It is a long historical tradition that events at the centre of the Russian empire determine events at the periphery. What happens in Moscow, or St Petersburg, defines what happens in Kyiv, Tashkent, Bishkek or Minsk.

2005 was a very strange year, because that tradition was reversed. Events at the periphery, in Kyiv, Bishkek and elsewhere, defined events at the centre.

Among former dominions, it was a very active year. The Orange Revolution in December 2004 led to president Yushchenko taking office in Ukraine in January. His new government joined Georgia in declaring that its highest foreign policy goal was integration with the West, particularly with the EU. Moldova’s government likewise announced a new focus on integration with the EU, though it wasn’t clear in any of these cases if the EU was interested.

Meanwhile, relations between Belarus and the EU reached new lows, as neighbouring Poland used its new EU clout to put increasing pressure on the dictatorship of Lukashenko.

Events were no less dramatic in central Asia. In Kyrgyzstan, president Askar Akayev’s fifteen-year reign came to an abrupt conclusion in March when two weeks of demonstrations and riots made him flee the country. The governments of Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan managed to hold on to power, but only at the cost of a bloody massacre in the case of Uzbekistan.

While these events have raged in the countries surrounding Russia, events in Moscow have been strangely muted. What political reforms have taken place? There has been some M&A activity in the oil sector. Gazprom share liberalization almost happened. UES reform has been delayed. Banking reform and benefit reform were slowed. Military reform has not happened. Administrative reform has been confused.

This lack of political activity comes despite the fact that the economy is booming, oil prices are at record highs, the government is incredibly wealthy, and Putin is very popular. This is a uniquely positive set of circumstances for a government. But the Kremlin is incredibly wary of spending any political capital. Why?

The answer is clear – it’s afraid of causing a revolution. The sight of all those babushkas demonstrating against the monetization of benefits in January terrified the tough guys of the Kremlin. Coming so soon after the loss of Ukraine, they became petrified by the threat of a popular uprising, financed by the West, which would undermine all their hard-won stability.

So the year was defined by preventing any instability, which meant avoiding all difficult reforms, and defending against the threat of revolution. Hence the financing of a seemingly endless number of puppet youth ‘NGOs’, hence the fight with the OSCE over election observers, hence the new law on NGOs, the boosting of social spending, the increasing control of the media, and so on. When it comes to defending Russia from the threat of revolution, the Kremlin has been incredibly active this year. No idea so hare-brained, but it will get support and funding.

But why is the Kremlin so frightened that a revolution will occur? Surely it’s obvious that the only potential opposition parties – Yabloko and SPS – are utterly weak, while United Russia and Putin himself are very popular? Surely it’s clear that Russian people do not want to return to the crazy days of the 1990s, and value the predictability and prosperity that Putin has helped bring?

The reason the Kremlin is so paranoid, it seems to me, is it is being given faulty intelligence by its advisors and security forces, both of whom have their own vested interests in stoking Kremlin paranoia.

According to one account I heard, the Kremlin paid over $1 billion trying to win the Ukrainian election for Yanukovich. Most of the money went missing, of course. But when the Kremlin’s political technologists had to explain the reason for their failure to get Yanukovich elected, they came up with a good answer –the United States and EU spent even more.

This was a reason the devious Kremlin could accept. It accorded with their perennial suspicion of the West, and their faulty assessment of how important Ukraine and Russia were to the US and EU. The Kremlin could far more easily accept this reason than the more accurate reason, that Ukrainians saw the prosperity of the EU on their borders and wanted to join, that Yanukovich seemed like a figure from Ukraine’s gangster past rather than the more civilized future which Kyiv’s middle class hoped for.

If the Kremlin’s political technologists succeeded in selling the Kremlin their line about Ukraine, then they could receive even more funding to ward off the threat of a similar western-financed revolution in Russia. Rather than being booted into ignominy, or put in prison for misappropriated state funds, they would actually receive a pay-rise! If the Kremlin spent over $1 billion in Ukraine, think how much it would spend on ‘revolution prevention’ in Russia.

So the paranoia of the Kremlin was stoked by its own political technologists, as well as by the traditional paranoia of the FSB, which is always prepared to see a ghost in every shadow, and by the hype of the media, both western and Russian, for whom the idea that the US and EU had ‘caused’ all these revolutions was much simpler and more attractive than the more complicated truth.

That, it seems to me, explains the weird inactivity of the Kremlin this year, aside from the expensive and controversial measures of ‘revolution prevention’ that the Kremlin has undertaken. It reminds me of a man who is convinced by travelling salesmen that his house is in danger of attack by a giant rabbit, therefore he must buy the giant rabbit trap that the travelling salesmen happen to be selling. Well, Russia is thoroughly protected from giant rabbits now. So how about taking some political risks, and spending some political capital in 2006?

Julian Evans is a British freelance journalist based in Moscow.

December 28, 2005