Moskovsky Komsomolets: "More political science fiction"
Alexei Pushkov gave MK readers a ride on Putin's roller coaster.
There are not too many journalists in this country who were on familiar terms with all our presidents - from Gorbachev to Medvedev. However, when you meet Alexei Pushkov, the author and anchor of the Post Scriptum weekly TV show, broadcast on the TV-Centre channel for 12 years now, the paradox is that you want to ask him not only about the presidents but also about the future. You have the strong sense that the mysteries of the future are open to him...
Putin is good at debating and Medvedev, at listening
Question: You are reputed as an analyst who offers precise forecasts. Let's test your intuition once more:
Who will be Russian President in 2012?
Answer: There are quite a few bright political fantasy authors in this country. They will tell you everything in detail. It can be interesting reading but, as usual, nothing will come true in the end. I prefer another genre.
Q: Then I'll rephrase it. How much has the country changed since Medvedev took office? How much will it change when he leaves it?
A: It has changed very little though Putin and Medvedev are different people as individuals. Putin is older and he worked for the KGB. The disintegration of the USSR affected his personal life. Like many other people, he lost his job at the elite special service and the state administration, and he had to rebuild his life and career. Putin knows what instability is like from his own experience, that's why he puts so much value on stability now. For all these reasons, he gravitates toward an authoritarian, though not tough, rule. Medvedev is a man of other times: He was brought up on the ideas of change and market reforms, and he worked in private business. He is instinctively more liberal than Putin. Being a member of the presidential human rights council, I had a chance to watch their behaviour at the council's meetings. Putin used to argue with human rights activists trying to persuade them that they overdramatised things. Medvedev listened to them and promised to settle their problems, though he didn't always agree with them. Medvedev is more receptive to human rights arguments. Meanwhile, the country's policy has remained unchanged under both Putin and Medvedev. This is a liberal economic course with the established power vertical. We haven't started again to elect the governors, they are still appointed. People in the regions cannot elect members of the Federation Council (the Russian parliament's upper house), so that some of them represent regions they have never been to before their appointment.
Q: Why is it that the opposition has lost its capability to influence the government and press for change?
A: As regards the right-liberal opposition, the reason is that they are too far removed from the people. Moreover, they are incapable of consolidating their strength and are living through a crisis of ideas now. However, even the KPRF, with its support base, has no influence on the government. The reason is the monopolistic system. United Russia, too, tends towards the monopolistic on the party front, though its ideological image is not very distinct. Several years ago, Putin said that the party needs its own ideology, its own face, which cannot as yet be seen.
What was the party's reply? An article by a member of the United Russia leadership was published in one of the leading newspapers. It was entitled, "United Russia's Ideology is Putin's Policy." Sure, this is honest but it is common knowledge that policy stems from ideology, that ideology is primordial, not the other way round. By the way, the opposition has often accused United Russia of being a monopoly. And there's no way to stifle opposition sentiment when it arises. If it doesn't show during the elections or at the State Duma, it will take the form of kitchen debates, motorists' protests against flashing blue lights, and Internet messages. Opposition moods will find a way to reveal themselves. The protest rally in Kaliningrad demanding the resignation of the government was not at all accidental.
Democracies are running the risk of emulating China's approach
Q: I haven't abandoned my hope to divert you towards political fantasy. Could you tell us whether the epoch of monopolistic governments will come to an end in this country? Will a multiparty system ever emerge here?
A: However paradoxical it might seem, I think much depends on what kind of world we'll have after the crisis. Before the crisis, the civilised countries saw liberal capitalism and political democracy as mankind's natural development. We've been told that democracy has economic advantages over authoritarian regimes. What has the crisis shown? China, where one would fear to say a reckless word, where Mao's portraits and posters calling for unity around the communist leadership are still hanging in Tian'anmen Square, registered 8% growth in a year when all democratic economies collapsed with a bang. China's economy is predicted to grow 10.5% this year, against Europe's 0.7%. It turns out that, given efficient governance, authoritarian systems can ensure high economic growth.
This conclusion could precipitate huge political change. Western economists and sociologists are talking today not about the "Washington consensus" based on recognition of the advantages of the liberal model, but about a new "Beijing consensus," that is, such a course that could ensure economic growth while rejecting political freedoms and the principles of a law-based state. The Western ideology has been hard hit by the crisis. Due to this, as well as the weakening of the United States, authoritarian-style regimes have obtained a new legitimacy. Thus, Saudi Arabia has been invited to the G20 group, though compared with that country Russia enjoys full democracy and absolute freedom. The Americans do not care today about human rights violations in a country as long as they can have beneficial cooperation with it. Obama visited Beijing and offered China the opportunity to form a G2 group instead of the G8, in other words, to share responsibility for the world with China. Who could have ever thought of the president of the leading capitalist power to offer such an alliance to leaders of the major communist country?
If, in the final count, liberal capitalism proves its superiority over other systems, Russia will drift towards a Western-type democracy. However, if the current crisis in Greece causes a chain reaction, authoritarian rulers will have strong new arguments in their favour. They will say: "Look at Greece. There's such a mess in that heavily indebted country. There have been deaths. Democracy does not pave a smooth way for overcoming the crisis and ensuring growth, whereas the authoritarian systems show much better performance." Then Russia may switch over from its present fluctuations between liberal democracy and authoritarian rule to fluctuations between various degrees of authoritarianism.
Much will depend on those who are 20-25 years old now. I have a feeling that they don't care about democracy. They seem to think in other categories, those of the 21st century, such as individual success, comfort, career, consumption, family interests. Surely, they won't accept a Stalinist-type regime. However, if authoritarian rule is mild enough and provides opportunities for growth, the younger generation may find it acceptable.
Who could make himself heard by Stalin and Gorbachev
Q: Now, about Stalin. What do you think about the debate on whether we should display his portraits again?
A: Stalin was Commander-in-Chief during the most terrible war in our history. There is no doubt that he made a tangible contribution to victory. He was respected by both Churchill and Roosevelt as the USSR's leader. This is why I see nothing terrible about the idea. As for his crimes and failures in the course of the war, this is another matter. My father went through the entire Great Patriotic War, from June 22, 1941, to May 9, 1945, from Lithuania, where his air regiment was deployed on June 22, to Prague. He told me about the total disarray at the beginning of the war. Seven days before the invasion, 60 out of the total 64 officers in my father's regiment were sent on leave. The Germans destroyed all our planes on land; they didn't even have a chance to take off. What did Stalinist propagandists tell our soldiers on the very eve of the war? They worked hard to convince them that the German workers and peasants would never attack the country of the Soviets. My father was on duty when the first German bombers flew over the regiment. He and his comrades saw crosses on their wings but couldn't understand anything. They knew the swastika but when they saw crosses they tried to guess whose planes they were and what their intentions might be. Someone said, "What if they are British?" When anti-aircraft gunners shot down a German bomber and captured two German pilots, our guys decided to explain it to them that working people should not fight each other. They ran to the stockroom to fetch their best preserves and fruit cocktails in order to feed their confused German comrades with the best food they had. The country was completely unprepared for war. Stalin himself didn't want to believe that Hitler could attack the USSR and failed to facilitate the combat readiness of the Armed Forces. It was a miracle that my father survived the first days of the war. Nearly all his comrades were killed.
However, I do understand why Stalin is still popular among some sections of the population. Russia is a big country with an epic history; it is used to having big leaders capable of great deeds. In 1990, the overwhelming majority of people voted for Yeltsin. Compared to Gorbachev, who only talked and made empty promises, many thought that finally another strong man would come, change everything for the better and make a strong leader. Regrettably, the destructive Razin-Pugachev urge was much stronger in Yeltsin than his creative impulses.
Q: You were Gorbachev's speechwriter. Can a speechwriter influence the country's number one person and politics?
A: This has never been possible, not now or then. A speechwriter can write a good speech, devise a suitable phrase, offer a smart thought, but this won't have much effect on the general content. On the contrary, speechwriters are chosen to "fit the content." A speechwriter must share the leader's views and understand him well enough, otherwise he won't be able to do the job. I, for one, couldn't have worked with Brezhnev. I was invited to work for Gorbachev because I thought that the idea of perestroika was correct, though I wasn't excited by the results.
A speechwriter's task is to adapt to the leader's mentality, to guess how he'd like to see his thoughts put on paper. Quite often we would write a text at random and receive it back with a lot of it crossed out, rewrite everything, and get it back again with fewer corrections. This could go on seven or eight times. And then we would have a phone call from Gorbachev's plane saying: "Look, you can do it if you want!" And it wasn't quite clear whether we had really hit the mark or there were just two hours left before the speech and it was too late to make corrections. Mikhail Gorbachev had a strong desire to change the country and the world for the better, but he had no clear vision of what should be done to accomplish it. We realised it only too well. There were many good but too general slogans, such as a common European home. This is fine, but how to build it? There was no answer. It was all different with Yeltsin who immediately found the two key slogans: "Down with the CPSU," and "Abolish privileges." This was enough for him to win over Gorbachev, though the level of corruption and the new privileges under Yeltsin couldn't even be imagined in the times of Soviet nomenklatura, with its sausages in the CPSU headquarters' canteen.
The media and governments in search of bacilli
Q: While working in the Russian media, you also cooperate with foreign media. Is there a great difference between them?
A: True, I wrote articles about Russia for the Wall Street Journal Europe and I am a member of the editorial board of the National Interest published in Washington.
They value good journalism in the States, but there are some limitations. For example, a reputable magazine would insistently recommend that you avoid direct criticism of influential members of the American establishment and simply criticise the ideas and political platforms instead. This is common practice, especially if you are a foreign journalist.
The American press would periodically raise a hysterical ballyhoo campaign. As a rule, such campaigns precede military action. A rallying cry usually comes from the executive authorities. Following the White House, the whole nation will persuade itself that there is an enemy to mankind, a devil incarnate, a second Hitler. Many people have been cast in this role: Milosevic, Hussein, and now Ahmadinejad. They'll find someone else later.
During such a hysterical campaign, an article cautioning the US against war on Yugoslavia or Iraq is not likely to appear in the American press. The only exception I know of was Henry Kissinger's article published in Newsweek before NATO's war against Yugoslavia and expressing his disagreement with the official position. However, one should reserve his prestige to do those things only possible to a chosen few. Other (media) people who tried to protest against bomb raids lost their jobs, but there were only two or three of them, for the media executives are wise enough to agree with such campaigns.
They say in the US that they have no censorship. However, there is another thing. Condoleezza Rice said once that the American media should not broadcast bin Laden's messages and she personally rang news executives asking them, on behalf of the Administration, not to do so. In the States, the government has active influence on the media, and the major media executives prefer to be on good terms with it in order to obtain the necessary information and interview the country's leaders. For this reason, critical publications appear only when it turns out that the United States is losing the war. In much the same way that everyone would insist on the occupation of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, who has a nuclear bomb, a horrible bacillus and huge stocks of botulinum toxin, they would all line up in opposition to the government now: "We've been deceived. Bush has plunged the country into war without sufficient grounds." This happened in the 1970s, too, during the war in Vietnam.
So, our media has more freedom in some respects. Suffice it to recall debates about Chechnya conducted from 1994 through 1999 and 2000. Quite a few different viewpoints were expressed then which would have been impossible in the United States. Whilst it was decided to grip the enemy by the throat, so it will be done, with no one proposing the idea of talks on TV.
Q: Are there many restrictions imposed on the anchorman of Post Scriptum?
A: I'll answer you with a quotation from Ulyanov-Lenin: "One cannot live in society and be free from society." The times are changing. There were fewer restrictions several years ago, and the field for discussion was much wider. Now rather tough laws have been adopted and we regularly hear strange outbursts against the media from our deputies. No doubt, there must be cooperation between the government and the media. There must be solidarity, especially in the fight against terrorism. However, I don't think that the government must constantly hamstring the press. Restrictions are needed to protect society.
When the decision is made not to show bodies torn to pieces, this is done in order to protect society, its mental health. But when the authorities ban protest actions and their coverage, they protect only themselves, not society. And the damage is done to the authorities, too. They must constantly heed the public, receive signals from people, otherwise they will never know what is happening around them, what people think and what worries them. Such governments separate themselves from the people and they'll have to pay for this one day. This may lead to revolutionary changes or stagnation and degradation, of both the authorities and society.
I can put up with Chubais once a year
Q: You have written the book "Putin's Roller Coaster" (Putinskiye kacheli). Has Putin read it?
A: I have no idea, but surely I'd like to learn about his opinion.
Q: How free were you to write about him and his time?
A: This book is a political chronicle of our time, a collection of my commentaries written between 1999 and 2008. Each one of them is dated. When my book was published, I suddenly discovered how much the style of presenting politics has changed over these years. They don't write like this now and don't say these things on the air like they did in the early 2000's..Things that were absolutely normal then would give rise to questions now: What if such statements are rocking the boat and undermining political stability? Formerly, very few people seemed to care about these things and the reason could be the absence of stability. I'll add one more observation of mine. At that time, there was quite a bit of material about individuals in history. They focused on their biography, manners, clothes, weaknesses, a circle of acquaintances, family, etc. This is no longer done now.
Q: Do you keep in touch with many politicians now?
A: At different times, I was on very good terms with Irina Khakamada, Alexander Shokhin, Grigory Yavlinsky... Unfortunately, politics affects human relations. For example, my critical view of the SPS (Union of Right Forces) has put me at odds with Irina Khakamada. However, I still cultivate my relationship with Sergei Stepashin, Sergei Mironov, Nikolai Bordyuzha and Sergei Yastrzhembsky (even though he mostly travels now).
Q: Do you have any enemies?
A: Adversaries, not enemies. I don't think Anatoly Chubais is very fond of my TV show. However, once a year we call a truce for the Davos summit and have normal contact there. By the way, there are only the two of us left in Davos out of the whole cohort of well-known Russian political figures who used to travel there in the early 1990s. I remember the time when the Davos organisers sent a minibus to the Zurich airport and packed it full of Russian delegates, such as Yavlinsky, Yasin, Shakhrai, Khakamada, Boris Fyodorov, Nemtsov and others who are no longer seen in Davos.
I don't think the Education Ministry likes my show, because of my criticism of the EGE (Unified State Exam). However, I'm not the only one to disagree with it. When nearly all school and college teachers, as well as university rectors, express a negative attitude about it, I can't believe they are all mistaken. There must be something wrong about the experiment itself.
I think people who believe that Boris Yeltsin saved Russia cannot like my show. I am of a different opinion.
No one likes to be criticised. One of the tasks of my TV show is to assess executives and law-makers' activities from the point of view of public interest.
Mikhail Zubov
