Putin: man or mythDate: February 8, 2002
Over the last two years, I have had a number of occasions in this column to criticize President Vladimir Putin and the system of power that his developed since he took office. I still hold to every one of my words. What's more, much, if not all of what we were saying two years ago has become obvious today and people in or close to power are admitting as much themselves. The military operation in Chechnya, which has cost the lives of thousands of soldiers and even more civilians, is stuck in a dead end. Even if the whole world decides to close its eyes to this, it doesn't mean that we have the right to close ours to our own national tragedy. The disgusting spectacle of two clans (the "Family" clan and the "Lubyanka" clan) fighting it out in public for their share of power only serves to confirm an observation I made a year ago, namely that the so-called fight against the oligarchs turned out to be no more than the replacement of a few politically inconvenient oligarchs with others unswervingly loyal to the authorities and the president personally. Putin's list of privileged oligarchs includes not only the legendary Roman Abramovich and Alexander Mamut, but a number of key government officials, minister-capitalists - all these 2 and 5 percent Mishas whose private businesses, registered in the names of relatives or front people, are flourishing exclusively thanks to their official posts. It doesn't matter how many Petersburg Chekists there are, whether they're dressed in leather or in Pierre Cardin suits, whether they ride to the summits of power on machine-gun carts or in Mercedes Benzes, they can't change this situation. At most, they can push one of the more blatant gluttons away from the trough and take the place themselves. And everyone knows this, as they did a year ago. At the end of December, the Kremlin spin doctors held a meeting at their home base of Alexander House to discuss the results of two years under Putin's presidency. All the speakers came to practically the same conclusions as those listed above. They all noted the stabilization of the oligarchic system of power, the institutionalization of large-scale corruption and the failure of social policy. All that remained was for them to admit that these results are the inevitable outcome of the whole pitiful philosophy that is managed democracy, the administrative vertical, the dictatorship of the law, party-building frenzies and other such absurdities invented by these same spin doctors. The only kind of economy a regime built on these "values" can have is one that goes nowhere. The meeting's participants asked each other with a kind of mystical amazement how it can be that there has been no success, and yet Putin's popularity ratings haven't fallen. I already gave an answer to this question some time back: "It's that the entire political construction of present-day Russia turned out to be hanging from the single slender thread of the Putin myth. People have been deceived so often they can't bear the thought that they've been cheated yet again. And now people dying in Chechnya, freezing in the Far East and drinking themselves to death in Central Russia will defend to the last Putin's myth and popularity rating, going against every scrap of common sense, it would seem. In this sense, Putin is our everything. This is the last Russian myth - a senseless and merciless myth." All this is only indirectly related to the Putin who is our flesh and blood contemporary. For the creators of the myth, this real Putin is just as much a detail in the design as the administrative vertical, "Moving Together," the twelve-headed calendar, the fourth bed from the window at the Snegiryovka maternity hospital where our little Red Sun first rose over Russia and other such trappings. Now reclining comfortably in the shadows of the Putin myth it has created, the crusty old bureaucracy is so pleased with the reaction of our good-hearted people with its far-from-Argentine temperament that it dreams of prolonging this stage of history for seven, 17 or 21 years. In today's political reality, the only alternative to the ever more Brezhnev-like Putin myth can be only one man - Vladimir Putin. We saw this Putin after Sept. 11, when in his decisions on an important strategic issue he broke for the first time with the majority of his entourage, political "elite," advisers and colleagues, whose corporate solidarity he has always valued highly. This Putin has taken an enormous political and personal risk for the sake of what he considers Russia's genuine interests. He has the logic of history on his side. Russia and the West both need a strategic alliance with each other on the threshold of a century that has got off to such a menacing start. But then, Alexander II and Pyotr Stolypin also had the logic of history on their side. Against him he has the traditional rigidity of a large part of the Russian military-political establishment still ravaged by the complex of defeat in the Cold War. Against him he also has the oligarchic system with its merging of power and assets that developed under former President Boris Yeltsin and strengthened under the two years of the Putin myth. An impoverished and technologically backward country ruled by constantly rotating groups of favorites fighting for control over raw-materials flows and customs revenues cannot be a serious or respected ally for anyone and is doomed to sit on the sidelines. It's not enough to remove from power all the bickering members of this shameful gang. The whole institution of Power as a feeding trough has to be ended. The battle between the Putin myth and President Putin will be this year's main conflict. Related:
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