Amid protests from his opponents and from the main organization monitoring the Presidential elections, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) of which Russia is a member, current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin registered a substantial victory in last Sunday’s general elections, amassing 64% of the vote. Objections have been raised to what has been portrayed as an excessive influence of the government and Putin’s United Russia Party in the machinery responsible for conducting the elections. Putin, who came under immense pressure from the same party opponents, and from popular protest after the recent parliamentary elections, appears to have been much relieved, and has insisted that protests threatening state security will be dealt with firmly by the state.
Whether the opposition forces can muster similar demonstrations is left to be seen, but Putin well knows that, over the next few years, a certain tranquility is required if he is to put the Russian economy on a footing firmer than the dependence on its oil resources to which his economic strategy is substantially subjected.
The parliamentary, and now the presidential, elections can be perceived as part of the evolution of the Russian state from the communist forms of organization that characterized it as the Soviet Union. Following his removal of President Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin’s decisive liquidation and redesignation of the USSR as the Russian Federation with essentially pre-revolution borders, required a simultaneous construction of new arrangements of state and government. This in turn meant a relinquishing of attempts of dominant influence over the countries of Eastern Europe or the entities constituting Soviet Asia; a movement of the character of the economy towards a western-style capitalism; and a rearrangement of its relations with its land-bordering neighbours, in particular the European Union, the new states of pre-Soviet Asia, the reborn politically autonomous states of Eastern Europe, and with China.
But in the face of what appeared to be a personal psychological disintegration of Yeltsin himself, and consequent growing political uncertainty, Putin’s two terms as President of the state, gave him a certain legitimacy and political dominance in Russia in what appeared to be quick time. Taking advantage of a rise in oil prices during his first and second terms as President, he seemed to the Russians to have restored a certain stability and predictability to the management of the state, and to the country’s economy. In return, he obviously used this appreciation initially to organize a more personalized control of the state machinery; and to persuade the Russian public that the economic boom of the first decade of the 2000’s was due to his, and not simply the new Russian entrepreneurs’, particular policies on the economy. And such was the success of this strategy, that he felt strong enough to manoeuvre the strategy of, and get electoral support for, replacing himself by now President Medvedev; and then reversing it to permit himself to be now reelected as President again.
But what Putin seems not to have anticipated was two things. The first was the onset of global recession again with a downward effect on the original upswing of the Russian economy; and secondly, that the opening of the economy was creating multiple centres of power, information and popular influence, that would eventually open the way to challenges to his and his party’s authority. Considered opinion would appear to be that in return, in his effort to reinforce his own power and authority in the face of opposition, he overplayed his hand, this resulting in a reinforcement of opposition. Hence some degree of doubt that the 64% vote which he obtained is more than the actual result; and western world sentiment, as the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe reports have indicated, that the numbers given do not reflect reality.
It is unlikely that Western sentiment can have any real influence on this situation. Though there can be little doubt that attempts will be made, from within Western Europe in particular, to support various kinds of groupings wishing to pursue the question of the validity of the results; and to promote influences in Russia that are calling for more effective instruments of independent control and monitoring of future elections.
The NATO powers will however, be more concerned to seek to influence Russia’s relations with the former republics in Europe such as Ukraine, Georgia and the ex-Asian Soviet republics, the first two being seen virtually as test cases of whether Russia wishes to relate to them as fully sovereign entities. Putin has in the past of course insisted that Russia is entitled to have the kinds of special relationship with certain neighbouring states whose behaviour can have an influence on both the functioning of its own economy, and on its security.
Russia, under the Putin-Medvedev combination has been keen to undertake a normalization of its relations with areas of the globe that will enhance its own economic growth. But equally as importantly, the government has retained an aspect of the old Soviet policy that emphasizes the necessity for even a down-sized Russia to ensure influence over developments, and Western behaviour in, significant areas like the Middle East, Asia and the countries on its wide perimeter. Hence its behaviour in both the Libya and Syria issues in recent times. And much like President Obama emphasizing the importance of Asia and the Pacific to United States’ economic and security diplomacy, Putin has cast a global perspective on Russia’s role in stating that Russia’s foreign policy rests with the Asia-Pacific, including China.
There can be no doubt that both the NATO powers and China have had a certain appreciation for the degree of overall stability which Putin has brought to Russian diplomacy in the last decade, after the roll-and tumble behaviour of Yeltsin. But they perceive themselves to have a certain constituency, if we can refer to it as that, which makes them responsible for ensuring a persistent growth of popular strength and representative institutions in Russia. The European Union, for example, would claim that Russia’s very adherence to the OSCE legitimizes a wider European interest in its domestic affairs. Putin, of course, fears that they, and the variety of NGO’s concerned with Russian development, will use this as a wedge to support opposition groupings within the country itself, which the President sees as interference.
What seems undoubtedly to be the case however, is that a persistent growth of the Russian economy, if the European economy does not descend too precipitously will, Western powers or not, strengthen populist and liberal forces in Russia. The EU is Russia’s largest trading partner, taking 52% of the country’s foreign trade, with 68% of its exports being oil and natural gas supplies. In that context, it will be for Putin and his government to find a way of seducing various internal political and economic forces to their side, with the necessary concessions that that will entail. His triumph seems to be something of a double-edged sword.
