Turning Back the Clock in Russia

...Meanwhile the urban poor, the rapidly thinning rural population, and remote regions generally (unless they produce oil and gas) have been neglected as much as the peasantry of old...

...Medvedev is the perfect frontman: He can present a reassuring face to the outside world as well as to any Russians who need convincing...

...Now comes the pretender to the Romanov throne, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, to congratulate Presidentelect Medvedev (a professed admirer of the hapless Nicholas II) and to hail Russia’s return to the ranks of the great powers: “May God shed on you the wisdom, strength and will to preserve, consolidate and multiply all the good that was achieved with the great nationwide effort over the past years...

...he is currently cooling his heels in indefinite Siberian confinement...

...Now that is practically all gone...

...The object lesson was Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man at the time of his arrest in 2003, when he aspired to become an independent mover and shaker politically...

...The exception is France, where General Charles de Gaulle instituted the present hybrid president-prime minister system that President Boris N. Yeltsin copied in his 1993 Constitution for Russia...

...All this resembles the personal space the tsars allowed members of the privileged class, who could read the books and “thick journals” that were too expensive for the masses, and take their vacations at German spas—as long as they steered clear of overt political opposition...

...It corresponds in all respects to the triune formula Emperor Nicholas I endorsed in the aftermath of the French Revolution— “Orthodoxy, Autocracy, Nationality...

...They can say what they want, write and read what they please in the print media (ignored, as in the United States, by the mass of TV viewers), and travel freely abroad—that is, provided they don’t make too much of a fuss about politics...

...Putin had prepared the ground by excluding serious opposition, especially from former Prime Minister Mikhail M. Kasyanov, through spurious legal technicalities...

...Perhaps Prime Minister Putin will keep Ivanov in his present post and, through him, control the power sector directly while President Medvedev sticks to ceremonial functions...

...FOR SEVERAL YEARS Russia’s retrogression toward tsarism as a model for governance and social structure has become increasingly clear...

...Petersburg days in the ’80s, he had previously been deputy head of the presidential administration (the inner government, corresponding to the Communist Party apparatus before it...

...Putin delivered his presidential swan song at a marathon press conference on Februar y 14...

...IF THERE WAS any saving grace in the Soviet economic system it was the safety net of full employment, free medical care and pensions (however meager...

...On the other hand, as under tsarism, the wealthy elite who behave themselves get their cut from the export of natural resources on the world market—grain from the landed estates back then, oil today from the privatized wells of what is still the world’s leading petroleum producer and number two exporter...

...During the final half-century of tsarism, after the reforms of Emperor Alexander II, the state did allow some local self-government and a measure of the rule of law, but only in service areas— health education, agricultural extension work, and the like—that did not infringe on real political power...

...Benito Mussolini, for instance, was Italy’s dictator with King Victor Emmanuel III still sitting on his nominal throne right up to the Allied invasion of 1943...

...A shift of power from president to prime minister does not necessarily mean more democracy...

...Clearly he is not going to yield center stage, even if he will not formally reign as Tsar Vladimir III...

...At the same time, he was remarkably open about his problems, freely taking questions from reporters, including foreigners, that could not have been rehearsed...

...It is intensified by the experience of the 1990s, when Russia lost everything that gave it clout internationally—its military power (except for nuclear weapons), its domination of Eastern Europe, its command of an international lobby in the form of Communist parties, and worst of all the 14 other republics of the Soviet Union...

...That left the tame and scarcely credible opposition of Communist Party leader Gennady A. Ziuganov (18 per cent of the vote) and the quasi-fascist clown Vladimir V Zhirinovsky (12 per cent), plus a total unknown, one Andrei V Bogdanov of the putatively Kremlin-created Russian Democratic Party (1 per cent...

...By all accounts, he is a decent, attractive, open-minded type as Russian bureaucrats go...

...A young Putin crony from their St...

...There have, of course, been oceans of speculation about the answer: Would Putin defer, rule coequally with the new president, or eclipse his creation...

...Tsar Vladimir III Turning Back the Clock in Russia By Robert V. Daniels WHILE FOLLOWING Russia’s presidential campaign and the actual election on March 2, I was reminded of what a Russian historian once said to me: “To understand Russia, you must realize that legality is not the same thing as legitimacy...

...By stressing the “power vertical” in the operation of his government, Putin has capitalized on the Russian penchant for running everything from the top down...

...Then there was the overestimation of Yeltsin as a reformer, and the economic disaster of the shock therapy he was encouraged to try by the promise of international loans...

...In some ways this outcome resembles the mercantilism practiced by European governments in the 17th and 18th centuries, not to mention, in more recent times, the economic practices of the Fascist and Nazi regimes...

...He could gracefully bow out and leave the Russian helm to whomever he orthe electorate might pick— an unlikely prospect even then...

...The Russian government has learned cleverly how to use the mechanisms of capitalism to pursue its own ends, notably through the domestic and international operations of the majority-state-owned natural gas monopoly Gazprom...

...This raises a little uncertainty about the Putinto-Putin transition, since according to the Constitution the power ministries report directly to the president, not to the prime minister (another bow to the Russian predilection for special treatment of the power sector...

...Petersburg University...

...As we now know, Putin chose the last option...

...The Kremlin even undertook to fashion its own “opposition” party, A Just Russia, to share the pro-Putin vote with the official United Russia Party...

...The state assumes minimal responsibility to redress economic injustice or inequality—it is the Devil take the hindmost...

...Geographically, Russia was set back to its dimensions in the 17th century, before the era of Peter the Great, and was moreover separated from 20 million ethnic Russians who suddenly found themselves second-class citizens in foreign countries...

...Thus, as one Russian report had it, they “agreed to disagree...

...Putin, with his genuine popularity and his Russian legitimacy, plus what some Russians have called a “one and a quarter party system” at his command, can exercise as much power as he wants...

...In this situation, the evolution of real power can depend on personalities and their political base—as, for example, in 18th-century Britain, where executive authority gravitated from the crown to the prime minister because the first Georges could not speak English...

...The sole surprise in the balloting was that President Vladimir V Putin’s man, Dmitri A. Medvedev, fell slightly short of the 70 per cent target projected for him...

...Medvedev will accordingly be formally inaugurated May 7. A year ago it was not entirely clear what Putin might do at the end of his second and constitutionally final term as president...

...Psychologically, the effect was as bad as the German defeat complex after World War I that set the stage for Hitler’s vicious nationalist revival...

...Interestingly, the division makes some sense of having two “first” deputy prime ministers, one for the “power” ministries, including defense, police and foreign affairs, and one for everything else...

...At the same time, the government believes it can ban any private organizations, even religious and political, that it considers a nuisance...

...Neither Washington’s official reason—defense against Iran—nor Moscow’s frenetic protest—a Western threat to Russia—have much to do with reality...

...My own expectation is that he will remain the Kremlin’s strongman, pulling the strings of real power as prime minister and designated head of the dominant United Russia party...

...Bearing in mind the psychology of legitimate power in Russia, it is easy to see how the relationship between the senior Putin and the junior Medvedev can persist right through the handoff of the presidency...

...Well before the election, in an obviously choreographed two-step, Medvedev announced that “if ” he were elected, he intended to offer the prime ministership to Putin...

...One could well argue that Russia under Putin has been undergoing a creeping counterrevolution, not only against the evils of Communism but against all the basic values that prevail in the West today...

...But Medvedev reportedly does not like the group, and it is apparently being phased out...

...The association of the Putin-Medvedev regime with tsarism is more than figurative, as the remarks of the Grand Duchess suggest...

...Most recently he has been serving as first deputy prime minister (one of two “first” deputies, in the curious practice inherited from Soviet times...

...The one question left open was what power Putin would continue to exercise in that less exalted capacity under his chosen successor...

...One of these organizations is the so-called National Bolshevik Party of one Eduard Limonov, which the debarred opposition bloc led by chess master Garry Kasparov foolishly admitted into its ranks...

...Nonetheless, both Putin and George W. Bush wanted to keep their amicable pose at their final meeting as presidents on April 5-6 in the Black Sea resort of Sochi...

...Just a couple of weeks ago a new statue of Emperor Alexander II was unveiled at St...

...It also tells us something about the new president that his jurisdiction as first deputy prime minister was the everything-else area, not the power sector...

...Russia’s formal constitutional structure presents no great difficulty in accommodating what this arrangement implies about the offices of president and prime minister...

...Robert V. Daniels, a frequent New Leader contributor, is professor emeritus of history at the University of Vermont...

...The tsarist idea of nationality and Russia’s special place in the world goes far toward explaining the Putin government’s prickly relationship with the West...

...Putin has gone out of his way to embrace the Russian Orthodox Church as the embodiment of the national spirit...

...Meanwhile his government has been harassing other Christian denominations and marginalizing the three other “official” religions (Judaism, Islam and Buddhism...

...Again echoing tsarism, the top layers in Russia’s new social structure enjoy their wealth and privileges at the pleasure of the state...

...The victim of a revolutionist’s bomb in 1881, Alexander II is again being turned into a martyr, while Russia’s brief fling with democracy under the Provisional Government in 1917 is totally skipped over in the heroics of the new history...

...The Russians feel humiliated, just as Weimar Germany did after World War I, and have only the weapon of their oil and gas exports (which may have helped turn Germany against expanding NATO to Ukraine and Georgia...

...Not so different is the quasi-official youth organization Nashi (Ours), sometimes, like Mussolini’s Blackshirts, unleashed by the authorities to harass their opponents...

...There are plenty of other analogies between today’s Russia and tsarist times, and some even less savory comparisons...

...The West is not blameless in Russia’s return to type...

...The same distinction prevails today: Raison d’état overrides legalism when the authority of the center is challenged...

...Or he could step down a rung to the post of prime minister, whatever he might make of it...

...Indeed, in most European governments the prime minister is the real executive under a figurehead monarch or president...

...Thanks to give-away privatization under Yeltsin, Russia now has the second-largest number of billionaires in the world, next to the United States, and 19 of the world’s 100 richest individuals...

...Looking over the recent past, one can see missed opportunities and betrayed promises at almost every turn, starting with the underappreciation of Gorbachev as a reformer and the withholding of economic aid he had been led to expect...

...That is still under First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei B. Ivanov, former minister of defense and a much tougher personality, who until recently had actually been rumored to be the most likely successor to Putin...

...There are parallels with tsarism in Russia’s new economy as well as in government, in consonance with the other Russian historian’s forecast that I mentioned...

...That project was given up when its leaders all endorsed Medvedev for president, but recently the idea was brought up again by Sergei V Stepashin, former prime minister under Yeltsin and currently head of Russia’s counterpart to our Government Accountability Office, when he spoke quite frankly about the government’s plan to form a new opposition party, “a normal opposition made up of the right forces [sic...

...That meant the Orthodox Church as the state religion, the unlimited power of the supreme leader, and the claim of a special virtue for the Russian people...

...Simultaneously the West, led by the U.S., turned the knife in the wound by absorbing East Germany into NATO territory and then expanding the alliance into the former Communist realm...

...The recent American plan to put antimissile missiles in Poland added insult to injury...

...As under the last tsars, there are farRight, ultranationalist (and anti-Semitic) groups who regularly brutalize selected victims, particularly migrants from the Caucasus...

...Like him or not, the man exuded competence, speaking from memory with an encyclopedic command of policy detail as well as the big picture...

...Or he could execute a coup d’état, so to speak, by having the Duma amend the Constitution so he could continue to serve as president indefinitely—the choice I expected...

...For now, the intelligentsia and the affluent business class—the people foreigners are most likely to meet and get to know—enjoy a degree of personal freedom unimaginable in Soviet times...

...Following the chaotic shakeups of the Soviet system under Presidents Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Yeltsin, the economy under Putin has taken the shape of private monopoly capitalism steered by the government, with much direct state participation in ownership and control...

...And of what another answered when I suggested that Russia had Russified Communism more than Communism had communized Russia: “The same thing will happen with capitalism...