January 30, 2001   

This Date's Issues:   5058 • 5059 • 5060

Johnson's Russia List
#5058
30 January 2001
davidjohnson@erols.com

[Note from David Johnson:
1. Reuters: Russia's Putin backs NTV freedom, Soros mulls bid.
2. Bloomberg: Russia's Gaidar on Russian Debt Relief and the WTO.
3. Christian Science Monitor: Scott Peterson, Power troubles snowball in Russia. Record cold has collapsed power grids. Next year could be worse.
4. Nezavisimaya Gazeta - Stsenari: PUTIN: PRELIMINARY RESULTS. THE LIBERAL
VIEW. Russian Authorities in Search of Political Strategy and Development
Model. (Views of Yevgeny YASIN, head of the Liberal Mission Foundation,
Lilia SHEVTSOVA, leading researcher of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, Igor
KLYAMKIN, vice-president of Liberal Mission, Alexei KARA-MURZA, director
of the Centre of Theoretical Problems of Russian Reformism at the Russian
Academy of Sciences, and Vyachelsav NIKONOV, president of the Politika
Foundation)]

*******

#1
Russia's Putin backs NTV freedom, Soros mulls bid
By Jon Boyle
 
MOSCOW, Jan 29 (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin said on Monday he wanted
Russia's NTV television to remain independent, a status billionaire George
Soros said was a precondition for any western investment in the embattled
channel.

Putin met leading NTV journalists for more than three hours in the Kremlin
library, rejecting their complaints that prosecuters were conducting a
witch-hunt against the station and Vladimir Gusinsky, founder of its parent
group Media-Most.

"But the president said he favoured keeping NTV's editorial team and
maintaining it as a non-state company," NTV General Director Yevgeny Kiselyov
told reporters. "How far he persuaded us of these views is another matter."

Prosecutors have raided the group 28 times since last May in what critics say
is a Kremlin-orchestrated campaign to muzzle a vocal critic and Russia's sole
independent media empire.

Gusinsky has been under house arrest in Spain fighting extradition to Russia
on fraud charges. On Monday he travelled from his luxury villa on the south
coast to Madrid before court proceedings set for Wednesday on the extradition
case.

Gusinsky is also battling to prevent a takeover of his media empire by
state-dominated gas giant Gazprom.

Its media arm has given notice it wants to call a Media-Most shareholders'
meeting to change the board and exclude Gusinsky. Media-Most has challenged
Gazprom's assertions that it has control of a majority of its shares.

Gusinsky is trying to sell Soros and CNN founder Ted Turner a 25 percent
blocking stake in NTV. Cash thus generated would allow Gusinsky to clear
debts to Gazprom and stave off a boardroom coup.

KREMLIN CONFRONTATION

Kiselyov said that during a "long and difficult and emotional at times"
meeting, Putin had produced a letter he had written to Turner thanking the
U.S. media mogul for his interest in investing in Russian media.

Putin's letter did not refer directly to NTV, but said the Kremlin chief
shared Turner's "convictions that media must be honest and balanced in
helping to create a civil society.

"I view with optimism the prospects for investing foreign capital in Russian
companies. I look forward to productive cooperation in the future."

Turner has sought guarantees the Kremlin will not interfere in editorial
matters. Putin's letter contains no such pledge.

Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland,
Soros said that he and Turner would drop any investment plans if Gazprom
seized majority control of NTV.

If Turner and Soros pulled their bid, "Gazprom will find it very difficult to
find a foreign investor," Soros told NTV in an interview translated into
Russian.

BACK SEAT GUSINSKY?

Soros said the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development could invest
up to $100 million in NTV, while sources close to the negotiations told
Reuters that Sweden's Modern Times Group was also interested.

"To buy out Gusinsky -- to remove him so that the old turmoil that surrounds
him is removed and to preserve NTV as an independent, high-quality TV network
-- is really quite crucial for the future of Russia as a open society," Soros
told Reuters.

Gusinsky told Reuters he welcomed the interest shown by Turner and Soros in
his troubled group, and signalled he could accept a lower-profile role in the
station he founded.

"A back seat, a front seat, is discussable,"  he said by telephone from
Spain. "I'm not afraid of the influence (of Soros and Turner) on the
editorial policy because these are very respectable people."

Kremlin spokesman Alexei Gromov told Russian news agencies that Putin
believed it was "vital to maintain the NTV reporting team regardless of who
will hold the controlling package of shares or who will be on its board of
directors."

(Additional reporting by Joan Gralla in New York)

******

#2
Russia's Gaidar on Russian Debt Relief and the WTO: Comment

Washington, Jan. 29 (Bloomberg)
 -- The following are comments by Former Russian Prime
Minister Yegor Gaidar speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. Gaidar is a deputy in Russia's parliament, the Duma, and the
co-chairman of the Union of Right Forces, a political party.

Regarding Russia's internal differences of opinion about how to pay creditor
governments billions of dollars in Soviet-era debt:

``When you have a complicated issues, and Russian financial officials are
being asked the same questions, even when they were told very strictly not to
express different opinions, inevitably you could find some small
differences.''

On the possibility of Russia completing negotiations to enter the World Trade
Organization by 2001:

``The problem is not a lack of political will. Putin strongly supports the
idea of early membership in the WTO and he made it one of the priorities. The
problem with the WTO is it is an extremely complicated technical issues. You
need a lot of things prepared and then adopted by the Duma itself.''

*******

#3
Christian Science Monitor
30 January 2001
Power troubles snowball in Russia
Record cold has collapsed power grids. Next year could be worse.
By Scott Peterson
Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

The floor in Marina Gladkaya's bedroom is caked with ice, where a hard freeze
caused the radiator to burst. Bundled up and wearing insulated boots, Ms.
Gladkaya now sleeps on the floor of the sitting room across the hall, where
there is a small plug-in heater. Her 12-year-old son gets the couch. Her
husband, a sailor, is away.

A thermometer in the "warm" room registers just a few degrees above freezing.
"We feel warmer outside on the street," says Gladkaya, watching her breath in
the icy apartment air.

Russians in the remote Far East and Siberia are used to extreme cold, which
claims scores of lives each year. But temperatures this winter plunged to 67
degrees below zero F., the lowest in half a century. Central heating systems,
electrical grids, and fuel-transport and communication lines have buckled
under the strain since November, leaving tens of thousands without heat or
electricity.

California's rolling blackouts have affected millions and caused estimated
billions in damage, but Russians say their

problems are of a far more serious - and potentially lethal - magnitude. A
political blame-game between Moscow and regional officials has made matters
worse.

Analysts have been warning of nationwide infrastructure breakdown in Russia,
predicted in 2003. Many say the current energy crisis shows that the
breakdown is already under way.

That's how it looks to Gladkaya, too. Her concrete apartment block on
Yubilenaya Street is one of 37 buildings in Spassk that have been without
heat for the past two weeks. Residents wrapped in layer upon layer of clothes
and ankle-length fur coats gather outside to discuss their troubles. "We are
ashamed of our lives," says Galina Petrichenko, her face framed by heavy
woolen scarves and a hat. "Now it's the 21st century, but we have gone
backward. We are living like 100 years ago."

Alarm bells in Moscow

Power outages have plagued this region - seven time zones and 4,000 miles
east of Moscow - for years, and disruptions were common even last summer. But
the crisis has alarmed Moscow, which in November summoned the Communist
governor of Primorskiy Kray, Yevgeny Nazdratenko, to account before the Duma,
the lower house of parliament. President Vladimir Putin described the
situation then as an "utter disgrace."

More than $17.6 million in emergency funds were dispatched, with little
apparent affect. Mr. Putin upbraided ministers at the Kremlin on Jan. 19.
"Where are the resources, the reserves, the contingency plans for such a turn
of events?" he asked. "Are we to conclude that when the temperature falls to
a certain level, we doom people to a slow, freezing death?"

A state of emergency was declared the same day in the town of Artyom, just
outside the Pacific port of Vladivostok. Prosecutors have brought more than a
dozen criminal cases against local officials, and an energy director in
Artyom was given a two-year suspended sentence.

Russia's upper house, the Federation Council, is due to debate the crisis
tomorrow, at its first session of the year. And Russian Emergency Situations
Minister Sergei Shoigu spent the weekend in the remote region, setting up a
regional crisis center and promising more aid during stops in small towns
near Vladivostok. But problems persist. On Sunday, a defective heater caused
a fire in Vladivostok city hall.

Residents of Spassk, a once-prosperous industrial town 150 miles north
Vladivostok, say it's typical of the regional breakdown. The cement and
tractor factories still operate, blackening the snow in places with their
soot. Others have shut down and been looted. Missing manhole covers, sold for
scrap, leave treacherous holes in roads and sidewalks.

Inside, many toilets have frozen solid. To prevent radiators from doing the
same, some residents plug in jury-rigged electrical-oven elements next to
them, held together with tape and frayed wires. Schools have cut back their
hours - kindergartens are shut completely - and local clinics have closed
their doors.

"In Soviet times, [the heating] was so hot here we had to open our windows,"
says Zoya Tkachenko, who answers the door in a wool hat and teddy-bear
slippers. Today, her windows have a thick layer of frost - on the inside.
Half her apartment has heat. Scraping away the frost, she can see where the
rest is going: outside. As in many parts of the city, pressurized steam
escapes from ruptured pipes, creating large cauliflower-shaped ice flows.

"After perestroika, [the restructuring instituted by former Soviet leader
Mikhail Gorbachev] the Soviet system fell apart," says Ms. Tkachenko. "Now
all the infrastructure is broken, too. They are falling apart together."

Moscow blames the problems on Governor Nazdratenko - whom former President
Boris Yeltsin tried to fire several times. Leaders of other regions note they
also are beset by a hard winter and have fewer natural resources, but have
not collapsed the way Primorskiy Kray has.

Local officials counter that Moscow's federal energy monopoly, Unified
Electric Systems (UES), failed to invest funds that would keep systems intact
during winter, and permits high oil tariffs. "Moscow created this crisis; UES
is responsible" because Moscow officials "don't like" the governor, says
Vladivostok Mayor Yurii Kopylov. He calls the result a "crime" and vows to
take UES to court.

"They are mixing economics with politics," he says. "UES has paralyzed all
Russia, not just [our region]."

UES spokesman Andrei Trapeznikov responds that years of underbilling for
energy - under the governor's populist policy of "protecting the people" -
has built up nearly $1 billion in debt. Before Nazdratenko came to power,
Primorskiy Kray had an energy surplus, the spokesman notes. "Now because of
his policies, the whole utilities system there is ruined, and the region has
no money to restore it." This "potentially rich" region is "now living under
half-feudal rule," he says.

Shared responsibility

But many blame both Moscow and Vladivostok. The governor's rule is marked by
crisis management, and "a widespread feeling that he must go ... since he
can't cope with anything more sophisticated than banging his fist on the
table," says a longtime Russia analyst, who asked not to be named.

Moscow's attitude hasn't changed either, he says. "The Kremlin sees the Far
East as a colony, a base for raw materials, and does not invest here. It is
part of Russia's imperialist history."

For Alexander Zankov, head of the Energy Resources department in Primorskiy
Kray, fingerpointing is a minor concern. "You can't shoot us, like in
Stalin's time," he says. "Now I am afraid of next winter. People in Moscow
are beginning to understand that this will be the same situation all across
Russia, in two or three years. We are just the first."

*******

#4
Nezavisimaya Gazeta - Stsenari
No. 1, 2001
[translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only]
PUTIN: PRELIMINARY RESULTS. THE LIBERAL VIEW
Russian Authorities in Search of Political Strategy and
Development Model
    
     We published what we think were highly interesting results
of the round table "140 days of President Putin (Where Is
Russia Going?)," held by the Free Word Club, in the tenth issue
of this newspaper. [The materials of that round table were
included in Daily Review on November 28, Article 1 of Part II,
titled "Russia on Edge, or Understanding Putin." - Ed.]  That
bright creative community, although highly pluralistic, is
somewhat anti-bourgeois. In the West, many of its active
members would be described as "leftist intellectuals."
     Today we offer you a fundamentally different, liberal view
of Putin's first few months of presidency. We believe that it
would be interesting to compare the views of Alexander
Zinovyev, Valentin Tolstykh, Vladlen Loginov and others with
the opinion of prominent liberal experts published in this
issue.
     Representatives of virtually all the political parties and
advocates of most different views sum up the first serious, if
not first, results of Putin's presidency. The duration of the
period under discussion and the choice of the point of
departure when calculating the length of Putin's stay in power
are no that important. After all, these are only relative
elements. What is important is the fundamental attitudes and
evaluations of principle. This is probably why the minutes of
the new discussion will not be the last offered this year.
     The debates were organised by the Liberal Mission
Foundation and were attended by Yevgeny YASIN, head of the
Liberal Mission Foundation, Lilia SHEVTSOVA, leading researcher
of the Moscow Carnegie Centre, Igor KLYAMKIN, vice-president of
Liberal Mission, Alexei KARA-MURZA, director of the Centre of
Theoretical Problems of Russian Reformism at the Russian
Academy of Sciences, and Vyachelsav NIKONOV, president of the
Politika Foundation.
     As far as we know, the time that elapsed after those
debates did not greatly change the fundamental positions of the
participants.
    
     Yevgeny YASIN: Well, the subject of our discussion today
is the first results of the new power, the balance of mistakes
and achievements. The main question is: Can the first few
months of Putin's stay in power be used to state that his model
of presidency is an accomplished fact? If so, what are its
characteristics? Is "the Putin myth," which developed by the
end of the presidential election campaign, still alive today?
What explains his high rating? What can be regarded as his
genuine achievements and mistakes? And is there a system in
either?
    
     THE MODEL OF PRESIDENCY
    
     "Mobilisation and Innovative Tactics Are Incompatible"
     Lilia SHEVTSOVA: I would like to begin with the following
question: What is the main thing at this stage of Putin's
presidency? I believe that the main thing is his attempt, and
it does not matter if it is conscious or subconscious, to
combine two types of development - the mobilisation and the
innovative ones. The attempt to apply the mobilisation type of
development can be seen in politics, and the innovative method
can be discerned in the economy, which I will not touch upon.
     What is the president trying to do and what he has
achieved in politics? First, he attempted to dismantle several
fundamental regulators of the Yeltsin regime, namely by
renouncing the tactics, or the policy, of bargaining and mutual
permissiveness in the process of consolidating his base and the
regime as a whole. Second, he abandoned anti-communism as a
means of consolidating the regime and neutralising his
opponents. And third, he dropped one very weighty, fundamental
element of Yeltsin's system of power, meaning the oligarchs.
     With what is he replacing these elements? In a word, he is
replacing them with a mechanism of driving-belts. It should be
said that an attempt is being made to change the filling of the
structure without changing the structure and its roof. The roof
and the main pillars remain the same, meaning Yeltsin's. Putin
is changing the filling, the regulators and the consolidating
factor. He is trying to introduce the mechanism of
driving-belts, using, for the first time in the past ten years,
intimidation as a method of regulation and consolidation. The
president is also changing the base-plate of the structure,
preferring the bureaucratic resource to the former favouritism
of the oligarchs. 
     The question is: To what degree, in what measure can the
attempt to combine the mobilisation and the innovative types of
development be effective? To what extent can these two types,
two models of development, be combined? In this connection, it
would seem expedient to look back at the experience of those
societies that succeeded in doing this.
     I must say that I find it highly improbable that these two
types of development can be combined, I think the trivial
example that will be surely used in this context, meaning the
example of Chile under Pinochet, graphically and convincingly
shows that it is impossible to combine the mobilisation and the
innovative tactics. If only because Pinochet's
mobilisation-innovative regime became economically effective
only when it started to move away from the mobilisation model.
     The next question is: Can this mobilisation model of
political development be effected in conditions of a rather
fragmented pluralistic society, which had existed and developed
for ten years within the framework of Yeltsin's structure of
mutual shadow balances? I think the idea is doomed to failure,
and this failure will be rather quick, it will come sooner than
the failure of Yeltsin's concept because of the existence of at
least two structural traps.
     The first trap - much has been said and written about it -
is connected with the super-concentration of powers in one pair
of hands and the absence of the means of applying these powers,
as well as the danger of legitimising this power concentrated
in one pair of hands. The second structural trap is connected
with the incompatibility of the model of driving-belts, on the
one hand, and elements of democracy, on the other hand. We can
already see now that Putin, while trying to introduce the
mechanism of driving-belts, is weakening democratic
legitimisation.
     While weakening the latter, he has to compensate for the
weakening of the democratic base-plate by strengthening the
fact of the forceful (repressive) factor, or at least the
intimidation factor. But this raises one more question: Where
to take the funds for the use of force to prop up the regime?
As I see it, there are no such funds. What will happen in this
case? The tactics of intimidation without a logical result,
which is without the use of force, would expose the impotence
of power.
     Consequently, my conclusion is that the attempt to combine
the two types of development will fail. The model of political
driving-belts cannot be effective.
    
     YASIN: But Putin has a mandate of trust and the people are
afraid to speak up against him not because they could be
imprisoned, but because he is legitimate today. How can this
fact be fitted in with what you have said? Sociologists claim
that the main and most stable factor of Putin's support is that
the majority of people regard him as one of them. An average
citizen thinks that we at long last have in power a man about
whom one can say: He is just like myself.
    
     SHEVTSOVA: Yes, quite. You are pushing me towards
admitting a paradox. On the one hand, Putin proclaimed the
mobilisation model, thus become "one of us" for communists and
nationalists alike. On the other hand, he is trying to
introduce innovations and in this way neutralise liberals, you
and me, to some extent.
Putin is different. He is still ambivalent and amorphous. And
this combination of different models is helping him to
reinforce his image. But today's reinforcement of his image is
not equal to the long-term stability of the regime. Because his
image does not have, let's say, a resource backing. Putin can
be popular for some more time, but this does not mean that
there will be no crisis of the regime. On the contrary. The
very thing that is maintaining his image is objectively
promoting the deepening of the regime's crisis.
    
       "The Regime Is Stronger, But the System Is Weaker"
     Igor KLYAMKIN: I will begin with the question of the new
model of presidency. Has it shaped up or not yet? I think it
would be premature to say that it has shaped up, or even that
it has taken shape. When will we be able to speak about this
model more or less certainly? When the people understand what
Putin's innovations are. Take the reduction of taxes. At the
level of life experience, this aspect of Putin's actions is not
regarded at all; the people don't seem to notice it. It can be
said that a considerable part of Putin's electoral base does
not accept the flat scale of taxation now. But it is not clear
yet how this will affect his image in the future and if Putin
will manage to shake this public discontent off onto Kasyanov.
    
     YASIN: Given his current behaviour, he will not manage to
shake off this discontent onto anyone. Kasyanov is not a man
who would tolerate this.
    
     KLYAMKIN: Right, but it is not clear to me how he will
distribute political responsibility in the eyes of the people.
This is the question. Everything was clear with Yeltsin. But
Putin has not dismissed and hardly touched anyone, so far. This
cannot go on for much longer. This is the first thing.
     The second thing is that to speak about the shaping up of
Putin's model of presidency, Putin should - hypothetically - be
put into a hospital for three months, where he will be denied
access to his duties and powers. This is when we would see if
his system has shaped up, or if everything hangs on one man,
meaning that it is not operational institutionally. I think
that, from the viewpoint of institutional operation, the regime
has grown stronger, but the system has become weaker.
     Why has it become weaker? Because the regime is based on
the following principle: The more power I (president) have, the
stronger the state. This is true - but only in the case of a
totalitarian or consistently authoritarian regime. And this is
not true in case of democratic procedures. At least this is not
true on the intermediate, let alone long-term, plane.
     Although the new regime has not taken shape yet, we can
speak about certain trends. This regime is frequently described
as "guided democracy." I think that it is a notional slyness to
speak about "guided democracy," especially when this is done
positively, without explaining the meaning of this phrase or
the principle underlying the guidance of democracy. There are
different models of guided democracy with vastly different
underlying principles. A Soviet-style democracy was guided and
we all know its underlying principle - the party and its leader
were safely protected from any responsibility. There was guided
democracy under the generals in South Korea, and its underlying
principle was clear, too - the emergency political laws, which
enabled the rulers to make short shrift of the disloyal
opposition.
     There is nothing Soviet or South Korean in modern Russia.
There is - it has not shaped up but only developing as of yet -
an imitation-legal regime, which allows the selective use of
legal norms in return for loyalty. It is not suited for a
strong state or for combating corruption, but then I don't
think it was designed for this purpose. There are certain signs
- only signs so far - of the establishment of a new principle
of relations between the federal authorities, on the one hand,
and the regional leaders and oligarchs, on the other hand. This
principle is: Remain in the shadows, wallow in corruption, but
don't interfere in politics. And this is creating the inertia
of servility a la Russe, when everyone is dependent but nobody
shoulders responsibility. This is the danger, and it is quite
real.
     The second element is highly alarming from the viewpoint
of what Lilia Shevtsova has described as innovations. The
economists know better, but I as an observer who is no expert
in this sphere see that there are no signs of movement towards
the division of power and business. Instead, there are signs of
movement in the opposite direction.
    
     YASIN: There is struggle...
    
     KLYAMKIN: Possibly. But I think there are reasons to
assume that the battle is being won by the advocates of the
model that Korzhakov and Soskovets wanted to create back during
the Yeltsin rule, when they tried to deprive Chernomyrdin of
control over oil and other resources and to gather the reins of
this control in the hands of a narrow group. I am not sure,
though, that the Suharto or the South Korean models would be
effective in Russia.
The situation is quite different here. We all know very well
what comes of the concentration of resources in raw-materials
countries - a degrading authoritarian regime.
    
     SHEVTSOVA: We should probably take into account the
possibility that this trend will move on from the maintenance
of the old political-financial clans to the creation of new
clans that would unite business and power departments. This
happened in several Latin American countries and resulted in
the degradation and collapse of the system. Well, we cannot
exclude the possibility that the power departments and secret
services will begin to enjoy business. This would create a link
between the repressive-power structures and business, which has
never been a case in Russia before.
    
     YASIN: So far, I have been watching the secret services
and have seen that they don't like business.
    
     SHEVTSOVA: And I know some secret service men who are
working very actively in business. 
    
     YASIN: Yes, but these are not the top men.
    
     SHEVTSOVA: They have not learned to enjoy it yet.
    
     YASIN: Maybe, but they have certain limitations concerned
with the fact that the policy of the integration of business
with power is represented by another group, which is not
trusted by the secret services. They clash, and this is the
strength of those liberals who are still in power. They can
play on these contradictions and mutual fears. But if what
Lilia Shevtsova is speaking about really happens, it will be
the end of the world.
    
     SHEVTSOVA: This is happening very energetically at the
medium level in the regions.
    
     KLYAMKIN: And the last element - the media. Proceeding
from what I have said above, the current policy with regard to
the media looks quite logical. Unlike Yeltsin, Putin is relying
on the undivided people who have certain expectations, which
should be kept up, which must not be allowed to wither away and
be replaced with disillusionment. Hence the policy of
disavowing criticism in the media.
    
     YASIN: Here is a question. Suppose Putin has a certain
notion of his mission, with state-patriotic and economic
components. Do you think this notion includes at least the
maintenance of those sprouts of democratic development, which
appeared in the previous decade? Or is this only playing with
words in the absence of an understanding of civil society and
democratic procedures? He seems to be saying everything right;
one cannot find fault with anything. Yet the impression is that
his mind is working absolutely differently.
    
     KLYAMKIN: It is difficult to say what he personally thinks
and wants. I cannot say that he is principally a staunch
anti-democrat. If you listen to those around him, they seem to
proceed from the belief that there was democracy in Russia in
the past ten years, and the result was chaos and the collapse
of the state. Consequently, the state is more important than
democracy.
So, when Putin says all these words about the importance of
democracy and the freedom of speech, he probably believes in
what he says, but proceeds from the assumption that all this
does not work in Russia, that it leads to chaos, and hence
democracy should be only imitated here.
     To my mind, he does not even ponder the idea that chaos
could be even greater on the road that he is walking now, nor
does he think about ways of making democracy constructive and
effective. It appears that the guideline is that Russia is not
ready for democracy yet, but since we cannot abandon democracy
either, Russia should be outsmarted. This is why the media is
the key question.
    
     YASIN: I want to draw your attention to one circumstance:
At least Putin has advanced certain initiatives in the sphere
of strengthening the state and the economic reforms. As for
civil society, the democratic system, the division of powers
and the improvement of these mechanisms, the result is nil.
Nothing.
These achievements are expected to come of their own volition,
and it appears to me that they are not even thinking about
this.
    
     KLYAMKIN: This is indirect proof of the fact that the
authorities have chosen the imitation-legal model so far. As
for civil society, there is one symptomatic thing. Gref said,
and Putin repeated it in his address, that they are for a
social contract, or for an agreement with society. But this is
another imitation. It is assumed that everything Putin says is
the social contract. The other side is not envisaged. It is a
social contract with one signatory. It is probably assumed that
the other party has undersigned everything that will be done in
the future by voting for Putin. Not to mention the notional
slips in the statement of the very idea of the social contract:
it is social because it means not a contract between society
and the state, but between different segments of society and
concerns society's ideal of the state.
    
         "The Supertask Set by Putin Is Not Visible Yet"
     Vyacheslav NIKONOV: I believe that we are moving from the
Byzantine model of management to a Prussic-German one. The
Byzantine model consists of the court, the military leaders,
"the family" and extra-institutional centres of
decision-making, with the formal existence of institutes (the
State Duma, the government) as centres and powers that are
independent of and not controllable by the tsar. They, however,
sometimes play a much smaller role than "the family," which
actually decides everything.
     We are moving in the opposite direction today, towards a
much more institutionalised presidency. Putin is either acting
through institutes stipulated in the Constitution, or is
creating new temporary institutes in the form of his envoys in
the federal districts. But, while acting through these
institutions, Putin is depriving them of independence. All of
them - the legislative and judicial powers and the executive
vertical - are largely controllable. I think this is an
accomplished fact. It can be said from this viewpoint that we
have an institutionalised model of power, where the institutes
are not playing an independent role, but have the roles
(functions) through which Putin is acting and will continue to
act.
     The second major specific feature of this rule is that the
structure of presidential power itself is divided into
functions.
There is a political government - the presidential
administration. There is a security government - the Security
Council and the power departments. There is an economic
government - the government and the economic team as a whole.
It would be premature to say that this system has taken firm
shape.
This will largely depend on Putin, his personal experience and,
if you will, his inner content.
     There are three layers here. The first is the Andropov
layer, the second is the Sobchak layer, and the third is the
Yeltsin layer. These layers can be graphically seen in the
three teams, the three directions of policy, which are badly
mixing so far. The government, the administration and the
Security Council do not like each other and are happy when the
other side flops.
But I repeat, this system has not taken a firm shape yet,
because any one of these teams can be thrown away. I regard
this scenario as possible, but not inevitable. Because the
Yeltsin layer is only a part of Putin's personality. He surely
owes much to "the family" and regards it not only as something
to be got rid of to become an independent politician, but also
as the people with whom he had worked and is still working and
who had been useful.
     The third specific feature of Putin's model of presidency
is the suppression of alternative (regional, oligarchic and
other) centres of political influence. This element has an
established shape and I am perfectly sure that any head that
sticks out of such an alternative centre of political power
will be immediately chopped off.
     However, the supertask that Putin sets to his presidency
is not visible yet. He has declared it, but since this
supertask - to make Russia a prosperous state again - has not
been given a functional meaning, it is impossible to say if the
new model of presidency has taken shape as a whole. It will be
determined by this supertask and the need to fulfil it.
    
     YASIN: I would like to draw your attention to the fact
that certain expectations were linked with Putin from the very
beginning. By and large, society expected Putin to do what
Yeltsin did not want to do. The people really expected Putin to
combat the regional boyars. This means that he was acting -
well or badly, it's another matter - on the social mandate.
Second, everyone was sick and tired of the oligarchs,
especially Gusinsky and Berezovsky. Everyone said that unless
Putin did something, it would mean that he had been bought up
and worth nothing. He is fulfilling this social order now. We
may love or hate it, but he is doing this. Besides, he has
proclaimed the line for liberal reforms, which nobody (less a
very narrow group of people) expected from him. But in
principle, I thought that public expectations were closer to
Primakov's stand - correct the mistakes made by liberal
reformers, rather than carry on their cause. Hence the
question: Would it be right to say that the first phase of
Putin's rule amounted to the settling of accounts with Yeltsin
and the fulfilment of society's expectations by the young
president?
     It seems to me that nothing can be said about the shaping
up of the new regime not only because much of its potential has
not been realised yet, but also because Putin has so far been
fulfilling the expectations presented to him. He has only
proved that he plans to live up to our expectations. But his
further policy must become independent, constructive and
definite. It is not enough to defeat governors or oligarchs. It
is necessary to understand why you have defeated them and what
you must do next.
This is what he is lacking, as I see it.
    
             THE ACHIEVEMENTS AND MISTAKES OF PUTIN
    
                  "Putin's Virtues Are Evident
     When He Acts Anti-Systematically"
    
     YASIN: Well, here is the third question. What can be
regarded as Putin's genuine achievements, and what should be
seen as his mistakes in the past period? Is there a system in
either?
    
     SHEVTSOVA: I will begin with the question that you raised
some time earlier. Indeed, if development will move towards the
mobilisation variant, will society support it? And what if
development moves towards the variant of liberal reformers?
Vyacheslav Nikonov believes that there would be no definite
variant at all. Instead there would be the eclecticism of
different political agendae, with the corresponding ideological
eclecticism of the public mind. But I think that an eclectic,
hybrid development is possible only to a certain point, the
point of crisis. And the economic factor is crucial here.
     The recent experience showed that a hybrid regime has
limited possibilities of existence in crisis conditions. The
regime broke down in August 1998. And Yeltsin changed it, going
over to the model of dual leadership, a union with Primakov. It
was a change of regime, even if temporary. Consequently, nobody
can guarantee that Putin will keep within the framework of
eclecticism and hybridism in the face of a threat of a real
system crisis. He will face an alternative: Either - or. Either
the mobilisation model, or the innovation one. But there should
be two factors for society to support the mobilisation type of
development: the ideological backing with the enemy image, and
readiness for economic sacrifices. It would be difficult to
provide ideological backing, and it would be even more
difficult to ensure the economic payment for mobilisation, as
under Stalin.
     Now to achievements and mistakes. I think there is the
possibility of a paradoxical answer. As I see it, there are
clear virtues in Putin's policy. But these virtues become
apparent only when he acts anti-systematically from the
viewpoint of the mobilisation model. He acted
anti-systematically quite frequently from this viewpoint in
foreign policy. He was pragmatic, did not highlight the
superpower idea, and was trying very cautiously to find a new
attitude to that idea. In view of the limited resources and
possibilities of Russia on the foreign policy scene, he acted
in a civilised manner, which is clearly a virtue.
But this is an anti-systematic virtue.
     I believe that Putin also acted anti-systematically - from
the viewpoint of the mobilisation model - in the economic
sphere as well. But his effectiveness was questionable when he
acted systematically, creating the presidential vertical and
driving-belts. Everything he will be doing in the sphere of the
media, regional policy and the struggle against oligarchs will
be reduced to a strange dance of one step forward and one step
or half of a step back. We will see chaotic authoritarian
vagaries, whose results could be directly opposite to
expectations.
    
     YASIN: I would like to clarify certain points. It appears
to me that Putin's programme consists of two elements. The
first is the strengthening of the state at all costs. And the
second is the liberal reforms. How well can these two elements
- liberal reforms in the economy and what he is doing in
politics - be combined? If I understood you correctly, you
believe that the system he is trying to create is a certain
bureaucratic system capable of modernisation and prompt
reaction to signals coming from the top. Remove Rutskoi in a
manner that would leave the Kremlin unblemished? Here you are.
As for the liberal reforms in the economy, it is the domain of
Kudrin and Gref. But liberal reformers and bureaucrats live in
two different systems. So, what can be considered as systematic
and anti-systematic?
    
     SHEVTSOVA: From the viewpoint of the mobilisation model,
the actions of the bureaucracy are systematic and the actions
of reformers are anti-systematic.
    
     YASIN: I see. And yet, I want to say that there are
certain - this should be said, for justice's sake - apparent
achievements. The tax reform, which had been marking time for
eight years, was taken off the ground. Nobody is paying taxes
by the new rates so far, and it cannot be guaranteed that they
will do this. It is vital for the authorities to show patience
and for business to start trusting the authorities. Business
should be convinced that the government will not deceive it and
will not go back. It seems that the government is aware of
this. On the other hand, business is not calm yet, and the
situation is very complicated...
    
     "I Don't See Strategic Mistakes"
    
     KARA-MURZA: I want to go back to the question of virtues
and mistakes. I think the first term is not the period of
setting goals for Putin. His main task in this period is to
strengthen his personal power and create reliable pillars for
it. And it can be assumed that Putin is fulfilling this task
highly successfully, thanks to the rule of trial and error that
helped him to create institutional pillars without destroying
too much.
However, it is not clear yet what the outcome of the problem
with the Federation Council will be and what it will look like
as a result.
     Putin also settled (even if partially) the problem of
oligarchs and, apparently, the problem of the media, at the
same time maintaining his high rating. How did he do this? By
bureaucratising the system. By the way, bureaucratisation is
not the one and only rut by which Russia has been travelling
since olden times. It is a kind of a road leading to results,
which is probably why it is a rut. There can be no stepping
right or left, and everything eventually returns to the rut.
This is because the alternatives are either grass-roots
liberalisation, which results in chaos, or the popular revolt,
which means chaos again.
     But we should remember about the task of catching up with
Europe. When one starts to think about ways of doing this, one
comes to the conclusion that there is only one way: a
bureaucratic modernisation from the top. All successes in the
liberalisation of the economy, which Yevgeny Yasin mentioned
here, are only the side effects of bureaucratisation. Conquer
the Duma, and you will push through a liberal law. This is the
only way - so far. This is how it has always been in Russia:
liberalism is the by-product of the strengthening of the state.
But where is the limit to the strengthening of liberalism,
which will want to go on and on? The answer to this question
can be provided only in the logic of bureaucratic limitations.
     Now to mistakes. I don't see any strategic mistakes, if
only because the result has been achieved. And it was achieved
not only thanks to certain actions, but also thanks to
favourable conditions in the economy. By the way, I believe
that structural reforms in Russia should be launched only when
the situation in the economy is more or less good, and not some
time in the future. Because in this case we would have only a
dictatorship, and in the current conditions it would be a
dictatorship that would not maintain a certain way of life, but
would further impoverish the basic strata of the population.
     However, wherever Putin acted politically, he did not
attain everything he wanted. To me, this is the first sign that
he might ... take offence. Not Putin as an individual, but
Putin as the personification of the regime.
     When there is a malfunction in the bureaucratic machine,
this malfunction affects the whole of the machine, making it
inoperable. Only small regions have been forced to toe the line
so far, while the big ones refused to comply. In view of the
complicated situation with Shaimiyev, Rakhimov and Rossel in
the Urals and Volga regions, it can be assumed that his policy
with regard to the regions is failing.
    
     YASIN: But what is his goal? If the task was to replace
regional heads, Putin has apparently failed. But if he ...
    
     KARA-MURZA: Wants to subjugate them?
    
     YASIN: Yes, if he wants to subjugate them, to force them
to toe the line ...
    
     KARA-MURZA: He succeeded, in a way. He came to an
agreement with Luzhkov. But, you see, one cannot explain to the
people that an agreement was reached. He faced Luzhkov with a
choice, lost and crawled back. This is what the people saw. And
the fact that he had come to an agreement with Yakovlev and
Shaimiyev behind closed doors looks not as their subjugation,
but as the boyars taking liberties. Because the boyars must be
made to toe the line all together, and in a manner that would
convince the people that they are toeing the line. Not the
situation now ...
     It is very difficult to force the regional princelings to
toe the line. Some feign surrender and reconcilement to their
expulsion from the Federation Council, and even pretend that
everything is as it should be. But all the while he is thinking:
Well, you have expelled me, but I will stop going to the
capital at all now. Instead, I would send a cog and will stop
anyone from meddling in my affairs.
     In short, I would not even say that Putin is winning by
points. I don't know if this is a mistake or not. Maybe more
time should pass for the centre and the regions to get used to
each other. Maybe from the systematic viewpoint it would be
better for democracy if they came to an agreement, rather than
started wasting each other. As for "I wanted to, but failed,"
there is nothing systematic in that; this is a system
malfunction. They planned to create one system, but they are
getting something else.
    
    
    
     "The Main Achievement Is the De-Privatisation of the
State"
     NIKONOV: It was asked here if it is possible to strengthen
the state and at the same time to carry out liberal reforms.
This is not a new question. And in fact we know the answer. It
depends on the answer to another question: What is the state,
or who is the state? If the state is state institutions, the
army and so on, then the combination is quite possible within
the framework of a conservative paradigm - Thatcher's, Reagan's
or de Gaulle's.
But the combination is impossible if the state is something
else, like a group of comrades, the bureaucracy, or the
strengthening of state influence in the economy. Consequently,
much in modern Russia will depend on what Putin understands as
the state.
Frankly speaking, I have not understood yet what he has in
mind.
     Speaking about practical mistakes and achievements, I
would say that the main achievement is the de-privatisation of
the state, which has progressed very far already, the removal
of oligarchic groups from state management. The second most
important achievement is foreign policy. I think that it has
been pursued rather successfully in the past few months. It is
true that there have not been major victories, but foreign
policy was chaotic under Boris Yeltsin, while now we have a
more or less understandable system of priorities and lines of
interest.
Another achievement is the economic programme. No matter what
we may think about it, the absence of budgetary populism is a
clear plus. And the tax reform is a positive achievement, too.
     As for the reform of the federation, there are both
visible pluses and considerable minuses in this sphere. One of
the new minuses, which appeared of late, is the fact that the
presidential envoys are trying to get hold of material
resources and initiate a re-division of property in the
regions. There are grounds to say that they are creating a kind
of mini-states around themselves.
     The main apparent drawback is the absence of a strategy,
of a strategic vision for the development of the country. There
is no such strategy. Hence, and probably also for other
reasons, there are no rules of the game. Few people understand
now by what rules to play, what can, and what cannot be done. I
describe this practice as deliberate uncertainty. The people
are deliberately put in a situation where they have to guess
what is wanted of them. In this situation, many transfer their
money from the country and take cover. This is probably one of
the reasons why investments are held back.
     Another negative result is the situation in the sphere of
the freedom of speech. The information security concept has
alarmed me not so much by its practical contents, as by its
general philosophy.
    
     YASIN: You know what I cannot understand? Why has the
concept appeared at all? Who needed it?
    
     NIKONOV: But I was surprised by the philosophy of the
concept. Its authors simply do not understand the world we are
living in. They are died-in-the-wool retrogrades. And not
because it will clamp down on the freedom of speech. It is
clear that it will not clamp down on anything. No concept ever
clamped down on anything. The trouble is that the authors of
the document do not seem to know that information security is
understood the world over as the provision of maximally large
amount of information to the public. But our mentality is still
highly specific ...
     And lastly, the problem of inadequate management. The
process of implementing decisions has not become automatic in
Russia. Consequently, the creation of a manageable state
remains one of the key questions.
    
     KLYAMKIN: I would like to go back to what Alexei
Kara-Murza said, to the very logic of his thoughts and, if you
wish, the method he is using. It boils down to the following.
There are objective possibilities in the historical situation
in which each politician, each president is placed. And he
tackles his tasks within the framework of this situation,
limited by its possibilities. In our case, we have President
Putin, who is using the rule of trial and error in order to
simultaneously evaluate the situation and strengthen his power,
because attempts to reach any other goals are futile when the
power is weak.
     This analytical attitude has its advantages, especially in
our political culture, which has a long-standing tradition of
nihilistic criticism of the authorities from the viewpoint of
abstract (and frequently utopian) ideals. However, the attitude
suggested by Kara-Murza presupposes another danger, whose roots
go deeper still than the roots of the first danger we discussed.
I mean the danger of approving of any actions taken by the
authorities and the accompanying danger of extrapolating the
past experience into the present day.
     Here is the logic of Kara-Murza: Only a ruler who relies
on bureaucracy can be the subject of modernisation in Russia.
Because this is as it has always been. He does not refute the
fact that Russia cannot reply to modern challenges without
liberalisation, at least in the economy. A fusion of new
challenges and the old tradition produces a formula:
liberalisation can only be the by-product of bureaucratisation.
But this leaves aside what is well nigh the main question: Can
the corrupt Russian bureaucracy become the subject of
liberalisation?
     In our conditions, the by-product of bureaucratisation
will be not liberalisation, but dictatorship. The monopoly of
bureaucracy would be inevitably accompanied by chaos under any
other regime. It appears that Alexei Kara-Murza is aware of
this, because he admits that Putin might "take offence" at the
regional leaders who refuse to toe the line. If we regard the
situation from this angle, we will see that Putin is not as
alternative-less as it seems. Indeed, there is no alternative
to Putin on the liberal flank, and will hardly be any in the
near future. But it can well appear on the opposite,
traditionalist-patriotic flank. The political wave is moving in
that direction so far. And General Shamanov is the first
portent.
    
             "Liberal Reforms Cannot Be a By-Product  of
Bureaucratisation"
    
     KLYAMKIN: According to a ROMIR sociological service, over
50% of Russian citizens would like to go back to the
pre-perestroika period. And the main thesis of Shamanov is that
everything that happened in this country after 1985 was
horrible.
By the way, this is the answer to the question about how the
people would react to a possible bureaucratic turn. This is how
they would react. Not all of them, but the majority surely
would.
     This is why, if you are called Liberal Mission, you should
not evaluate Putin's actions proceeding from his current
possibilities and their successful, or unsuccessful, use in the
struggle for strengthening his power. We should do our best to
facilitate the consolidation of alternative social subjects,
which will be able to compete with bureaucracy and in this way
stop it from rolling back to traditionalism and help it to
change itself. This is all the more important that such
subjects began to appear in the past few years. One of them is
business, which shows a visible tendency for breaking up the
corruption-shadow link with bureaucracy and going over from an
imitation-legal to a consistently legal order. Another is a
part of society whose orientation puts it close to the business
class. These people are not many, barely 15-17% of the
population, but they constitute the most energetic and better
educated part of Russian society. I suggest that we should
evaluate Putin's achievements and mistakes from the viewpoint
of interests and values of that group.
     This logic is quite different from the logic of Kara-Murza.
According to it, the reduction of taxes should be regarded as
an achievement. As for the creation of the seven federal
districts, this is a big if. There is certain progress, if we
regard the situation from the viewpoint of the salutary effects
of bureaucratisation, if we see bureaucracy as a monopoly
subject of modernisation. But if we assume that bureaucracy
cannot play this role and take up the interests of alternative
subjects, we will see that the creation of yet another
bureaucratic link would be destructive.
    
     YASIN: But what about the freedom of speech and pressure
on the media? Is it a mistake or not?
    
     KLYAMKIN: It is not a mistake in the logic of
bureaucratisation. But it surely is a mistake in the logic of
alternative subjects. Because the ideological and political
consolidation of these subjects and those political forces
which represent them is being hindered. If these forces are
conserved in their current amorphous state, the liberal future
will be once again blocked in Russia. Because, I repeat, such
liberal reforms cannot be a by-product of bureaucratisation.
Especially in Russia, with its traditions.
    
*******

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