the support for Putin had climbed to a spectacular 45-plus per cent. At present, the next in the order of public rating, Zyuganov, trails behind him with a mere 13 per cent while he moves towards an unprecedented 60 per cent mark. Primakov, whose appointment as prime minister produced hundreds of well researched commentaries all over the world heralding a new synthesis in the dialectics of post-Soviet politics, has plummeted in public approval to such an extent that he first dropped out of the presidential race to become an aspirant for the post of Duma's speaker and then gave up even that ambition as unattainable. The speaker's election was a clear indication of a new in-house correlation of forces in the Russian parliament, a body prone to work by its own peculiar dynamics. The western media frequently allege that Putin has deliberately planned and promoted his ascent to the commanding heights of the Kremlin through a bloodstained path in Chechnya. Unlike 1994-96, when the Chechnya conflict was viewed by large segments of the Russian people with horror and abhorrence, the current campaign is a popular enterprise that easily translates into political support for the ruthless warrior, the best of the KGB-appartchik, Vladimir Putin. The Chechnya factor is only a half-truth if one interprets the cheering by the Russian people as the expression of an outdated form of jingoistic European nationalism. But it becomes highly relevant if one treats Chechnya as the tragic battleground where Russia chose to articulate its new response to several internal and external pressures on its state and society. That this had to happen at the expense of the lives and property of a large number of innocent Chechens is just one more cynical illustration of the way realpolitik works in our imperfect world. The message underlying Putin's masterly exploitation of the Chechnya crisis, which many suspect he also engineered, is that the Russian Federation is reordering not only its internal polity but also its international relations. At the basic and elementary level, the Chechnya war is a declaration that Moscow would be the sole judge of how much autonomy the constituent units of the Russian Federation can claim. The permissible measure would vary from region to region but it would meet zero tolerance if there was the spectre of de facto secession in a sensitive zone. Russia was increasingly being seen as an aggregate of powerful regions with a progressive erosion of federal authority. Putin is fast emerging as the man who would preside over the revival of a re-centralized state. What happened in the Russian Duma on January 18 was highly instructive. In a somewhat unexpected deal, Unity, the party created in recent months to provide a political base for Yeltsin's chosen heir, Vladimir Putin, secured the cooperation of the Communist Party (KPRF) to create a new framework for future relations between the parliament and the executive. All through the Yeltsin years, an inherent antagonism between the two branches defined their interaction, with the Duma trying to block or delay the government's programme , ranging from internal legislation to the ratification of international treaties such as START II. Making a major move towards cooperation, Unity and KPRF shared the leadership and composition of the new Duma committees and entrusted the august office of the speaker to a communist deputy. The stage is thus set for an easier passage of government-sponsored legislation and, more importantly, for a more consensual vision of Russia's destiny. There is no evidence that Putin, who combines hard-line thinking of an intelligence chief with strong educational attainments in the intellectually-oriented Russian city, St. Petersburg, is planning to turn the clock back on economic and political liberalization. What, then, is the basis of his ability to work with the communists, at least in a carefully delimited sphere of national politics? The answer may partly come from a shared allegiance to the mystical idea of Russia as the 'New Jerusalem', historically engaged in fulfilling a sacred mission through its own greatness. The post-Soviet scene in Russia has been marked by a strong nostalgia for the loss of its superpower status and by a deep sense of humiliation at its growing dependence on the West. If Primakov was briefly seen as the pragmatist who would help heal the internal divisions of the Russian body politic and thus preserve its unity and territorial integrity, Putin is staking a claim to being the leader of the restoration theology of a new generation of men determined to reclaim Russia's pre-eminence in world affairs. Citizens of a highly educated society, most Russians understood the price they were paying for the painful transition from a failed command economy to a market-regulated free enterprise world. They accepted, albeit temporarily, a noticeable decline in their military and diplomatic clout as well as the severe limitations of Yeltsin's peculiar brand of electoral democracy because of the need to place West-assisted economic revival on the top of the agenda. But it was here in the economic sphere that they experienced some of their worst traumas that, in turn, caused much disenchantment with the West. A major economic upheaval, termed Black Tuesday, October 11, 1994, happened during the early part of my own tour of duty in Russia. The International Monetary Fund, obviously committed to the grand design of 'westernizing' Russia, helped with a package that included a stand-by agreement worth nearly seven billion dollars in April 1995. The Russian people accepted the western-backed 'super-presidentialism' of Yeltsin as a condition necessary for macro-economic stabilization. But what they actually witnessed was a Czarist court facilitating the rise of a new oligarchy comprising a small number of men (often put at the mythological figure of seven) who gained immense power and wealth, anchored in the emerging banking sector. This concentration of power enabled Yeltsin to win the 1996 election handsomely despite great gains made by the Communist Party and its allies in the Duma elections held a little earlier. Whatever chances the new oligarchs had of defusing social pressures through trickle-down benefits of their capital accumulation were nullified by the fall in the oil prices, the effects of the East Asian crisis, the growing debt service liability and, above all, the declining capacity of the state to collect taxes and generate revenue. The day of reckoning came on August 17,1998, when Russia was obliged to announce a hefty 34 per cent devaluation, a ninety-day moratorium on some of its commercial debt and an inescapable restructuring of short-term rouble debt. " In a matter of few weeks this past summer, " wrote Strobe Talbott, the US diplomat known for his sympathetic advocacy of continued western support for the Russian economic and democratic reforms, "Russians saw much of their savings evaporate, many of their banks go belly-up, the bottom fall out of their fledgling stock market, goods disappear from stores, and a burgeoning middle class sent reeling". Amongst the many consequences of this meltdown was the renewed search for a successor for Yeltsin who would not send the entire post-Soviet historical process reeling backwards. The ailing president himself would also not countenance a successor who would succumb to demands for his impeachment for the armed assault on the parliament in 1993 and for other alleged unconstitutional actions. Primakov had probably disqualified himself by recommending a redistribution of powers between the president and the Duma. Yeltsin seems to have convinced the West that Putin would be the bridge to a post-Yeltsin continuation of free-market reforms. Many Russian believe that Putin will take advantage of this autocratic arrangement for the transfer of power to him and then distance himself from the Yeltsin legacy by developing an independent profile for himself. The process may well include a Russian version of what, in China, is known as 'the Chinese way' of political, economic and military reforms. Putin may well nuance democratization in more specifically Russian terms than was implied in the traditional slogan of transforming Russia into a western liberal democracy. Putin has already moved to elicit a different response to issues rankling Russia including NATO's eastward advance and the growing western interest in states like Azerbaijan, Georgia and, above all, Ukraine. Russia has renounced the concept of "No First Use" of nuclear weapons and defined the kind of military situation where it would not hesitate to use them first. Putin has also enhanced military expenditure by more than 50 per cent. Russia is demonstrably engaged in upgrading its conventional and nuclear arsenal and delivery systems. Vladimir Putin's commitment to the restoration of Russia's big power status is of considerable interest to Pakistan. We need a radical improvement in the quality of our study of that great northern neighbour of ours as well as a new vigour in our efforts to develop better relations with it. As Russia moves towards the election of March 26, this task should be taken up in earnest. Adequate coverage of events in Russia and their serious analysis and editorial assessment remain the hallmark of this newspaper, with outdated rhetoric of a bygone era defining much of the comment elsewhere. Pakistan would be well served by a broader and a more objective understanding of the highly complex events unfolding in that country as it resumes its quest for greatness. <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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