{"id":2531,"date":"2007-12-21T04:44:58","date_gmt":"2007-12-21T04:44:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2531"},"modified":"2007-12-21T17:56:55","modified_gmt":"2007-12-21T17:56:55","slug":"retro-authoritarianismso-old-its-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/?p=2531","title":{"rendered":"Retro- Authoritarianism….So Old, it’s New"},"content":{"rendered":"

TIME<\/em><\/strong> magazine<\/a>, as most are no doubt aware, named Russian President Vladimir Putin<\/strong> as it’s 2007 “Man of the Year<\/a>“.\u00a0 The editors explained their choice in a way that also\u00a0attempted to\u00a0 articulate Putin’s stabilitarian\u00a0“siloviki ideology”:<\/p>\n

“But all this has a dark side. To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government has shut down TV stations and newspapers, jailed businessmen whose wealth and influence challenged the Kremlin’s hold on power, defanged opposition political parties and arrested those who confront his rule. Yet this grand bargain-of freedom for security-appeals to his Russian subjects, who had grown cynical over earlier regimes’ promises of the magical fruits of Western-style democracy. Putin’s popularity ratings are routinely around 70%. “He is emerging as an elected emperor, whom many people compare to Peter the Great,” says Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and a well-connected expert on contemporary Russia. <\/strong><\/p>\n

Putin’s global ambitions seem straightforward. He certainly wants a seat at the table on the big international issues. But more important, he wants free rein inside Russia, without foreign interference, to run the political system as he sees fit, to use whatever force he needs to quiet seething outlying republics, to exert influence over Russia’s former Soviet neighbors. What he’s given up is Yeltsin’s calculation that Russia’s future requires broad acceptance on the West’s terms. That means that on big global issues, says Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution and former point man on Russia policy for the Clinton Administration, “sometimes Russia will\u00a0\u00a0be helpful to Western interests, and sometimes it will be the spoiler.” <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Putin’s rule\u00a0can ( and typically has been) analyzed from the perspective of Sovietology and Russian history.\u00a0Articles feature the usual, superficial, observations that Russians like a strong vozhd<\/em><\/strong> (supreme leader) in the tradition of Stalin<\/strong>,\u00a0Alexander III<\/strong>, Nicholas I<\/strong>, Peter the Great<\/strong>\u00a0and Ivan the Terrible<\/strong>; that\u00a0Putin’s regime is\u00a0a\u00a0Cheka-KGB front (\u00a0 actually, KGB veterans are among the most competent and least ideological technocrats of the Soviet era officials – who would YOU hire ? The guys who ran Soviet agriculture ?); that Russians yearn for a return to the Cold War and so on.\u00a0 While there is some truth to these statements regarding the Russian national character and unhappy history,\u00a0to use them as a fundamental explanation of Russia’s current political system is mostly rubbish.\u00a0 The truth is that Russia’s liberal and democratic parties self-destructed and discredited themselves among Russian voters in the waning years of Yeltsin’s tenure and that Putin enacted a moderately nationalist\u00a0 and anti-oligarchical\u00a0agenda that catered to the tastes of the vast majority of his countrymen. When Putin centralized power in his hands as a quasi-dictator, he did so in a political vacuum.<\/p>\n

This pattern is hardly uniquely Russian. We have seen populist, plebiscitary yet police state regimes long before Vladimir Putin’s New Russia. Napoleon Bonaparte<\/a><\/strong> was the modern innovator, abolishing the decrepit Directorate and constructing a regime that offered a little something for everybody who wanted a glorious France; his cabinet included Jacobin Terrorists, Monarchists, Girondins, aristocracy, bourgeosie\u00a0and the chameleon-like Talleyrand<\/a><\/strong>.\u00a0Napleon made use of “new men” and flattered the old nobility even as he created a broad class of “notables” and answered the desire of the French\u00a0for both greatness and order. Propaganda was used liberally but so to were the police-spies of Fouche<\/a><\/strong> to cadge Napoleon’s impressive plebescitary majorities out of the electorate. How different, functionally speaking,\u00a0is Vladimir Putin? Or for that matter, Hugo Chavez<\/strong> ?<\/p>\n

We\u00a0 could go back still further to the Caesars – Julius<\/strong> <\/a>and his canny heir Augustus<\/a><\/strong>. Both men understood well that truly revolutionary changes in a political system were most placidly accepted when cloaked in the guise of adhering to old forms and restoring order and normality ( it must be said though, that Octavian understood this better than his martial Uncle). After periods of disorder, want or uncertainty there\u00a0has always been\u00a0many people who are all too willing to trade liberty for economic security.<\/p>\n

Whenever authoriarianism has the added attraction of marshalling competence and cultural values behind it’s standard, democrats should beware.<\/p>\n

ADDENDUM:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Thomas P.M. Barnett<\/a><\/strong> – “Putin Positions himself as Russia’s Lee Kwan Yew<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The Guardian<\/em><\/strong> – “Putin, the Kremlin\u00a0power struggle and the $ 40 bn fortune<\/a>”<\/p>\n

The Russia Blog<\/a><\/strong> – “Why Russia Loves Putin<\/a>”<\/p>\n

Michael Barone<\/strong> <\/a>– “Putin: Odd Choice for\u00a0Person of the Year<\/a>“<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

TIME magazine, as most are no doubt aware, named Russian President Vladimir Putin as it’s 2007 “Man of the Year“.\u00a0 The editors explained their choice in a way that also\u00a0attempted to\u00a0 articulate Putin’s stabilitarian\u00a0“siloviki ideology”: “But all this has a dark side. To achieve stability, Putin and his administration have dramatically curtailed freedoms. His government […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[476,425,51,187,88,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2531","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-democracy","category-government","category-history","category-politics","category-putin","category-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2531"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2531\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2531"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2531"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zenpundit.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2531"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}