[update below]
LCP (French C-SPAN) broadcast a very good two-part, 1¾-hour documentary by this title (“Le Système Poutine”) the other night on Vladimir Putin’s rise to power and exercise thereof during his first two terms as president. The documentary, which was made for France 2, dates from 2007 but remains entirely relevant today—which is no doubt why LCP decided to rerun it. It’s absolutely worth watching. Part 1 may be viewed here and Part 2 here. As it happens, CBC broadcast a slightly shorter version in English, which may be seen via YouTube here.
It is beyond me how anyone who is not a Russian nationalist could have even minimally favorable sentiments toward that KGB bully boy, though he does have his fans in the West, mainly on the far right: e.g. the French Front National, Hungarian Jobbik, Greek Golden Dawn, and other charming formations out that way on the political spectrum (e.g. see here, here, here, and here). And a certain number of American conservatives—e.g. Patrick Buchanan, Sarah Palin—also have a soft spot for the bear-wrestling, oil-drilling tough guy Putin—American right-wingers have a fetish about being “tough”—, with his defense of Christianity, family values, and all (e.g. here, here, here, and here). Somehow I’m not surprised.
UPDATE: TNR’s Julia Ioffe says that “Putin’s American toady gets even toadyer” (May 1st). That toady is, of course, Stephen Cohen.
“It is beyond me how anyone who is not a Russian nationalist could have even minimally favorable sentiments toward that KGB bully boy…” – those sentiments are much easier to understand for anyone who lived through Russia in the 1990s, when under ‘democratically-minded’ and western-establishment-praised Yeltsin journalists were killed off MORE, oligarchs were MORE empowered, street crime ran rampant while ordinary people were dying like flies as economy and infrastructure and national security collapsed.
Since Putin came to power, Russia’s real GDP per capita has tripled, social welfare system was rebuilt, and Russia registered its first natural population growth in decades (for fascinating look at Russia’s demographic trends, which go against every ‘dying bear’ presupposition, check out Mark Adomanis at Forbes). Almost every quality of life indicator (I would dare to say every but I dont have access to all the stats) got better during Putin’s first two terms than they were in the preceding Yeltsin and Gorbachev years. It’s very easy to discard those facts from the comfort of Paris or New York or London, and to pontificate on how people in other lands should feel about one thing or another, without taking into account their actual experience.
And speaking of Russian nationalism: traditional Russian nationalism (and the kind of nationalism that VP embraces) is more about Russia’s strength and role in the world than about immigration, Jews and other, more internally-oriented issues that color nationalist sentiments in other countries. The loss of Russia’s military and geopolitical status in the world was a MAJOR blow to the hearts and minds of millions of Russians (who viewed and view their country – Russia or USSR – as almost divinely heroic, the one that defeated Nazism, not to mention…every other enemy that attacked it), who suddenly saw themselves as the doormat of the West, with NATO looming on their borders. The resurrection, however partial, of Russia’s standing under VP brought back that national pride across generations.
Anna, thanks for your comment. None of your points really contradict what I said. Life in Russia has clearly improved over the past decade. This is normal, given that the price of oil has quadrupled since Putin took office in 2000. Russia is a rentier state, heavily dependent on the world price of hydrocarbons and other mineral resources. When the price is high and over a long period of time, the country does well. It’s axiomatic. E.g. a hydrocarbon rentier state I know well, Algeria, is presently awash in cash. It has paid off its once huge foreign debt and has lots of money to spend on infrastructure, increasing salaries of public employees (a sizable percentage of the work force, no doubt like Russia), and whatever else the government decides to spend money on. And all this has made Abdelaziz Bouteflika a relatively popular president. But the economic good times – for some Algerians more than others – are not due to better governance or judicious policies adopted by successive governments. When Bouteflika came to power in 1999, Algeria was an economic basket case. Today it is a basket case with lots of money, as the latter has come from a windfall for which the Algerian government did nothing to bring about. The situation in Russia is roughly similar, I think.
On demography, I took a look at the Forbes article you cited. The fertility rate in Russia has indeed increased over the past several years but is still well below replacement level. Given the mean life expectancy of the Russian population – which is at Third World levels (only slightly above India’s) – this will at least make coping with an ageing population (pensions, health care costs, etc) more manageable than in other demographically plunging countries (e.g. Japan, Germany, Italy…).
On Russia’s geopolitical decline negatively affecting the hearts of minds of ordinary Russians, this pretty clearly confirms what I said about nationalism. In point of fact, the presence of NATO on Russia’s borders and the perception that America doesn’t take Russia seriously as a great power is entirely irrelevant to the material well-being of individual Russians, or to Russia as a country for that matter. Whether or not Poland and Estonia are members of NATO, or if Ukraine signs an association agreement with the European Union, changes absolutely nothing in your life or in the lives of anyone whom you will cross paths with in Moscow today, tomorrow, next week, or two years from now. That fact that the (otherwise depoliticized) Russian masses have strong sentiments on these questions – that they take pride in Russia throwing its weight around with countries that were once in its empire and Russia’s president talking tough to foreign powers – is indicative of a virulent nationalism that is afflicting that country.
By way of contrast, France’s status as a great power is not what it once was. No one in France – or anywhere else – needs to be reminded that France has been in decline on this score over the past century (indeed three centuries). But the majority of Frenchmen today really couldn’t care less, as France’s status as a great power has no bearing on their personal lives, let alone their bank accounts. Now there are, of course, Frenchmen who are preoccupied with this: French nationalists (and who tend to be on the hard right). But they are very much in the minority.
Personally speaking, I hate and loathe nationalism. Nationalism is a scourge. And everywhere, not the least in the United States. The upsurge of American nationalism in the post-9/11 period, and which attained fever pitch in the run up to the Iraq war – and whose bullhorn was/is right-wing media (Fox News, etc) -, was the worst. I’m so glad I wasn’t living in the US back then. But that’s all in the past. A leitmotif at the present moment in American magazines of opinion and on the op-ed pages of newspapers is the decline of American power and of America’s influence in the world. Policy intellectuals and others are debating and wringing their hands over it – and Republicans are using it as yet another club with which to bash Obama – but most Americans don’t care. They have other things to worry about. It would be nice if such were the case in Russia as well.
I hope to tackle a lot of these egregious oversimplifications 🙂 one by one when the time allows but a couple to start with the claim that Russia is a rentier state. As of 2011, less than 9% of RF’s GDP came from extraction industries, which is about the same as Canada. Compare that to Qatar’s 50%+. About 21% of Russians are employed in the public sector – vs 15% in the US and 17% in the UK. There has been effective reform of several sectors, resulting in development of consumer economy, financial markets and revival of industrial production, investment in science and infrastructure projects, etc all driving RF toward a truly diversified economy. Those things dont just happen bc of high oil prices. These are results of deliberate policy choices – like how to handle those sectors, their revenues, and cash surpluses – choices that were not made and would not have been made by the preceding administration. Pre-Putin Russia had plenty of extraction industry revenues, but the general population saw barely any of it, in direct or indirect form. By the way it was those reforms, strategic investment (thanks to, once again, properly handling the surpluses) and RFCB’s sound monetary policy that caused Russia to recover much faster than most its neighbors from the 2008-2009 financial crisis, despite oil prices halving.
Yeltsin was not that long ago. If you’re an adult today, chances are, you have lived consciously through those years. And for all but the richest and most criminal (really, the same) Russians these were horrible, devastating years. Under the leadership of a man tacitly propped up and explicitly endorsed as the champion of democracy and capitalism by most of the western political and media establishment (this ties into our twitter chat).
With Putin people’s lives got richer, safer, BETTER. Most Russians arent keen on comparing their lives to some abstract or overseas standard, because the last time they did that – late 80s and early 90s those “idealistic” aspirations came back to bite them in the ass and then some.
On demographics, once again you choose to focus on the static picture (“fertility increased but is still …”) as opposed to the trend. Oh, the sick person is getting better but is still as bad as the guy in the next room… Seriously, this is when I want to facepalm and shake my head, bc THIS is why people on the outside cannot understand Putin’s level of support in Russia, or understand Russia, period. People here see babies in strollers, they see grandparents living longer, decent hospital care, private insurance, less drunks on the streets, less suicides in their communities, and they are not thinking about replacement levels and ‘third world countries.’ They are thinking about how it was just a decade ago, in their own lives, families and communities, and their takeaway is “SO MUCH BETTER.”
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