#6588
#11 - JRL 6588
Komsomolskaya Pravda
December 5, 2002
PAVLOVSKY: RUSSIA IS A COUNTRY OF CHRONIC REVOLUTIONS
An interview with political scientist Gleb Pavlovsky
Author: Andrei Vandenko
[from WPS Monitoring Agency, www.wps.ru/e_index.html]
GLEB PAVLOSKY DISCUSSES THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE SOVIET UNION AND RUSSIA TODAY, TOGETHER WITH PRESIDENT PUTIN'S PERSONAL STYLE AND PROSPECTS. HE ALSO MENTIONS THE WAR IN CHECHNYA, THE HOSTAGE-TAKING IN MOSCOW, AND HARASSMENT OF PEOPLE FROM THE CAUCASUS.
Question: Aren't you tired of living in immigration?
Gleb Pavlovsky: The Kremlin is not a foreign country. It is a piece of Russia which the people have fenced off for their rulers.
Question: But these are your words after all: everyone who was born in the Soviet Union feels like a foreigner in Russia nowadays.
Gleb Pavlovsky: I said it when Russia was ruled by Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky. They themselves are abroad now, and we are going back.
Question: To the Soviet Union, you mean?
Gleb Pavlovsky: No. On second thought, we have not gone very far from it. The state is different, the people are pretty much the same. It is all right. The Soviet Union was our school, but you cannot be a school student all your life. We grew up and learned our geography - China to the left, Europe to the right. By the way, having cunning Europe as its neighbor in the West is beneficial for Russia. Europe will remain in hibernation and irritably mutter at Russia unless our common enemy strikes it.
Question: What do you mean?
Gleb Pavlovsky: I mean international terrorism. A global network of the persons without citizenship, fear of death, shortage of funds or sponsors. This enemy doesn't have a clear ethnic identity yet but it does have ethnic hatred - towards Russia. The identity will reveal itself with time.
Question: What will it be like?
Gleb Pavlovsky: Ask residents of Moscow or Krasnodar, and they will even describe it for you.
Question: Do you mean the common enemy has the face of a person from the Caucasus?
Gleb Pavlovsky: I dislike accusations of this sort but the ethnic community should purge all bandits. Apart from Maskhadov and Basayev's guerrillas, I also see the frightened Chechen diaspora in Moscow which is doing all it can in the wake of the hostage-taking to make peace in Chechnya.
Question: Are there any reasons for these worries?
Gleb Pavlovsky: Do not exaggerate the degree of xenophobia in Russia. Refugees from ethnic conflict areas are a sure indication of hatred. All the same, try as I might I do not see a mass exodus of Muslims from the Russian-populated areas. It is rather vice versa.
Question: Xenophobia or not, but people from the Caucasus are disliked in Russia and the war in Chechnya continues...
Gleb Pavlovsky: The war continues and what of it. It will end sooner or later. We merely have to win.
Question: What victory can there be in a civil war?
Gleb Pavlovsky: Nobody considers it a civil war. Civil wars are fought by the men who equally love their country.
Question: But Chechens have the same Russian passports.
Gleb Pavlovsky: You must have missed it. It is not a war on the Caucasus. It is a war on terrorists. They are not citizens of Russia and do not give a damn about Russia. As for passports, they change them more often than they change socks. It is Russian stupidity that enabled them to transform Chechnya into a fortified criminal den. The den has been destroyed, and gunmen are living on borrowed time, believe me. There are two parallel lives in Chechnya. Economy is being gradually restored. Even thefts are just a bit down from what they used to be! All 100% federal funds were stolen in the past, but these days at least 50% are left alone. That's a progress. On the other hand, bullets are flying there nearby. Residents of the Caucasus are going to fire shots for a long time to come yet. Merely because they have lots of weapons over there. That's the only way of life they know. And besides, I cannot understand why you dedicate so much time and attention to Chechnya alone.
Question: It was the promise to do away with terrorists that elevated Putin to the pinnacle of political power in 2000, wasn't it? The impression is that the Kremlin is out to play the same card again now.
Gleb Pavlovsky: Putin will be elected by all of Russia, not by Chechnya alone. He does have something to show the voters. Russians see changes taking place in the country and their trust in the president is growing. It means that Putin has been doing a good job. Needless to say, it will only benefit the nation to have workaholics near Putin, people like himself. Unfortunately, I do not see them up there for the time being.
Question: You are reputed to have coined the term "controllable democracy".
Gleb Pavlovsky: Do you want uncontrollable democracy? The intelligentsia enforced liberty on the country at first and soon enough professors discovered that they could not let their daughters go out without fearing for their lives. Soon afterwards professors themselves became targets. Everybody was fed up with revolutionary anarchy to such an extent that three years ago Putin could have easily established a dictatorial regime. He could have, believe me, and nobody would have so much as uttered a word of protest. "Democrats" themselves would have been the first to take an oath of loyalty. Putin did not establish a dictatorship, he began fortification of power structures instead. It is the useless, the men who cannot offer anything constructive that complain of controllable democracy. "Democrats" cannot even handle the media. And that media is making noise about free speech is I think the best possible indication of the true freedom of speech.
Question: Do you think it all right that we do not have any real opposition in the country?
Gleb Pavlovsky: Opposition is an old Russian myth.
Question: But this myth has electorate of its own. Communists have their voters, the right have theirs too...
Gleb Pavlovsky: Why repeat somebody else's rubbish? Electorates are formed on the election day when every fourth citizen of the country decides who he or she will vote for this time en route to the polling station. We do not see politicians on TV screens, we see the same old men with problems. With their problems, mind you, not with our problems. From this point of view, Zyuganov and Nemtsov are "the same old men" I'm talking about. Both are clearly confused, mumbling something incoherent about Berezovsky and "authoritarianism"...
Had there been bona fide right and left in this country, the Duma would not have been centrist nowadays. And by the way, it is exactly the centrist majority that put lawmaking process back into motion and preserved democracy in Russia.
Question: Back in 1999, Putin backed up the Unity and helped Shoigu and Co get elected into the Duma. Will it be United Russia and Gryzlov next December? Will Putin have to lend his prestige and rating again?
Gleb Pavlovsky: It mustn't be done again! Yes, there are lots of men in the party who expect to find themselves in a warm place under the sun due to the president. They will not do away with it.
Question: But using ministers is... something that smacks of the late Soviet Union too much.
Gleb Pavlovsky: Let them use patriarches if they want! In my view, all state officials in Russia should belong to a single party.
Question: Which one?
Gleb Pavlovsky: The ruling party. Society wants adequacy and competence from state officials, and as for the multi-party system, it is entirely up to us. Poor state officials are a plague, but antibureaucratic malice and gloating in society is worse. Everybody wants to see the state strong and capable of protecting its citizens, but nobody so much as lifts a finger to help reinforce it. That is what our enemies rely on. It's great when the regime has the will and determination. I do not even want to think what would have happened had we succumbed and began negotiations with the terrorists who seized the theater in Moscow.
Question: No, we did not succumb. We won, and paid for it three lives of our compatriots for every terrorist.
Gleb Pavlovsky: This is not how things are counted at war. The command is not castigated for hospitals, and losses are counted when the war is over. Extermination of the enemy that made it into the capital was the only priority. These days, the country is speculating on who is to be blamed, and society in the meantime is bracing itself for new attacks.
Question: What shall we brace ourselves for when we do not know who is guilty?
Gleb Pavlovsky: "Who is to be blamed" is a question for desk- riders. That's not how the question is put in Russia.
Question: How then? The hostage crisis in Moscow is an echo of the war in Chechnya.
Gleb Pavlovsky: That's the kind of nonsense that already cost us victory once. An end to the war might have been achieved back in 1996, but not in Grozny. In Moscow. We are not going to repeat this mistake. Pacification of Chechnya is one thing and the war on international terrorism is another. These are different problems, and a solution to one of them doesn't mean an automatic solution to the other. By the way, it is time our lawmen officially denounced all accords Yeltsin signed with Chechnya. They are invalid.
Question: Lebed is no longer with us. he may be blamed for everything.
Gleb Pavlovsky: There are others to assume their share of blame... In any case, we should see to it that not a single politician of Yeltsin's group makes it to the Duma again... You shift to the subject of Ichkeria again and I tell you once again to leave it alone! Nobody will play this card again, in or out of elections. Forget it. Chechnya is a Federation subject, a tiny, backwards, and depressive region that should not be of any interest to anybody save for its own diaspora.
I understand that the slogan "Stop the war in Chechnya!" is too convenient a chant to be dropped, and that a lot of politicians would not want the situation any different. At least two inaugural congresses of new parties take place every week nowadays. Where do they get fresh and new ideas? There are not enough ideas for everyone. It means that all these parties take up old ideas. But that is a wrong path. He who wants to remain afloat must offer something new to the country. I repeat: Yeltsin's political team will not survive another parliamentary election. And the composition of the Duma is of paramount importance because this parliament will have to work with Putin until 2007.
Question: Do you think Putin will find eight years in the Kremlin enough?
Gleb Pavlovsky: To accomplish what he has started? I do. Or else he may take a time out for fur years and come back afterwards.
Question: And who will replace him for the duration of what you call a time out?
Gleb Pavlovsky: That's the question. That is why we need a competent majority in the Duma. The people should trust this majority the way they trust Putin.
Question: It is easier to revise the Constitution and extend the term in office, isn't it?
Gleb Pavlovsky: So far as I know, Putin is not going to revise the Constitution in order to deal with current political tasks.
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