Carnegie Moscow Center
The regional unification of record-high presidential election results has closed the Kremlin bureaucrats’ eyes to the diversity of different parts of the country, their elites, and the preferences of their electorates. In this model, regional masters of balance and public politics are extraneous. But the expulsion of old regional barons is risky: the banner of public pushback and local patriotism could be picked up by new regional politicians who might be even less convenient for Moscow.
In theory, the seizure of a greater share of Sakhalin’s resource wealth by the federal authorities could lead to a fairer distribution of wealth throughout the Russian Far East. The fear, however, is that further centralization of budgetary revenues will merely encourage the pursuit of vanity projects that will not come to fruition for over a decade, if ever.
Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky’s primary motive is to curry favor with Vladimir Putin. As Putin has shifted gears to a more conservative, anti-Western, and isolationist outlook, scores of his aggressive loyalists have followed the new trend.
Russia will likely succeed in holding sway over Ukraine and turning this country into its buffer zone, but it cannot secure itself from the people’s resentment and resistance.
The seizure of Crimea is Putin’s personal conquest, as well as a dramatic reinforcement of his regime of personal power. For now Putin has succeeded in halting Russia’s social and economic modernization and has pushed Russia to an anti-modernization course.
The Ukrainian crisis has intensified the Kremlin’s crackdown on the Russian media. Nongovernment media simply no longer belong in today’s Russia.
Just as any grand event, the Sochi Olympics will soon be over and Russia will remain with itself. Its prospects are uncertain since the economic growth has dropped and the Kremlin’s policy has shifted toward social conservatism.
The aggravation of the human rights situation in today’s Russia is impossible to deny. What makes things worse is that in Russia the political power is above the law.
The anti-gay campaign may have helped the Kremlin to pit the conservative majority against the excessively modernized trouble-makers. But the wave of negative publicity this campaign is generating has taken a heavy toll on the image of Russia in general, and the Sochi Olympics in particular.
Since the collapse of the Cold War order many countries around the world have engaged in wars and revolutions. The outcomes of these battles no longer fit in the good-or-evil framework. What’s more, in today’s disorderly and erratic world even major nations do not have the authority to make such judgments.