Mistrust returns to disfigure Putin's Russia

Quentin Peel

Of the world leaders assembled for the summit of the Group of Eight industrialised nations this week, the most relaxed must surely be Vladimir Putin. All his companions have political or economic clouds hanging over them. The Russian president must be feeling rather smug.
He has just been re-elected for a second term in office with the backing of more than 70 per cent of Russian voters. His supporters control more than two thirds of the seats in the state Duma, enough to change the constitution and give him a third term if he wants it. On top of that, the soaring oil price has fuelled economic growth running at an annual rate of 7.3 per cent last year, and up to 8 per cent in the first quarter of 2004. Tax revenues from the oil and gas sector are pouring into his state coffers.
Yet the mood back in Moscow is remarkably glum. It is not just the obvious critics in the Russian liberal intelligentsia who have seen their political feathers plucked by Mr Putin's band of reinvigorated bureaucrats. Spirits are also depressed among the traditional Russia-boosters in the business community.
As for the government itself, there is an ominous silence. All the indications are of ferocious in-fighting between departments as they juggle for power in the new regime. There is no sign of Mr Putin's long-promised radical administrative reform and indecision is rife. The heavy hand of the security services is reappearing in alarming places. So is corruption.
It would be wrong to exaggerate. The climate of fear that used to pervade the country in the bad old Soviet days has not returned. But suspicion and mistrust have come back. Maybe they never went away.
It is a sort of civic mistrust that goes to the heart of life in Russia, an unwillingness to confide in any but a tiny circle of family and friends. Institutions such as the courts, the police and the government are mistrusted profoundly, according to a recent survey by Yuri Levada, Russia's leading pollster. The Orthodox church and the army are the only ones that earn some measure of respect. So does Mr Putin. He came top of the poll, trusted by a solid 62 per cent.
It certainly suggests that the Putin formula for managing Russia is not unpopular. His combination of "managed democracy" - elections conducted with a gross media and institutional bias in favour of the president's supporters - and economic reform is presented as the ideal solution to what would otherwise be chaos in post-Soviet Russia.
Mr Putin's political control is clear. His United Russia group has seized every position of influence in the
Duma. It is backed by the two ultra-nationalist groups, Motherland and the ill-named Liberal Democratic Party. The Communists are the only faction not tied to the president. According to Vladimir Ryzhkov, one of the last seven independent liberals in the Duma, "the Communists are now one of the last guarantors of political pluralism in Russia". How ironic.
Outside the Duma, Mr Putin's order is ensured by the siloviki - present or former members of the security services - who have reappeared in many branches of government and the economy. It does not seem to surprise or alarm many Russians. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Richard Pipes cites a survey carried out in Voronezh last year in which 88 per cent said they would opt for "order" rather than "freedom" if they had to choose between them. Another survey he quotes suggests that 76 per cent of Russians favour restoring censorship over the mass media.
The trouble is that Mr Putin's political illiberalism is no longer countered by much economic liberalism. For example, he has yet to tackle the great monopolies that still dominate the energy sector - Gazprom, the gas giant, and Transneft, the state pipeline group. There are ominous signs that the government wants to bankrupt and seize back control of Yukos, the best-run privatised oil company, whose boss Mikhail Khodorkovsky is languishing in jail awaiting trial for tax fraud.
In addition, foreign businessmen now doubt that the government will allow any further control of the energy sector to pass into foreign hands. The nationalistic siloviki regard Russia's oil and gas as an inalienable part of the national heritage.
The same thinking is blocking genuine property rights in Russia, and thus impeding development of the mortgage system needed to boost the private housing sector. And the siloviki are also notoriously hostile to all forms of foreign interest in any aspect of Russian life.
The most ominous line in Mr Putin's recent state address was not about freedom of speech or political opposition but about non-governmental organisations. He accused some NGOs of "not defending the real interests of the people" and "getting financing from influential foreign and domestic foundations, while others serve dubious groups and commercial interests".
The very language he used was reminiscent of the sort of oblique threats issued in Soviet times. It was an attack on a vital part of civic society that he does not control. And there lies the real contradiction at the heart of Mr Putin's policy: in seeking to control all forms of political life, he is unleashing forces that will stifle a free market, too. As a bureaucrat - and a silovik - at heart, he does not seem to understand the problem.

quentin.peel@ft.com
"Financial Times"; June 10, 2004

http://search.ft.com/search/article.html?id=040610001033&query=Russia&vsc_appId=totalSearch&state=Form

To discuss on a forum >>