11/26 Reading Assignment. Russia As a Case Study of the Impact of Political Culture on Democratization

11/26 Reading Assignment. Russia as a case study of the impact of political culture on democratization. 1. What's the difference between "mental software" and "ideology"? The features of Soviet Man according to Yuri Levada, a sociologist, is relevant. 2. When the Communist regime collapsed in 1991 there was an expectation, both in the West and in Russia, that the country would embrace Western values and join the civilized world. What was not taken into account in that expectation? 3. How did Boris Yeltsin's firing on parliament in 1993 mark a turning point? Turning away from what and towards what? 4. What Yuri Levada's polling shows (see graph)? 5. The two factors that made Putin popular. 6. The elements of Putin's strategy for consolidating his power: a. his response to the oligarchs and the costs of 1990s-era freedom; b. his understanding of the longstanding nexus between property and political power; c. the conistency, yet different means, of monetizing privilege from Soviet era to the present d. his reinforcement of the "fortress mentality." e. Instructive examples/details: Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Yukos oil company. One in six businessmen in Russia. Yegor Gaidar's 1994 warning. "The bureaucracy's main resource is participation in the rent- distribution chain" (rent seeking). Examples of the "fortress mentality" _____________________________________________________ Russia The long life of Homo sovieticus This week’s elections and upheavals in Russia show how hard it is, 20 years after the system collapsed, for the country to put away its Soviet past Dec 10th 2011 | MOSCOW |From the print edition of The Economist TWENTY years to the month since the Soviet Union fell apart, crowds of angry young people have taken to the streets of Moscow, protesting against the ruling United Russia Party (“the party of crooks and thieves”) and chanting “Russia without Putin!” Hundreds have been detained, and the army has been brought into the centre of Moscow “to provide security”. Although the numbers are a far cry from the half-million who thronged the streets to bury the USSR, these were the biggest protests in recent years. The immediate trigger for this crisis was the rigging of the parliamentary elections on December 4th (see article). But the causes lie far deeper. The ruling regime started to lose its legitimacy just as Vladimir Putin, Russia's prime minister, declared a final victory for “stability”, promised to return to the Kremlin as president and pledged to rebuild a Eurasian Union with former Soviet republics. The Soviet flavour of all this had been underscored at United Russia's party congress at the end of November, where Mr Putin was nominated for the presidency. “We need a strong, brave and able leader …And we have such a man: it is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin,” enthused a film director. A steelworker told the congress how Mr Putin had “lifted our factory from its knees” and supported it “with his wise advice”. A single mother with 19 children thanked Mr Putin for a “bright future”. Such parallels with the now idealised late Soviet era were supposed to be one of Mr Putin's selling points. No tiresome political debate, fairly broad personal freedoms, shops full of food: wasn't that what people wanted? Instead, unthinkably, Mr Putin has been booed: first by an audience at a martial-arts event on November 20th, then at many polling stations, and now on the streets. The Soviet rhetoric conjured an anti-Soviet response. According to Lev Gudkov of the Levada Centre, an independent polling-research organisation, this reaction against the monopolistic, corrupt and authoritarian regime is itself part of a Soviet legacy. It is driven by the lack of alternatives rather than a common vision for change. For Russia is still a hybrid state. It is smaller, more consumerist and less collective than the Soviet Union. But while the ideology has gone, the mechanism for sustaining political power remains. Key institutions, including courts, police and security services, television and education, are used by bureaucrats to maintain their own power and wealth. The presidential administration, an unelected body, still occupies the building (and place) of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. More important, the Soviet mental software has proved much more durable than the ideology itself. When, in 1989, a group of sociologists led by Yuri Levada began to study what they called Soviet Man, an artificial construct of doublethink, paternalism, suspicion and isolationism, they thought he was vanishing. Over the next 20 years they realised that Homo sovieticus had mutated and reproduced, acquiring, along the way, new characteristics such as cynicism and aggression. This is not some genetic legacy, but the result of institutional restrictions and the skewed economic and moral stimuli propagated by the Kremlin. This mental software was not a generational feature, as the Levada group at first suspected. The elections were rigged in Moscow not only by middle-aged people with Soviet memories, but by thousands of pro-Kremlin younger folk gathered from across the country and dispatched to cast multiple ballots around the city. Symbolically, they made their camp in an empty pavilion of the Stalinist Exhibition of People's Achievements. Most of them had no memories of the Soviet Union; they were born after it had ceased to exist. Yet the election results also revealed the reluctance of a large part of Russian society to carry on with the present system. Thousands of indignant men and women, young and old, tried to stop the fraud and protect their rights. One election monitor, who was thrown out of the polling station, wrote in his blog that “I thought I would die of shame…I did not manage to save your votes…forgive me.” Such voices may still be a minority, but the clash between these two groups was essentially a clash of civilisations—and a sign that the process of dismantling the Soviet system, which started 20 years ago, is far from over. A moral vacuum When the Communist regime collapsed in 1991 there was an expectation, both in the West and in Russia, that the country would embrace Western values and join the civilised world. It took no account of a ruined economy, depleted and exhausted human capital and the mental and moral dent made by 70 years of Soviet rule. Nobody knew what kind of country would succeed the Soviet Union, or what being Russian really meant. The removal of ideological and geographical constraints did not add moral clarity. In particular, the intelligentsia—the engine of Soviet collapse—was caught unprepared. When their “hopeless cause” became reality, it quickly transpired that the country lacked a responsible elite able and willing to create new institutions. The Soviet past and its institutions were never properly examined; instead, everything Soviet became a subject of ridicule. The very word “Soviet” was shortened to sovok, which in Russian means “dustpan”. In fact, says Mr Gudkov of Levada, this self-mockery was not a reasoned rejection of the Soviet system; it was playful and flippant. Sidelined by years of state paternalism and excluded from politics, most people did not want to take responsibility for the country's affairs. The flippancy ended when the government abolished price regulation, revealing the worthlessness of Soviet savings, and Boris Yeltsin, faced with an armed rebellion, fired on the Soviet parliament in 1993. Soon the hope of a miracle was replaced by disillusion and nostalgia. As Mr Levada's polling showed, it did not mean that most people wished to return to the Soviet past. But they longed for order and stability, which they associated with the army and security services rather than with politicians. Enter the hero Mr Putin—young, sober, blue-eyed and calm—was a perfect match for people's expectations. Although picked by Yeltsin, he made a striking contrast with the ailing leader. Though he owed his career to the 1990s, he stressed that his own times were very different. Two factors made him popular: a growing economy, which allowed him to pay off salary and pension arrears, and the prosecution of a war in Chechnya. Both symbolised the return of the state. In the absence of any new vision or identity, the contrast with the 1990s could only be achieved by appealing to a period that preceded it—the late Soviet Union. Yet although Mr Putin exploited the nostalgia for an idealised Soviet past and restored the Soviet anthem, he had no intention of rebuilding the Soviet Union either economically or geographically. As he said repeatedly, “One who does not regret the passing of the Soviet Union has no heart; one who wants to bring it back has no brain.” As a KGB man, Mr Putin knew perfectly well that the state-controlled Soviet economy did not work and that the ideology was hollow. But also as a KGB man, he believed that democracy and civil society were simply an ideological cover-up adopted by the West. What mattered in the world—East or West—were money and power, and these were the things he set out to consolidate. The country was tired of ideology, and he did not force it. All he promised (and largely delivered) was to raise incomes; to restore Soviet-era stability and a sense of worth; to provide more consumer goods; and to let people travel. Since these things satisfied most of the demands for “Freedom” that had been heard from the late 1980s onwards, the people happily agreed to his request that they should stay out of politics. Though Mr Putin was an authoritarian, he seemed “democratic” to them. The ease with which Mr Putin eliminated all alternative sources of power was a testimony not to his strength but to Russia's institutional weakness.

Load more