Post-Soviet Politics | Thoughts on the political, economic and social development of the former Soviet Union

A grey cloud over Euro 2012

06-05-2012

2012 in Ukraine has been a litany of woe. Following her arrest, trial and imprisonment in 2011, former Prime Minister and opposition politician Yulia Tymoshenko is now on hunger strike. Recently released photos show bruises to her body; allegedly the work of prison guards. With matches of the upcoming Euro 2012 championship scheduled to take place in the city of Kharkiv near the penal colony where Tymoshenko is held, various EU governments have announced their intention to boycott the Ukrainian matches of the tournament (which is to be jointly held with Poland). German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains undecided, but has hinted that she will attend. The UK government has stayed quiet so far.

In March, the horrific murder of Oksana Makar by a gang of mazhory in the eastern city of Mykolaiv (in this case, the gilded offspring of Party of Regions officials) provoked nationwide shock and reflection. In April, over thirty people were injured in four explosions at bus stops in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, eerily reminiscent of other pre-crackdown explosions in the post-Soviet world (the Moscow apartment bombings and the bizarre Minsk metro bombing). It’s perhaps cynical to assume this was a regime-sanctioned ‘false flag’ operation heralding a period of authoritarian consolidation, but it’s also difficult to explain such a seemingly motiveless attack.

There is no reason for these grim examples to spell disaster for the tournament. The hospitable Ukrainians will warmly welcome visitors to their cities and the economy will benefit greatly from the influx of tourists, but the grey cloud over the country will remain.

In some ways, however, the boycotts seem a strange choice for EU leaders to make. Will they also boycott the 2018 World Cup in Russia if the human rights situation there remains poor? The EU understandably wants the Yanukovych administration to move towards its system of values, but shunning and making an example of Ukraine makes potential EU integration a more distant prospect and only serves to please Moscow.

The sad fact is that Tymoshenko will, like Mikhail Khodorkovsky in Russia, serve the full sentence she has been given. The Yanukovych government has no intention to release her early, and any boycott of the tournament will have little effect on the political situation in the country. Commentators picturing Tymoshenko’s imprisonment as a PR disaster for Ukraine miss the point. The Yanukovych administration isn’t concerned with PR or the country’s image abroad.

The purpose of Tymoshenko’s imprisonment is to remove her as a potential political threat and for the regime to continue their real business of personal enrichment. Vladimir Putin has offered medical assistance to Tymoshenko, which would surely suit the Ukrainian government better than having her flown to Germany for treatment. If even Russia is reaching out to help, the folly of Yanukovych’s personal crusade against Tymoshenko is made clearer, and the prospect of rejoicing in three weeks of the beautiful game becomes more and more unpalatable.

Putin’s ‘Little Father’ complex

By: Christopher Leigh

10-03-2012

Russia

We have shown that our people are truly able to easily distinguish between the desire for progress and renewed political provocation that has only one objective – to destroy Russian sovereignty and usurp power. The Russian people have now shown that in our country such choices and scenarios will not pass.

- Vladimir Putin, 5 March 2012.

President-elect Vladimir Putin’s tearful speech on March 5th thanked his supporters for, once again, promising him another spell as Russia’s supreme leader, but gave the impression of a man beginning to see himself differently. Once the disciplined administrator sent to right the wrongs of 1990s Russia and restore the state to its former glory, Putin now seems to see himself as the Tsarist ‘Little Father’ figure; paternal protector of Russian interests, seer of its destiny and unique guardian of its sovereignty.

Seemingly relieved to not have to face a second round in the presidential vote, Putin spoke elatedly about how he and his people had “won a great fight”. With campaign articles promising modernisation at home allied with strength and protection in international affairs, Putin’s mind must have also been on how he can deliver on these pledges. Few believe he can. Despite its great potential, the promise of modernisation has eluded Russia for years, with its BRIC colleagues looking more dynamic with every passing year.

So what will change? In the few months he has left to serve, President Medvedev seems bent on political reform, and will try to change as much as he can before his power is neutered in May. This is anathema to Putin, whose post-Beslan reforms, particularly the direct election of regional governors, speak of a mindset that sees strong control from the centre as the only way to preserve order and keep Russia stable. Medvedev’s ordering of a review into the verdict passed on Mikhail Khodorkovsky is either a transparent bluff aimed at temporarily placating the opposition, or a weak attempt to try and secure some kind of good legacy for himself.

In six or 12 years, Putin will no longer be the hunting, shooting, action man of today. Power, both within the political elite and in the opposition, will ebb and flow around the Kremlin in the coming years. Putin will need to beef-up the vertikal vlasti’ and maintain order in the Kremlin clans. Some analysts have spoken of the possibility of a palace coup, but too many people benefit from Putin’s sistema for him to be pushed out by those around him. The status quo is just too desirable. Others talk of liberal figures like former finance minister and Putin ally, Alexei Kudrin, or even opposition presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov, being brought into the tent when Putin begins his presidency.

To the public, the Putin brand is only fading. It is not yet toxic. The protests may become less frequent and eventually the spotlight will shift away from Russia. What is for sure, however, is that the consensus built by Putin has become untenable. Grassroots revolutions are preying on anachronistic political systems the world over, and hyper-networked citizens are demanding change. Russia is a long way from such a revolution, but its long history tells us that reform has only been implemented when all other options have been exhausted, so instability will undoubtedly lie ahead.

Protesters may yet head to the squares of Russia’s cities – tents in hand – and Putin may yet find that when you crown yourself Tsar, you reduce your escape routes.

Who votes for Yanukovych?

By: Christopher Leigh

12-02-2012

Ukraine

Just prior to Ukraine’s 2010 presidential election, a regional newspaper published in the country’s industrial east quoted a woman who claimed she would kill herself if Yanukovych did not win. Perhaps not true and undoubtedly an extreme case, but this example goes some way to describe the level of support Yanukovych and the Party of Regions have always had in this part of the country.

Few states have such clearly divided political geography. The maps below show the percentage of votes given to Yanukovych in all regions of Ukraine during the final round of both the 2004 and 2010 presidential elections. The Autonomous Republic of Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet (based in Ukraine until 2042 following the Kharkiv Accords of 2010), and the republics hugging the Russian border to the east are where Yanukovych polls strongest. So what is this support down to?

On a visit to the Donbass - the historic coal-producing region in eastern Ukraine – in 2011, it was repeatedly clear to me that the residents there vote for Yanukovych simply because he is ‘our guy’. The population appreciate his loyalty to the area (Yanukovych was born in Donetsk and worked there for many years before becoming its governor) and see him as a bulwark against the ‘orange threat’ which materialised in 2004. In western Ukraine, home to the main support base of the pro-West opposition, anti-Yanukovych feeling is strongest. A young man there once told me that ‘here, nobody has any faith in his ability to govern. He is regarded as a figurehead President. Much of the actual governing comes from Ukrainian bureaucrats and Russian advisors’.

In Donetsk, capital of the Donbass, I asked Igor, a 24 year-old resident, why the region votes for Yanukovych:

‘Many people here are working men whose lives revolve around the daily shift in the mine and whose days are so dangerous that they think that each shift could be their last. They aren’t well educated, so they vote for the consensus candidate; the person everyone else in their mine votes for and the person their bosses tell them to vote for. Then the miner’s wives vote for Yanukovych, without even thinking why, and their friends and parents’.

Yanukovych and the Party of Regions also enjoy embedded support in many of the institutions of eastern Ukraine. In a school in Donetsk, for example, a teacher warned me and members of the European Voluntary Service to not talk about politics with the students during a lesson on the changes brought about in the city by billionaire, and funder of Yanukovych’s campaigns, Rinat Akhmetov. The headmaster and most of the staff explained that they were all members of the Party of Regions and, upon hearing of our discussion topic, issued a stern warning to halt any activity relating to Ukraine’s domestic political affairs.

The division in the country causes low-level social friction in many ways. There is a palpable sense of anger at the aspects of Ukrainian culture that have been trodden-on since Yanukovych came to power in 2010. The Ukrainian language, for one, is routinely disregarded. A video of Yanukovych giving a speech at Christmas time and forgetting the Ukrainian word for Christmas tree, pausing interminably and then resorting to the Russian word ‘yolka’ is widely circulated among western Ukrainian youth (see here). Prime Minister Mykola Azarov refused to speak Ukrainian at the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko, despite it being the official state language and de jure language of all official administrative business. The opposition are also painfully aware of the negative effect that the trail and imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko has had on Ukraine’s image abroad. To them, Yanukovych is the quintessential Soviet manager; a provincial mediocrity who reportedly plagiarised a book on the future of Ukraine (see here) and who built a house for himself in the middle of a nature reserve outside Kiev (see here).

Yanukovych’s supporters, on the other hand, see the opposition as an unstable, alien entity that is not representative of their interests, whether economic or linguistic. In the east of the country, young people routinely tell Soviet-era jokes focussing on the Ukrainian accent and habits. The western Ukrainians, they argue, are a peasant people, who don’t deserve to be the country’s primary political force; it is the east – the most populous, prosperous and productive region – which is of greatest importance. These issues of identity will be very hard to resolve within the state’s current borders. As the European Union and the faltering power apparat in Moscow continue firefighting their own crises, Yanukovych is preparing to host (with Poland) the UEFA European Football Championships. Foreign visitors to both the west and east of the country, where the matches will be held, will probably sense little of the animus that runs through Ukrainian public life, but it is there, and both the current administration and the opposition are at fault in not aiming to remove it.

The Caucasus and Russia’s new nationalism

By: Christopher Leigh

29-01-2012

Russia

In-text references have been omitted from this post for clarity, but a bibliography of texts cited is at the end.

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The North Caucasus is not ballast, but one of the pearls of Russia.

—Vladimir Putin, August 2011.

The separation of all non-Russian territories could be the last chance for the survival of the Russian nation. Better amputation than gangrene.

—Konstantin Krylov, President, Russian Public Movement, January 2011.

As the Soviet Union fractured and broke up, scholars wondered which forms of nationalism would emerge in the newly-independent states of the great, multi-ethnic empire. In the Russian Federation, nationalism and Russian national identity have been continually debated by both the people and the political elite. This post analyses the evolution of post-Soviet Russian nationalism, with particular reference to its recent – largely populist, extra-parliamentary and grass-roots – incarnation, manifested best in the ‘Russian March’ and ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ movements. The latter phenomenon, gaining publicity during the public protests which followed the 2011 Duma election, has focussed on attacking the federal financing of the republics of Chechnya, Ingushetia and Dagestan. Its composition – the fusion of a number of smaller nationalist groups – provides a clear picture of the wider trend at work in the evolution of modern Russian nationalism. Instead of remaining a tool of Kremlin ideology used to reconcile civic difference and orchestrate the national agenda from above, modern Russian nationalism is resurgent as a popular, bottom-up movement with grievances symptomatic of a state undergoing transition, modernisation and social flux.

To form a tentative hypothesis explaining the path nationalism is taking in modern Russia, we may turn to the classic theoretical literature on the subject; namely Gellner’s work on nations and modernity and then Anthony Smith’s celebrated theory of ethnosymbolism, which both translate well to the Russian context. Smith’s conception of the ethnie; ‘a named human population with a myth of common ancestry, shared historical memories, elements of shared culture, an association with a specific “homeland” and a measure of solidarity’ can accurately apply to the ethnic Russian population whom the modern nationalists largely comprise of, and claim to represent. Gellner’s definition of nationalism as ‘a principle that holds that the political and national unit should be congruent’ is evocative of the Russian nationalist desire to forge a renewed political entity in which the rights of the Russkii majority have primacy.

In short, the ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ movement is a response to the nascent modernity of post-Soviet Russia and the changes it brings – in immigration, crime, welfare and federal funding – whilst also being grounded in the tension between different ethnosymbolic traditions forced to inhabit the same emerging political space. These ideas will be the yardstick against which we can assess the provenance and motivation behind the ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ movement and the development of the ideology that engendered it.

Building the nation: contextualising the evolution of modern Russian nationalism

In the years following the Soviet break-up, scholars analysed the emerging nationalisms that arose both in former Union republics and Russia’s new ethnofederal subjects. The ethnic Russians themselves, whether in Russia or in the Russian diaspora across the post-Soviet space largely failed to politically mobilise in the same way, remaining submissive to the economic ‘shock therapy’ being waged around them. Anatol Lieven has characterised this lack of interest in renewing the Russian national identity as ‘the exhaustion of Russian idealism’, arguing that, with the withdrawal of Soviet internationalism, ethnic Russians were left without a defining national idea on which to build a new identity. Speaking in 1991, nationalist firebrand Vladimir Zhirinovskii described Russia as ‘the most humiliated and insulted nation’.

The ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ movement highlights the reversal of this ennui. Nationalism has become sufficiently important to bring large numbers to the streets and for 58% of respondents in a recent Levada survey to say they support the term ‘Russia for Russians’. The movement evidences the broad shift from the downtrodden 1990s nationalism of Zhirinovskii’s LDPR and the Communist Party to a popular nationalism projected on to the ethnic Other. Marlène Laruelle has compared 1990s ‘red’ nationalism – which held the West as its principal Other – with the patriotic nationalism of United Russia:

[. . .] the first nationalism is that of the defeated. It expresses a refusal of the post-Soviet world and of the pauperization resulting from the reforms of the 1990s. [. . .] the satisfied nationalism of United Russia is that of the winners, of those who have profited from the changes of these last two decades. The first sort of nationalism has not disappeared; it can be seen with the development of the skinheads and the Movement Against Illegal Immigration. After its main battle theme, national identity, was revived by the authorities, this first nationalism shifted its focus onto a second object, namely the migration question [. . .].

Laruelle’s analysis is right in acknowledging that there is still a plurality of views in Russian nationalist thought, from patriotic Communism to Dugin’s Eurasianism. The overwhelming trend, however, is to movements like ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’, which reject the corruption and ineffectiveness of public politics and its shallow brand of sanctioned nationalism.

The migration question Laruelle mentions is the main concern of all major nationalist groups. Unburdened by the Soviet system, in which resources – human and capital goods – were moved at the behest of central planners, large numbers of people have moved to Russia’s urban centres in search of work. Most arrive from Central Asia and the Caucasus. The latter is largely terra incognita to most Russians who don’t have ancestral ties to the region, demonstrating how the call of modernity has upset the ethnic balance of many regions, fermenting nationalism.

Overall, the problem with nation-building in the wake of a collapsed empire, as one scholar argues, is that ‘the existing borders were drawn by the imperial power not to reflect actual ethnic and national differences, but for its own convenience’. ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’, in this sense, tells us that modern Russian nationalism is a response to the federal nature of modern Russia, in which ‘nation’ and political space are not one whole. The extreme anger felt by nationalists towards the ethnic Other also shows how failed any attempts to build civic nationalism were in Russia in the 1990s.

Fed up with Federalism? Statism and Russia’s ‘new nationalism’

Putin has described himself as a gosudarstvennik; a statist, commited to the preservation of a strong and secure Russia as a ‘community of citizens’. However, the task of ruling such a vast state, with so many constituent federal subjects with wildly divergent economies and local governance structures, necessitates a high degree of intervention from the Centre. This is especially true in Chechnya, which Russian nationalist groups say receives 90% of its federal budget from Moscow. The idea that this funding is solely being channeled towards Chechen criminal gangs and the ruling kleptocracy of Ramzan Kadyrov is common in the nationalist community and amongst the wider Russian public, with 30% of those polled in a 2011 survey claiming the defining feature of Kadyrov’s leadership is his clan’s full control of the republic.

The underlying issue in the nationalist’s desire to cut off federal funding to Chechnya is the perceived preferential treatment the republic is receiving, making obvious the extreme inequality in federal financing across Russia. Head of the National Democractic Alliance, Alexei Shiropaev has described how a ‘new nationalism’ has evolved as a result of Moscow’s flawed North Caucasus policy:

‘Russians need their own Kadyrov’. This is a logical consequence of the development of the old Russian nationalism: reactionary ideology oriented on authoritarianism, a closed society, paternalistic, archaic and medieval moral values. Old Russian nationalism openly declares disdain for democracy, civil rights and dislike of ‘persons of a certain nationality’ [. . .]. The vector of the old Russian nationalism – the Eurasian, the Horde, the Imperial, the anti-Western – this Russian nationalism is trying to gain support for the most odious regimes, whether it’s Chechnya, or Iran. It is objectively a pro-Putin political movement, which speculates on the most reactionary remnants and stereotypes of Russian society.

The anger over federal funding of the North Caucasus has made the nationalist movement into a serious opposition group. As Russia’s internal security depends on maintaing strict control of the Caucasus, it is unlikely there will be any respite to the funding, but the national discourse over the issue tells us that Russian nationalism has evolved past the traditional Russian ‘imperial-thinking’ expansionism that Shiropaev describes. It has become a movement which, having closely observed Putin’s pyrrhic victory in Chechnya, is unsure whether the volatile ethnic regions Russia has fought for so many times are really worth fighting for. ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ might be a movement containing extreme nationalist elements, but a large part of its message is based on a latent tiredness with the violence stemming from its most volatile regions.

The development of an ‘uncivil society’

The growth of ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ and similar movements is reflective of the rise in what Andreas Umland has termed Russia’s ‘uncivil society’. This network of ‘nonstate institutions and networks in Russian society contain ultranationalist, fundamentalist, and protofacist subsectors whose nature casts doubt on the use of the construct civil society to designate them’. Modern Russian nationalism then, has developed an eco-system of websites, media outlets, groups and associations to spread its message in the same way that political parties do, with charismatic leaders such as Dimitri Demushkin of the now-banned Slavic Union, performing a similar function to the LDPR’s Zhirinovskii. Indeed, the rapprochement between the LDPR and the main contemporary nationalist groupings was evident in a 2011 roundtable, held in the State Duma, on ‘the Russia question’. The rising popularity and appeal of modern nationalism has resulted in a clear sign of entry to the mainstream; co-option by a party represented in the Duma.

The SOVA Centre, which monitors Russian nationalism, has argued that nationalist organisations are forming new, stronger alliances following the banning of a number of groups. Their aim is to ‘evade total marginalization due to the accumulation of resources, and secondly to burst onto the field of public politics by demonstrating a ‘unified nationalist front”’. State attempts to ban different sections of this emergent ‘uncivil society’ suggests the threat they feel from a popular nationalist bloc. The gradual merger and consolidation of different groups, with the influence of more mainstream political figures like Zhirinovskii suggest that federal funding of the North Caucasus is becoming a more politically volatile issue.

Navalny

Out of the myriad personalities in Russian nationalism, Alexei Navalny has proved the most compelling. Popularised in the role of anti-corruption blogger, shareholder activist and doyen of Russian liberals, Navalny’s star has been rising of late. But it is the undercurrent of nationalism underpinning much of his public commentary that is potentially most important to the future of Russian politics. Uniting Russia’s burgeoning protest movement on a platform of anti-corruption and fair elections, Navalny is also admired by many for his participation in the annual Russian March and his expressed desire to ‘stop feeding the Caucasus’. The flakiness of Russia’s opposition is infamous, with many parties being creations of the Kremlin necessary only to draw votes away from the Communists and LDPR at election time. In contrast, Navalny is the first opposition figure who appears genuine and who could possibly unite the dispersed liberal vote and wage war on Putin. This is what the Kremlin is afraid of.

The exact character of Navalny’s nationalism, and the potential nationalities policy of any political party he may come to lead, will determine how the issue is discussed in Russia over the next presidential term. What is for sure is that the conversation over Russian nationalism is now out of the Kremlin’s hands. The currents of change and political awakening surging around in modern Russia will decide what identity the majority of Russians will strive for, not the Kremlin propaganda machine.

Conclusion

Geoffrey Hosking’s description of Peter the Great ruling over a ‘multi-ethnic [. . .] service state’ sounds remarkably similar to the country that the Russian government currently oversees. Russia’s vast population, with its ethnic differences previously drowned out by the tune of the Soviet Internationale, is experiencing the profound change that adjusting to a new political space brings. The ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ movement signifies how the feeling of imperial expansionism fuelling nationalist rhetoric in the 1990s has been displaced by a widespread popular desire to actually allow the secession of restive republics like Chechnya. A November 2011 Levada poll of 1500 people across Russia showed that 34% advocated a separation of Chechnya from Russia, with a further 23% saying that they felt neutral about a possible secession.

Migration, modernity and ethnic factors underly this considerable shift in the preferences of the Russian people. The incredible growth Russia experienced during the 2000s inured the population to a prosperity-for-stability deal with the Kremlin. The flow of money towards the Caucasus palliated the security situation there and was tolerated when living standards were rising, but the economic crisis of 2008 signalled an end to the popular acceptance of statist federal subsidies.

The evolution of Russian nationalism, then, is a path of defeat, modernisation, crisis and renewal. ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ highlights the initial failure of post-Soviet nation-building policies, the weakness of civil society and the transparency of patriotic, Kremlin-nationalism created only to justify ‘the interests of the ruling class, which by promoting confusion between the public and the private has succeeded in carving up the most profitable political, bureaucratic and economic functions.’ Ironically, the migration caused by the aggressiveness of Moscow’s North Caucasus policy is now the main factor causing nationalists to call for the region’s starvation or secession. Ethnic tension is rarely combustive when all sides are enjoying prosperity; it is only ignited when inequalities emerge, so ‘Stop feeding the Caucasus’ also attests to the drastic social change, economic transition and loss of values in the Russia of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

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Bibliography

Wayne Allensworth, The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernisation and Post-Communist Russia, Lanham MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.

Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism, Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983.

Geoffrey Hosking, Russia and the Russians: A History from Rus to the Russian Federation, London: Allen Lane, 2001.

Mark N. Katz, ‘Nationalism and the Legacy of Empire’, Current History, 585, 1994, 93, pp. 327-331.

Marlène Laruelle, In the Name of Nation: Nationalism and Politics in Contemporary Russia, New York NY: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.

Anatol Lieven, Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power, New Haven CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998.

Richard Sakwa, Russian Politics and Society, 3rd ed., London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

Michael Schwirz, ‘Russian Anger Grows Over Chechnya Subsidies’, New York Times (NY, USA), 8 October 2011.

Anton Shekhovtsov and Andreas Umland, ‘Vladimir Zhirinovsky and the LDPR’, Russian Analytical Digest, 102, 2011, pp. 14-16.

Oxana Shevel, ‘Russian Nation-building from Yel’tsin to Medvedev: Ethnic, Civic or Purposefully Ambiguous?’, Europe-Asia Studies, 63, 2011, 2, pp. 179-202.

Anthony D. Smith, ‘A Europe of Nations. Or the Nation of Europe?’, Journal of Peace Research, 30, 1993, 2, pp. 129-135.

Vera Tolz, ‘Forging the Nation: National Identity and Nation Building in Post-Communist Russia’, Europe-Asia Studies, 50, 1998, 6, pp. 933-1022.

Andreas Umland, ‘Toward an Uncivil Society? Contextualizing the Decline of Post-Soviet Russian Parties of the Extreme Right Wing’, Demokratizatsiya, 10, 2002, 3, pp. 362-391.

Online Sources

‘Kadyrov’s Chechnya Remains Highly Dependent on Russian Subsidies’, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 198, October 27 2011, 8 <http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=38577>.

‘Russian Nationalist leader threatens with popular uprising, if Caucasus is not ceded from Russia’, Kavkaz Center, 25 January 2011 <http://www.kavkaznews.com/eng/content/2011/01/25/13386.shtml>.

‘Natsionalizm v covremennoĭ Rossii’, Levada Tsentr, 4 February 2011 <http://www.levada.ru/press/2011020407.html>.

‘Rossiyane ob obstanovke na Severnom Kavkaze, natsionalizme, politike i finansirovanii regiona, lozunge “Khvatit kormit’ Kavkaz”’, Levada Tsentr, 15 December 2011 <http://www.levada.ru/15-12-2011/rossiyane-ob-obstanovke-na-severnom-kavkaze-natsionalizme-politike-i-finansirovanii-regio>.

Alexei Shiopaev, ‘Dva vektora v Russkom Natsionalizme’, Natsional-Demokraticheskiĭ Al’ians, 18 June 2011 <http://nazdem.info/texts/247>.

‘Vnimanie! Vstuplenie vethnopoliticheskoe dvizhenie “Russkie”’, Slavyanskiy Soyuz, 19 March 2010 <http://www.demushkin.com/content/articles/318/3323.html>.

‘Spring 2011: Causes Célèbres and New Ultra-right Formations’, SOVA Center for Information and Analysis, 12 July 2011 <http://www.sova-center.ru/en/xenophobia/reports-analyses/2011/07/d22101/>.

‘Russian Nationalists Divided Over Caucasus Slogans’, RFE/RL (Moscow), 3 November 2011 <http://www.rferl.org/content/russian_nationalists_divided_over_caucasus_slogans/24380500.html>.

Thomas Grove, ‘In Russia, nationalists turn on Putin’, Reuters, December 1 2011 <http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/01/us-russia-nationalism-idUSTRE7B013220111201>.

‘United’ Russia?

By: Christopher Leigh

11-12-2011

Russia

Adapt or perish, now as ever, is nature’s inexorable imperative.

H.G Wells

An image of a polar bear, dying on a Kremlin spire, covered the website of influential newspaper Kommersant on the day of Russia’s State Duma election. Placed by unknown hackers, the furry creature – logo of the United Russia party – provided a fitting metaphor for the party’s performance at the polls. Gaining 49% of the vote – down from 64% in 2007 – the preeminent ‘party of power’ is rapidly losing signs of life.

Yesterday, a reported 50,000 protesters gathered in Moscow. A dozen other Russian cities also saw smaller protests that represent the biggest popular demonstrations in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The masses are calling for another set of parliamentary elections, criticising the first vote as fraudulent. Widespread reports of ballot-stuffing and ‘carousel’ voting, in which buses of United Russia loyalists toured ballot stations, voting multiple times in different locations, have flooded the internet in recent days. This galvanised the Russian public – with the protesters seemingly drawn from all strata of society – and resulted in the mass mobilisation seen in Moscow’s Bolotnaya square, just across the river from the Kremlin.

The source of anger is largely Putin himself, government corruption, the electoral commission and the deadening, deterministic nature of Russian politics. In a post-Arab Spring world, with the much-discussed use of social media now ubiquitous among urban populations, the protests in Russia are unsurprising. Ukraine’s Orange Revolution of 2004 began in a similar, ground-up way, with public anger over the rigged Presidential election leading to mass demonstrations in Kiev’s Independence Square.

So will the events that occurred in Ukraine in 2004 be repeated in Russia?

In all likelihood, the answer is no. The expanding state apparatus in Russia has been enriched by 12 years of Putinism. Whether in the presidential seat or as Prime Minister, Putin has overseen rising levels of prosperity – albeit helped by the energy price explosion of the 2000s – and, consequently, the stability that Russians craved so much after the chaotic Yeltsin years. With such a large section of the elite depending on Putin to deliver his prosperity-for-stability deal, wholesale political change as a result of the protests is unlikely. What the protests do represent, however, is a renewed political consciousness that many believed ordinary Russians did not possess. By proving that the Kremlin’s famed ‘managed democracy’ is easily overhauled, with freedom of movement and protest a genuine possibility, Russians have been politically ‘woken up’. In this sense, the protests do not mean the end of Putin, but they may mean the end of Putinism and its dominance of Russian politics. Or perhaps just the beginning of the end.

What options does the Kremlin have? A violent crackdown would be disastrous, removing any legitimacy the regime still has and only serving to strengthen the opposition and protesters. Reform, on the other hand, is possible. The protests call President Medvedev’s ‘lame duck’ status into question; it is possible that his reform agenda could now play a greater role in the next presidential term. Will Putin choose to bring in Medvedev’s young staff of reformers so disappointed by the former’s decision to run for president again? Or will he maintain the status quo and forge ahead with his governing circle of siloviki, hoping that popular sentiment will recede? Not for the first time, Russia’s ruling elite are overseeing a system in dire need of reform, but impeded by factionalism within the Kremlin.

The protest has concretised a new political class; a section of Russian society who are likely to have holidayed in London or Finland, who have profited greatly from Putin’s time in the Kremlin, but who have become tired of domestic authoritarianism, the lack of free media and endemic corruption. Crucially, they have also witnessed the success of the ‘colour revolutions’ in the post-Soviet world and now the Arab Spring. With more protests already scheduled, the problem is unlikely to go away for Putin. The Kremlin’s response could spell disaster or it could herald the increased political liberalisation and economic reform that Russia’s citizens feel they deserve.

Power, identity and the ‘Orange’ threat: Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine, 2004-present.

By: Christopher Leigh

11-12-2011

Russia, Ukraine

In-text references have been omitted from this post for clarity, but a bibliography of texts cited is at the end.

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The Orange Revolution was a powerful example – an example of democracy for people around the world.

George Bush to Viktor Yushchenko, 2005.

Do you understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state?

Vladimir Putin to George Bush, 2008.

This post uses realist and constructivist international relations paradigms to interpret how power and identity have governed the Russian foreign policy response to a perceived geopolitical threat on its border: Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ of 2004. The political upheaval of the Soviet collapse resulted in the lack of a clear Russian foreign policy toward its newly-independent ‘near abroad’. The sensitive security issue of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal and the status of the Black Sea Fleet meant that relations were primarily conflictual in the 1990s. Into this post-imperial policy vacuum, Ukraine’s popular uprising – within the wider context of other ‘colour’ revolutions in the post-Soviet space – resulted in a state in which a genuine ‘euro-atlanticist’ orientation emerged under the Yushchenko presidency, presenting a threat to Russian security and raising the issue of how far shared national identity in the ‘Slavic triangle’ would influence bilateral relations between the states in this new geopolitical reality.

The framework in which foreign policy is formulated in the Russian Federation is largely realist in nature. Russian strategists differ little from their Tsarist or Soviet predecessors in believing that any country with sufficient military potential, size or material resources constitutes a threat to Russian sovereignty. With the historical legacy of ‘buffer states’ receding quickly, Russia’s threat perception has grown more acute. In this context, the Orange Revolution acted as a proxy for the threat of greater Western influence in Russia’s zone of ‘privileged interest’. As a result, Russia’s foreign policy towards Ukraine has focussed on subverting the nascent democratic process to prevent ‘democratic contagion’ in the wider post-Soviet world.

Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine is dual-pronged. The ‘hard power’ prong is best characterised by Russia’s use of energy policy as the main way to limit Ukraine’s political options and to nurture its economic dependency. The ‘soft power’ prong is visible in Russia’s use of subversive tactics to undermine Ukrainian sovereignty and extend tacit dominion over the state through the use of political pressure, propaganda and support for separatism. The two policy prongs act as a form of ‘new imperialism’ projected by Russia over the former Soviet states.

Lastly, I give a constructivist analysis of Russia’s foreign policy toward Ukraine, which contends that the policy of suppressing the ‘orange threat’ is indicative of Russia’s fear of a rift in the East Slavic identity. The failure of Russian political elites to, firstly, comprehend Ukrainian independence and, secondly, accept the legitimacy of the Orange Revolution represents a reluctance to believe that Ukraine would seek rapprochement with the Western ‘Other’ at a time when Russia is undergoing a ‘Great Power’ resurgence. A traditional realist interpretation of the relative material power of the two states cannot account for the shared identity – cultural, ethnic, religious – that makes Russian-Ukrainian relations an exceptional case in the geopolitics of the region.

Russian foreign policy sees the Orange Revolution as a threat to its ‘civilisational idea’. Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US national security adviser, noted that the crux of the relationship was that ‘without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine, suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire’. Putin’s recent outline of a ‘Eurasian Union’, with a ‘harmonious economic community on a territory from Lisbon to Vladivostok’, is the most serious attempt to outline a Russian civilisational idea since the end of the Soviet Union, giving it primacy within its zone of special interest, whilst engaging with the West as an equal competitor and rival pole of the developed world. Ukraine’s assent to the plan is crucial to the restoration of this new Russian ‘empire’, which serves to guarantee Russia’s conception of Self, whilst balancing the threat of the Western ‘Other’. Russia’s foreign policy now demands that Ukraine cedes its ‘orange’ elements and acquiesces with Russia’s revived civilisational idea.

Gas wars and the ‘new imperialism’: the political economy of Russian foreign policy

Through Gazprom and a tentacular network of gas pipelines, the Russian government has de facto control of energy policy, and has enacted an overt tactic of subsidising political loyalty and punishing political dissent in its ‘near abroad’. In 2001, before the Orange Revolution, negotiations between Putin and Ukrainian President Kuchma on joining a Russia-Belarus union were pressured by Putin’s claim that gas prices to Ukraine would rise if it chose to ‘behave like a West European country’. This is consistent with the Russian Federation’s Foreign Policy Concept of 2000, which states that ‘Russia must be prepared to utilize all its available economic levers and resources for upholding its national interests’.

The scholarly debate on whether Russia’s energy policy constitutes a ‘new imperialism’ is divisive. Foreign policy scholar Andrei Tsygankov, writing on the 2005 ‘gas war’, posits Russian ‘gas imperialism’ as an attempt to modernise economic relations with its neighbours and introduce market pricing, not as a tool of political coercion:

The dispute was first and foremost about correcting a heavily distorted price structure, with Moscow working to reduce the amount of subsidies to the Ukrainian economy and Kiev, understandably, resisting the effort. Russia’s decision reflected a policy adjustment in the post-Soviet world following the coloured revolutions. [. . . ] the decision might have been driven by economic modernisation, rather than political power considerations.

Picturing the numerous gas wars as purely economic disputes, however, fails to analyse the way Russian policy changes depending on the political orientation of the Ukrainian President. Punishment seemed to be implicit in the Russian decision to raise gas prices in 2005, with Yushchenko’s newly installed as President, from $50 to $230 per 1000 cubic metre in a single year. The insulting letter issued by President Medvedev to Yushchenko in 2009 highlights the highly personal nature of the bilateral relationship, with energy used as the main tool to exact revenge for ‘the Orange Revolution and the subsequent change of power in Kyiv’. Before the Orange Revolution, Former Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, noted that ‘Russia resolutely rejects any “neo-imperial” ambitions and firmly advocates the creation of a democratic system of international relations’. Analyst Dmitri Trenin argues that Russia is now post-imperial and that the weakness of the state means that Russia must now focus on establishing itself in the international system, rather than aiming to increase its influence in the post-Soviet world:

Russian moves toward integration are being carefully, and often suspiciously analyzed for their potential neo-imperialist implications. However, the more insightful Russia-watchers have recognized early on that it is now Russia’s weakness, rather than its strength, that is the problem for the West.

Trenin’s analytical framework, however, is too reliant on the geopolitics of the situation, with much of his argument devoted to the territory Russia has lost. Soft power and economic imperialism have extended Russia’s reach into countries that broke away during the Soviet collapse, despite the loss of land, maintaing influence in an extremely imperial fashion.

Russia’s energy policy to Ukraine following the Orange Revolution displays many of the characteristics of empires. Firstly, Russian energy policy can be seen as ‘neo-imperialist’ in its maintenance of a ‘web of economic dependencies’ on the imperial ‘centre’ – Moscow – which has demonstrated its power to cut off gas to large parts of Europe in 2006 and 2009. Secondly, Russia’s gas subsidising policy has the effect of an imperial power ‘buying’ the loyalty of its subject. As soon as Ukraine chose to orientate towards the West in 2004, prices were increased. Thirdly, Russian policy in the energy sphere can be seen as imperial because of the the geopolitical, economic and ‘ideational’ reality of the scenario. Confronted with the Western ‘Other’, which has strongly allied with orange Ukraine, Russia’s energy policy is combative, interest-strengthening and typical of its Realpolitik.

The election of Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine’s President in 2010 brought stability to the Russo-Ukrainian relationship. Russian policy switched away from the gas disputes that occurred under Yushchenko and focussed immediately on the signing of the Kharkiv Accords, which happened only two months after Yanukovych took office. Essentially an agreement that extended the lease of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet base in Crimea in exchange for a 30% reduction in the price of gas, Yanukovych claimed he signed the agreement to ‘save the country’. The degree of sovereignty given to Russia in the accords, however, seems to strongly suggest that the negotiations were geared towards securing Russia ‘geopolitical dividends’ and not giving Ukraine a better gas price. In consolidating its position as a great power, Russia has aimed to increase the price of its gas exports, but the economic motive is not an end in itself. Russia deals in the currency of vlast‘ and this is the real goal of the political economy of its foreign policy.

Soft power, ‘active measures’ and ‘fifth columns’

The soft power prong of Russia’s foreign policy response to the Orange Revolution is aimed at promoting stability, both in Russia’s domestic political arena and the wider post-Soviet space, where the threat of more ‘colour revolutions’ is strongest. Among the most visible soft power arms of the Russian government are its youth movements. The Russian elite, noting the age of the majority of Ukraine’s Orange protesters, created Nashi, ‘founded in order to generate a “patriotic” (regime-loyal) focal point for the teenage population which are easiest to influence in their political outlook’. It operates primarily domestically, but its foreign policy implication is visible in many of its statements; in 2010, Nashi activists rallied at the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow to ‘congratulate the Ukrainian people on the defeat of the Viktor Yushchenko policy of rapprochement with American “friends”, and to sum up the grim results of the Orange president’s five-year rule’.

The creation of Russia-dominated NGO networks is central to its post-Orange Revolution foreign policy. The Orange Revolution was seen by Russian elites as humiliating proof of its dwindling influence in the post-Soviet space. As such, Russia has begun its own ‘humanitarian trend’ in foreign policy, focussing on the creation of pro-Russian NGOs, think-tanks and media organisations targeting the Russian population of post-Soviet states such as Ukraine’s largely Russophone south-east. In an addition to the pre-Orange Revolution Foreign Policy Concept of 2000, the 2008 version states that:

Russia actively develops interaction between the CIS Member States in the humanitarian sphere by preserving and increasing common cultural and civilizational heritage that provides an important resource for the whole of the CIS and for each of its Member States in the era of globalization. Particular attention is paid to supporting compatriots who live in the CIS Member States, as well as to negotiating mutual agreements intended to protect their educational, linguistic, social, labor, humanitarian and other rights and freedoms.

The focus on a shared ‘civilizational heritage’ with ‘compatriots’ abroad highlights the renewed impetus on a soft-power policy appealing to national unity in Russia’s foreign policy. This is particularly relevant to Ukraine, where 17% of the population identify as ethnically Russian. This significant diaspora has led some analysts to believe that a cultivation of a Russian ‘fifth column’ within Ukraine is part of Russia’s policy towards the country. The Black Sea Fleet’s extended lease in Crimea is arguably the clearest example of a potential ‘fifth column’ in Ukraine, acting as a loyal ethnic foothold in the region, with considerable military power.

In keeping with its policy of supporting compatriots abroad, Russia has provided financial support to numerous organisations NGO and civil society groups in Ukraine. Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) have tried to ban the People’s Front ‘Sevastopol-Crimea-Russia’ party, as well as pro-Russian groups in the Carpathian mountains and the region of Donetsk on grounds that they are ‘controlled from abroad’ and threaten Ukrainian sovereignty. The degree to which the soft power dimension of Russia’s foreign policy has increased in priority is evident in the statement by Foreign Minister Lavrov, who was forced to intervene in a dispute over Russia’s cable television provision to Ukraine, noting that south-east Ukraine “should have access to all mass media” from Russia.

The bulk of Moscow’s soft power foreign policy towards Ukraine is seemingly an update of the ‘active measures’ conceived by the Soviet security services ‘for “organising victory” beyond the USSR’; a world of secret collaboration, preventative action and ideological diversion in ‘unfriendly countries’. The appointment of ‘velvet counter-revolutionary’, Modest Kolerov, to head a new Presidential Directorate for Interregional Relations and Cultural Contacts with Foreign Countries, described by political consultant Gleb Pavlovsky as a way to ‘get around the problems in the post-Soviet territory, where the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has failed’ demonstrates the extent to which Russia’s foreign policy has come to be dominated by the quashing of real or imagined ‘orange’ threats.

Constructivist and civilisational approaches

The three east Slavic states have a common heritage that is often characterised as the product of one ancient Rus nation, and this is the view of many modern Russians, however:

[. . .] the fact that a common identity may have existed in the twelfth century is not at all the same thing as saying that Ukrainians and Belarusians are just “Russians” today. “Rus” was what came before all three, at a time when collective identities were extremely loose and modern “nations” as such did not really exist. [. . .] Russians are still brought up on the idea of a single ancient Rus/Russian nation and still have great difficulty adjusting to the idea not just of a separate Ukrainian state, but of the Ukrainians’ separate origin as a people.

This common identity has led the states to develop ‘virtual foreign policies’ towards each other, argues Kuzio (2003). The fraternal, informal nature of these policies is due to Russia’s inability to ‘reconcile itself to coming to terms with Ukraine as an independent state’ and an attitude of denial to an independent Ukrainian identity. In this context, a constructivist argument may be presented to explain Russia’s foreign policy response to the Orange Revolution.

The primary identity in the Russo-Ukrainian relationship is Russia’s own view of its Self as a great power, which has replaced Soviet ideology as the principal motivating factor of Russia’s foreign policy. Russia sees the West (America, the EU and NATO) as the main civilisational danger to this identity. Perhaps in order to differentiate itself from path of development chosen by Ukraine in 2004 – and also to shun the Western liberalism that produces painful memories of the 1990s ‘shock therapy’ experiment – Russia has constructed a ‘unique’ political identity: ‘sovereign democracy’. It has aimed to promote this identity in its neighbours through neo-imperial foreign policies, with the most successful example being the 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine, which ended the unstable ‘orange’ period and benefited Russian interests in Crimea through the extended Black Sea Fleet lease.

The West has sought to combat the pervasive Russian influence in Ukraine by promoting Ukraine’s ‘orange’ elements and condemning examples of explicit Russian intervention. This political ‘push and pull’ is mirrored in Ukraine’s domestic attitudes, which remain divided; the 2010 Presidential election was, crucially, deemed fair by Western observers and resulted in a 48.95% vote for Yanukovych and a 45.47% vote for West-leaning candidate Yulia Tymoshenko. This gives modern Ukraine the effect of being a geopolitical battleground between two ‘ideational’ opponents, where theories of government are tested. It can be argued that this is caused by state actors, both the West and Russia, adjusting to changes in the international system that the Orange Revolution helped cause. As Wendt (1992) argues in his pioneering work on constructivism:

The absence or failure of roles makes defining situations and interests more difficult, and confusion may result. This seems to be happening today in the United States and the former Soviet Union: without the cold war’s mutual attributions of threat and hostility to define their identities, these states seem unsure of what their ‘interests’ should be.

Writing shortly after independence, a group of Ukrainian intellectuals predicted that ‘Ukraine’s national security is not threatened by Russian military expansion, but by Russia’s potential use of social, cultural and psychological means.’ The common cultural, historical and religious identity of the east Slavic states have ‘penetrated every aspect of their current relationship’. It is the presence of pro-West and pro-Russia identities within Ukraine that threaten to cause a rift in the common historical bond and destabilise the country further.

Conclusion

In a region where politics, and foreign policies, are often ‘virtual’, Ukraine’s Orange Revolution was a resolute statement of democracy, which constituted a considerable challenge for Russia at a time when its aim was to continue building its status as a great power. With the aim of increasing its influence throughout the post-Soviet space and halting any further democratisation, the leadership responded ‘through domestic and foreign policies aimed at immunizing Russia from the “orange virus”’.

Characterised as a new, or neo, imperialism, Moscow’s foreign policy has been broadly dual-pronged. Aggressive energy policy sought to nurture Ukraine’s economic dependence and make the Ukrainian electorate strive for stability, which was eventually delivered by the election of Yanukovych in 2010, who ended the more major bilateral energy disputes and signed the landmark Kharkiv Accords to extend the Black Sea Fleet’s presence in Crimea for a discount on gas deliveries. Russia’s soft power began a ‘humanitarian trend’ which, as I have argued, manifested as a channel for Russia to influence and financially aid the ethnic Russian population of Ukraine’s south-east.

These foreign policies were initiated by Russia to ‘halt, resist, or contain democratization in order to preserve its autocratic political system’. Russian political elites, seeking to build power and influence in the post-Soviet space, view a democratic rift in the east Slavic identity as a grave threat to their security vis-à-vis the West, which has assumed its old role as ‘Other’ in Russia’s foreign policy thinking. A realist analysis of Russia’s foreign policy, considering only Ukraine’s military power and resources, should also be supplemented by a constructivist view of Ukraine’s domestic identity split, as well as a study of the ideas behind the civilisations wishing to control its future. This results in a picture of a state in which rival identities and civilisational ideas are being contested. The common identity shared by the eastern Slavs makes their relations unique in the post-Soviet world and Russia’s foreign policy suggests that it will go to great effort to protect Ukraine from choosing its own path and identity.

The argument that ‘“Russian democracy stops where the Ukrainian question begins” is a powerful one, and many of Ukraine’s fears and reproaches are justified.

………………..

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Yanukovych chooses the ‘Khodorkovsky option’

By: Christopher Leigh

27-10-2011

Ukraine

The decision of Kiev’s Perchersk district court to hand down a seven year sentence to former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has shocked observers around the world. The European Union and other foreign governments condemned the trial as unfair, politically-motivated and typical of the ‘selective justice’ that has plagued the post-Soviet judiciary. First imprisoned for abusing her position of power when, as Prime Minister, she signed the infamous contract with Russia that ended the 2009 ‘gas war’ between the two countries, Tymoshenko is now facing fresh charges from the Russian Ministry of Defence. They allege that, under her leadership, Ukraine’s United Energy Systems failed to pay $405 million for Russian gas imports in the 1990s. Payment is now due. There is also evident Russian anger that the legally-binding 2009 contract is again being questioned in the public arena, with the Russian Foreign Ministry claiming that the trial had “obvious anti-Russian overtones”.

It is unclear how much of the seven year sentence Tymoshenko will serve. Her lawyers are preparing an appeal, the international response has been fiercely negative and, sincere or not, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has made various vague statements hinting that the original charges may be decriminalised. The charges from Russia, however, could be more serious. Taking into account the fine of $190 million that Tymoshenko must pay to state company Naftogaz and a three year ban on holding public office, and it becomes clear that powerful forces within Ukraine have waged war on her.

Tymoshenko has numerous adversaries in the business world that she inhabited in the 80s and 90s. It has been alleged that that Dmytro Firtash, gas oligarch and longtime rival of Tymoshenko, is partly behind the trial. But it is Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who has the greatest desire to remove the leading lights of the 2004 Orange Revolution (Tymoshenko will join Yuri Lutsenko, who served as Minister of the Interior from 2007 to 2010, and is currently in jail for alleged abuse of office). Yanukovych’s motives are clear; in taking the ‘Khodorkovsky option’ – the removal of a political enemy through a fabricated criminal trial – he hoped to clear a path through the next parliamentary elections in 2012. But this tactic has backfired, and Tymoshenko has been very publicly martyred. The deep personal animus between Tymoshenko and Yanukovych is well known. The pair traded insults during her spell as Prime Minister and she berated him for authoritarianism and corruption in court. In engineering the trial, the bungling Yanukovych has succeeded in enraging the Russians, whilst simultaneously offending the European Union.

But how could Yanukovych allow simple revenge to interfere with his broader political strategy? The answer, as this blog has argued previously, is that closer ties to Europe or Russia are of no particular importance to the President. He is a demonstrably short-termist political leader, whose main goal is to secure another Presidential term so that he may continue to serve the elites of Ukraine’s eastern regions, home to the country’s most powerful industrial combines and his Party of Regions power base. His clientilist rule has served his patrons in the east of the country well, notably Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine’s richest man and Yanukovych’s foremost sponsor. Despite his public statements, the president has no more political or global ambition than consolidating his sultanistic rule at home.

With Russian energy relations and European Union association relations now badly damaged over the Tymoshenko affair, Yanukovych seems to be in a weak position. However, he may have more cards in his hand than at first glance. The last thing the EU needs is another Belarus in its Eastern Neighbourhood, so it will tolerate a great deal of bad behaviour from Yanukovych to keep him on their side, preferring an authoritarian Ukraine within its orbit than a Ukraine back in Russia’s arms. Russia, in the same vein, will tolerate Yanukovych’s blunder over Tymoshenko’s public trial. The gas price will not be re-negotiated, as Yanukovych hoped, but Moscow will dangle other carrots. With last week’s signing of a free trade agreement involving seven CIS states, including Ukraine, the Yanukovych administration seems to be sending a clear message to Brussels that it has other options on the table. This highlights the larger conflict that Tymoshenko’s trial is a proxy for; the battle for Ukraine’s membership to either the European Union, or to Russia’s nascent Eurasian Union. The political and business elites wishing to remove Tymoshenko and the opposition have a huge interest in whether Ukraine leans west or east; their profit, and Ukraine’s prosperity, is at stake.

Putin without Kudrin

By: Christopher Leigh

02-10-2011

Russia

The feeling that the Russian political system is a play where only the two directors know the ending has never been stronger. Prime Minister Putin announced that he would return to his role as President in a sequel beginning 2012, while dramatis personæ Mikhail Prokhorov and Alexei Kudrin fled the stage at the direction of the maestros in the orchestra pit.

Prokhorov theatrically denounced the Medvedev-Putin tandem and claimed that the Right Cause party he led is a Kremlin-engineered project under the guidance of ‘puppet master’ Vladislav Surkov, Deputy Chief of Staff to President Medvedev.

Much has been made of Prokhorov’s resignation elsewhere, so let us focus on Alexei Kudrin, who tendered his resignation shortly after being criticised by President Medvedev on live TV for his condemnation of the Putin-Medvedev job-swap. Finance Minister during Putin’s first two terms as President, Kudrin oversaw a rise in GDP of $1.35 trillion in under a decade; from around $250 billion in 2000, to an all-time high of $1.6 trillion in 2008. Widely credited with building the $150 billion Stabilisation Fund of the Russian Federation (a rainy-day fund accumulated during the oil boom and designed to balance the state budget in times of lower oil prices), Kudrin paid off Yeltsin-era debts and won numerous plaudits for his fiscal prudence.

The Russian economy is likely to falter without this competent technocrat running its finances. The siloviki - the contingent of ex-KGB and FSB officers that make up a large proportion of Putin’s Kremlin and Russia’s regional governments – are not likely to be as disciplined in keeping to the state budget, which has slid into deficit since the 2008 economic crisis. Add the prospect of a global slowdown that could define the next decade or more, with oil prices that look set to stagnate, and Kudrin’s rainy-day fund is likely to be all but spent in the near future.

The astonishing growth that Russia experienced during the 2000s can be largely attributed to the rising price of oil and other commodities, sales of which make up c35% of national income. In 1998, the oil price hovered around $10 per barrel; in 2008 it topped-out at $147, delivering an unprecedented rise in living standards for Russia’s urban population. Those days are over. The reality of this ‘new normal’ state of slow growth and lower energy prices means that Mr Putin will experience considerable difficulties when he becomes President again in 2012. Writing on the wider commodities market last year, Dylan Grice, an analyst at Societe Generale, wrote that “when you buy commodities, you’re selling human ingenuity.” This, put simply, is the cynical bet that Putin made in the 2000s. Buoyed by a decade of commodities-fuelled prosperity, Russia now faces the challenge of utilising its human capital in an age of slow growth.

Russia isn’t short of talented graduates; its shabby-but-solid universities and institutes produce more of them each year than any other country in Europe. An intelligent government would find ways of stopping these bright young people from moving abroad, harnessing their creativity and nurturing entrepreneurialism. Growth will not come from the energy giants – the ‘national champions’ – that Putin developed during his first two terms. Most have failed to invest in finding new reserves, and Exxon’s recent arctic exploration deal will take years to come to fruition. Instead, the SME sector – currently an anaemic c15% of the economy – should be further developed. Tech, services, manufacturing and infrastructure outside of Moscow and a few well-developed oil towns should also be prioritised. The health of Russia’s economy, and the prosperity of its young people, depends on the lateral thinking of the next Putin Kremlin. Whether this thinking will be forthcoming remains to be seen. Kudrin’s legacy will be well remembered; Russia’s next ten years are not nearly as certain as the years of his tenure.

Unjust deserts: rewarding wrongdoing in contemporary Russia

By: Christopher Leigh

02-10-2011

Russia

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent one-day visit to Russia was designed to boost British business interests and help warm the frosty relationship between the two countries, which have been largely estranged since the 2006 killing of Kremlin-critic and ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko in London.

Speaking at a press conference with President Medvedev, Mr Cameron reiterated the British position on the Litvinenko killing; that the main suspect, Andrei Lugovoi, should be extradited to the UK and tried in the British courts. This statement brought a terse rebuttal from Mr Medvedev, who said that such a move would not be allowed under the Russian Constitution.

The main goal of the visit was to strengthen trade ties, and in this respect it seems to have been a success, with over £215m worth of deals signed. But this was overshadowed by the dispute over the Litvinenko killing, with Mr Cameron concluding that the two governments “don’t agree with each other about this issue.” Writing in the Sunday Times before the visit, four former UK Foreign Ministers urged Mr Cameron to press President Medvedev on the “corruption and lawlessness” plaguing Russia, and on the extradition of Andrei Lugovoi. Judging by the cool reception that Mr Cameron received on mentioning the Litvinenko case, we can only assume that other issues of importance to the international community, such as the ongoing imprisonment of Mikhail Khodorkovsky and the killing in pre-trial detention of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, were not discussed.

Lugovoi and Litvinenko

When considering these issues, and the alleged guilt of Andrei Lugovoi in the Litvinenko case, an uglier trend in post-Soviet affairs can be detected: the speedy and very public advancement of figures who commit (or who are under suspicion of committing) crimes and misdemeanours against enemies of the Kremlin. There are many examples of this practice. In the Litvinenko case, it wasn’t long after the media storm subsided that Lugovoi, a formerly unknown security man, was elected to the State Duma as a candidate of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia. He even boasted that he intended to run for the Presidency one day. One can hardly conceive of an American, French or Japanese official being promoted in such a public way (even by a leader as erratic as the Liberal Democratic Party’s Vladimir Zhirinovsky) while being wanted by a foreign state on suspicion of murder.

Sergei Magnitsky and “Russia’s Best Investigators”

In the case of Sergei Magnitsky, the group of officials alleged to have stolen $230m in tax paid by companies Magnitsky represented (individuals who are also named in the Justice For Sergei Magnitsky Act of 2010, now enshrined in US law), were not only promoted following Magnitsky’s controversial death, but were bestowed with the title of “Russia’s Best Investigators” by the state.*

Anna Chapman and the “Illegals Program”

The treatment given to the members of the so-called ‘Illegals Program’ of Russian intelligence operatives working within the United States is most indicative of this phenomenon, especially the case of Anna Chapman. The dramatic uncovering of the alleged spy ring shortly after President Obama and President Medvedev pledged to ‘reset’ US-Russia relations should have caused great embarrassment to the Russian Government, but they seemed to show little interest in restricting the activities of the operatives when they arrived back in Russia. In addition to appearing within the pages of Russian Maxim and on various catwalks and TV shows, Anna Chapman was promoted, with great fanfare, to the top tier of ruling party United Russia’s Young Guard organisation. It would be hard to imagine a stronger endorsement of her past activities by the Kremlin. It is inconceivable that a CIA or MI6 operative – exposed and humiliated – would, upon returning back to base, not only receive no criticism, but be promoted, financially rewarded and elected to an important position within the state’s dominant political party. Another member of the ‘Illegals Program,’ Natalia Pereverzeva, was made an aide to Nikolai Tokarev, President of the state pipeline titan, Transneft. Other members received the prestigious Order of Courage medal.

Effect on Russia’s image

All of this is toxic to Russia’s diplomatic relations, its soft power status and its reform process. Is Russia simply thumbing its nose at the West? What is behind this phenomenon of rewarding those whose bungling, incompetence or criminality would enrage, or at least embarrass, the government of any other country?

Russia’s resurgent Great Power status under the Putin Kremlin is partly to blame. After the chaotic Yeltsin years, culminating in perhaps the lowest point a developed economy can reach – the debt default of 1998 – Putin’s two terms as President re-established Russia as as major world economy, with all the diplomatic clout that this brings. It is clear that the ‘rewarding wrongdoing’ principle is partly to do with Russia, now back in the top tier of nations, refusing to bow to the West’s conception of fairness and justice. By doing the complete opposite of what the West considers fair (for example, promoting the main suspects in the crime that saw Sergei Magnitsky die in pre-trial detention instead of firing them), Russia sends a crude message that it won’t be coerced into patterns of rule that it does not approve of. The Kremlin is asserting its absolute sovereignty over its own affairs and is showing that the West’s value judgements will not be heeded.

The spirit of Bolshevism at work

In Virtual Politics: Faking Democracy in the Post-Soviet World, Andrew Wilson argues that Russia’s stage-managed political system (and its agents of ‘political technology’), are examples of how the state is only partly post-Bolshevik. In the same way, the Putin Kremlin’s rewarding of those who harm its enemies can be characterised as part of a profoundly Bolshevik political culture. Under Stalin, enemies of the state were dispatched to far-flung penal colonies or shot in basement jails, while aspirational Party administrators ascended through the strata of Soviet society, receiving choice apartments, postings and material benefits. The ripples of this culture can still be felt in the rewarding of Lugovoi, Chapman and the network of individuals all partly responsible for the death of Sergei Magnitsky. In the Bolshevik worldview, loyalty to the Party meant everything; enemies of the people, and of the state, were liable to receive the same punishment as Litvinenko, Magnitsky and Khodorkovsky. With its mix of conspiracy, political manipulation and propaganda, Bolshevism is too strong a political brand to disappear within a century. It was part of everyday life for Soviet citizens for almost forty years, until the death of Stalin. The legacy will take a long time to die.

At the time of Andrei Lugovoi’s election to the State Duma, British Ambassador to Russia, Tony Brenton, stated:

It is a pity that a man wanted for murder gains political recognition. It does Russia no good at all to have Lugovoi there in the parliament. It continues the suspicion. If he steps a foot out of Russia he will be arrested. We want him.

Until Russia’s political culture can evolve past post-Bolshevism, the country’s image and moral authority in international diplomacy will continue to be undermined.

………………..

*In an unmistakably Bolshevik twist to the Magnitsky case, vital documents relating to the bank where the stolen $230m was said to have been laundered through were destroyed in a mysterious truck crash and explosion in central Moscow. In the excellent Stalin: Court of the Red Tsar, Simon Sebag Montefiore points out that car crashes were also the preferred Bolshevik method of disposing of evidence (and people), that became problematic to the Kremlin.

Tymoshenko and Yanukovych: Europe or the Donbass?

By: Christopher Leigh

06-09-2011

Ukraine

Last week, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych stepped onto a larger, more international stage than he is usually accustomed to: the Opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal. Addressing the world’s financial and political elite, Mr Yanukovych set out his position on the future of the country he has led since February 2010, stating that:

Ukraine’s future belongs in Europe. While our historical connection to Russia will continue to be very important, the key to prosperity for our people and the development of our natural and human resources lies in a deeper and more developed integration with Europe and the West.

He then went on to describe improvements Ukraine has made since he took office, praising its educated labour force, the recent increase in small business ownership and the booming levels of Foreign Direct Investment that the country currently enjoys. Mr Yanukovych’s article comes at a time when most of the headlines coming out of Ukraine are focussed on the arrest and trial of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, thought by many international observers to be a politically-motivated attempt by the ruling administration to remove the former Prime Minster from political life before next year’s parliamentary elections.

It didn’t take long for a reply to come. A few days later, writing in the same pages, Ms Tymoshenko responded from her cell in a Kiev prison. Co-written with Grigory Nemyria, her former deputy as Prime Minister, Ms Tymoshenko disputed Mr Yanukovych’s claims and rubbished his statistics, stating that:

Mr. Yanukovych has put in place mechanisms associated with Soviet-style autocracy. Today, he holds absolute sway over the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.

She also affirmed that:

It is our fervent belief that Ukraine’s future lies in Europe.

These passages illustrate the paradox at the heart of present day Ukrainian politics: two politicians who share the same goal of closer ties to Europe and the West, locked in a bitter public dispute, with one overseeing the trial of the other to the opprobrium of the international community. The Tymoshenko case, seemingly in its closing stages this week, has had such an overwhelmingly negative effect on Ukraine’s image, that it leads the observer to question the sincerity of Yanukovych’s message. Carl Bildt, foreign minister of Sweden called the trial an ‘embarrassing spectacle’, and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton expressed this week, that ‘we are following the case of Yulia Tymoshenko with great concern’.

How can President Yanukovych, supposedly intent on completing negotiations towards the EU Association Agreement, allow the trial to attract statements like these from some of the Europe’s most senior politicians? It is hard to give a conclusive answer, but what is for sure is that the Ukrainian administration is playing a strange foreign policy game: alienating both the Europeans on the issue of democracy and the Russians on the issue of gas and closer ties.

But the truth is that President Yanukovych need not look to Brussels or Moscow. Born and raised in the Donbass - Ukraine’s Eastern Industrial zone – Yanukovych can play the Europeans and the Russians against each other whilst busily enriching the political and business elite hailing from the region where his ultimate loyalty lies. The Donbass and its regional capital, Donetsk, is the heartland of Yanukovych’s political base, garnering millions of votes for him at the 2010 presidential elections. Unfamiliar to many Ukrainians living in other parts of the country, the coal-mining region was the president’s home and workplace for decades before his political career began. It is an intensely Russia-facing region, with the highest proportion of ethnic Russians and citizens with Russian, rather than Ukrainian, as their mother tongue in the country. The oligarchic class that cut their teeth as traders and factory managers in the Donbass at the end of the Soviet Union now inhabit the upper echelons of the Ukrainian economy. It is loyalty to this group, not the people, that is guiding the president’s decision-making.

— Post-Soviet Politics

A grey cloud over Euro 2012

Putin’s ‘Little Father’ complex

Who votes for Yanukovych?

The Caucasus and Russia’s new nationalism

Building the nation: contextualising the evolution of modern Russian nationalism

Fed up with Federalism? Statism and Russia’s ‘new nationalism’

The development of an ‘uncivil society’

Navalny

Conclusion

Bibliography

Online Sources

‘United’ Russia?

So will the events that occurred in Ukraine in 2004 be repeated in Russia?

Power, identity and the ‘Orange’ threat: Russian foreign policy towards Ukraine, 2004-present.

Gas wars and the ‘new imperialism’: the political economy of Russian foreign policy

Soft power, ‘active measures’ and ‘fifth columns’

Constructivist and civilisational approaches

Conclusion

Bibliography

Other sources

Yanukovych chooses the ‘Khodorkovsky option’

Putin without Kudrin

Unjust deserts: rewarding wrongdoing in contemporary Russia

Lugovoi and Litvinenko

Sergei Magnitsky and “Russia’s Best Investigators”

Anna Chapman and the “Illegals Program”

Effect on Russia’s image

The spirit of Bolshevism at work

Tymoshenko and Yanukovych: Europe or the Donbass?

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Building the nation: contextualising the evolution of modern Russian nationalism

Fed up with Federalism? Statism and Russia’s ‘new nationalism’

The development of an ‘uncivil society’

Navalny

Conclusion

Bibliography

Online Sources

So will the events that occurred in Ukraine in 2004 be repeated in Russia?

Gas wars and the ‘new imperialism’: the political economy of Russian foreign policy

Soft power, ‘active measures’ and ‘fifth columns’

Constructivist and civilisational approaches

Conclusion

Bibliography

Other sources

Lugovoi and Litvinenko

Sergei Magnitsky and “Russia’s Best Investigators”

Anna Chapman and the “Illegals Program”

Effect on Russia’s image

The spirit of Bolshevism at work

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