Will Russia Ever Be an Autocracy Again
Editor'due south annotation: On Dec 28th Russian federation's Supreme Courtroom ordered the closure of Memorial, ruling that the group had cleaved the law on "foreign agents" described in the commodity.
O North October 14TH Twins Garden, in Moscow, was amongst the showtime Russian restaurants ever to be recognised with Michelin stars. In celebration information technology treated guests from the beau monde to magnums of Bollinger alongside its signature "sea urchins with citrus and shiso leaves" and innovative "3D-printed bean 'squid' with asparagus and black caviar". From its rooftop terrace overlooking Pushkin Square guests could marvel at Moscow's beautifully lit skyline. Beneath them pedestrians strolled along recently repaved streets lined with cafés and boutique shops, or rushed to take hold of the new production of "Tosca" at the Bolshoi. Delivery bikes sped back and along attending to the needs of those staying at home—or stuck in their offices.
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The diners might also have made out, less than a kilometre away, the building housing Memorial, Russian federation's oldest human-rights system, which was at the time being stormed by masked thugs. Dozens of them, accompanied past state TV crews, crashed into a screening of "Mr Jones", a film past Agnieszka Kingdom of the netherlands, a Polish director, most the famine Stalin inflicted on Ukraine in the early 1930s. The thugs jumped onto the stage and pumped their fists in the air, shouting "shame", "fascists" and something most Goebbels. When the police force arrived, they used a pair of handcuffs to lock the edifice's doors closed, sealing the staff inside until the small hours of the morning.
In 1987, when Memorial was set up upwardly to document Stalinist repressions, the state was property most 200 prisoners of conscience. Today, co-ordinate to Memorial'southward count, Russia has at least 410 political prisoners. On the day the Michelin stars were awarded, Vyacheslav Egorov, an activist involved in protests against a landfill site in a historic town about Moscow, was sentenced to 15 months in prison. A few days earlier, Sergei Zuev, the rector of the Moscow School of Social and Economical Sciences (known as Shaninka), i of the state'southward leading independent universities, was taken to a prison cell from his infirmary bed; the university faces closure. After existence released and undergoing cardiac treatment he was jailed again on November 9th.
On October 27th Gleb Maryasov, a libertarian activist, was sent to a penal colony for ten months for blocking roads during a protest in Jan. On October 29th, the mean solar day on which the victims of Stalin's repression are commemorated, four Crimean Tatars were sentenced to 12-17 years in jail. Hardly a mean solar day goes past without someone being fined, sent to jail, officially deemed "undesirable" or declared a "strange agent", as Memorial has been—a distinction which requires targeted organisations and individuals to preface every public utterance, in capital letters, with these exact words in Russian:
THIS MESSAGE (MATERIAL) IS CREATED AND/OR DISSEMINATED BY A Foreign MASS MEDIA PERFORMING THE FUNCTIONS OF A Strange Agent AND (OR) RUSSIAN LEGAL ENTITY PERFORMING THE Role OF Foreign AGENT.
The increasing number of political prisoners—at that place are viii times as many as at that place were vi years agone, according to Memorial—is not a return to Soviet grade, as the high life which surrounds the repression bears witness. But the people of late-1930s Berlin would find the mixture of the 2 quite familiar.
Echoes of that era are besides to be establish in Russia's official rhetoric of ressentiment and imperial nationalism. They can exist recognised in media images of the male torso cute, encouraging healthy living, and in laws against homosexual propaganda. They were voiced in a recent oral communication past Vladimir Putin, Russian federation'due south president, extolling the state's "spiritual values and historical traditions" and denouncing the decadence of Western liberalism. Mr Putin took the opportunity to praise Ivan Ilyin, a philosopher who in the 1920s embraced Italian fascism as a model for Russia.
Sitting pretty
For much of his rule, Mr Putin was more readily associated with kleptocracy, fakery and cynicism than with a coherent ideology which inserted the state deep into everyday life. During his outset decade in power, the 2000s, economical growth—much of information technology to the benefit of his friends and former KGB colleagues, but significant amounts enjoyed more broadly—provided more or less all the support his regime needed. In his second decade, when growth faded and protests broke out in big cities, nationalist propaganda and anti-Americanism became more prevalent. The looting of Crimea in 2014 and the state of war in Ukraine kept people entertained, excited and on-side. There was repression, merely Russia's ruling elite was more interested in wealth than violence. Literary-minded Russians could take comfort in lines from "Letters to a Roman Friend" a poem past Joseph Brodsky: "Y'all are saying procurators are all looters, But I'd rather choose a looter than a slayer."
Mr Putin'southward government is now rendering that distinction moot. Every bit Alexei Navalny, an opposition leader poisoned in August 2020 and jailed this year, recently wrote from his prison jail cell: "An official taking a bribe and a policeman pulling a pocketbook over the head of a prisoner tied to a chair are one and the same person. His law is the superiority of the stiff over the weak. The superiority of the interests of a corporation over the rights of an individual. The willingness to commit crimes equally an act of loyalty."
Grigory Okhotin of OVD-Info, a media and human being-rights organization that monitors political repression and provides legal aid to its victims, notes a shift in the government's tactics. One time it wanted to contain, and by doing so deter, political threats. Now information technology wants to eliminate them. Political power has shifted from civilian technocrats to militarised and often uniformed "securocrats" happier with violence. The authorities has moved from being a consensual autocracy supported past co-option and propaganda to a dictatorship resting on repression and fear.
This aspect of Mr Putin'due south ability has deep roots. In 2015 it claimed the life of Boris Nemtsov, a liberal opposition politico. Having warned of the lethal danger of Mr Putin'due south corruption he was subjected to a detest campaign earlier existence shot dead on a bridge next to the Kremlin. But since the summer of 2020 information technology has been applied more widely. According to a poll by the Levada Heart, also a "foreign agent", the fear of repression, now shared past 52% of Russia's population, and of state violence (58%), are at best historic peaks, trumping the fear of losing a chore, falling into poverty or beingness struck past natural disaster.
Politics has been banned. Mr Navalny's organisation has been crushed and alleged "extremist". His unabridged squad has been forced out of the country; their remaining relatives are harassed and persecuted. The father of Ivan Zhdanov, one of Mr Navalny's right-hand men, was put on trial in October. On November 9th Liliya Chanysheva, a 39-year-old politician who ran i of Mr Navalny'south regional offices, was arrested on a retroactively practical charge of "extremism". She could face 10 years in jail.
Open Russia, a pro-democracy system funded past Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a sometime billionaire once jailed and since exiled, has been declared "undesirable" and forced to close. Its former boss, Andrei Pivovarov, is facing 6 years in jail for Facebook posts. Thousands are denied the right to stand for election because of real or imagined association with Mr Navalny—every bit are 9m people (8% of the electorate) with previous criminal records or dual citizenship, according to Golos, an ballot-monitoring outfit that is as well a "strange agent".
1 case is Violetta Grudina, who one time worked for Mr Navalny in Murmansk, an Arctic port, and who is profiled in a motion-picture show produced by The Economist and Hardcash Productions (see economist.com/russia-motion-picture show). After Mr Navalny's arrangement was banned, she decided to stand up as an contained candidate in local elections. Her office was vandalised, she was forced into a covid hospital, and then disqualified for being role of an "extremist organisation".
The crackdown has not been equally harsh every bit some before it. The regime has non used lethal force—at to the lowest degree not in its own proper name. Many have been immune—indeed encouraged—to leave the state. This is not a liquidation, nor is it a tyranny congenital on a cult of personality. Rather it is something cobbled together to retain power in the confront of falling popularity and eroded legitimacy. Information technology is similar in kind, if not withal in resistance and violence, to that of Alexander Lukashenko in neighbouring Belarus. It does not thrive on mass mobilisation and hysteria. Its aim is to suppress crowds not excite them. It neither inspires nor requires enthusiasm in the masses.
Maybe this time
Just every bit well. Mr Putin'south access to the masses is not the piece of cake matter it once was. He was brought to power by television, which then helped him consolidate his control. The public was dependent on the medium that he monopolised. Anything that was not televised did non exist, which was bad news for opposition figures. And that which did not exist could still, when necessary, exist televised—as in the case of Ukrainian "fascists" in Crimea.
The rise of the smartphone changed all that. By 2018, 80% of the population was using the internet and 82% of 18- to 44-year-olds were watching YouTube. According to a contempo report by Liberal Mission, a recall-tank, the share of TV, radio and newspapers in overall media consumption has shrunk from 70% to 45% since the mid-2010s, while online sources' share has grown from 18% to 45% (run into chart one).
In the aforementioned catamenia, trust in Mr Putin has fallen from lx% to 30%. In the 2000s members of the younger generation were among Mr Putin's near loyal supporters. That has now been reversed (see chart 2), and not just because of internet access. The young feel more than disgust at corruption, which deprives them of prospects, and have a more positive view of Europe and America. They resent the country's increasing intrusions into their lives and they value man rights. But the internet has undoubtedly helped cement those feelings and bring together those who experience that manner.
One way of looking at the change is by comparing the three waves of protest in 2011-12, 2017 and 2019. The protests of 2011-12, the largest up to that time, were a response to elections seen as rigged and to the return of Mr Putin, who had previously switched from president to prime number minister, to his previous part. They were political protests spurred by political events.
The next protests of comparable size, in 2017, were triggered by a YouTube video. An business relationship of the corruption of Dmitry Medvedev, Russian federation's prime government minister at the time, put together by Mr Navalny, was seen past four.5% of Russians within a couple of weeks, his supporters say, and its claims were heard past three times as many. Mr Medvedev's approval rating barbarous by 10 percentage points. Encouraged, Mr Navalny called on people to take to the streets, and they did.
In the Liberal Mission report, Kirill Rogov, a political analyst, argues that "The biggest threat to the government is not the protest itself, only the reaction of gild." On that basis the 2019 protests were the watershed. Barred from standing himself, Mr Navalny nominated allies to run in Moscow'southward local elections. When the Kremlin blocked them, people took to the streets and violence ensued. After the 2017 protests, 40% of the public had sided with the police force and merely 27% with the protesters. In 2019, 41% sympathised with the protesters and condemned the police violence. The Kremlin lost near half of its seats on the metropolis council. The protesters had, for the offset fourth dimension, garnered real support.
That did non mean they were winning. Though Mr Navalny had back up in Moscow and some other places, just 20% of Russians approved of him. But lxxx% now knew who he was. One of the key assets of whatsoever autocracy—the apparent absence of whatsoever alternative—had been lost. The Russian elite started to talk nigh succession. So Mr Putin changed the constitution to permit himself stay in power indefinitely and reinforced that modify with repression.
Information technology has been largely a pre-emptive strategy. Many Russians believe Mr Navalny's videos showing the extent of the authorities'south abuse and recollect him brave, merely few are committed to doing anything about the situation. That is how Mr Putin wants to proceed information technology. The difference in the handling of those arrested during the protests of 2019 and those arrested in protests at the time of Mr Navalny'south return in January is revealing. In 2019, the vast majority were quickly released with a fine, whereas in 2020 roughly half of the 11,000 arrested were held for up to two weeks. More 130 criminal cases take been launched in the aftermath, according to OVD-Info.
Facial-recognition technology also allowed the police to make arrests weeks or even months afterwards the main protests—a delayed response that adds to the anxieties of all who participated. Mr Okhotin of OVD-Info argues that such feet has become an important instrument of oppression in itself. Then has the pessimism of jailing protesters during the pandemic for "violating epidemiological restrictions", in a country where 80,000 people can be gathered into Moscow'south Luzhniki stadium to cheer Mr Putin. If Mr Navalny tried to inspire a sense of agency, the Kremlin wanted to plunge them back into a country of helplessness.
In 2019 Mr Putin signed a "sovereign internet" police which forced net providers to install special equipment that allows the state to block, filter and irksome down websites. Gregory Asmolov, an expert on the internet at King's College London, says the goal is not to build a Chinese-style firewall but to influence people's choices. If people don't know what they are missing, they will not look for information technology.
The Kremlin has cracked downward on "influencers" and independent media outlets that feed interest in politics, while herding web users towards local social-media networks—which happily share information with the security services—and video-hosting platforms that are easy to control. International services are harried with fines and hobbled with slow download and upload speeds, making video sharing nigh impossible. Most Russian opposition figures believe that within two years YouTube will non exist bachelor in Russia.
Tomorrow belongs to me
For now the Kremlin seems to have succeeded in applying plenty repression, and thus generating enough fear of worse to come, to accomplish its needs.Simply the spiral continues to be turned. For one thing, the repression is not limited to achieving the Kremlin's political aims; those close to Mr Putin are able to use this machinery for their own ends. Mr Zuev's persecution, for example, appears to be to some extent collateral damage in a fight between a detained sometime vice-president of Sberbank, Russian federation's largest state bank, and Arkady Rotenberg, one of Mr Putin'due south closest business organization associates.
And Russian federation's securocrats are non going to pack their bags and get dwelling when they command a meaning and growing chunk of public expenditure. More 10% of the national budget is spent on internal security. There are a third more law and security staff than active-duty soldiers.
Mariya Omelicheva of the National State of war Higher in Washington, DC, points to another self-perpetuating dynamic: she calls information technology a "repression trap". Expanding the role of the security services amplifies the Kremlin'due south perception of threat at home and abroad, justifying more repression. As long equally the regime relies on the demonisation of foreigners—and "strange agents"—this trap looks set to keep tightening.
So repression worsens even as resistance is held at bay. Protesters know that the people empathize the government's abuse. According to a Levada survey, 55% found the picture of Mr Putin's ostentatious wealth and abuse that Mr Navalny posted to YouTube on his return in January disarming. But they also understand that this in itself will not alter things, at least not rapidly. Only 17% said that the video changed their opinion of Mr Putin for the worse. And increased comforts provide a palliative for some.
On the eve of the last large protest in April, in a candle-lit Moscow café, members of the liberal intelligentsia sabbatum huddled around small tables, bracing themselves for arrest at a protest the following solar day. Tatiana Gnedovskaya, an art expert, sang for them. Her normal repertoire is Russian and romantic. On that evening, though, she concluded her set instead with night-order songs from 1930s Federal republic of germany. No 1 needed to ask why. "Nosotros, besides, take a sense of dark times coming" she said later on, "but we continue to live and enjoy our lives while we can." ■
A 15-minute picture show, "How Putin is silencing his opponents", is available here. A longer version, "Fearless: The Women Fighting Putin", a co-production of The Economist and Hardcash Productions for ITV, is available to readers in Uk on ITV'due south website
This article appeared in the Briefing department of the print edition under the headline "Manacled in Moscow"
Source: https://www.economist.com/briefing/2021/11/13/vladimir-putin-has-shifted-from-autocracy-to-dictatorship
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