BORIS KAGARLITSKY, MOSCOW
MEDVEDEV-2
Russia’s victory over Georgia in the armed conflict in South Ossetia, the diplomatic maneuvers which followed the conflict and showed that the Western community cannot (and does not want to) oppose Russia in a serious way, and Dmitry Medvedev’s bold statements at the Valdai International Discussion Club make the President of Russia ‘a hero of the day’. Some time ago it was difficult for Dmitry Medvedev to show his real worth, but today his importance as a strong state leader is beyond any doubt. The only problem is that the President and his team believed that his role would be quite different.
The Kremlin bureaucrats hoped that Medvedev would be a kind of a liberal leader who could come to terms with the West. He was supposed to slowly, quietly and surely soften the regime, established by his predecessor Vladimir Putin, and to make the Russian capitalism legitimate and respectable worldwide. The liberals were ready (on certain terms) to put up with the ‘bloody regime’ that would be reformed gradually. And Vladimir Putin became the Prime Minister in order to protect the interests of some ‘important’ persons during the regime’s transformation by warning the incumbent President and his course against any ‘extremes’.
The presidential succession was thought over carefully, organized excellently and performed perfectly well. But not long after the new President’s inauguration, he had to start the confrontation with the West, quarreled with the liberals and provoked embarrassment among the bureaucrats.
It would be naive to explain this by Medvedev’s personal quality or by his desire to become independent of Vladimir Putin’s “old guard”. Quite the contrary, he’s followed Putin’s political course and has made it even tougher. On the other hand, it is apparently hard for a man of Dmitry Medvedev’s nature to play a role of a strong state leader and West’s “antagonist”. He justified himself in Vedomosti newspaper saying that owing to the force of circumstances he had no choice but to recognize the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and that he hadn’t planned to do it before Georgia’s armed conflict with South Ossetia. There is no reason for doubting his sincerity.
Here we can fix two consequences for Dmitry Medvedev’s presidency with certainty. The first one is that his positions as a national leader have been strengthened. The second one is that the ‘Medvedev project’, which had been elaborated a year and a half ago in the Kremlin, failed completely.
Now the President needs a new strategy and a new image urgently.
The reason for what has happened must lie in the economic processes, which cannot be influenced by the politicians. The global crisis is affecting Russia more and more and the current events are only its first signs. The world is breaking up into rivaling countries and blocs which try to protect and control their markets. Sincere mutual understanding and consensus gave place to conflict of interests. The irreconcilability of the state leaders is caused by Hobson’s choice rather than by their ideological confrontations. Those who talk about a new ‘Cold War’ miss the point. The Cold War was an ideological and social confrontation between two different systems. Today there are clashes engendered by the crisis of the single system including Russia, the USA, Georgia, Venezuela, Germany and South Ossetia. There will be no Cold War but there will be more ‘hot spots’.
The leaders of the states should respond to the new challenges which they have never had to face before. A year ago it seemed that the oil prices would always be high and the ruble rate would be stable. The Stabilization Fundand the reserves of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation werepermanently growing and nobody believed that this would come to an end. The industry also grew by leaps and bounds.
Unfortunately, the economic growth has become a thing of the past. Leanfleshed kine came and are eating up the fatfleshed kine right now. The Russian authorities will not rest on their laurels any more. The drastic alterations are required. The government understands that much better than the ordinary people and opposition do. But the authorities inwardly are not ready to carry out reforms.
The strategy of Russia’s development till 2020 is nothing but ridiculous wishful thinking that has nothing to do with present-day reality. The unsettled problems, which were ignored against a background of the economic growth, are coming to the forefront.
As the head of state, Medvedev will have to take up those challenges. His place in history depends on what steps he will take and how he will solve the problems. For the time being the Russian government has neither a clear policy nor, what is more, a strategy. No groundwork was laid even for propaganda and ideology. A new image of the President should be created now. But what kind of statesman will “Medvedev-2” be?
The Kremlin has got several options. It can pursue the policy of aggressive nationalism and promote the imperial traditions. True, wild enthusiasm, caused by Russia’s victory over Georgia, can vanish soon. And a new conflict, for example with Ukraine, would be far less popular and far more expensive. The prospects of victory will not be obvious either.
It is still more unlikely Russia will take the liberal course again. This does not meet the modern political and economic situation.
Dmitry Medvedev’s words about the multipolar world sound like antiglobalistic rhetoric more and more. Moscow started to seek partners in the South countries, to develop the relations with Venezuela and other Latin American states. It is good that the Russian officials have come to realize that the West is only a single part of the modern world. But I’m not sure that they will manage to use this knowledge properly.
Apart from that, although leftist policy may look attractive to the Russian authorities, I doubt that they will manage to follow it. Using the political rhetoric and changing the policy are quite different things. Left rhetoric without a proper domestic social policy looks absurd, in particular when things are reaching a crisis point.
The Venezuelans back their President Hugo Chaves because he had the natural resource revenues seriously redistributed to the poor rather than because he quarrels with Washington. And now that he had enlisted the people’s support, he can criticize the USA as much as he likes.
Meanwhile in Russia the government tries to put the cart before the horse, as always.
Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements
September 25, 2008
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