As a day of protests against Sunday’s Duma election begins in Russia’s Far East, the big question is why are people protesting now? After all, it’s not like this is the first Russian election with shenanigans, fraud, etc, etc. It is, however, the first one when Vladimir Putin and his party, United Russia, are dropping in approval ratings. Still, VVP still garners, according to the last tally, a 67 percent approval rating. And if you buy that the elections were close to the will of the people, United Russia still polled 49.3%. But that is if you buy the results, which many, including myself, don’t.
Still, “why now?” is the question of the day. Svobodnaya Pressa asked Leontii Byzov, a senior sociologist from the Institute of Sociology of the Russian Academy of Sciences this very question. I thought his answer was worth thinking about.
Svobodnaya Pressa: Not too long ago many experts said that our society is passive, young people are apathetic, and it’s hard to get people out into the street. Why in the last few days are we seeing one protest after another on the streets of Moscow and other cities?
Byzov: There are several overlapping factors. First, the rise of a new generation of young people who don’t remember the “trauma of the 1990s”. They are not afraid of change, it is more attractive to them than the “gilded cage” of Putinist stability. Young members of the middle class want social mobility and dream about meteoric careers.
Another factor is the swelling internal opposition within the Russian elite. In the 2000s, Putin served as a certain guarantor of balance between elite groups with completely opposite interests. Such as, for example, the siloviki and liberals in the government. Under President Medvedev this process became unbalanced. One was for Putin, the other for Medvedev. Those who stood with Medvedev felt the taste of power and property. They urged the President to remove Putin from the Premiership and run for a second term. For them, this was a chance that would have called for a struggle against the financial flows Putin’s people control. For control of Gazprom and other state corporations. Therefore, it was hard to presume that these groups would submit to defeat and quietly leave and put aside their plans for the next several years and, perhaps, forever.
I don’t exclude the possibility that now a very large stake has been placed on Putin not being elected. Or, if it happens, to ensure that Putin becomes President in an extremely weak position with minimal support of Russian society and in poor light in the eyes of the West. This will bind his hands.
The parliamentary elections are a pretext for the maximum inflammation of social dissatisfaction and to delegitimize the upcoming Presidential elections in Russia. Hereby at the same time the results of the parliamentary elections interest a few. From this, United Russia more or less gained a mandate, it made no one hotter or colder. These issues are completely irrelevant to our political system.
The falsification of the election results that are now criticized truly have a place but they occurred in 2007 and then even possibly on a greater scale than now. But then it wasn’t an issue for anyone. Today society is incensed and will continue to be deliberately heated up. An outside group interested in the reduction of power and property has global influence, first and foremost Western networks are in this process. In the West, they also very much don’t want Putin to return to the Kremlin and consolidate power around himself. A serious struggle awaits and the main players are not the people in the street, but those who prepare the government elite revolution in the country. And they are looking after their own objectives.
Are the street protests and public outcry symbolic or part of a larger struggle within the Russian elite? Perhaps. There are deep splits within the Russia elite, fissures that were deepened after Putin’s return was announced. But will Don Putin be able return balance this time? I’m not very confident.
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“Young members of the middle class want social mobility and dream about meteoric careers.”
That alone is enough to substantiate Mr. Byzov’s contention that these are mostly young people who don’t remember the trauma of the 90′s. I’ve seen that in western media sources as well, only they frame it as, “young free-thinkers whom Putin will not be able to terrify with specters of the 90′s”. They are not afraid of change, and dream of meteoric careers. Hmmm…And indeed, some would get just that – after all, meteoric careers were the hallmark of the 90′s for some: Khodorkovsky, Berezovsky, Prokhorov…
But meteoric careers were most definitely the exception rather than the rule. However, if young Russians need to learn once again to fear change, nothing teaches it like ruin.
Perhaps Russians, and not just the youngsters, are not that keen on another 12 years of the gilded cage. Now that Medvedev is out, there is not even the illusion of the platitude of, “well, it’s a crying shame that Putin and his cronies are such cads but if we just let them feather their nests for another 3-4 years then Dima will fix it up.” Now there’s not even that comfortable daydream…the elite and their apologists have spoken. “You get Putin, corruption, stagnation, and mini-repressions for the next 12 years…deal with it.”
It is not at all shocking that some object to the fact that there is no vehicle to “vote the bums out” in Russia just now.
And if Zyuganov got in – since he’s the only one even close to doing so – what then? You’d be free of the “gilded cage”, all right. I don’t have any trouble believing United Russia continues to be the choice of the majority, because the majority are not fools. Only a fool would throw out a leader that gave them 8 straight years of advancing prosperity – those interrupted only by a financial crisis that negatively affected the entire world – in favour of a lot of high-sounding promises from potential leaders you couldn’t get rid of once you’d voted them in.
There are endless complaints that Putin has made no progress on reforms. I don’t think that’s true, but assume it is. What guarantees have the people that Genady Zyuganov or anyone else is going to make better progress, with the codicil that they may very well fail to match Putin’s excellent economic record into the bargain?
A lot of countries would give a very great deal to achieve stability. Russia has it, and now you’re telling me they don’t want it – that they’d rather take a flyer on liberal promises of unmatched freedom and human rights and equality? What then? How do they plan to pay for it? Once the savings are squandered on a five-minute utopia, what’s going to happen? Where’s the new government going to get the money to keep things going? From energy, of course, exactly like the present government does. The difference is the present government won’t relinquish control of it, and a liberal government has shown every sign it would. Once you let it go, you’ll never get it back.
The argument for stability is a strong one and perhaps the only one that ER has left. And contrary to Mark’s point I do think it’s the #1 motivator for Russians’ voting. But I don’t subscribe to the straw men that ER are the only ones who can deliver stability or that libs would sell the country down the river. You can make those arguments I suppose…pretty convincingly too…but it’s a dodge to the questions at hand, “Does Russia deserve free and fair elections? How can they get them? What should the government do next?”
The difference is the present government won’t relinquish control of it, and a liberal government has shown every sign it would. Once you let it go, you’ll never get it back.
They could do what the USA, Norway, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Canada, the UK, Indonesia and a whole load of other countries do: license development blocks and tax production within a robust, off-the-shelf regulatory framework. Nobody talks about Canada, for example, having relinquished control of its oil production but for some reason people seem to equate control with nationalised oil companies when it comes to Russia. And yes, you can always get whatever has been supposedly lost by kicking out the foreigners and helping yourself, as has happened on several occasions around the world.
Sean, long ago you’ve said you were a Communist.
If that’s correct, I believe, the information about the “Essense of Time” demonstration in Moscow is no news for you.
Alternatively, here is the video with the results of the demonstration:
http://eot.su/node/10433
And here is the video with the first minutes of the demonstration:
http://vimeo.com/34165232
Merry Christmas!
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