"With
Friends Like These, Putin Needs a Smarter Strategy,"
by Dimitri K. Simes, from The
Washington Post, July 16, 2000, p. B5.
For a man who was handed the Russian presidency on a platter in exchange for pardoning the widely despised Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin enjoys remarkable popularity. His current 54 percent approval rating is essentially the same support he received when his authority was confirmed in Russia's March elections. But as he prepares to head for the G-8 summit in Okinawa next weekend to attempt to reschedule Russia's debt, his honeymoon may be coming to an end.
While Putin himself remains quite popular with the public, approval of his policies--as demonstrated by public confidence in his cabinet--declined from 57 percent to 39 percent in June alone, a drop partly due to the government's failure to end the bloody war in Chechnya and to inflation that is suddenly accelerating (prices rose 2.5 percent that month).
More ominously for the Russian president, noisy disenchantment is growing among the entrenched Russian elites who brought him to power and who have formed an important part of the ruling coalition. At the time of Putin's election, the elites saw him as the person best able to preserve the status quo; in essence, they sought Yeltsinism without Yeltsin. But since he has begun to act as if he will not be content as their puppet, many of them feel betrayed.
During a recent trip to Russia, I heard complaints from key associates and opposition leaders alike that he was trying to do too much, too soon, too clumsily--alienating important interest groups in the process.
An economic adviser who knows the president well told me: "To Putin's credit, he, in contrast to Yeltsin, genuinely cares about doing what is right for Russia, and he appreciates that strengthening the state is a precondition for achieving anything. But beyond that, he does not have a well-thought-through strategy. And because of his KGB background, he is a bit too inclined to see critics as enemies of the state, which undermines possibilities of dialogue and compromise essential for actually implementing reforms."
The recent attack on media magnate Vladimir Gusinsky, for instance, at a time Putin desperately needed support from the press and Gusinsky's fellow tycoons, was mentioned repeatedly as evidence of the president's lack of strategic planning.
In his campaign to strengthen the Russian state, Putin's first targets were the presidents and governors of Russia's 89 republics and regions. While officially elected, these regional leaders have increasingly become modern-day feudal lords, controlling everything from local legislatures to the economy and the media in their provincial fiefdoms. Moreover, because they also hold ex officio seats in the Federation Council, the upper house of Russia's parliament, they are simultaneously regional executives and federal senators. No wonder the vast majority of Russia's people and all of its major political parties favor limiting the power of the regional bosses.
The problem is that these provincial leaders are also the strongest constitutional constraint on the enormous powers of the Russian presidency. So when Putin put forward legislation to reduce the powers of the governors and remove them from the Federation Council (which would also strip them of the legal immunity given to all Russian parliament members) even rivals of the regional bosses were somewhat uneasy.
Boris Berezovsky, the multimillionaire businessman, legislator and Kremlin insider who helped mastermind Putin's ascent, argued against the legislation, sensing that he and his fellow oligarchs might be the president's next target. Berezovsky was right: On May 11, Russia's tax police raided Media-Most, the television, radio and press conglomerate controlled by another oligarch, Gusinsky. Gusinsky himself was later arrested, detained briefly and released.
In the United States, the action was seen as an outrageous attack on a crusading journalist. It was indeed; but most Russians view Gusinsky, who used his media outlets to smear business and political opponents, primarily as an unsavory oligarch. The view that the raid was part of an "open season" on the oligarchs was reinforced last week when prosecutors and tax police seized financial documents from Media-Most--but this time simultaneously took actions against such major companies as Lukoil, Norilsk Nickel and Avtovaz.
Like the regional governors, oligarchs are key players in the way Russia has been ruled since the early Yeltsin period. A small group of rich businessmen close to the government, and sometimes in it, the oligarchs were allowed to buy privatized state businesses at bargain prices. No level playing field will be possible in Russia until these tycoons are deprived of their grip on the state--a step promised by Putin during his election campaign, although many mistook this for empty rhetoric.
It is in this context that most Russians viewed the attack by Putin's government on Gusinsky. True, he is probably not the worst among the oligarchs and his media empire has recently played the role of a much-needed alternative voice. But average Russians hate the oligarchs, and their chief complaint was not that Gusinsky was arrested, but that the others were not locked up with him.
The Russian political elites saw a further message in the arrest: If neither the governors nor the oligarchs were to be immune from prosecution, then what could prevent the development of a new dictatorship built around Putin, a former KGB lieutenant colonel, and his colleagues in the security services?
Even Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov--no friend of the oligarchs--said to me, "Either we respect democratic methods and observe fundamental human rights or everything will turn into a brawl. We agree that there is a need to fight corruption and to strengthen the authority of the state, but in the name of what? In order for five new people to be in charge of everything?"
Putin has tried to provide a reassuring answer. Last weekend, addressing the Russian Federal Assembly, he said, "Only a strong and effective--if someone does not like the word 'strong,' then let us say an 'effective and democratic'--state is capable of defending civil, political and economic freedoms." But he also declared that the state is "responsible for everything," and seemed to define the state as that branch of government under his direct control.
One reason for apparent inconsistencies in Putin's attitude is the divided nature of his ruling coalition--a group that reflects his own mixed past, including his tenure in the KGB, work in the reform-minded St. Petersburg government, and role in the Yeltsin political machine. His team thus includes economic reformers, members of the so-called "family"--the officials and bankers who were Yeltsin's cronies--and the heads of security services.
The problem of Gusinsky's arrest showed how disparate these team members are. The economic reformers were unhappy because it upset Russia's international partners and interfered with attempts to reschedule debts and lure investors. Members of the "family," though eager to cut Gusinsky down to size, opposed the arrest because it violated the unspoken immunity granted to oligarchs--like themselves.
But to the security component of the Putin coalition, Gusinsky looked like an enemy of the state. In its view, his mocking television programs almost dared the authorities to demonstrate that the new Russian president could not be kicked around.
Though Putin was traveling in Europe at the time--trying to cultivate investors and to mobilize support against missile defense plans--few Russians believed him when he said Gusinsky's arrest caught him completely by surprise. Still, the action appeared halfhearted and without the full weight of the government behind it. Most mass media were severely critical. Within days, the Kremlin concluded that there was no alternative to backing off.
Gusinsky was quickly released--so quickly that Putin did not even have a chance to come home and get credit for ending the embarrassing episode. "The whole action was so incompetent that one could suspect that some people close to the president wanted intentionally to undermine him," former prime minister Yevgeny Primakov told me.
Most of Putin's advisers would privately agree. But that does not mean that Gusinsky is off the hook. Rather, as last week's new seizure of financial documents from Media-Most suggests, the authorities have decided that it may be easier to strangle Gusinsky's empire economically.
Diverging views inside the Putin camp, and the Russian president's own apparent ambiguity on the right balance between freedom and discipline, give an opening to the United States to affect the direction his government takes. But the Clinton administration's record on promoting democracy in Russia is dismal. "The U.S. government has acted as if we are total idiots: It was giving us lecture after lecture about building a free society based on a free market while staunchly supporting a small group of people most prepared to accommodate Washington's preferences," charges Grigory Yavlinsky, a leader of the democratic opposition.
What is needed is a consistent, pragmatic, yet high-minded American policy. Most importantly, the United States needs to communicate a simple truth in Okinawa next weekend: For Russia to reverse its decline, a friendly attitude of Western governments, citizens and investors is essential, and that attitude will never develop if the "dictatorship of laws" that Putin promised either leads to instability or increasingly appears to be just a dictatorship.
Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center, is author of "After the Collapse: Russia Seeks Its Place as a Great Power" (Simon & Schuster, 1999).
