It’s a bit too early, of course, for fortune-telling. Traditionally, the time for predictions comes on the night of Epiphany, so we should wait, but I am already curious about the bumps and pitfalls the New Year has in store for us. It is impossible to predict all the problems that will come in the New Year, so perhaps we should instead wish ourselves everything we would like the year to bring – but we all know that fate does not work that way.
As we meet this new year, all our illusions are long gone. Russia’s political class did not want to develop the country along the lines of modern open models, but it’s also not planning to drag it into full-scale totalitarianism. The political class based its decisions on the idea that Russia is not destined for democracy. They feel the country is predisposed to bureaucratic control supported with an increased role for the secret services and financial clans alongside a weakened role for the courts and civil society. This model also incorporates the direct subordination of the regions to Moscow, the increased involvement of the state in the economy and attempts to use the Russian Orthodox Church to justify an absolutely non-clerical domestic policy. This model has been laid out. To make sure the model was psychologically accepted, the country had to be inoculated with a moderate hostility against Russia from the outside world; a state of increased alarm had to be announced without any real threat of a conflict. Such a situation was carefully formed in Russia’s relations with the UK, the United States and Georgia.
At the same time, there are many problems. The secret services don’t feel completely emancipated and all the financially well-off opponents of the state have been destroyed in the cruelest possible way. Of course, the leaders and their deputies have been imprisoned or exiled, but these fates have also befallen simple employees, assistants and clients. Each of the ruling clans has its hostages in prison. The chekists who were in charge of the Tri Kita case, General Alexander Bulbov, who was spying on the chekists, and Deputy Minister of Finance Sergei Storchak are all behind bars. Those regions headed by appointed rather than elected functionaries are much worse managed than the regions in which those governors who had previously been elected were appointed again. The social tension in some regions and cities has reached a peak.
Up until now, the situation in Russia was similar to that in South Korea during its stratocracy era – an economic rise accompanied by political extinction due to the creation of large, private companies within the state. During the past year the situation actually resembled South Korea on the eve of student riots, only without the rebellious students and without a capable opposition. This is something that must be clearly acknowledged. The current opposition is untenable. Of course, it has been artificially marginalized and turned into an amateur act, but the problems of the opposition are not only the authorities’ doing. The opposition is either too tired of itself or it is premature. It emanates too much young ardor of a street riot, although nobody is gathering in the streets to riot. And if people do gather, it will be the wrong people for the wrong reasons.
Under these conditions, one thing to desire would be a disassembly of the system from the top in a process that would be too slow, but steady. It would involve a gradual increase of public freedoms, a change in the rules governing the media and the growth of local self-governance. Finally, after a long preparation period, there could be a disbandment and re-creation of the police and a reestablishment of a court system that could observe and protect real laws.
This process can start only from the top. Today we have no civilized forces able to start it from the bottom, but we do have people inside the system who are able to cynically weigh all the choices and understand that, in its current shape, the existing system cannot hold much longer. It will collapse – not under the pressure of enemies, but under its own non-constructive weight. And yet, power has a very strong instinct of self-preservation.
The reality is such that a new, even shakier system has to be constructed in place of the old unstable one. The successor – whoever he will be – has to be politically de-energized and isolated so that under no circumstances would he be tempted by the desire to escape from control. This is what the constitutional majority in the State Duma is for – it will make sure he doesn’t. But the majority itself could still become infected with megalomania. So the prime minister exists to keep the majority in its place. After all, he is the one who personally ensured that the majority has its constitutional superiority. If the majority became bold enough to go into a new election without the support of the prime minister, it would no longer be a majority. In any case, it would definitely not be an overwhelming majority. The president will be under strict surveillance of the Duma, which is supposed to be loyal to him; the Duma will be monitored by the prime minister, who is formally supposed to be accountable to it, together the president and the prime minister will stand back to back to guarantee each other’s safety in the face of their “friends” from the department of law enforcement.
Under these conditions, any movement is practically impossible. Everything is too closely connected, too closely correlated. But in today’s world, it is impossible to simply stand in place. History has become too accelerated and so the current configuration is not the last one; it will have to be altered because the instinct for self-preservation will force the change.
In any case, we will live and act; we will witness and maybe even participate in complicated and risky turns of the plot; there is still a chance of resolving the conflict. That chance is small. Nevertheless, it is still real.
