02/28/2008
Putinism
As Russian President Vladimir Putin turns over the office to hand-picked selection Dmitry Medvedev, with Medvedev prepared to roll in the election March 2, just a few notes on the Putin years (thus far), via an article in the January/February issue of Foreign Affairs by Michael McFaul and Kathryn Stoner- Weiss; both hanging their hats at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University.
The authors write that the standard explanation for Putin’s high popularity in Russia is a result of a return to order and a booming economy following the chaotic Yeltsin years, even as political freedoms have been eliminated one after the other.
Russian democracy began evolving during the time of Gorbachev and Yeltin, yet Putin has been rolling it back; a process that started with the end of totally all independent media outlets, including television, print and online outlets. Only one national, independent newspaper, for example, exists today and one radio station, though the future of both is iffy. Separately, Russia now ranks as the third most dangerous place for journalists behind only Iraq and Colombia. 21 have been murdered in Russia since 2000.
And when it comes to regional governments, in September 2004, Putin announced that he would begin appointing governors – “with the rationale that this would make them more accountable and effective.” There hasn’t been a single regional election since February 2005.
Of course when it comes to parliament, Putin’s control of the media has led to a strong majority (at least 2/3s) for the Kremlin’s mouthpiece, United Russia.
But as McFaul and Stoner-Weiss observe, “In terms of public safety, health, corruption, and the security of property rights, Russians are actually worse off today than they were a decade ago.”
“Security, the most basic public good a state can provide for its population, is a central element in the myth of Putinism. In fact, the frequency of terrorist attacks in Russia has increased under Putin. The two biggest terrorist attacks in Russia’s history – the Nord-Ost incident at a theater in Moscow in 2002, in which an estimated 300 Russians died, and the Beslan school hostage crisis, in which as many as 500 died – occurred under Putin’s autocracy, not Yeltsin’s democracy. The number of deaths of both military personnel and civilians in the second Chechen war – now in its eighth year – is substantially higher than during the first Chechen war, which lasted from 1994 to 1996. [Conflict inside Chechnya appears to be subsiding, but conflict in the region is spreading.] The murder rate has also increased under Putin, according to data from Russia’s Federal State Statistics Service. In the ‘anarchic’ years of 1995-99, the average annual number of murders was 30,200; in the ‘orderly’ years of 2000- 2004, the number was 32,200. The death rate from fires is around 40 a day in Russia, roughly ten times the average rate in western Europe.
“Nor has public health improved in the last eight years. Despite all the money in the Kremlin’s coffers, health spending averaged 6 percent of GDP from 2000 to 2005, compared with 6.4 percent from 1996 to 1999. Russia’s population has been shrinking since 1990, thanks to decreasing fertility and increasing mortality rates, but the decline has worsened since 1998. Noncommunicable diseases have become the leading cause of death (cardiovascular disease accounts for 52 percent of deaths, three times the figure for the United States), and alcoholism now accounts for 18 percent of deaths for men between the ages of 25 and 54 .Life expectancy in Russia rose between 1995 and 1998. Since 1999, however, it has declined to 59 years for Russian men and 72 for Russian women.”
Then there is the issue of property rights. Simply, the nation’s leading assets have been confiscated, an obvious case in point being energy giant Yukos, whose assets were funneled by the Kremlin to state-owned oil company Rosneft. Sibneft, another privately held oil outfit, was forced into selling its operations to Gazprom.
But what of the economy? Real disposable income has indeed risen by more than 10 percent a year, while consumer spending has skyrocketed. Unemployment has also been cut from 12 percent in 1999 to 6 percent in ’06.
McFaul and Stoner-Weiss:
“One can only wonder how fast Russia would have grown with a more democratic system. The strengthening of institutions of accountability – a real opposition party, genuinely independent media, a court system not beholden Kremlin control – would have helped tame corruption and secure property rights and would thereby have encouraged more investment and growth. The Russian economy is doing well today, but it is doing well in spite of, not because of, autocracy .
“The Kremlin talks about creating the next China, but Russia’s path is more likely to be something like that of Angola – an oil- dependent state that is growing now because of high oil prices but has floundered in the past when oil prices were low and whose leaders seem more intent on maintaining themselves in office to control oil revenues and other rents than on providing public goods and services to a beleaguered population. Unfortunately, as Angola’s president, Jose Eduardo dos Santos, has demonstrated by his three decades in power, even poorly performing autocracies can last a long, long time.”
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Hot Spots returns in two weeks .March 13.
Brian Trumbore
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