Are Russians Doomed to Reject Democracy?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times & Transcript

Many western writers despair of the prospects for democracy in Russia. They continue to view its people as obedient, passive, and dependent on government – in other words, not all that different from their behaviour in Soviet times. So they attribute the country’s current brand of authoritarianism under Vladimir Putin to the subservient mindset of its citizens.

Is this just a stereotype? What does actually explain President Vladimir Putin’s high approval ratings despite economic downturns? Why do Russians take a positive view of Putin?

As privatization and free elections were introduced simultaneously by Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, access to power meant access to property, and vice versa. Two political models emerged: centralized and non-competitive, the system favoured by the tight-knit Tatar elite, and fragmented and competitive, which characterized the Nizhny Novgorod region under Yeltsin ally Boris Nemtsov.

In the latter, politicians aired corruption scandals over the course of nasty campaigns, leading many voters to see elections as elite infighting and to respond with apathy and protest voting. As competitive democracy delegitimized itself, the Tatar model looked increasingly appealing. Popular disillusionment with democratic institutions united the self-interest of Putin’s circle with the desires of an alienated public.

Putin has been successful in promoting his image as an embodiment of the shared national identity. He has tapped into powerful group emotions of shame and humiliation, derived from the traumatic economic transition in the 1990s, and has politicized national identity to transform these emotions into a renewed sense of patriotism.

When Mikhail Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet Union in December 1991, it unleashed a torrent of change that inundated Russia’s political landscape, washing away the old and leaving a morass of debris in its wake.

By emphasizing the foreign threat to the Russian state, which Putin maintains is a key impediment to the country’s modernization, he has restored the nation’s self-respect. He has reawakened the elements of his country’s legitimizing myths in ways that have proved deeply satisfying to tens of millions of Russians.

Putin sensed that which pro-democracy revolutionaries of the early 1990s tended to disregard: the deep-seated trauma inflicted on Russians by the loss of what they believed was their country’s exalted status. They grieved the disappearance of the mission by which the Soviet Union defined its exclusivity.

In an article entitled “On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” published in both Russian and Ukrainian on July 12, Putin accused the country’s enemies of working methodically to rupture the historic links between Russia and Ukraine.

According to Putin, the ouster of the pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 was a culmination of a centuries-old Western plot to create in Ukraine what Putin calls an “anti-Russia,” to squeeze and contain Russia proper. Ukraine is not sovereign and finds itself under “external governance,” a code word for the United States.

“The Western authors of the anti-Russia project set up the Ukrainian political system in such a way that presidents, members of parliament and ministers would change but the attitude of separation from and enmity with Russia would remain,” Putin wrote. “Today, the ‘right’ patriot of Ukraine is only the one who hates Russia. Moreover, the entire Ukrainian statehood, as we understand it, is proposed to be further built exclusively on this idea.”

Putin charged that Ukraine has failed to fulfill its obligations under a 2015 peace deal to grant broad autonomy to the Donbas region The Russian leader also noted that Ukraine acquired broad territories in the country’s southeast and elsewhere during the period when it was part of the Soviet Union.

That’s why there was euphoria following Putin’s annexation of the Crimea from Ukraine in March 2014. Putin recast himself as a wartime president and war or threat of war has been the key to his regime’s legitimacy since then.

The president enjoyed enormous esteem in the wake of the takeover, when his favourability rating regularly exceeded 80 per cent. It has since fallen from that height but has held relatively steady.

It is the consolidation of a strong and conservative Russian national identity representing a direct counter to liberal democratic values that has fostered national self-esteem in Russia. It has led to Putin’s continued approval despite economic downturns.