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Russia reaps
the whirlwind
By Jonathan Weiler
(Posted with permission from Foreign Policy in Focus)
As editorialists from across the United
States and Western Europe have reiterated lately,
Russian democracy is under assault. During a joint
press conference following the recent summit
meeting in Slovakia, US President George W Bush
outlined for Russian President Vladimir Putin the
importance of "a rule of law and protection of
minorities, a free press, and a viable political
opposition".
Bush's comments represented
the culmination of months of growing US
dissatisfaction with the backsliding of democracy
in Russia, a dissatisfaction ostensibly based on
three recent developments in Russia: the campaign
against former oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
the progressive limitations on independent media,
especially television, and the decision to abolish
direct elections for Russia's regional
governorships.
On its own terms, much of
the criticism is merited. What is striking about
it, however, is its failure to acknowledge that
these authoritarian tendencies were part of the
very genetic code of Putin's Russia from his
presidency's inception. In fact, the seeds of
Putinism were all sown during what some consider
the "golden age of Russian democracy", the Yeltsin
era. Furthermore, those seeds were sown with
strong US support. This article examines some of
these earlier anti-pluralist developments in
Russia and suggests that uncovering the roots of
current Russian authoritarian tendencies sheds
light on the highly selective nature of
Washington's democracy promotion efforts. The
article also questions the motives behind
America's professed goal of promoting freedom and
explores whether that ostensible goal is
consistent with pressing policy concerns.
The war on independent
media
Lilia Shevtsova, one of the
best-known observers of the Russian political
scene, has written, "During the run-up to the
parliamentary and presidential elections in late
1999 and early 2000, television had been the
decisive force in transforming Mr Nobody into Mr
President, and Vladimir Vladimirovich did not want
this powerful political resource in the hands of
his opponents - or even his mildest critics." In
other words, Putin set his sights on reining in
television from the very beginning. The biggest
obstacle to doing so was Vladimir Gusinsky, an
oligarch who loomed large over Russian politics
and society in the chaotic 1990s and the owner of
the largest independent television network in the
country, NTV. By the summer of 2000, just a few
months after Putin's election, Gusinsky was
arrested. Ostensibly, the charges were economic in
nature: Gusinsky's failure to repay loans he owed
to the state. This established a pattern later to
re-emerge in the Yukos affair - an oligarch
prosecuted for economic crimes that many others
had committed, raising the specter of a political
motive behind the legal attack. Gusinsky was
eventually released and later left the country,
and NTV was shut down in April 2001, two months
before President Bush first met Putin and said he
"looked into his soul and liked what he saw".
TV-6, another independent television
station where many NTV journalists sought refuge
after NTV was closed down, also was snuffed out by
the Kremlin in 2002. Thus, current concerns about
media (especially television) freedom in Russia
are not new.
Even before the clamp down,
it was unclear whether the Russian media were
truly independent promoters of meaningful
democratic accountability. For example, during the
decisive 1996 presidential elections, in which
Boris Yeltsin beat back a serious challenge from
communist Gennady Zyuganov, oligarch-controlled
"independent media" played a decisive role in
Yeltsin's come-from-behind victory. NTV eschewed
its independent character to become a propaganda
arm of the Yeltsin team, and, in a staggering
conflict of interest, NTV's president became media
coordinator for the Yeltsin team. Many are
concerned that a withering of media independence
in Russia shields Putin from serious
accountability. But how effective a watchdog is
the Russian media? Whenever its Kremlin paymasters
were seriously threatened, as during the 1996
presidential elections or the 1999 legislative
balloting (after which Putin first cultivated a
pliant parliamentary majority), the media became a
propaganda arm for the administration.
The attack on oligarchs
Putin's
attack on Gusinsky was only one element of a
broader intention to discipline the oligarchs who
had so dominated Russian politics under the
more-accommodating Yeltsin. Though Boris
Berezovsky, perhaps the most politically
well-connected oligarch, originally supported
Putin's rise to power, he soon became a critic.
Like Gusinsky, Berezovsky's vast holdings included
media properties. Berezovsky had held a minority
(but controlling) stake in ORT, Russia's Channel
one, the largest network in the country. By
mid-2000, fearing that he would soon suffer a fate
similar to Gusinsky's, Berezovsky left the
country. Prosecutors later charged him with a
series of crimes, including not repaying massive
debts and loans. As with Gusinsky, there was no
need to trump up the economic charges; many
oligarchs made their fortunes by exploiting
connections to the authorities and borrowing money
on highly favorable terms, often with no intention
of repaying the loans. Putin's decision to attack
these individuals would have been viewed as a
plausible effort to assert the rule of law if
other more-cooperative but equally shady
businessmen had also been targeted.
In
this context, the fall 2003 attack on Yukos Oil
and Khodorkovsky's business empire was not
necessarily illegal, since the circumstances under
which Khodorkovksy acquired his staggering wealth
were certainly questionable. But the attack
followed a pattern: the most outspoken, media
savvy, and politically ambitious oligarchs were
singled out. This pattern is consistent with
Putin's larger effort to curb alternative sources
of power.
Many Western supporters of
shock-therapy economic reforms saw in these
oligarchs the qualities of robber barons who,
despite their outlaw profiles, would bring
capitalism to Russia. But the success of Russia's
oligarchs in the 1990s came at the expense of
ordinary citizens. In fact, Yeltsin's
American-supported economic reforms, whatever
their merits, impoverished millions and deeply
polarized Russian society. This polarization led
to the creation of political institutions,
including a super-presidency, that have become
increasingly remote from Russia's nascent civil
society and are vital to Putin's political
designs.
Economic reform in Russia has
concentrated wealth in a way that undermines the
very basis for a broad-based civil society. With
such vast disparities in wealth and such a weak
middle class, the unobstructed distribution of
resources necessary for the emergence of a
politically independent society simply does not
exist. Recent data suggest that economic
inequality is only getting worse, but the Western
commentariat, let alone the Bush administration,
surely won't waste its time criticizing economic
inequality in Russia, despite its political
significance for democratic development. In short,
the concern about the attack on oligarchs as
representatives of liberal economic and political
freedom in Russia is misplaced. The attacks are
more properly understood as a squabble within an
elite that has already largely inoculated itself
from an open civil society.
Bringing
the regions to heel
The shocking
middle-school massacre in Beslan in September 2004
prompted calls for authorities to more
aggressively deal with the growing problem of
terrorism in Russia. Looming over the school
assault is the ongoing war in Chechnya, a
bloodbath now more than five years old that has
claimed many thousands of lives. From the time he
was appointed prime minister in August 1999 and
emerged as Yeltsin's likely successor, Putin
insisted that the conflict with the breakaway
republic of Chechnya was essentially a fight
against terrorism, for which there was no
conceivable negotiated solution. At the same time,
in the aftermath of the Beslan horror, Putin
argued that corruption in the regions had
contributed to the attack, and he abolished the
direct election of governor for each of Russia's
89 regions, excluding Chechnya. Putin has now
begun appointing governors, who are then approved
under highly constrained circumstances by the
respective regional legislatures. Critics who
argue that this move was nothing but a cynically
timed attempt to further consolidate the
president's power certainly have a point.
Actually, Putin has been working to
restrain regional independence from the time he
took office. Phrases such as the "power-vertical"
and "dictatorship of law" have characterized
Putin's governing philosophy since 2000. Among his
first significant initiatives was to organize
Russia's regions into seven super-regions, each
supervised by a Kremlin appointee. So the
appointment of governors is not really a new
direction. In fact, among Putin's earliest
successes, Shevtsova argues, was his ability to
"tam[e] the governors".
The regions had
more latitude under president Yeltsin, but that
latitude did not serve a positive democratic
purpose. Corrupt governors willing to use the most
extreme methods to combat opponents, whether
journalists or others, were characteristic
features of Yeltsin's Russia. Furthermore, it was
Yeltsin's elimination of serious political
opposition in fall 1993 that led, according to
many well-placed observers, to his decision to
invade Chechnya in late 1994 despite the
opposition of almost all political forces in
Russia's new and weakened parliament. That
invasion left perhaps 100,000 people dead before
it ended in late 1996. The Clinton administration
decided that Boris Yeltsin's shock therapy program
and subsequent re-election justified all means of
support, which contributed both to Washington's
shameful muteness about Russian conduct during the
first Chechen incursion and to effective US
endorsement of a presidency increasingly
unaccountable to any other political and social
forces in Russia.
Promoting
polyarchy
So, recent developments only
represent the intensification of longer-term
trends that successive US administrations either
ignored or actively endorsed. This fact raises
questions about the real motives behind
Washington's current public criticisms of Russia.
As William Robinson argued in his important book
Promoting Polyarchy, US administrations
since the 1970s have increasingly engaged in
"overt operations" to install in each target
country a pliant leadership sympathetic to the
agenda of transnational capital. Instead of
relying on active military force or supporting a
domestic coup, according to Robinson, Washington
cultivates a network of civil and business
organizations able to wangle elections to bring to
power a transnational-friendly ally.
Robinson's work focuses on Chile,
Nicaragua, and the Philippines, where the United
States is able to exert much more direct influence
than in Russia. Robinson's critics note that US
overt operations predate the 1970s and that the
United States has been perfectly content with
non-polyarchies, as long as they are receptive to
transnational interests. A key point for Robinson,
however, is that US policymakers increasingly
recognize that democracy, if properly
masterminded, can serve as a most effective tool
for installing foreign governments sympathetic to
transnational economic interests. Such democracies
hold elections and, on paper, protect democratic
rights. In reality, however, these "polyarchies"
are only nominally accountable to broad-based
domestic interests. Thus, functioning as a
legitimizing smoke screen, Washington's rhetoric
about democracy and freedom effectively serves the
transnational corporate interests that decisively
influence US foreign policy.
Although not
as malleable as smaller countries traditionally
influenced by the United States, Russia largely
conforms to the model of polyarchy promotion
outlined by Robinson. Civic organizations are weak
and tend to support the administration. Media,
particularly television, are in the hands of
government allies. The authorities promote an
economic agenda much more compatible with
Washington's blueprint than with the needs and
desires of broad-based interests in Russia. And
all of this is christened as legitimate through
elections compromised by official manipulation and
US support for that manipulation.
Russia
is too powerful to be subject to direct pressure.
But, as the important work of Janine Wedel and
others has shown, the Yeltsin administration was
especially cooperative in the 1990s both in
pursuing an economic approach compatible with
transnational corporate interests and in
instituting the ideology most reflective of those
interests - neo-liberalism, often referred to as
the Washington Consensus. [1] In fact, during the
1990s, the US gave more than ten times as much
assistance to Russia's privatization efforts as it
gave to support democracy building through efforts
such as cultivating independent civic
organizations. Washington's two-fold interest in
the 1990s in Russia was keeping Yeltsin in power
and ensuring the application of economic shock
therapy. General support for democratic
institutions, if they might result in opposition
to Yeltsin's economic agenda, was not a priority;
Yeltsin's compliance with broader US ideological
and transnational interests was. The influence of
the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on
Russia in the 1990s and the complicity of these
multilateral bodies in Russia's deeply corrupt
privatization process only underscore the nature
of US priorities in Russia at the time.
Once Russia had started down the path of
genuine pluralism and democratization, it was
difficult to support an obvious reversal on that
front. The United States had no meaningful control
over the reform processes that began under
Gorbachev in the late 1980s, and those processes
clearly served Yeltsin's interests as he rose to
power during 1990 and 1991. This prehistory
necessitated asserting a narrative about Russia as
continuing down a contentious but increasingly
democratic path. In that context, it made more
sense for the United States, whatever its
policymakers' genuine sentiments in this regard,
to encourage a version of democracy that saw
neo-liberal economics as intimately interwoven
with Russia's procedurally democratic
institutions.
There is also reason to
believe that US policymakers were concerned about
a reversion to communism, or something like it, in
the difficult days of 1993. Thus, the Clinton
administration's support for Yeltsin in his
standoff with hard-liners in Parliament
undoubtedly flowed from real concerns about the
reform process. What's important to understand,
though, is that the Washington Consensus
constructed a very specific understanding of what
reform, democracy, and free markets meant - an
interwoven complex of institutions in which the
political leadership, once empowered by an
electoral majority, accepted the idea that
responsible public policy decisions involved
accepting the primacy of capital markets and
interests in determining what was best for the
country's future. If significant social costs
accompanied that understanding, that was perhaps a
matter for compassion, but other historical
options had been ruled out, so there was no
alternative. In this way, Robinson's outline of
polyarchy promotion comports well with the
outcomes observed in Russia, though what was
concretely at stake there may have differed from
the situation that he analyzed in Latin America.
Why the current concerns about Russian
democracy?
Independent sources of
potential political opposition have been
progressively curbed under Putin. But what has not
changed in any meaningful way is that the most
powerful political interests in society were as
unaccountable for their wrong-doings in the past
as they are now, unless they happen to cross
Putin. So, why is Washington currently so
concerned with democracy in Russia, when it has
been perfectly content with only superficial
democratic trappings since 1993? This question has
at least three possible answers.
First,
the administration's growing rhetorical commitment
to democracy, necessary to justify its actions in
Iraq and its broader efforts to reshape the Middle
East, is perhaps having spillover effects kindling
demands for cultivating democratic institutions
elsewhere. One could argue that this rhetorical
commitment prompted American calls for the
invalidation of Ukraine's contested presidential
runoff election last November, as we'll explore
later. In reality, the development of Russia's
political institutions certainly takes a back seat
to issues of nuclear cooperation and Putin's
ongoing cooperation in the "war on terror",
including his continued acceptance of a US
military presence in Russia's "near
abroad"(neighboring ex-Soviet republics).
Rhetorically, however, the momentum generated by
the march of "freedom and liberty" combined with
lingering hostility and distrust of Russia among
many neo-conservatives prompt elevated and
ideologically motivated attention to Putin's
recent moves.
Second, Clinton's support
for Yeltsin was predicated on the belief that the
worst possible outcome for Russia in the 1990s was
a reversion to communism. In fact, economic shock
therapy's supporters often justified their
neo-liberal elixir in political terms: the more
rapidly the old economic order is dismantled, the
more unlikely communism will re-emerge. Seen in a
different light, Yeltsin's fealty to the
principles of shock therapy, especially its
openness to international capital, represented the
preferred outcome for US policymakers, and
Yeltsin's primary political opponent, Gennady
Zyuganov, despite his own attempted assurances,
never convinced relevant interests that he would
similarly facilitate Russian economic openness.
Under Putin, Russia largely imitated
Yeltsin's economic course by installing a flat
income tax and reducing business taxes to among
the lowest in the world while pursuing
international economic integration. This continued
until the attack on Yukos Oil, which represented a
potential departure from that economic trajectory.
In fact, in the months before Khodorkovsky's
arrest, Yukos and British Petroleum had agreed in
principle to a merger that would have made the new
entity perhaps the third-largest oil company in
the world. Observers at the time suggested that
Putin found such a possibility - the loss of
control over a significant portion of a critical
strategic resource - unacceptable.
For the
United States, the forbidden line that Putin
crossed was not a disdain for freedom, liberty, or
democracy per se. Rather, his action signaled a
possible rejection of full compliance with larger
US economic preferences, including openness to
foreign capital and access to key resources,
notably oil. In the discourse of the post-Soviet
world, "free market democracy" is often seen as a
seamless and historically transcendent
political-economic configuration. In reality, the
complex and historically specific interaction of
market institutions and democratic ones, as
they've evolved in the West, often allows for the
promotion of destabilizing economic reform in the
guise of democracy promotion. Putin's refusal to
cooperate fully in economic terms triggered an
almost reflexive criticism of his anti-democratic
tendencies, as if the two constitute a seamless
larger whole.
Third, although Washington
and other Western governments raised concerns
about the Khodorkovsky affair, it was the
Ukrainian elections of last fall that appear to
have opened the floodgates for the full-throated
criticisms of Putin that have followed. Within
days of the disputed second-round election last
November, then-secretary of state Colin Powell
declared "unacceptable" the official outcome, in
which Moscow-backed Victor Yanukovich was named
the winner. Moscow was, in turn, furious at what
it regarded as Western meddling in the affairs of
Ukraine, a vital strategic partner with Russia.
The subsequent decision by Ukraine's Supreme Court
to order new elections and the victory of US-
backed Victor Yushchenko represent perhaps the
most embarrassing single political defeat Putin
has suffered.
Europe and the Ukrainian
elections
But why was the United States so
adamant about the proceedings in Ukraine?
Significant violations had characterized Ukraine's
previous presidential elections in 1999, and
Ukraine's outgoing president, Leonid Kuchma had,
over the course of a decade in office, been
accused of fraud, corruption, and even contract
murder without triggering much interest from US
authorities. Furthermore, clearly fraudulent
elections and widespread repression in other
post-Soviet republics, such as Azerbaijan and
Uzbekistan, have not merited condemnation by the
United States or any meaningful US media
attention.
One possible answer lies in the
strained relationship between the United States
and Europe since 2002. Candidate Yushchenko
expressed strong interest in Ukrainian integration
into Europe, including the European Union (EU) and
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Moscow
found these possibilities especially disturbing,
threatening the historical relationship between
Ukraine and Russia. It is arguable that the US
perceived in Europe's reaction to the November
results (Europe condemned the elections as stolen
and insisted on a remedy) an opportunity to remind
the Western alliance of a shared set of value
commitments, commitments that President Bush
stressed on his recent trip to Europe.
Furthermore, Russia is now Europe's
largest supplier of natural gas and oil. Given the
rising price of oil and Russia's increasing
emergence as an oil-producing giant, the prospect
exists for a growing synergy between Russian and
European economic cooperation and investment
interests. With the continued weakening of the US
dollar and the growing urgency of securing access
to strategic oil supplies to keep America's
increasingly indebted economy afloat, Washington
may wish to discourage this synergy from
developing. This would explain Bush's desire to
remind the EU allies that Europe and the United
States share values that Russia does not. It is
also true that Ukraine represents a vital transit
point for oil and gas flowing westward into
Europe. A more Western-oriented Ukrainian
leadership could be a positive development for
Europe, and this perhaps motivated the United
States to hop on the Yushchenko bandwagon in
exchange for other considerations.
Designer governments vs the risk of
democracy
Rarely does one factor alone
drive significant policy initiatives. Certainly
the recent erosion of the minimal pluralism that
existed in Russia is not a very plausible reason
for the escalation of rhetoric and growing
diplomatic emphasis on Russia's pluralist
deficiencies. US democracy-promotion efforts have
historically been compromised by the central
importance of securing foreign markets for
significant financial interests or at least
promoting an ideological vision of market openness
potentially compatible with such interests, even
if an actual economic payoff is not always
immediately realizable.
Furthermore, the
pattern in US foreign policy is clear -
non-compliant leaders sitting atop strategic oil
supplies, whether Saddam Hussein in Iraq or Hugo
Chavez in Venezuela, are potential targets for
"regime change". Systematic abusers of human
rights who are compliant and who sit astride
strategically important oil resources, such as
Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia, get a pass. Russia is
still too powerful to fall victim to
US-orchestrated regime change. But the growing
possibility that Russia might wield its increasing
oil and energy clout for interests not totally
compatible with US corporate understandings of
free markets (that is, foreign capital access) has
created a window of opportunity for US criticism.
Putin has contributed to that opening by engaging
in a series of self-serving political maneuvers.
But concerns about democracy, by themselves,
provide an insufficient explanation for
Washington's recent rhetorical offensive.
To be true to its word, the US should
support the integrity and importance of democratic
institutions and should help struggling nations
develop self-organization and meaningful defense
of their interests. For example, Washington could
redirect aid priorities to enhance civic
organizations and legal training instead of
supporting potentially destabilizing and
corrupting economic reforms. The White House would
also do well to resist the temptation to
personalize US foreign policy by handpicking
savior-winners. In Adam Przeworksi's words,
nascent democracy entails "institutionalized
uncertainty" and involves risking other people's
right to choose their own path. Unfortunately,
President Bush's new budget calls for cutting
democracy support programs. This is a revealing
signal.
Additionally, Washington might
reconsider its often-unqualified support for
privatization, liberalization, and fiscal
austerity. Advocacy of policies with a more
social-democratic bent, such as support for
economic safety nets during painful transitional
periods, could serve at least two useful purposes.
First, such an approach might forestall
the emergence of destabilizing political
movements, of either the far right or the far
left, which feed off the chaos, insecurity, and
suffering of many ordinary citizens during times
of wholesale economic and social transformation.
Though Vladimir Zhirinovsky turned out to be a
clown, at the time of his unexpectedly strong
showing in the 1993 parliamentary elections, many
in the West wrung their hands at Russia's
potential ultra-nationalist turn. Clearly, the
Zhirinovsky phenomenon was an outgrowth of the
chaos and instability of the previous two years.
Greater sensitivity to the social costs of reform
might have foreseen such a reaction.
Secondly, shock therapy has produced
extraordinary inequalities, which have undermined
the prospects for a genuinely broad-based civil
society. This is both a political and an economic
concern. As the eminent economist Marshall Goldman
has shown, Poland's decision to encourage new
business creation instead of focusing on breakneck
privatization of state enterprises created a
strong economic foundation not beholden to narrow
and highly corrupt elite interests. In turn,
Poland's economic foundation will likely serve to
foster the development of a more sound
civil/political foundation yielding a stable,
consolidated democracy that meets the genuine
needs of a majority of the country's citizens.
If US foreign policy were less fixated on
ensuring conditions under which transnational
interests can flourish unfettered by
responsibilities or accountability, America could
nurture the roots of a broad-based, vibrant, and
less-concentrated global economic order. This type
of economic arrangement would have salutary
political consequences as well and would almost
assuredly moderate the foreign policy tendencies
of all the world's nations.
Disregarding
the emergence of disturbingly undemocratic
tendencies and a lack of respect for basic legal
principles, US policy toward Russia in the 1990s
was still guided both by a Cold War mindset and a
rigid ideological commitment to a particular
understanding of capitalism. Consequently,
Washington was more concerned with guaranteeing
particular political outcomes than with
cultivating institutions that could legitimize
both uncertainty and accountability as central
democratic processes. The reductio ad absurdum
of such an approach is evident in Putinism.
End notes
[1] Janine Wedel,
"Rigging the US-Russian Relationship: Harvard,
Chubais and the Trans-identity game",
Demokratizatsiya, Fall 1999.
Jonathan Weiler
received his PhD in political science from the
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where
he is an adjunct professor of Russian and East
European Studies and a fellow at the UNC Center
for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies.
His book Human Rights in Russia: A Darker
Side of Reform was published by Lynne Rienner
Publishers in 2004.
(Posted with
permission from Foreign Policy in
Focus) |
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