Transition to democracy is a challenge not for the Government but for society
There is no doubt that our President wants Russia to be a lawful and free country. One has to be a naïve cynic (cynics are often naïve) to think that anyone can say, "Freedom is better than non-freedom" while thinking to himself, "How easy it is to cheat these fools".
It's another matter that any person wants many different things and has conflicting wishes; the urge for freedom may not necessary be the strongest of all. Let us however imagine that the President has firmly committed himself to expanding freedom in the country. That is quite plausible, especially since in the early stages the President's wish to establish democracy and rule of law in the country may be very much in tune with his other natural wishes: to enjoy independence and real personal power, to win respect and popularity. Many today dream about a "thaw" after Putin's "freeze". This is the ideal liberal scenario. Let us examine it more closely.
From dots to commas
Everything begins with a few sentences (they have already been uttered) and symbolic gestures that put some distance between the President and his predecessor and prime minister, who "froze" Russia a little bit, and generate hopes among the liberals. The crisis deepens and the President gently criticizes the Government for being too bureaucratic and not energetic enough in extreme conditions (that has already happened). Opinion polls show a decline of confidence in the Prime Minister and his popularity (that too seems to be in evidence). The President makes several statements to the effect that the scale of the crisis has something to do with earlier mistakes. He speaks about "our mistakes", but everybody understands what "our" means. The President's approval rating is beginning to outstrip that of the Prime Minister, who suddenly finds himself "responsible for the crisis" (that has not yet happened, but it is not outside the realm of possibility).
Although all of this is not very important, it has symbolic significance. Everybody is waiting to see what will happen next. The President is a decent man; he understands that he is indebted to his Prime Minister and predecessor, but he also understands that the Government is not coping and the interests of the state and responsibility before the people are more important for him than personal sentiments. In due course, Vladimir Putin will retire from the post of Prime Minister with great honour (what he will do after that is a major political problem in modern Russia, but some options exist). It turns out that the people don't care one way or the other, that the bureaucratic elite has long been waiting for this and thinks the measure is, if anything, long overdue, while the liberals are jubilant. The West is also pleased, hoping that the thaw may lead to "détente". President Obama meets with President Medvedev and says afterwards that he looked him in the eye and realized that he is a true democrat who is committed to modernizing his great country, and that the issue of Abkhazia and South Ossetia could be sorted out later.
Next some of the more odious or farcical figures ("the Putin fruits") of the outgoing era resign and some key posts are occupied by people who "think modern and have a firm grasp on economics". If early signs of a recovery from the crisis happen to emerge shortly afterwards (after all, any crisis comes to an end sooner or later) they will naturally be associated in the popular mind with Mr Putin's departure and the new appointments. Television (whose top executives may or may not be replaced, because the present ones also know their lines) broadcasts some programmes that are increasingly critical of the recent past, even showing some of the former "Puppets" programmes by Shenderovich, including the scene that proved to be the old NTV's undoing in which Mr Putin is portrayed as "little Zahes". The film based on Sorokin's "The Day of the Oprichnik" is hugely successful. In 2012 Medvedev is triumphantly reelected - now for a term of six years. People say: "Thank God, we are not living in Putin's times", "There was a lot that we didn't know", "I for one have never voted for Putin", and so on. Is it a realistic scenario? To be sure, implementing it requires intense work and involves major psychological and political problems, but I think it is quite realistic. It combines two "plotlines" that are quite "normal" and have occurred in history time and again.
The first plotline has the ruler getting rid of those who put him on the throne and who think that the ruler should forever be grateful to them and follow their bidding. Thus, Anna Ioannovna promptly got rid of those who elected her, and indeed all the Soviet leaders from Stalin to Gorbachev did the same to those who elected them; Mr Putin's first action was to get rid of Berezovsky.
The second plotline is the onset of liberalization after the departure of the ruler whose toughness (or cruelty) has made everyone weary, as was the case at the enthronement of Alexander I after Paul I and of Alexander II after Nicholas I. Very often these two "plotlines" have merged into one: the ruler got rid of those who elected him and gained popularity by launching liberalization (Khrushchev, Gorbachev). The probability of seeing another film made from this script is considerable.
When you write a script it is easy to put a full stop and write "The End" as the film fades out on the victory of progressive forces over forces of reaction. However, in history full-stops tend to become commas as the plot continues to develop or smoothly turns into a different one. Let us see how it may evolve.
Everything is predictable
Initially liberalization may boost the President's popularity and his personal (not formal) power, but further down the road problems will inevitably arise because no liberalization can be maintained at an absolutely harmless level. It is always like this with the liberals: you give them a finger and they try to bite off your hand. There will surely be "slanderous allegations", "irresponsible demagogy", "attempts to denigrate all our achievements". Some will say that the YUKOS case should be reopened when YUKOS has long been dismembered and the matter should be laid to rest. Some will recall the events at the beginning of the second Chechen war, which would be totally irrelevant.
One also must remember that society consists not only of liberals. There are Tatars, Chechens and Ingushes, Communists, "patriots", and National Bolsheviks. Some of them are sure to start saying that there was more order under Putin. The President will have to say, "but surely you don't want to turn the clock back" to some people and "you don't want things to be like they were in the 1990s" to others, all of which is unpleasant and dangerous. Meanwhile, the year 2018 looms ahead. The President has colossal power; he can stop "the rocking of the boat" and make sure that the man who is elected President in 2018 has his complete trust (or he may choose to amend the Constitution and run for yet another term). However, for this to happen tighter control over society must be established and the screws must be tightened a bit. Normal human and political instincts would nudge the President in that direction: after all, a person always seeks to win the game in which he is involved and to retain his grip on the situation. As always, these wishes will be justified by unselfish considerations: one cannot allow politics to be dictated by "irresponsible demagogues", let alone allow them to control the country.
But that would bring us back to square one. We would continue to live under an authoritarian regime that lurches from "thaws" to "freezes", just like in tsarist and Soviet Russia. Saltykov-Shchedrin described it wonderfully.
Untypical cases
The first, insufficient but absolutely necessary, step in introducing democracy in our society is the first in Russian history defeat of the incumbent in elections. . However, one cannot expect a president to engineer his own defeat. The most one can expect from a president committed to democracy, law, and order is that he will not cross certain lines in fighting his enemies. For example, not to rig elections, not to deny opponents access to the media, not to accuse of tax evasion anyone who shows signs of opposing the Government. Mr Gorbachev was like that. He is a normal man and did not want to be defeated. He fought until the last clinging to the illusion that he could win. Even faced with the threat of losing power and of the disintegration of the state, however, he did not do what instinct and "common sense" prompted him, but rather what ran counter to his ideals and the standards he set for himself. Such things rarely happen. However, as the experiences of the Gorbachev and post-Gorbachev era have shown, even that is not enough for a successful transition to democracy.
The point is not to prevent the incumbent or his appointee from winning the election in 2012 or 2018 or 2024. It is even more important that the winner not set about consolidating his power in the way Yeltsin and Putin did, that the road to a normal contest for power, one conducted according to uniform rules that imply a succession of winners and losers, is not blocked again. This scenario has occurred before, in Belarus for example, where Mr Lukashenko came to power in a free and fair election and immediately decided that his would be the last such election. If that is to happen, the winner should have a minimum standard of commitment to the rule of law and democratic values and furthermore have a strong opposition that will prevent him from consolidating his power by illegal methods if the winner's commitment does not prove to be strong enough. It would be better if he did not win by a landslide and if the supporters of the previous administration did not disappear and promptly put themselves in the service of the winner. Such a scenario is even harder to imagine in this country than a landslide victory by a contemporary incarnation of Yeltsin.
Better late, but better
All of the above is not so difficult to understand. However, it is one thing to understand something in the security of one's office, and it is quite another thing to understand and be guided by this understanding when you are in the middle of a political fray. While it is very difficult to demand from a ruler not to break the law in fighting the enemy even under threat of defeat, demanding that he should know in advance that he will have to lose, that he should foster his own rival, who will beat him but in a way that will not allow him to consolidate his power, is absolutely impossible. A politician who sees that as his task and genuinely seeks to solve it would be the greatest of all humans. With all due respect to the President, there are no grounds for thinking that he is the greatest of all humans. Therefore, we should tell ourselves that the liberal scenario is realistic but will still not solve the main task facing the country: transition to democracy. It can even be said that it is not directly related to that task. Such a transition cannot be the cause and the task of those in power. It is a challenge for society itself. It can only be solved through a crisis (not the current economic crisis, but a profound political crisis), only by leaping over an abyss. The President's liberal instincts and steps may go some way to facilitate the solution of that task in the future, but no more than that. Perhaps there is no need to rush to solve the task - we have tried to do it twice and both times have made a mess of it. It would be better to make a third attempt later but with greater success than suffering another demoralizing setback. At the same time, we should be aware even today of the need to solve the task, the nature of the task, and the colossal difficulty of solving it.
Dmitry Furman, Dr. Sc. (History) is Professor and Senior Researcher at the RAS Europe Institute
Dmitry Furman