Putin's Potemkin Democracy

It won't fool the Russian people, but it surely will the journalism majors in this country:

Vladimir Putin, the former KGB agent who rose to become president of Russia, has recently been a whirlwind of activity. In the last few weeks he has reshuffled his Cabinet, wooed the new German chancellor (and current European Union president), Angela Merkel, denounced the United States at an East-West security conference in Germany, and visited Saudi Arabia and the Gulf state of Qatar for quasi-secret talks on energy. All of these events reflect in different ways the recent revival of Russia as an important power whose interests other nations must now consider. They also reflect the internal success of Putin in reestablishing a strong central government in Russia following the anarchic failures of the Yeltsin years. But they are built on shaky political, economic, and demographic foundations — the current high international price for energy, a falling ethnic Russian population within the boundaries of the Russian federation, and the instability of Russia’s post-totalitarian politics. These risks lie mainly in the future, but one risk that concerns Putin himself is rushing towards him. Under the present constitution, Putin’s presidency ends next year and he cannot serve a further term. In theory this could be a watershed event in Russian politics. Putin has built a new centralized authoritarianism — call it “guided democracy” — around himself and a coterie of former KGB agents. He has transformed the regional governors into mere agents of the Kremlin, brought the television news media under the control of an informal censorship, shaped the major political parties into supportive clients of his administration, and either driven out, imprisoned or bought off the once-powerful economic “oligarchs.” If he and his allies in the “siloviki” — those politicians and officials with links to secret intelligence agencies — were to lose office, that would put at risk this new structure of power.

Putin’s recent reshuffle of his Cabinet, however, suggests that he has little or no intention of allowing this to happen. His most important decision was to appoint the most senior silovik, Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov, to be first deputy prime minister with special responsibility for overseeing Russia’s military-industrial complex. In the opinion of most observers that set Ivanov up to be the official candidate of the current Kremlin for next year’s presidential election. His election would signify that Putin’s siloviki establishment would retain power under a new face.

Some Kremlin insiders go further than that. Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin “spin-doctor” — yes, they have them there too — was quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as suggesting that Putin himself would still be pulling the strings: “A democratic nation cannot not release its leader, but it can provide him with the opportunity to change from one job to another.”

To be sure, the voters have got to ratify Putin’s choice in due course. That should not be hard to arrange, however; the Kremlin’s candidate will have a near-monopoly of campaign finance, media coverage, and respectable party support. And just in case the voters show a strong aversion to Ivanov, they will likely to be able to choose a second “official” candidate, namely Dimitri Medvedev, another first deputy prime minister, who is reckoned to be slightly more liberal than the siloviki (no very great achievement) and thus more appealing to voters nervous of their growing power.

So Putin seems to have the succession problem well and neatly solved. His successor will be the same man under a different name.

I predict a fawning NY Times editorial on the Russian "transition" of power, probably with the unfavorable comparison to Bush II's first inauguration.