Doing Well By Doing Right

David J. Kramer, Lilia Shevtsova Op-Ed March 2, 2012 American Interest

Summary

Western governments have the opportunity to demonstrate to the Russian elite that its ability to prosper in the West depends on its behavior inside Russia itself.

Related Topics

Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions

December 2011 will be remembered as a tumultuous month in Russia, if not a seminal one. Observers both Russian and foreign were surprised by the December 4 Duma election, in which United Russia failed to muster 50 percent of the vote despite significant ballot box stuffing and voter fraud. More importantly, in Moscow, St. Petersburg and dozens of other cities across the country, massive post-election protests caught most people—including Russia’s leadership—completely off-guard.

Shevtsova chairs the Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program at the Carnegie Moscow Center, dividing her time between Carnegie’s offices in Washington, DC, and Moscow. She has been with Carnegie since 1995.

Lilia Shevtsova

Senior Associate
Russian Domestic Politics and Political Institutions Program
Moscow Center

More from this author...

Perhaps we should not have been so surprised. For several years, Russia has been stagnating, at least politically, and in turn the political system has degraded and society has become demoralized. Vladimir Putin, representing the antithesis of his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, raised hopes for many Russians of a more stable and secure future. Indeed, most Russians were ready to close the books on the unhappy, chaotic decade of the 1990s. They longed for stability at home and recovery on the world stage, and Putin got credit for delivering both with the help of the second Chechen war and the soaring price of oil. But as Putin prospered from happenstance during his first two terms as President (2000–08), lately he and his own policies and judgments have suffered from it. The economy is stalled, neo-patrimonial corruption is rife and assaults against human rights and sheer decency are on the rise. Above all, it seems, Putin’s little Potemkin village act with Dmitri Medvedev finally prompted a critical mass of Russians to take umbrage at being manipulated as though they were a bunch of gullible teenagers. When Putin announced on September 24, 2011, that he would reoccupy the presidency in March, according to a deal that had been worked out with Medvedev “several years ago”, that was the last straw.

After the September announcement but before the December 4 election, Putin was booed by thousands of spectators at a sporting event. Medvedev became the brunt of jokes on the internet and radio and was widely derided for a staged event at Moscow State University. Weeks before the election, polls showed that large numbers of Russian voters were itching for a chance to voice their displeasure with the party in power. On December 4, they scratched the itch, despite efforts by nervous authorities to limit the damage by resorting to old tricks: denying registration to certain opposition parties, perpetrating other administrative abuses and showering disproportionate and favorable media attention on United Russia. Similar efforts during previous Duma and presidential elections were met with general indifference, even a sense of resignation. Not this time, as the most politically dynamic part of the population—the so-called middle class, journalists, the intelligentsia and youth—mobilized as never before. A Levada Center poll of those who attended the massive December 24 protest in Moscow revealed that 73 percent said that they were protesting to “give vent to their indignation over the rigged election” and “accumulated frustration with the state of affairs in the country and the policy promoted by the powers-that-be.”

The protest of Russia’s “angry class” (to describe it as a middle class movement does not fully capture the mood) has permanently punctured the aura of invincibility surrounding Putin and the system he erected. He has lost the support of the two cities crucial for the survival of any politician in Russia—Moscow and St. Petersburg—where, according to independent observers, United Russia secured barely 30 percent of the vote. (Nationwide, according to official results, United Russia obtained 49.3 percent.) Putin’s regime now stands delegitimized in the eyes of the most active and educated part of society. ...

Full text of the article in the American Interest

Source: http://carnegie.ru/2012/03/02/doing-well-by-doing-right/ahip