Preface

This book has been long in the making, although relatively short in the writing. Russia and its future has always been a central preoccupation of my academic as well as personal life. From the early years when I studied history at the London School of Economics (LSE) and then when I undertook doctoral studies at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies (CREES) at the University of Birmingham, and also when I studied and then worked in Moscow for over two years, Russia and its problems have been a daily concern. To live in Moscow in the early 1980s was to witness an empire in decline. The stultifying attempts at imposing conformity, the pervasive surveillance and arrests, the food and consumer goods shortages, the visible signs of a society ravaged by alcohol consumption, all testified to the exhaustion of what had once presented itself as an alternative model of modernity. With Mikhail Gorbachev’s arrival in the Kremlin in March 1985 hopes were raised that long-delayed reforms and greater openness would finally be achieved. They were, but instead of creating a more dynamic and revived socialist system, the Soviet Union was reformed out of existence.

In its nearly three decades of independent existence since the disintegration of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) in December 1991, Russia has confronted the political, social and economy legacy of the Soviet attempt to build a communist alternative. It has done this while trying to build a capitalist market democracy and while creating a new state and forging a new national identity. The enormity of the task is staggering, and is still far from over – to the degree that such processes are ever complete. In addition, Russia’s relations with the rest of the world played an important part in shaping domestic reconstitution. The emerging pattern of elite political and economic power, shaped in part by the Soviet and even pre-Soviet legacy, influenced the way that Russia relates to the external environment and, in the end, traditional patterns of confrontation were revived. There was to be no smooth passage to competitive market democracy at home or integration into the global economy and dominant power system abroad. The eternal ‘Russian question’ of identity and autonomy of civilizational experience re-emerged in sharp forms. For much of Russia’s post-communist elite, socialized in the idea of Soviet and Tsarist exceptionalism, the idea of joining Western institutions as a subordinate power proved simply impossible. On the other side, the Western powers are simply mystified as to why Russia could not take its place in the expanding ‘liberal international order’ as a worthy member of this community of democracy and progress.

The offer was there, and it was a genuine one. However, for Russia, ultimately the sticking point was the prefix: the ‘US-led’ liberal international order. Status concerns and worries that this ‘order’ ultimately was not so ordered led to a deterioration in relations. The crisis over Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014, the imposition of sanctions in that year, which have become progressively tougher, and Russia’s status as an outcast from the West, have now become realities. This accelerated Russia’s long-term ‘turn to the East’, and Russia and China have now forged an alignment that is unprecedented in its depth and scope. Enduring tensions with the West and the opening up of Russia’s horizons towards the East now shape Russia’s immediate future. However, while Russia’s orientation on Eurasia and the East are important, Russia’s future will ultimately be determined by the dynamic interaction of the Eastern and Western vectors.

Domestic factors of course will be crucial. The constitution adopted in December 1993, after a long period of turmoil that brought the country to the brink of civil war, represented the culmination of aspirations for genuine constitutional governance. The document is both liberal and democratic, although granting the presidency perhaps excessive powers. The 1990s under Boris Yeltsin was one of unprecedented freedom in which the institutions of liberal democracy were established, and the rudiments of a capitalist economy were created. This was also a period of catastrophic social hardship, anarchic governance and the accumulation of power and property by a small group of insiders who came to be known as ‘oligarchs’. Vladimir Putin was the nominee of some of their leading representatives, but soon after coming to power in 2000 he set out on his own course, rebuilding the power of the state, taming what he perceived to be unruly business leaders, regional governors and civil society activists. He established what has come to be known as ‘managed democracy’. The Putin years are distinguished by the emphasis on Russia’s status and sovereignty at home and abroad.

According to Vladislav Surkov, the former deputy head of the Presidential Administration responsible for domestic strategy, Russia faces ‘one hundred years of solitude’. He stressed that ‘Solitude does not mean complete isolation’, but Russia’s openness would be limited in the future. In his view Russia had a ‘mixed breed’ culture incorporating elements of the East and the West: ‘He is everyone’s relative, but nobody’s family’. It was now up to Russia whether it became ‘a loner in a backwater’, or ‘an alpha nation that has surged into a big lead’ over other countries.¹ Russia would have to find its own path to the future and rely on itself to develop. For Russian nativists this is only to be welcomed, putting an end to the illusion that a country of Russia’s size, civilization and history could simply join the ranks of the medium-sized powers such as Britain and France as a subordinate element in the existing world order. For liberals (the term covers a wide spectrum of views, but they are united in an internationalist perspective), such ‘solitude’ will be disastrous, and they recommend finding a way towards reconciliation with the West. Many believe that the problem lies in Putin’s leadership, but his re-election for a presumably final six-year term in 2018 means that Russia’s immediate future will be shaped by his preferences. Although Putin is one of Russia’s most consequential leaders, the problems and challenges facing the country are far deeper than that. Any new leader will face the same problem of reconciling the many different views of Russia’s future and negotiating the treacherous foreign policy waters. In fact, one of the main themes of this book is that there is no single view of the way that Russia should go, and it is this absence of consensus which in part allowed Putin and his ‘centrist’ group to dominate for so long.

Russia’s future is shaped by long-term historical and cultural factors, by sociological and economic realities, by some fundamental ideological cleavages within society about what sort of Russia is desirable, by the absence of consensus on Russia’s place in the world, and by a political elite that has been able to manage constitutional constraints to perpetuate its own power. In this context, views on Russia’s future veer from the apocalyptic to the benign. My own view is that any discussion of Russia’s futures needs to be rooted in an appreciation of the country’s past and its present social and political configuration, as well as an understanding not only of the larger international arena in which the future will be shaped, but also some of the deeper process shaping our era. I also believe that there is a deep underlying societal pressure for genuine constitutionalism and public accountability, the rule of law, defensible property rights, good relations with the West (but not on any terms), free and equal citizenship, and competitive elections. All this can be achieved within the framework of the present constitutional order.

Although the word ‘democracy’ in Russian public consciousness is tainted by its association with the bacchanalia of the 1990s, these features in effect comprise democracy. The question, then, is whether Russia can achieve an evolutionary shift to democracy, or whether it is fated once again to endure a systemic breakdown. The experiences of 1917 and 1991 suggest that revolutions do open up new vistas for social and political development, but at enormous cost in lives and institutional development. In short, can Russia manage the change from managed to liberal democracy without another revolution? Other outcomes, of course, are possible, including a more consolidated authoritarian system, accompanied by isolationism and greater domestic repression. Another possible future is a burgeoning Sino-Russia alignment that creates a thriving alternative international order to that dominated by the traditional Western powers. The emergence of such an order would restore balance and multipolarity in international affairs. Such a system, feasibly, would be no less rules-based, but it would no longer be the West adjudicating on the rules.

While the past is open to interpretation, the present to contestation, the future belongs to us all. I am grateful to Polity Press, and in particular my editor Louise Knight, for the opportunity to think through these issues. Louise has been unfailingly supportive and constructive in what has turned out to a particularly tricky assignment. I am also thankful to Louise’s assistant, Nekane Tanaka Galdos, whose bright emails have cheered many a dull moment. It has been tough going, especially since anything to do with Russia today in certain circles has become extremely toxic, while academic and policy debates have become increasingly polarized. Russia is not a ‘rogue’ state, but it has emerged in opposition to what were once thought to be the verities of the post-Cold War world. In such a short book only the broad outlines can be analysed, but the work is written in the belief that Russia’s future is part of the common destiny of humanity. The future is a process that is ours to shape and for which we have to take responsibility.

Canterbury, May 2018

Notes

Introduction: Multiple Pasts and Many Futures

Many argue that the twenty-first will be China’s century, but few would dare to suggest that it will be Russia’s. The country is one of whom it is said that they will have a great future – but that future, like the horizon, never seems to arrive. Russia is one of those countries with a tendency to plan its own future, often with mythical and messianic overtones, and this too often detracts from existing harsh realities. The idea of Moscow as the ‘Third Rome’ gave way in the Soviet era to Moscow as the shining city of the communist future. All this turned to dust, but these ideas still exert an appreciable influence on current thinking. Russia may no longer have a great future, defined in messianic terms, but what sort of future will it have?

Critics, whose ranks in recent years have swelled enormously (probably more than reality deserves), would argue that Russia is a declining power in the grip of enduring and debilitating demographic and economic crises, governed by a despotic and kleptocratic elite, wracked by corruption and social alienation (anomie), and a threat to the financial and political institutions of the West. These critics accuse the Putinite leadership of engaging in provocative actions abroad to divert attention from domestic shortcomings, while feeding the nationalistic sentiments of a population drugged by the endless propaganda pumped out by the state television stations. By contrast, defenders of the broad outlines of Putin’s policy argue that Russia is finally standing up to those who have tried to determine its future from abroad, and is pursuing not only its national interests in resisting the enlargement of the US-led liberal international order, which today takes the form of the expansion of the NATO military alliance to Russia’s borders, but is also defending international order itself against a system that so disastrously pushed for regime change in Iraq and Libya, and then tried to do the same in Syria. Those who look on the bright side of Russian life stress the way that Putin’s rule has restored confidence and pride in the country, increased GDP several-fold, stabilized the demographic situation, reduced the scourge of inflation to only 2.2 per cent in early 2018, and consistently increased standards of living (except for the four years 2014–17). Above all, a sense of security has been returned as the crime rate has fallen dramatically. Putinite stability has come at a price, but one its defenders insist is well worth paying.

Both views could be expanded indefinitely. Pessimists would point to the heavy-handed political regime that suppresses genuine political pluralism, manipulates the rule of law, allows elite members to enrich themselves incommensurably while the country has become one of the most unequal in the world; public health and education are starved of funds while military adventures are pursued abroad, and funds are diverted to pay for the annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and to pay for grandiose mega-projects such as the Winter Olympics of February 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in June–July 2018. Optimists would suggest that the Putin system has stabilized the country, raised its status in the world, established inter-ethnic and cross-religious peace (although, of course, not without problems), halved the poverty rate and created a middle class accompanied by a burgeoning consumer society, with shiny new shopping and entertainment malls built, cultural monuments and churches restored. The streets are clean and well paved, and millions now take their holidays abroad. From this perspective, Russia has never been freer, with a lively public sphere, plentiful sources of alternative information from critical newspapers and the internet. Indeed, in intellectual circles it is considered bad form not to criticize Putin, and people do so fearlessly and with gusto (even in some of the more boisterous political chat shows on the state TV channels).

Both the optimists and the pessimists make justified points, so how can we reconcile these opposing positions? Some say Russia is headed for disaster under a corrupt self-serving leadership, while the other side says Russia has never had it so good. How can both positions be true? But they are! This is why this book is called ‘Russia’s futures’. The title is meant to indicate not only that Russia will have a multiplicity of futures, but above all that its reality is multi-planed, plural and diverse. The future, like the present (and perhaps even more so the past), is a process, in which multiple realities intersect and diverge. This could sound like a cop-out, trying to hedge one’s bets and avoid coming down on one side or the other. In fact, keeping alive the possibility of many futures and the multiplicity of presents is the only way to keep an open mind, and to be aware of the undoubted negative features of contemporary Russia, while remaining alive to how the system has developed in recent years and delivered enormous public goods: macroeconomic stability that has severely reduced inflation, budgets running mostly in balance, full employment, a social security system that works and delivers support (perhaps not very generous and not very efficient, but providing a lifeline and safety net for millions), courts that in daily matters provide justice and are increasingly trusted by the population to deliver fair verdicts, the provision of free education and health services, and a cultural life that ranks with the best of any times in Russia’s history. In other circumstances no doubt, these goods could be provided at less cost and at higher quality; but these ‘other circumstances’ could also have led to their degradation if not complete abolition.

On the other side, any leadership group that remains in power for over two decades is prey to degradation, arrogance, corruption and high-handedness. Although elite stability provides policy continuity, leadership change provides an opportunity for innovation. Personnel turnover is an essential mechanism of political accountability. Although elected for a fourth term in March 2018 by an overwhelming majority (76.7 per cent of the vote on a 67.5 per cent turnout, meaning that for the first time in a Russian presidential election over half the population voted for him), Putin faced the challenge of any long-term incumbent to demonstrate that the system retained vitality and the capacity to adapt. Maintaining power could become an end in itself, reinforced through stultifying social and political legislation. Notably, in spring 2018 the authorities tried to close down Telegram, a popular social networking site with end-to-end encryption used also by some major banks and public corporations for internal communications. Telegram, with 16 million users in Russia and 200 million worldwide (with a large subscriber base in Iran) fell foul of a new law requiring internet sites to store communications in the country for six months, and to make available the encryption codes to the Russian security services, allegedly to facilitate the struggle against terrorism. It appeared that Russia was trying to regulate what is called ‘Runet’ (the Russian internet) on Chinese lines, an impossible and dangerous enterprise given that a whole generation had grown up used to web freedom.

The founder of Telegram, Pavel Durov, had earlier been in conflict with the authorities over his social media platform VKontakte (later renamed VK) when the Federal Security Service (FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB) demanded that he hand over the identity of users and block certain protest groups. Even those who had maintained a stance of sceptical neutrality vis-à-vis the authorities were effectively turned into rebels as they changed Internet Protocol (IP) addresses to maintain access to Telegram’s services. The government agency responsible for the attack, Roskomnadzor, blocked thousands of IP addresses, including those of Yandex and the cloud services of Google and Amazon. Roskomnadzor enjoys a budget that is 12 per cent that of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and used its generous resources to learn from Chinese experience how to build a firewall in the informational sphere. The defence of internet freedom is essential if Russia is to become a competitive modern state in which a reasonable balance is maintained between security concerns and business development. It is this sort of misstep, mobilizing even those usually little interested in politics, which has provoked alienation and the downfall of regimes in the past. Effective restraint on the security services is one of those ‘structural reforms’ that is essential if Russia is to be part of the globalized economy. A veneer of stability can conceal deeper processes eroding the legitimacy and solidity of a system, rendering it brittle and liable to sudden collapse.

Russia has always sought to be treated like any other country, yet it is unlike any other country. Its sheer enormity, its diversity, its many peoples, its dramatic rises and falls, mean that writing about the country requires sensitivity to the historical and cultural matrix out of which modern Russia has emerged, and in which it continues to operate. It also means that a very special type of courage is required when studying the country, since for every statement of fact and above all judgement, even of opinion, there is always another fact, or a different perspective or view, to be advanced to argue the opposite. This is not to say that Russia inhabits some sort of postmodern fantasy land, where everything is relative and a matter of opinion, and where nothing can be stated with certainty and where truth dissolves into the air. Quite the contrary. Although a healthy dose of fantasy and imagination does help make sense of Russia, this book is written in the belief that ultimately the normal criteria of rationality and empirical research apply. Although Victorian-style narratives of national improvement, or even Soviet-style meta-narratives of progress, liberation and peace through global anti-capitalism no longer apply, a coherent story can be told, applying conventional standards of evidence, evaluation and critique. This is not to say that the story of Russia is simple, but that the danger of ‘orientalizing’ or ‘othering’ Russia as some sort of exotic artefact of our imaginations needs to be avoided. Equally, following Russian interventions in Ukraine and Syria, the ‘demonization’ of Putin reached extraordinary heights, especially among the political elite in Washington. It was amplified by allegations that Moscow had ‘meddled’ in the presidential election of November 2016, in which Donald J. Trump scored an improbable victory over the more conventional Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. There is an enduring problem of finding an appropriate narrative to tell the story of our times, but it is one that is not unique to Russia. Russia is indeed more different than most other countries, but the difference is one of quality rather than of essence.

What are these qualities? Above all, they are shaped by Russia’s engagement in successive programmes of radical change, designed to make the country conform to models generated outside of the country and to render it competitive in the international system. The dialectic of autonomy and adaptation continues to shape Russia’s future. Since Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century launched his radical programme of modernization from above, Russia became the paradigmatic case of a late-developing country seeking to emulate more advanced models by imposing them on an often unwilling and certainly long-suffering population. This provokes a conservative reaction, shaping a culture of resistance to what became known as ‘catch-up’ modernization. Russian nationalists continue to believe that the gulf between the state and society of the Petrine era has still not been healed. In particular, this division is held responsible for the Russian revolution in 1917. A modernizing elite oriented towards the West adopted the cultural norms of other countries, but became isolated from the real concerns and native virtues of its own country. This gulf may have been closing as the country industrialized from the late nineteenth century on, but the very process of rapid urbanization and modernization created a working class not effectively integrated into the changed society. Under the pressure of war, this alienation turned into revolution.

Russia’s ruling elite was well aware of the fragility of the society, as demonstrated by the wave of strikes and social disturbances from 1912. Nevertheless, the leaders ignored warnings that the country would not survive full-scale modern warfare and joined the Great War on the side of the Allies in August 1914. The country coped remarkably well, although with few major victories, but it ultimately headed ‘towards the flame’.¹ Food shortages and a lack of trust in the monarchy provoked the abdication of the Tsar in February 1917. The Provisional Government at last promised the nation constitutional government and democracy; however, it not only stayed in the war but ill-advisedly launched the disastrous Galician offensive in the spring. Vladimir Lenin at the head of the Bolsheviks took advantage of the turmoil, and in October put an end to Russia’s short-lived experiment with what was to have been constitutional democracy. The Bolshevik government, like Peter the Great, sought to ‘drive out barbarism by barbaric means’ (as Lenin put it), and thus inaugurated another form of barbarism. The Soviet attempt to build an alternative but improved form of economic modernity finally ran out of steam, and by 1991 the communist experiment was at an end. In the 1990s Russia once again embarked on a grand programme of radical change, this time trying to build a capitalist democracy on the bones of the Soviet order. Although the rudiments of a market and democracy were established, Russia’s capitalist revolution unleashed forces that the state was unable to control. Powerful oligarchs effectively captured the state, while in the regions, governors established semi-feudal fiefdoms.

Putin’s leadership stabilized not only the political system, but also and above all tempered expectations of the future. The Putin system represents a historic compromise in which the many pasts are incorporated into an overarching narrative built precisely on acknowledgement of the diversity of Russia’s many pasts and the values on which they were based. This leaves few entirely satisfied, but no version is entirely rejected. The Putin system incorporates disparate elements, giving all a stake in the system but allowing none to predominate. This is a type of selective restoration, drawing on useful elements of the past while repudiating others. This means that the leadership in the Kremlin becomes the coordinating mechanism, reconciling different factions and social forces. Its ideological position is ‘centrist’ (although with a conservative hue) on the horizontal left–right plane; but in political terms it sought to create a ‘vertical of power’ to provide direction in a country that had experienced systemic collapse and national disintegration in the 1980s and the anarchy of the 1990s.

This is the grand Putinite bargain, a combination of political centrism and technocratic leadership. In the absence of political consensus, centrism provides a rallying point for the diverse ‘ideological ecosystems’ that fracture and divide the country.² Integrated leadership on the vertical axis negates the centrifugal trends threatening national unity and provides coherence and direction to policy-making. The combination provided the country with an unprecedented breathing space (peredyshka), but there was a price to pay. Centrism and integrated leadership create what could be called a ‘stabilocracy’ or a stability system, in which the goal is social and economic peace and keeping political options open. This means suppressing the possibility of resolving certain major questions of public policy at the political level (for example, through competing political programmes presented at elections with an equal chance of winning), and deferring what some would argue are necessary structural reforms to the economy. The idea of ‘structural reform’ can be interpreted differently, and for some is no more than a synonym for the weakening of the social provision of welfare and other services and the disbursement of public assets through privatization, while plunging the country into the sort of crisis that it endured from the late 1980s. However, if understood as a package of real responses (including political ones) to ensure a dynamic, sustainable and competitive economy, then the term is useful, and it is used in that sense in this book. While the maintenance of stability is one of the essential tasks of any modern government, the assault on Telegram demonstrated that it is in danger of turning into a ‘securocracy’, in which the security apparatus once again (as in the Soviet period) stifles the free development of society. The Putin system from this perspective represents not the resolution of the problems facing Russia but their deferment – hence the perceived need for structural reform. The character of the political system remains ‘undetermined’, in the sense that it is a hybrid of democratic and authoritarian impulses and governing practices; while the economic system is even more a combination of statist dirigisme and market competition.

The overarching trajectory of Russia’s history in the modern era has been a two-fold struggle: on the one hand, to modernize and to catch up with the West in economic and social terms; and on the other hand, to complete the long struggle for constitutionalism. The two are of course related, yet in certain periods, notably in the Soviet years, a disconnection took place that still exerts an influence on the way that public affairs are conducted. The power system in the Kremlin since 1991 prioritized social and economic transformation, but in so doing it reproduced certain leadership characteristics of earlier years. This only reinforced the centrality of constitutionalism. Russia today has constitutional government, but the spirit of constitutionalism is less well developed. The concept of ‘constitutionalism’ here is more than the technical apparatus of a formulated body of norms, institutional rules and procedures, but the complex that makes up a ‘democratic’ polity: accountability, the rule of law, the competitive formation of executive authority, civic and human rights, and much more. Of course, there can be constitutionalism without democracy, but democracy without constitutionalism is inconceivable. In the Russian case, this is more than a ‘transition’, but a long process of social struggle, mobilization, false paths leading to dead ends, huge sacrifices for meagre rewards, yet an enduring struggle for civic dignity, free and equal citizenship and governmental accountability.³

This means that Russia remains in a condition of incomplete modernization, with modernization here defined as the combination of economic and political changes. This definition excludes any simple economic or political determinism but stresses that Russia’s future will be shaped through the dynamic interaction of contradictory pressures, and that its destiny will be forged through the combination of a diversity of paths, pluralism of forms and unity of ends. This ultimately is what ‘neo-modernization’ means: accepting that global modernity today requires certain principles of economic order and political inclusion; but this does not mean that modernization equates to Westernization, let alone subordination to the Western power system, even when presented as a universal ‘liberal international order’.

Russia remains locked in an extended constitutional revolution. Max Weber described the period of constitutional monarchy from 1906 to 1917 as ‘sham constitutionalism’, while the Soviet system represented ‘nominal constitutionalism’, in which constitutional norms failed to provide legal guarantees of rights and freedoms and where the power system was not controlled.⁴ The struggle today is to move from nominal to real constitutionalism, a category which includes some broad definition of social justice. The institutional framework for this is already in place in the form of the 1993 constitution, but now a reform of the elite – the way it is constituted, recruited and inserted into the power system – is required, accompanied by shifts in behaviour regulated not by personal ties of loyalty and obligation, but by the impartial norms of the constitutional state. This can only be achieved in an evolutionary manner, since a new revolution – by definition – will only reproduce authoritarian behavioural patterns (even if by a new elite) that impede the move towards genuine constitutionalism. From this perspective, Putinism can be defined as the final phase of the Russian revolution, preparing the ground for a subsequent transition towards the ‘normal’ politics of regular constitutionalism, representative democracy and governmental accountability. That is one path to the future and, while not inevitable, it is far from precluded.

Russia has not moved fully into the era of constitutional democracy and liberal democracy, but neither has it regressed into a new form of hard authoritarianism. Putin himself is a conservative centrist but, by definition, the centre shifts as the tide of opinion sways in one direction or another. Putin himself has strong views, which are predicated above all on the belief that his leadership prevents the country returning to another ‘time of troubles’, of the sort that tore the country apart in the early seventeenth century and again during the Revolution and Civil War between 1917 and 1921. A large proportion of the country agrees with him, hence his enduring high levels of support. His popularity is partially manufactured, but reflects overall the deeply held view that Russia in one way or another will have to find its own path to becoming modern while not necessarily becoming Western. It is Putin’s insistence on the autonomy of Russia’s historical experience and the complementary view that the country will remain a great power (the concept of derzhavnost’) and an independent actor in international affairs that ultimately provoked the breakdown in relations with the West and the onset of a renewed period of confrontation that is dubbed by some a ‘new cold war’.

Russia is the graveyard of utopias. The future of the past has too often become more attractive than the future of the present. It is over this disillusioned and traumatized society that Putin governed for a unique historical period. He rules in the classic guise of the restorer of order, but the foundations and durability of that order contain elements of fragility. A peredyshka by definition will sooner or later give way to something else. This work explores the historical origins and features of the present order, and will peer through the dark glass to outline the factors that will shape some of Russia’s possible futures.