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CIAO DATE: 8/01
Putin's Order of the Day
On The Issues
April 2000
To bring stability to Russia, President Vladimir Putin can either expand state control over society or grant society partnership with the state. The second choice will more likely lead to lasting success, but many in Russia would prefer a return to the pre-1991 tradition in which order was imposed by the state.
As Russia's new leader, Vladimir Putin faces a fundamental and unavoidable choice, one that will be at least as fateful as the one made by the Russians almost four years ago, when they gave Boris Yeltsin the victory over the Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov. He must choose between alternative means of bringing "order" and normalcy to Russia.
After eight and a half years, Boris Yeltsin—who inherited a decaying, impoverished, thoroughly corrupt totalitarian state—leaves behind a Russia that is by far the freest, most tolerant, liberal, and open to the outside world of any time in its history, save the eight months between February and November 1917. But Yeltsin did not remake the system into an efficient, equitable, orderly, upright, or stable one. Dismantling a totalitarian state is much like an earthquake, in that it leaves behind deep ravines and ugly piles of debris in the political and economic landscape. If Russia is to become prosperous, stable, and respectable, this terrain must be made safe.
Putin's Choice
One way to do this is to pour concrete from above. Russian history is replete with attempts (often lasting for decades) to achieve "order" and "unity" by expanding the state's control over society and retrieving the instruments of authoritarian coercion and mobilization, which have been significantly dulled under Yeltsin. Moreover, there is a strong national tradition of longing—when everything else fails—for the honest policeman: smart, energetic, and incorruptible.
The alternative route lies in continuing Yeltsin's policy of granting society partnership with the state, allowing the shoots of self- government that have begun to break through enough space and oxygen to develop strong roots. This is the path that will lead to lasting, organic stability, based on consent and consensus—for the first time in Russian history.
In politics, the choice is between tightening the screws (limiting freedom of the press; restricting regional autonomy; appointing, rather than electing, provincial governors) and continuation of crude, bare-bones yet real democracy and federalism (a press free from government censorship, the acquisition of power solely through free elect ions and real choices before the voters, and election of all local leaders).
In the economy, the options are putting "oligarchs" in jail by extralegal procedures and kangaroo trials—or putting them out of business by depriving them of access to high political offices and separating political and economic power. Similarly, the Kremlin could try to stem the flight of capital from Russia by suppressing the free flow of money across Russian borders—or by ensuring that keeping money in Russian banks is safe and profitable. This would require overhauling banking regulations, rescinding confiscatory taxes, and allowing foreign banks to compete with Russian financial institutions.
What Russians Want
Given his KGB background and the national tradition, Putin's initial impulse is almost certain to be in the direction of a police renaissance, like the one that occurred during the brief rule of Yuri Andropov. He should beware, however, of misinterpreting his mandate. Russians, like voters everywhere, are capable of holding seemingly contradictory views. Their yearning for order and stability—nostalgia for pre-1991—is not unlike that of East Germans, only a third of whom, in a poll last year, said they liked living in a democracy. Every seventh wanted the Berlin Wall back.
Yet in every poll in which Russians have been asked if they would sacrifice the key political and personal liberties (such as freedom to publish, to travel abroad, to form opposition parties, to hold meetings and demonstrations, or to criticize the authorities) the answer of a clear majority has been no. The Russians want order but not a dictatorship nor even creeping authoritarianism.
The ability to see the difference and maneuver accordingly will be a test of Putin's political instinct and statesmanship. An even more important test will be the ability of Russian civil society to resist, slow down, and reverse encroachment on political and economic liberties. We will know soon whether eight and a half years of liberty under Yeltsin were only a bright interlude—or the beginning of a new era in Russian history.
Leon Aron, a resident scholar at AEI, is the author of Yeltsin: a Revolutionary Life. A version of this article appeared in the Washington Post on March 29, 2000.
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