Even if Putin steps down, we shouldn’t expect a new Russia
Russia has a long history of corruption and has never been truly democratic. This won’t change whoever takes Putin’s place
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, Russia has been an exceedingly corrupt country. The conclusion of the Cold War, the so-called ‘end of history’, was meant to bring about stability and democracy to Russia and the rest of the Eastern Bloc. Yet although the election in which Yeltsin was elected in 1991 was the freest and fairest Russia had experienced perhaps ever, his sweeping capitalistic reforms engendered a period of political corruption from which Russia — in general, the Russian layperson — has never recovered. The elections of 1996 were riddled with unfair media influence and Yeltsin using government money to fund his election campaign. After the 2012 elections the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe said ‘There were serious problems from the very start of this election. The point of elections is that the outcome should be uncertain. This was not the case in Russia. There was no real competition and abuse of government resources ensured that the ultimate winner of the election was never in doubt.’
The reliability of the democratic process was mostly ruined by the failures of Yeltsin to properly implement capitalism in the country. After prices were freed by deputy prime minister Yegor Gaidar in 1992, the economy went into a state of hyperinflation. Money which Soviet citizens had saved in bank accounts was wiped out, made utterly worthless, literally overnight. Production was paralysed and government credits were issued in order to solve the problem. However, rather than being used to pay workers’ salaries, they were often deposited in banks, and officials and bank owners split the profits. Other higher-ups bribed officials for import licences, imported food products sometimes for as little as 1% of their actual value, and made their millions.
While this was going on, the government issued vouchers which represented ‘a citizen’s share of the country’s wealth’. Many were unsure how much they were worth, and so exchanged them for a bottle of vodka or ten dollars, despite them being valued at ten thousand roubles. Gangsters, however, realised that if they collected as many of these vouchers as they could, they could use them to invest. Over a few years, a third of the country’s industrial wealth was owned by organised crime groups.
These failed measures by the government led to massive inequality and huge levels of corruption among all levels of industry and government. Bribes are commonplace in Russia, and some estimates suggest that the size of an average bribe increased from 9,000 roubles in 2008 to 236,000 three years later, many orders of magnitude above the inflation rate. The World Bank judges that perhaps one half of Russian GDP is caught up in its so-called ‘shadow economy’. With criminal gangs owning much property and organising a lot of protection for private businesses, officials accepting bribes, and most of the country’s wealth being held by the top 10% of richest people, Russia manages to be in the top third of the list of most corrupt countries in the world — this in a nominally democratic, European country.
And so recently circulating rumours that Putin is being urged by his family to step down due to alleged health problems are neither here nor there. The Sun reported that Alina Kabaeva has asked him to relinquish his hold on power in order that he might spend more time with his family throughout his purported sickness. This report was compounded by a doctor who observed some of Putin’s movements at several events recently and argued that Putin shows some signs of Parkinson’s Disease. The supposed handover of the Russian reins will happen in January.
Can it be true? The authoritarian Putin— argued by some to be a dictator — who has ruled nearly twenty years over the country, and whose reign is shorter only than Stalin’s, responsible for mass corruption, brutal wars and the repression of political opponents— quitting? Many around the world would rejoice. Perhaps the story is merely a false rumour spun by a British rag with too much time on its hands for conspiracies. The Kremlin, of course, has denied all rumours, saying the President is in ‘excellent health’ and refuting claims that he is succumbing to Parkinson’s as ‘nonsense’.
But either way, it doesn’t really matter. Because whether Putin stays or not, Russian corruption is here to stay. Whoever Putin appoints as his next Prime Minister will be groomed to become Putin’s successor. The last Prime Minister, Dmitri Medvedev, was seen at the beginning of his tenure to be a more liberal politician than Putin. It soon became clear, though, that he was merely another in a long line of United Russia apparatchiks who exist mostly to keep Putin in power. Along with other criticisms of Medvedev is that during his role as head of the Federal Tax Service extensive intrusive government surveillance, including artificial intelligence technology, to collect taxes. A relative nobody in the government, his appointment came as a surprise to outside observers.
But it soon made sense. Although Putin was banned from running a third term in 2008, Medvedev simply gave him Presidential powers on the day of his election. Now, amid aforementioned reports of Putin’s stepping down, the current prime minister resigned in January to allow Putin to make sweeping constitutional changes which, among other things, grants him legal immunity until his death. It was later revealed that the resignation was forced through by Putin so nobody stood in the way of the changes he wants to make. It’s obvious that whoever is next in power, they will be loyal to Putin’s way of doing things, and it seems unlikely that he will ever leave power over Russia truly in the hands of another. Regardless, the fortunes he has amassed over the years can’t be taken away from him due to his securing his prolonged innocence due to the constitutional changes he has recently made.
The level of corruption within Russian politics suggests that wherever Putin is — whether working from the wings or sitting at the table taking questions from 12-year-olds —he won’t loosen his grip on power. It remains to be seen who will take his place, but you can be sure it’s somebody who has no interest in changing the status quo. If Russia is going to change for the better, if the government is ever going to work for the people instead of for themselves, a complete overhaul of the country — perhaps even a revolution — seems to be the only way; it appears impossible to vote someone in through democratic elections who genuinely wants to change the country for the better. The rot is set in deep and it seems only by removing the entire system and building a new one will the Russians be able to remove it. This is the real tragedy of the fall of the Soviet Union: things did get better — but only barely.
