RUSSIAN FEDERATION WEEKLY SITREP

by Patrick Armstrong

Putin speech. At the St Petersburg Forum. On a recurrent theme, he said that the economy must reduce its dependence on hydrocarbons and that foreign investment was necessary: “This is why we feel that creating an investment climate that is not just favourable, but truly better and more competitive, is a key issue in state policy.” A commissioner for entrepreneurs’ rights, Boris Titov, has been named (he immediately said he would press for pardons for the many in jail for economic crimes – including Khodorkovskiy. I wonder how that will play out). The government will reduce its holdings in state-owned companies. Medvedev received much attention at the start of his presidency for talking about Russia’s “legal nihilism”; well, here’s Putin: “Unfortunately corruption is without exaggeration the biggest threat to our development”. Same team, same program. In fact there are those who think Putin came back as President because only he has the muscle to take on corruption. There is a hint in the speech that he takes the G20 more seriously than the G8. An important speech to read and not read about: making Russia a more attractive place for foreign investment will be a high priority. He’s not naïve: “a fairly difficult and ambitious goal, given our position today”.

Today’s Video. Putin is a believing Christian. I heard that a long time ago and here’s a video collection.

Parties. The 1995 Duma election had 43 parties contending and 4 crossed the 5% threshold (I was an official observer and well remember the gigantic ballots – size of a newspaper sheet). In 1999 there were “only” 30 and five made it over the barrier (two merged into today’s United Russia pedestal party). Putin’s new rules made it harder to register and raised the barrier, Medvedev’s rules made it easier and lowered the barrier. So we’re back to the 1990s. 23 new parties have been registered and there are more on the waiting list. But, over these elections and different rules, one thing stands out: only four tendencies get into the Duma, whatever number of parties there may be. The Communists and Zhirinovskiy (who have some overlap of appeal) make it and so does the pedestal party (gone through several iterations but the same in essence). Then there is a “liberalish” party (used to be Yabloko – and probably could be today if Russian liberals had cooperated with each other) but today the United Russia-lite Just Russia fills the position (will it carve a place for itself? Seems to be doing so). I would be surprised if the addition of other 20 – or 200 – parties will make much difference to this breakdown which well reflects political opinion in the country. One of the great defects of Russian politics to my mind is the refusal of the “liberal” tendency (which probably has 10-15% of the electorate) to unite. Good piece on their failures here. As an observer of the 20 years, I find it interesting just how long it takes a real party system to evolve. We’re not there yet and I have no idea when we will be.

Federation Council. Yet another re-arrangement. Now gubernatorial candidates (again to be directly elected) must nominate their representative on the Federation Council (and 2 spares) as part of their campaign. Russia’s upper house therefore resembles the US Senate before 1913 – direct representatives sent by the regions.

Poll. For those who think Russian polls that show Putin is popular are fixed and that they can therefore make up their own numbers, here’s a German/US one that shows the same thing (graphic). By the way Navalniy, the West’s current darling, is not especially popular. I also notice that 43% say they have 2 or more children.

NATO. Moscow has given approval for NATO to use a base in Ulyanovsk as a transit hub to Afghanistan. This is not going to be a popular decision.

The emptiness of former flaps. A DND study says that Russia’s activities in the Arctic pose no threat to Canada: “Russia is following the same process prescribed by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to define its outer jurisdictional limits as other coastal states”.  (See this) That’s not what we heard at the time: Russia claims North Pole. But the damage was done and it was affixed to the “charge sheet”. And another: one of the Russian amphibious ships supposedly enroute to Syria never went anywhere near it.

Israel. Putin’s trip to Israel is a reminder that Russian-Israeli relations are actually pretty good. Gas too maybe.

Georgia. Shevardnadze is reported to have said his “biggest sin to the people and the country was the fact that he had transmitted power to Saakashvili” whom he calls a dictator. Apparently Ivanishvili has hired his own PR firm in Washington. I foresee the amusing scene of Lobbyist A entering a US Congressman’s office and saying “Saakashvili is a great democrat and should be supported” to be immediately followed by Lobbyist B saying “Saakashvili is a great dictator and should be opposed”. Cognitive dissonance indeed.

Comments

[Da Russophile]

An excellent sitrep as usual, but man, we really should stop referring to Just Russia as "United Russia-lite." That's just another meme. They aren't UR, they are old school socialists in the mold of Labour (before it became New Labor), Mitterrand before 1983, or the German Social Democrats before 1959. I.e., social democrats who still take the anti-capitalism and workers solidarity thing seriously.

[Alexander Mercouris]

I second Anatoly's comment. It is indeed as always an excellent survey.

On the subject of Russian liberals, you have far more of a feel for the situation than me but I have to say that based on election results I am very far from sure that the liberal share of the electorate is anywhere near as high as 15%. I would guess the share is actually below 10% which is overwhelmingly concentrated in Moscow and St. Petersburg. It is precisely because the electoral strength of Russian liberals is so weak that they have throughout their history (including before the 1917 revolution) tried to make up for their lack of numbers by turning for support to the west.

Also when talking about Russian liberals it seems to me that we often lump together people of extremely different views from virtual Social Democrats (like some of the people in Yabloko) to extreme believers in a kind of turbocharged unadulterated free market capitalist vision of Russia which would have appealed to Ayn Rand. Quite apart from any personality differences between liberal leaders these major ideological differences must make cooperation between them difficult.

Lastly, one final point: we should I think resist the temptation to conflate Russian liberals with Russian democrats. Many (most?) Russians want democracy but only a minority are liberals.

[Patrick Armstrong]

What I meant was that JR is not exactly a bottom-up grouping of like-minded people who came together to create a political party. Instead it is a chunk sliced off from UR (kratotrops to a man) by the Centre to see whether it could fly.
In short it's another pedestal party. Will it work? I think that it might, actually.

I repeat that I find the whole process of the evolution of a small number (<5) parties (more than that and you have a political system that doesn't work very well) that cover the real spectrum rather mysterious.

And it doesn't seem to be happening in Russia by natural evolution.

So how does it happen? In Britain and the US it actually took quite a long time.

[Patrick Armstrong]

Alexander
Ah… Russian “liberals”. What to say?
First please note that I always use quotation marks – a kind of weasel-wording because I don’t want to be forced to essay a definition (other than, snarkily, “people whom the WaPo and Economist would like to interview to show that Putinism Is In Its Last Days”. And, in this respect, now that it’s Navalniy all day, every day; whatever happened to yesterday’s favourites Kasyanov and Kasparov, or Khakamada et al? But the MSM moves on, ever wiping its memory clean).
Apart from the fact that every Russian “liberal” hates other “liberals” even more than he hates Putin; what have they got to offer? United Russia stole most of their economic program (which had been a distinguishing feature back in the 90s. Remember the 500-days Plan?) and all they have left is anti-Putinism, sucking up to Western NGOs and dissing each other.
10-15%? Who knows? Never been tried. It’s my guess, however.
But still, I believe that the Russian political scene would be strengthened (and there’s the story BTW that Putin begged Yavlinskiy a couple of election cycles ago to get his act together) by a party that believed in free enterprise and free speech and had actual principles. What do we have instead? Commies-lite (happy to be in comfortable “opposition”), a personality/clown party (ditto) and 2 pedestal parties.
Not the best possible situation.
So here we are. The Germans (or so I have heard) designed the electoral system back in the Yeltsin days so that parties would naturally evolve. Didn’t happen (umpteen ephemeral groupuscules – The Beer Lovers’ Party my personal favourite – appeared and disappeared). So Putin & Co tried to force growth by creating United Russia and Just Russia. But United Russia is an unimaginative bunch of plods (both Putin and Medvedev have complained about that) and who knows whether Just Russia will fly on its own.
So now we’re back to a whole bunch o’ parties – taxi party as the old joke went (total membership will fit in a taxi cab and spends its time driving round and round the park).
Haven’t a clue except that it took Britain and the USA some time to evolve (my own dear Canada inherited the British division of Conservatives (“Tories”) and Liberals (“Grits”). So that was our start state back in the 1830s or so.)
Haven’t a clue.