BORIS KAGARLITSKY, MOSCOW
LIFE AFTER PUTIN
The main aim of the Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves’ visit to Moscow is to learn the name of Putin’s successor, that’s what told me a member of the Venezuelan delegation. Well, the Venezuelan President is not the only one who is bothering his head about Putin’s successor – many Russian citizens want to know the outcome of the “Successor” operation. But our leader remains conspicuously inarticulate causing panic among some interest groups.
I wondered how Commandante reckoned to get the “Successor” puzzle solved. The answer was: “Say, during the reception ceremony in the Kremlin President Putin would introduce one of his close associates to President Chaves: please meet the future President so-and-so”. “I am afraid I’ll have to disappoint you, but President Putin will hardly ever do so, or at least will chose different occasion”, - was my reaction.
Indeed, should Putin unveil the mystery of the new Russian president not to the Russian baffled bureaucrats but to Hugo Chaves, it would become a scandal and a top-liner. But the trick is that Putin himself doesn’t have the name, at least for the time being.
A third term for Putin would be all right with everyone but for Putin himself. He would rather leave the office preserving his good name and public recognition than to dig himself in the Kremlin waiting for new troubles to arise. For they inevitably will arise and Putin knows that, as we all do. So President would prefer to leave it to his successor. Fortunately, there are plenty of contenders for the post.
The problem is that Vladimir Putin is the only official in Russia who has real authority or at least popularity at the level of the whole nation. No other bureaucrat can pretend to grade up to the incumbent president in popular support ratings. Resentment against the bureaucrats is the dominant social feeling.
If Putin’s popularity was a derivative of his policy, this would simplify the task for his successor, who would win over the Russians by simply integrating Putin’s priorities into the new agenda. Alas, Putin’s artificial popularity served as a cover for the unpopular political line implemented by the cabinet. Under this scheme the cabinet was responsible for all the weak points, like the housing and public utilities reform, cash-for-benefits substitution, commercialization of education, public health and transport services, while Putin, who actually had appointed all the ministers, was the “guarantor of the Constitution”. As a guarantor the president did well and the unfortunate cabinet continued its work despite general disapproval.
But should we behead this construct and it will go all to pieces. And nobody will manage to manage the situation as good as Putin did. He enjoys the exclusive priority to have entered Russian political scene under emergency conditions and to be leaving it in a more or less stable situation – that is what people love him for. People’s magical consciousness always perceives the bonanza period as directly connected to a good leader. And to an extend they are right. But this is an inverse relation. The new leader will inevitably bring about new weather.
And as the weather will inevitably change, Putin is ready to cede his place in the Kremlin to a person who is doomed to take reigns over a more or less prosperous country and will hand them over under crisis. It is not exactly the flow of petro-dollars that will one day run dry or the real estate market that will melt down, or any other economic cataclysm that will let us down, but the social tensions that are aggravated by the economic growth.
It is only in the liberal economy theory-books that the output growth automatically breeds social prosperity. Put in practice, liberal economy laws have different implications: the way the state propaganda represents to the public the results of the economic growth defines how the society changes. Putin’s era was the time of social change – it has brought about the new social order and thus laid down basis of future contradictions and new social conflicts. But these conflicts will make another era in the Russia’s recent history – the era after Putin.
So now the bureaucrats are doing their utmost to extend Putin’s term of office hoping that this will save them from the coming cataclysms. But the president being smart enough to grasp that his presence in the Kremlin won’t avert the crisis, would rather watch the situation from distance.
In the final reckoning, the name of the successor doesn’t give much. And though the clocks are ticking and we will soon learn the name, history won’t change its way. Putin’s political experience prompts him that there’s little to be done. So the president is not hurrying to give the name – and unlike his team he has nothing to lose.
Boris Kagarlitsky is Director of the Institute of Globalization and Social Movements
July 5, 2007
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