Stand still! Strength as a sign of weakness
Project "ZZ". The political activity of the protesters in Moscow caused a new wave of Western interest in the Russian opposition. One professor from the United States made a far-reaching conclusion: there is only one step left to instability in Russia, since now everyone is in power for himself, including Putin. Other analysts, already from Europe, point to the “turmoil” at the top of the purges. Indeed, anti-corruption purges, which are very selective, do not at all mean a fight against corruption, but they do indicate a future redistribution of power.
Stephen Sestanovich of Columbia University (professor at the School of International Relations), a well-known publicist, wrote an article for the New York Times under the heading Opinion, where he expressed one very original idea.
If the scientist Fukuyama in the last decade of the last century reported the end storiesthen the scientist Sestanovich informed the world about the end of Putin’s forces. At the very least, the professor reported to everyone who was interested that nowadays everyone in the Russian elite is “for himself”, and the protests of recent weeks in Moscow may well become a test of power for strength. And what if Putin makes a big mistake with such a check? But what if Putin has already committed it, or rather, not one, but two?
Apparently, the Moscow protests prompted Mr. Sestanovich to come up with material in a major authoritative publication.
At the very beginning, the author indicated that the demonstrations in the Russian capital are continuing. It is for this reason that Moscow is talking about a new wave of political activity. However, among the Russian fighters for democracy, the road of the past is strewn with disappointments. And they realize that the reins of government are in the hands of Vladimir Putin, and he holds power firmly.
On the other hand, Sestanovich reflects, Putin’s position is not as solid as before. Looking back at the historical past, the scientist notes that since the 1991 of the year when the USSR collapsed, the rulers of the post-Soviet republics were burned with two “big mistakes”, as a result of which they lost their power.
V. Putin and his team also made two mistakes.
Big mistake number one: "brazen election manipulation." It is difficult to anger a people with something as much as this manipulation. Sestanovich points to the madness that gripped the crowds who realized that they were being manipulated. His historical list includes the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003 year), Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004 year), Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005 year). Everywhere the cause of revolutions was falsification of the vote count and other fraud in the elections.
As for Russia, there "the largest demonstrations of the post-Soviet period were the protests that followed the famous rigging of the 2011 parliamentary elections of the year."
And this strategy is being modeled again today, when new elections are being prepared in Moscow. Officials have recently rejected the candidacy of many opposition activists who wanted to run for the September 8 election in the Moscow City Duma. Although the protests were not massive, there are still no signs that they have come to naught.
The second big mistake: the impunity of official authorities. First of all, the professor points to "brutality by law enforcement agencies." And here are some examples.
When the ruling party in Georgia lost the parliamentary elections in 2012, the “trigger” was a “viral video” showing the torture by the jailers.
In 2013 and 2014, the Ukrainian crowd, who supported the so-called European future for their country, could have resolved if it hadn’t for popular indignation with a “series of nightly police attacks on demonstrators.”
And last year, there was a “sharp fall in the rulers of Armenia.”
So “Putinism” is being tested for impunity over and over again. In June, the author recalls, the security services brought charges against the famous investigative reporter Ivan Golunov. The evidence was fabricated so clumsily and caused such a storm of criticism that the Kremlin ordered "to release Golunov."
The use of force to disperse the demonstrations, as well as an obvious attempt to poison the prisoner Alexei Navalny, Sestanovich believes, "can lead to such indignation."
President Putin is used to tackling such issues with greater dexterity, the author writes further. There is a “soft dictatorship” in Russia, and Putin “rarely risks his position”, allowing “mass beatings and bloodshed or too obvious fraud in ballot boxes”.
The rigged election results of the 2011 year were “a clear exception,” the expert believes. In addition, "the government managed the consequences quite skillfully: protests were allowed, and Mr. Putin skillfully appointed the well-known human rights activist Ella Pamfilova to the post of head of the Central Election Commission." And she "did not disappoint him," ironically Sestanovich.
So why is Putin and his aides now “overreacting to danger”? After all, “liberal activists” striving to get into the Moscow City Duma are only a small group!
“Knowing Russians,” the professor believes, will answer this question this way. This is a "continuity policy." According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the current president cannot run again: his term will expire in 2024. The prospect is distant, but it is already seriously worrying the Russian elite. Surveys show that public confidence in Putin has declined. His United Russia party is so unpopular that in 2018, it lost a number of gubernatorial elections. The country's economy continues to stagnate. Some analysts argue that Russian officials "at all levels" are asking themselves: is Putin capable of guaranteeing institutional and social stability? Can he ensure their personal safety, as he did before? If it can’t, then giving the elections a free and honest look “seems like a luxury”, which “the regime can no longer afford”.
It is not difficult to understand, the American professor admits, how Putin and his entourage can make a second mistake: to show "the cruelty and impunity that previously brought down other post-Soviet leaders." For two decades, President Putin has been the "main defender of the so-called" power ministries "of Russia. The president was "back." A couple of sleepy agents trying to poison a double agent in the UK? The murder of the famous opposition leader Boris Nemtsov almost right in front of the Kremlin? The president "brushes off." Remember any gross abuse of power by officials (the Russian military, security services or the police): it is likely, Sestanovich believes, that Putin "publicly belittled his [abuse] importance or justified those who stood behind him."
However, today the strategy of “supporting and strengthening the state bureaucracy regardless of the consequences” is capable of giving “Putin subordinates” such confidence in their actions that Putin himself will “regret” it later, the author suggests.
Keeping his own plans for the future (if any) secret, Putin “authorized others to make their own decisions,” Sestanovich writes. And for good reason, the recent Russian study of Putinism has an ominous name: "Each for himself." Here it is, the "formula of instability"! Only one “brutal abuse of power” separates Mr. Putin from “mass anger and upheaval”. If in the current Kremlin really is “each for himself”, the president, no doubt, will understand what this means for him. Now he is “on his own," concludes the American professor.
Journalist Benoit Witkin in «Le Monde» told the European public about "arrests in the high spheres of the Russian state." Messages about this go one after another. According to the author, the arrests are the backdrop of the “fourth term of Vladimir Putin’s reign”. This is "a new situation that no member of the ruling elite can ignore."
Only in the first two weeks of July did a series of arrests take place: three senior officials were arrested in Dagestan. Then there were searches in the administration of the Voronezh region. This was followed by the arrests of six FSB officers. Further more. The assistant to the president’s representative in the Urals Federal District was arrested, and then the deputy chairman of the board of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. Searches were held in the government of Yakutia, in the administration of St. Petersburg ... And we are almost always talking about “corruption or economic crimes,” the correspondent notes.
The journalist is convinced that the growing number of arrests of high-ranking officials is explained by the “clash of clans” and “Kremlin policy”. The article states that since 2014, an average of two percent of elite members have been arrested annually. Therefore, a comparison of such a modest scale with the Stalinist purges of the 30 heads of the last century would be a clear exaggeration.
Arrests are defined in the article as a central factor in the “stability of the Putin system”. And it is not without reason that many cases are presented to the general public as another fragment of the “state fight against corruption,” writes the correspondent of Le Monde. But experts do not agree with this.
Valery Solovey, a political scientist, believes, for example, that such a struggle is "too selective to be real." These struggles do not attack the foundations of corruption, and the most senior people in Putin’s circle are not “affected” at all.
Vitkin himself admits that the arrests serve to covertly struggle for resources. A criminal case is instituted, for example, in order to pressure a competitor or seize his assets. This was interpreted by many experts as the arrest in 2016 of the year of Minister Ulyukaev. He was "a victim of appetite" Sechin, believes Vitkin. In his opinion, “clashes at the top” are a reflection of the struggle for power, which is exacerbated with the approach of Putin’s likely departure from the post of president in 2024. For example, the arrest of Abyzov in Russia is interpreted as an “attack on the liberal clan” and a demonstration of the weakness of D. Medvedev, who is unable to “defend one of his proteges.”
But what to do? Stand still.
“In the end, it’s best not to leave the place,” a regional Russian official told the journalist anonymously. “Do nothing: neither bad nor good.”
Useful advice!
To stand still, not to move, not to do anything - these are the components of stability. Not that instead of GDP growth there will be an increase in the number of arrests in the country.
Putin is now "for himself"
Stephen Sestanovich of Columbia University (professor at the School of International Relations), a well-known publicist, wrote an article for the New York Times under the heading Opinion, where he expressed one very original idea.
If the scientist Fukuyama in the last decade of the last century reported the end storiesthen the scientist Sestanovich informed the world about the end of Putin’s forces. At the very least, the professor reported to everyone who was interested that nowadays everyone in the Russian elite is “for himself”, and the protests of recent weeks in Moscow may well become a test of power for strength. And what if Putin makes a big mistake with such a check? But what if Putin has already committed it, or rather, not one, but two?
Apparently, the Moscow protests prompted Mr. Sestanovich to come up with material in a major authoritative publication.
At the very beginning, the author indicated that the demonstrations in the Russian capital are continuing. It is for this reason that Moscow is talking about a new wave of political activity. However, among the Russian fighters for democracy, the road of the past is strewn with disappointments. And they realize that the reins of government are in the hands of Vladimir Putin, and he holds power firmly.
On the other hand, Sestanovich reflects, Putin’s position is not as solid as before. Looking back at the historical past, the scientist notes that since the 1991 of the year when the USSR collapsed, the rulers of the post-Soviet republics were burned with two “big mistakes”, as a result of which they lost their power.
V. Putin and his team also made two mistakes.
Big mistake number one: "brazen election manipulation." It is difficult to anger a people with something as much as this manipulation. Sestanovich points to the madness that gripped the crowds who realized that they were being manipulated. His historical list includes the so-called Rose Revolution in Georgia (2003 year), Orange Revolution in Ukraine (2004 year), Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan (2005 year). Everywhere the cause of revolutions was falsification of the vote count and other fraud in the elections.
As for Russia, there "the largest demonstrations of the post-Soviet period were the protests that followed the famous rigging of the 2011 parliamentary elections of the year."
And this strategy is being modeled again today, when new elections are being prepared in Moscow. Officials have recently rejected the candidacy of many opposition activists who wanted to run for the September 8 election in the Moscow City Duma. Although the protests were not massive, there are still no signs that they have come to naught.
The second big mistake: the impunity of official authorities. First of all, the professor points to "brutality by law enforcement agencies." And here are some examples.
When the ruling party in Georgia lost the parliamentary elections in 2012, the “trigger” was a “viral video” showing the torture by the jailers.
In 2013 and 2014, the Ukrainian crowd, who supported the so-called European future for their country, could have resolved if it hadn’t for popular indignation with a “series of nightly police attacks on demonstrators.”
And last year, there was a “sharp fall in the rulers of Armenia.”
So “Putinism” is being tested for impunity over and over again. In June, the author recalls, the security services brought charges against the famous investigative reporter Ivan Golunov. The evidence was fabricated so clumsily and caused such a storm of criticism that the Kremlin ordered "to release Golunov."
The use of force to disperse the demonstrations, as well as an obvious attempt to poison the prisoner Alexei Navalny, Sestanovich believes, "can lead to such indignation."
President Putin is used to tackling such issues with greater dexterity, the author writes further. There is a “soft dictatorship” in Russia, and Putin “rarely risks his position”, allowing “mass beatings and bloodshed or too obvious fraud in ballot boxes”.
The rigged election results of the 2011 year were “a clear exception,” the expert believes. In addition, "the government managed the consequences quite skillfully: protests were allowed, and Mr. Putin skillfully appointed the well-known human rights activist Ella Pamfilova to the post of head of the Central Election Commission." And she "did not disappoint him," ironically Sestanovich.
So why is Putin and his aides now “overreacting to danger”? After all, “liberal activists” striving to get into the Moscow City Duma are only a small group!
“Knowing Russians,” the professor believes, will answer this question this way. This is a "continuity policy." According to the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the current president cannot run again: his term will expire in 2024. The prospect is distant, but it is already seriously worrying the Russian elite. Surveys show that public confidence in Putin has declined. His United Russia party is so unpopular that in 2018, it lost a number of gubernatorial elections. The country's economy continues to stagnate. Some analysts argue that Russian officials "at all levels" are asking themselves: is Putin capable of guaranteeing institutional and social stability? Can he ensure their personal safety, as he did before? If it can’t, then giving the elections a free and honest look “seems like a luxury”, which “the regime can no longer afford”.
It is not difficult to understand, the American professor admits, how Putin and his entourage can make a second mistake: to show "the cruelty and impunity that previously brought down other post-Soviet leaders." For two decades, President Putin has been the "main defender of the so-called" power ministries "of Russia. The president was "back." A couple of sleepy agents trying to poison a double agent in the UK? The murder of the famous opposition leader Boris Nemtsov almost right in front of the Kremlin? The president "brushes off." Remember any gross abuse of power by officials (the Russian military, security services or the police): it is likely, Sestanovich believes, that Putin "publicly belittled his [abuse] importance or justified those who stood behind him."
However, today the strategy of “supporting and strengthening the state bureaucracy regardless of the consequences” is capable of giving “Putin subordinates” such confidence in their actions that Putin himself will “regret” it later, the author suggests.
Keeping his own plans for the future (if any) secret, Putin “authorized others to make their own decisions,” Sestanovich writes. And for good reason, the recent Russian study of Putinism has an ominous name: "Each for himself." Here it is, the "formula of instability"! Only one “brutal abuse of power” separates Mr. Putin from “mass anger and upheaval”. If in the current Kremlin really is “each for himself”, the president, no doubt, will understand what this means for him. Now he is “on his own," concludes the American professor.
Stand. Do not move. There is a redistribution of power
Journalist Benoit Witkin in «Le Monde» told the European public about "arrests in the high spheres of the Russian state." Messages about this go one after another. According to the author, the arrests are the backdrop of the “fourth term of Vladimir Putin’s reign”. This is "a new situation that no member of the ruling elite can ignore."
Only in the first two weeks of July did a series of arrests take place: three senior officials were arrested in Dagestan. Then there were searches in the administration of the Voronezh region. This was followed by the arrests of six FSB officers. Further more. The assistant to the president’s representative in the Urals Federal District was arrested, and then the deputy chairman of the board of the Pension Fund of the Russian Federation. Searches were held in the government of Yakutia, in the administration of St. Petersburg ... And we are almost always talking about “corruption or economic crimes,” the correspondent notes.
The journalist is convinced that the growing number of arrests of high-ranking officials is explained by the “clash of clans” and “Kremlin policy”. The article states that since 2014, an average of two percent of elite members have been arrested annually. Therefore, a comparison of such a modest scale with the Stalinist purges of the 30 heads of the last century would be a clear exaggeration.
Arrests are defined in the article as a central factor in the “stability of the Putin system”. And it is not without reason that many cases are presented to the general public as another fragment of the “state fight against corruption,” writes the correspondent of Le Monde. But experts do not agree with this.
Valery Solovey, a political scientist, believes, for example, that such a struggle is "too selective to be real." These struggles do not attack the foundations of corruption, and the most senior people in Putin’s circle are not “affected” at all.
Vitkin himself admits that the arrests serve to covertly struggle for resources. A criminal case is instituted, for example, in order to pressure a competitor or seize his assets. This was interpreted by many experts as the arrest in 2016 of the year of Minister Ulyukaev. He was "a victim of appetite" Sechin, believes Vitkin. In his opinion, “clashes at the top” are a reflection of the struggle for power, which is exacerbated with the approach of Putin’s likely departure from the post of president in 2024. For example, the arrest of Abyzov in Russia is interpreted as an “attack on the liberal clan” and a demonstration of the weakness of D. Medvedev, who is unable to “defend one of his proteges.”
But what to do? Stand still.
“In the end, it’s best not to leave the place,” a regional Russian official told the journalist anonymously. “Do nothing: neither bad nor good.”
* * *
Useful advice!
To stand still, not to move, not to do anything - these are the components of stability. Not that instead of GDP growth there will be an increase in the number of arrests in the country.
Information