Gwynne Dyer: Vladimir Putin's last decade
Each time one of us thinks ‘I’ll just stand aside and things will happen without me and I’ll wait,’ then he is helping this disgusting feudal system that sits like a spider in the Kremlin,” said Alexei Navalny, often billed as Russia’s top opposition leader, as he sat in a courtroom in Kirov in July awaiting conviction on embezzlement charges. True enough, but Vladimir Putin is not losing any sleep over it.
The Russian president, currently hosting the G20 summit meeting in St. Petersburg (September 5-6), has run the country as his private fiefdom for the past 13 years. The media obey orders, political opponents are jailed on trumped-up corruption charges, and individuals who dig too deep into the murky history of Putin’s rapid rise to power (Anna Politkovskaya, Alexander Litvinenko, Yuri Shchekochikhin) die mysteriously of bullet wounds or poison.
Navalny, a 37-year-old Moscow lawyer, rose to fame as an anti-corruption campaigner during the 2011-12 protests against Putin because of his sharp, sardonic blog about Russian politics. He was then identified by the foreign media as the great new hope of the Russian opposition because he was hip, he was cool, he was everything that Russian leaders, whether in power or in opposition, have traditionally not been.
His new political prominence promptly attracted the usual state-sponsored charges of corruption, and on 18 July Navalny was found guilty of embezzlement (by a judge who has never issued a not guilty verdict) and sentenced to five years in prison.
Navalny took it with his customary cool. He tweeted to his 373,000 followers “Oh, well. Don’t get bored without me. And most importantly, don’t be idle. Remember, the frog won’t hop off the oil pipes by itself.” (Never mind—it makes more sense in Russian.)
But then something odd happened. The state prosecutor asked that Navalny be left free pending his appeal, which could take months. Navalny is running for mayor of Moscow in the election on 8 September. If he were in jail pending his appeal—the normal situation in politically motivated trials—he would have to drop out. Why is the state suddenly being nice to him?
Because it wants him to run and lose—and it’s sure he will lose. The opinion polls give Navalny just over 10 percent of the vote, compared to more than 50 percent for the incumbent mayor, Sergei Sobyanin. Navalny’s presence on the ballot papers will lend some credibility to Sobyanin’s re-election, Navalny’s defeat will demonstrate how little popular support he actually has—and afterwards they’ll whisk him off to prison.
But why does Navalny have so little popular support? Why do Russians put up with being ruled by Putin, an autocrat who no longer steals public money himself, but whose colleagues and cronies all steal? (Putin made his secret pile back in the early 1990s, when he was a rising politician in the first post-Communist city government of St. Petersburg.)
Well, before Putin came to power in 2000 they put up with eight years of Boris Yeltsin, a boorish drunk who not only stole from the Russians (as did most of his political allies) but also embarrassed them. Before that there was a brief interlude of honesty and sanity under Mikhail Gorbachev—but he is blamed by most Russians for all the bad things that have happened since the fall of the Soviet Union.
And before that there was the Era of Stagnation, the last decades of Communist rule, when the state didn’t murder its own citizens so much any more, but everybody lived in relative poverty under a perpetual rain of brazen lies, and endured the constant insults and petty criminality of an arrogant Communist elite. Fifty years in which the politicians who ran Russia have almost all been brutal, contemptible, or both.
So the great mass of Russians have given up believing that any politician could be honest, or that anything could ever really change. Some urban sophisticates are drawn to Navalny’s post-modern style and his relentless critique of the Russian political system, but even in large parts of Moscow and St. Petersburg, and almost everywhere outside the big cities, that sort of thing has no pulling power at all.
That’s why there is an undercurrent of despair in Navalny’s tweets, with their constant exhortations to Russians not to just switch off and go back to sleep. Living standards have risen considerably on Putin’s watch, mainly due to high world prices for oil and gas, and lots of people just want to keep their heads down and get on with their lives. Besides, in the boonies most people assume that Navalny is just another crook, only slicker.
Putin’s macho style no longer wins him the old adulation either: a recent poll by the Levada Centre found that nearly half of all Russians want him to step down at the end of his current presidential term in 2018. But they’re not in any hurry about it, nor will they be unless global energy prices and Russian living standards start to fall. And Navalny won’t be out of jail in time to run in the 2018 election anyway.
Comments
22 Comments
I Chandler
Sep 4, 2013 at 12:11pm
"Navalny, a 37-year-old Moscow lawyer, rose to fame as an anti-corruption campaigner"
He is not a nice guY:
The BBC noted in a profile of Navalny that he endorsed a political campaign called "Stop Feeding the Caucasus" and been a co-organizer of the "Russian March," . He once compared dark-skinned Caucasus militants with cockroaches. Cockroaches can be killed with a slipper, he said, but as for humans, “I recommend a pistol."
BIG WIG
Sep 5, 2013 at 4:45am
When stalin died the Russian people wept in the gulag , the streets and the fields . They cried for themselves and for Russia . As my Finnish mother said - There is always something terrible happening in Russia . The lack of belief in politics is very common in those from the former Warsaw pact . Anyone who can spread more of the sausage to more people is likely to be popular. Putin is the strong man and that is what they are used to . Back to the time when the Czar could bend an iron bar or crush a ruble in his fist . As for why all this is there is a observation from Churchill - Russia is an enigma wrapped in a riddle .Both Churchill and Mom had real insight into the Motherland . Nice to see some cogent analysis From Mr Dyer for a change . Bye the way now that we have established that putin is Not mr nice guy .Has it occurred to anyone that the other part of the Syria mess is in Putins hands ? Reportedly the Russian surface fleet has made their largest post Soviet tasking ever to the waters off Syria .
anonymous
Sep 5, 2013 at 11:02am
Alexei Navalny killing cockroaches with a slipper?
Sounds like a 20th century man.
P.Peto
Sep 5, 2013 at 11:31am
For some reason unknown to me the editors of the Straight seem to have bias for not publishing my comments perhaps it's because they are predictably anti Zionist or anti American opinions. Well, it seems Dyer has joined the fashionable anti-Putin bashers a safe bet for main stream, publishable, pro-western propagandists. However, Russia needs a strongman to resist the incessant tendency of the capitalist west to undermine and destabilise a nonaligned and economically independent Russia. Remember, under Yeltsen the west [US} was asked to advise the Russians on how to transition from communism to capitalism; it was a disaster for the country as economic chaos and crony capitalism reigned. Putin came in to clean up the mess and put Russia on a stronger footing. Moreover, under a weak Russian presidency the Americans remained unchallenged and could run the world as they saw fit. Now,with Russia under a strongman, the Americans and Zionists must temper their appetites as Russia is a formidable countervailing power. Surely a multipolar world is a more stable configuration than a unipolar world?
Me
Sep 5, 2013 at 12:52pm
This article is pure lies and propaganda to demonize Putin who is an excellent leader, and easily the best world leader today. His accomplishments speak for themselves. The author of this article is a microscopic midget relative to Putin.
John
Sep 5, 2013 at 1:30pm
Gorbachev is dirt for most Russians today but they don't realize what a role he played in dissolving USSR without massive bloodshed. Ditto for Yeltsin - a good for nothing drunk to most Russians but who liberated the Baltics without massive bloodshed. Just last week, in Estonia a new sculpture to Yeltsin was unveiled. Russians do love Putin - but even so, it was Yeltsin who gave Putin is leg up into Russian politics.
EM
Sep 5, 2013 at 1:54pm
Putin: NYET! NYET! NYET! SHOCK & AWE 2.0 ??
DAH! I provide Chemical weapons, what of it ?
I make ASSAD become Laika, my pet dog. He rolls over when I tell him.
You NO Touch ASSAD...or I get my FSB sleeper in Pentagon to sprinkle weapons grade plutonium on your mother- #@$%ing SALAD.
I have my FOOT on Western Imperialist European throat. EUROPEAN DOG SWiNE can SUCK on my GAZPROM's TEET.
I need Assad to BLOCK that pipeline from Saudi/Qatar gas fields to TURKEY.
European Western Imperialist swine have but one choice for ENERGY, ... My Beloved GAZPROM
& they Finance my take over of the WORLD....plenty Roubles ...$$$$$ KA-Ching!
I shall be the CZAR of the WORLD, I will rename Washington, PUTINsky, & play Fetch with Sunny & BO on White House Lawn.
I make Obama my Butler. Michelle Obama & children stay at White House DACHA, become tutors for my children.
John Boehner maybe become my Golf Caddy.
Ted Cruz, I give him important post, he MOW my Lawn. Igorev, my lieutenant & Rand Paul will run Dixie Mafia for me. Rand Paul will have Hunting Accident in 6 months. Paul Ryan he milk COWs under Supervision. He promised to deliver Wisconsin to Mitt Romney but NOT success. I NO like 'NOT SUCCESS'. Maybe later I make like Farming Accident, COWs fall on him.
Mitt Romney Launder my Money in his Banks.
Ann Romney she become Maid in one of my Dachas on Lake Baikal.
Eric Cantor & Mitch McConnell, both got faces I WANT very much to SHOOT, maybe stage Hunting Accident after.
Sarah Palin become my Drushenka!
Cheney & Rumsfeld have much EXPERIENCE with ABU GHRAiB & GitMO ...I make to establish GULAGs in America.
After I get old lawyer DikkWhittington to shoot Cheney in Face on live TV..
Gitmo, I give back to Cuba for Lifetime Supply of Havanna Cigars.
War on Terror Prisoners I give them boats with oars, if LUCKY the SHARKs EAT them.
All Republicans I make to work on my FARM Collective, replace all MEXiCANs.
Democrats become part of Chain Gangs in ALABAMA
For FUNNY .... Big Mac will become MacVlad
michael wind
Sep 5, 2013 at 3:28pm
putin will rule russia until he is dead,thats a reality,....russia is a mafia run country.
Mike Douglas
Sep 6, 2013 at 9:20am
Valdimir Putin is as described so well by Mr. Gwyn; just another in a mostly long and disastrous line of amoral and/or mentally diseased thugs operating far beyond their competencies.
The ease with which they do so, says a great deal about a country without principles, unable to collectively see beyond their daily personal needs.
Abe
Sep 6, 2013 at 2:02pm
It's great that people around the world are now taking a second look at V. Putin and his roll in it as a modernizing tyrant, supporter of terrorism, and homicide. It's good, for a change, that the world is looking at him as being part of what's wrong with Syria, N. Korea, and Iran. It's time to break tides with him so that his regime will also weaken and the threat he represents on democracy can be, once and for all, be destroyed.