The Times (Great Britain) "World Agenda: why Vladimir Putin's power is on the wane"
Tony Halpin
The ghosts of history are haunting Russia's rulers. As falling oil prices turn an unprecedented economic boom to bust, Vladimir Putin's monolithic "power vertical" is cracking under the strain.
The authoritarian system of government that he built as president to concentrate power in his hands appeared invincible while the country was awash with oil revenues.
But as Mr Putin prepares to address the global elite at the opening of this week's World Economic Forum in Davos, the Kremlin's swagger is turning to fear now that the money is drying up and the economic crisis bites.
The brittleness of the regime was exposed by a recent newspaper article. Yevgeny Gontmakher, a leading sociologist, described police brutally suppressing protests over factory closures in a fictional provincial city, sparking wider unrest that spread eventually to Moscow.
His article was titled "Novocherkassk 2009", a reference to a massacre in 1962 when Soviet troops killed 22 workers in the city of Novocherkassk who were protesting at wage cuts and price increases for food. The Communist regime covered up the slaughter, which was acknowledged only in 1991.
That was enough for the government's media watchdog to warn the newspaper that it was inciting extremism, a potentially criminal offence in Russia. Life quickly imitated art, however, when protests broke out in the eastern city of Vladivostock last month against increased import tariffs on foreign cars.
Mr Putin introduced the measure to protect domestic car producers, controlled by Kremlin favourites such as the shadowy former KGB agent Sergei Chemezov and the billionaire Oleg Deripaska. But thousands in Vladivostock depend on reselling foreign cars for their livelihoods and took to the streets brandishing banners denouncing Mr Putin, an almost unheard of event in the good times.
The Kremlin's response was swift. Riot police were flown 5,750 miles from Moscow - local forces were considered unreliable - to beat and arrest protestors.
Since then, Russia's Central Bank has engineered a steady devaluation of the currency, the Rouble, which has fallen from a peak of 23.5 against the dollar last summer to 33.5 now. The Putin middle class, who have become used to lavish consumption, is feeling the pinch as fear over job losses mounts.
Mr Putin looks edgy as Prime Minister, chafing at playing second fiddle, if only formally, to Dmitri Medvedev, the protégé he installed as President last May. Nobody doubts that he still pulls the strings, but the existence of two centres of authority is creating friction inside the elite now that oil riches for bureaucrats are being rationed and oligarchs are scrambling for state bailouts to escape crushing debt obligations.
Mr Putin's former KGB chums instinctively want to respond to the crisis with greater state control of the economy and repression of public dissent. More "liberal" reformers view an opportunity to promote competitiveness and encourage initiative by reining in the bureaucracy.
What they all fear is Novocherkassk-2009, of being swept away by a public already furious at handouts to billionaires while ordinary Russians struggle to survive.
Rumours persist that Mr Putin plans a return to the Kremlin, perhaps even this year, to try to hold the system together, mistrustful of Mr Medvedev's capabilities in a crisis. Mr Medvedev laid the foundations for his own demise with a swift rewriting of the Constitution last month to extend the presidential term from four years to six.
The temptation for Mr Putin will be to rig one more election before his "power vertical" crumbles, giving him six years to rebuild in time for re-election in 2015. He could outlast two terms of Barack Obama and that's the challenge for the new US President.
Mr Putin would act only if he felt that his achievements in the last eight years were at risk of collapse. But doing so would remove any pretence that Russia was on the road to democracy.
Would Mr Obama acquiesce pragmatically to achieve improved relations with a predictable regime? Or stand up for the principle of democracy in Russia? He may face this choice sooner than he would wish.
