https://www.site/2017-10-24/politolog_kirill_rogov_kak_rossiya_mozhet_ryvkom_dognat_ostalnoy_mir

"People sitting upstairs are tough, unkind - but not idiots"

Political scientist Kirill Rogov: how Russia can quickly catch up with the rest of the world

It is not enough to write and adopt a good economic program. Change must begin with a request from the population and elitesKremlin.Ru

“In 1991, we were seized with a certain idealistic euphoria. My friend, philologist, culturologist Andrey Zorin called this "a historically progressive delusion". It seemed to us that communism was over, and now, of course, there would be democracy. Because communism is a dictatorship that interfered with democracy, and since the communist regime has fallen, we will move from one “room” to another. Of course, it must somehow be framed, that is, some laws must be adopted, but in principle there is no other way. Now we know that most countries in the world are neither communist dictatorships nor democracies, but are located between these poles, making movements here and there and hanging out in this space for quite a long time. Why didn't we get into that "room"? Why was euphoria and enthusiasm replaced by pessimism? Since we were supposed to be in democracy, but we didn’t, it means that someone betrayed us, deceived us, someone was wrong, guilty? Yeltsin, Gaidar, Chubais? - this is how the well-known political scientist Kirill Rogov began his lecture at the Yeltsin Center. According to Kirill Yuryevich, the historical roots of today's "public-private oligarchy" are much deeper.

How the Stalinist model of modernization destroyed the USSR

— Here it is important to look at the years lived in the communist regime. What was this mode? Those who came to power in October 1917 were Marxists, but the regime they began to build after seizing power had nothing to do with Marxism. Marxism understood socialism as the next stage after mature capitalism and the transition to a new stage. Russia, on the other hand, lagged behind Western Europe by about half a century, industrialization did not take place in it, and Marxism did not assume that it was possible to build communism in such a backward country. But in the late 1920s, Stalin adopted a plan to build socialism in a single country, began to justify that this was possible, and - in a sense, spontaneously - a completely new economic model arose.

This model is typical for countries that are in a “trap of underdevelopment”: due to a lack of resources and investments, they cannot overcome the imbalance between sectors, primarily the agricultural and industrial ones, cannot move the industrial sector forward and move on to growth. The Stalinist model was a model of non-market industrialization, when the state seizes all the resources in the country and begins to solve the market problem, which cannot be solved by the market method, under the conditions of a dictatorship, a tough repressive regime: it redistributes funds from the agricultural sector to the industrial sector, underpays workers and increases the share of investments - and thus makes a big leap. Considering the number of peasant uprisings in the early 1930s and how they were suppressed, this was in fact another civil war in which Stalin subjugated the countryside, stateized it, seized the resources of the agrarian sector and forcibly redistributed them to the industrial one.

MMK website

It should be noted that the Stalinist modernization was quite effective: it gave a quick result, which made it possible to jump out of the “trap of backwardness” and start building industry. In the 1930s, the Soviet economy developed quite rapidly, and by the end of the 50s - the beginning of the 60s, a large urban population had developed, we achieved technological parity with the United States: we were the first to launch satellites, the first to fly into space. And in the military sphere, too, they became the second superpower. Then the virgin lands turned up, in the 60s they began to develop West Siberian oil and gas, and this gave a strong impetus to the economy, and in the 70s oil prices rose, and this made it possible to extend the life of the system. The system existed at the very least for about 70 years, moreover, it "infected" half the world. Yes, Eastern Europe was under Soviet occupation, but the socialist regimes in the Balkans arose without much intervention from Stalin, most of Asia also fell ill with this “disease”: China, Korea, Vietnam, Laos. Now it seems to some that the collapse of the communist regime was almost accidental - if not for the fall in oil prices, if not for Gorbachev ...

However, the fact is that in the 1970s and 1980s, another model of overcoming the backwardness trap began to take shape in Asia, the model of export-oriented modernization: with the help of cheap labor, you produce goods for the markets of rich countries for very little money, people come to you investments - you produce and sell even more goods, and there is a rapid industrialization. That is, if the Stalinist model was based on artificial, state-managed redistribution between sectors within the country, then this one is based on redistribution between countries. It turned out to be more efficient and profitable. The Soviet system is in crisis: by this time, in contrast to the Stalin era, the USSR is already too integrated into world trade, we already have large incomes from exports and large imports, while prices are flexible on the foreign market, and rigid in the USSR, and this leads to an inevitable crisis and collapse.

Mikhail Kovalevsky/Facebook Kirill Rogov

One of the problematic legacies of non-market industrialization is the location of resources. Resources were distributed across the country in accordance not with market incentives, but with centralized tasks. In the 1990s, it was discovered that in certain industries there were only two or three, or even one, largest enterprise that produced the lion's share of the products. And try to arrange a market here, if there is a ready-made, established monopoly that cannot be destroyed: we will not cut a huge plant in half. It turned out that entire cities, districts, regions are tied to these enterprises, and when such an enterprise runs out of resources, no one receives a salary, and the labor force has nowhere to go. In a market economy, it flows into other sectors, and if a tank factory that provides jobs and money for half of the region stops, then everyone has no money. And you won’t flow anywhere, into any market sector, because the market sector develops when people bring money there, but they don’t have money, they don’t get paid.

How Stalin's legacy brought a "gang" of oligarchs to power

— Non-market industrialization is a fundamental event in Russian history. In general, how industrialization proceeds is the most important moment in the history of any state. In Western Europe, the formation of both the model of industrial growth and the social model of society is connected with industrialization: there industrialization took place primarily at the expense of private capital, the main agents were private firms. Behind private firms, corporations are private banks, behind them - a whole system of social institutions, political parties. A proto-democracy is emerging that is not at all like the modern one: quite corrupt, dirty, but since private firms need access to markets and competition, then social system adapts to economic agents.

Accordingly, in Russia all this is not. In the Stalinist model, the only agent of modernization was the state, which, on the contrary, suppressed all other agents in order to carry out industrialization with an "iron fist". And at the moment when the communist system falls, we have nothing of the Western European socio-political infrastructure. In our country, the state has corporatized everything, crushed all structures under itself - there is no tradition of private corporations and political parties, that is, associations of citizens.

We pass laws, rules, create institutions, but there are no agents who should use them, are interested in them and support them. These agents have not yet grown up in our country, we are furnishing a “room”, and there is no one to live in it. We introduce elections, but there are no established parties, no social trust skill that supports them so much that they can continue to exist in an impersonal way, that is, not associated with specific individuals that make them influential, beyond the life of these individuals, without them. We have not only parties - ministries or regions are strong when they are headed by "strong leaders" who, using their connections, build a self-contained system of personal relationships that give the ministry or region certain advantages over others. These are patrimonial, or patronal, relations: the whole society consists of a system of patrons with their clienteles, everything is built into patronal pyramids and rests on interpersonal relationships.

Viktor Chernov/Russian Look

For example, one of the great achievements of Russia in the 1990-2000s was the creation in Moscow of a new, big and good university, the best in the country now - the Higher School of Economics. Yaroslav Kuzminov and his associates created it with great difficulty. But at the same time, Kuzminov is the permanent rector of the university, it never occurs to anyone that rectors are being changed. Because Kuzminov has very strong connections in the government, in the presidential administration, in political circles (we note that Yaroslav Kuzminov is the husband of the chairman of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation Elvira Nabiullina. - Ed.), And everyone understands that if Kuzminov leaves, the Higher School of Economics will be under attack: it is not known who will be sent and what he will do. And we need to save Kuzminov, because only he can cover up and develop this excellent educational institution.

In this example, we see that the mechanism of patronage relations operates not only at the very top of the political pyramid, but reproduces itself on all floors: it excludes impersonal institutions that work for everyone, and replaces them with relations of individuals that subordinate organizations: I appoint you as the Prosecutor General you'll be my attorney general. This institutional trap is a huge, key problem in our society.

Why did it happen? In the 1990s, it was not so much private corporations and political parties that arose and operated in Russia, but rather gangs. In gangs with low social capital, violence was the main craft, in gangs with higher social capital, which were formed on the periphery of Soviet corporatist institutions - the Komsomol, sports sections - circles with high interpersonal trust were formed, ready to seize space, property, power. Parties are broad horizontal structures with open access, gangs are small vertical structures with closed access. And since, due to the lack of tradition and infrastructure, social trust in society was low, small groups with high interpersonal trust turned out to be stronger than broad, amorphous structures. The parties of the 1990s are pure clientelles of various industrial, oligarchic and bureaucratic groups. Such parties do not depend on voters who help them come to power and gain power through parties, but on persons who have already received power and create a party in order to maintain this power. I call such a system, which took shape in the mid-1990s and until the early 2000s, a “competitive oligarchy”. This is a pluralistic-oligarchic regime, it has developed not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine, Moldova, Armenia, and also in Georgia in the 90s.

Interestingly, in the 2000s, when there was more money, we switched to an Asian, authoritarian type. Russia is an ambiguous state, it is here and there. In 1991, along with the Baltics, it is the most advanced state in terms of the influence of the democratic coalition; today we have no pluralism. There is a deep disillusionment with democratic institutions. This is a structural problem in which no one is specifically to blame, this is a reality that came after we went through non-market industrialization without creating the institutions that Western Europe created during its industrialization.

How Oil Profits Are Killing Russian Democracy

- According to the economist, Nobel laureate Douglas North and his co-authors, there are no separate political, separate economic institutions, they interact and support each other. Competitive economic institutions support competitive political institutions, thus creating open access orders; restricted access orders are arranged in the same way. The open access order is not at all a realm of universal justice, it does not exclude rent: you have invented something that everyone wants to buy, but you do not let anyone know how it works, and you, as the only manufacturer, receive rent.

Rents undermine the economy, but open access provides access to rent and other agents, and the more people rush into the sphere of rent, the smaller the rent itself and the more dynamic society develops, since rent does not become a plug in the economy and does not undermine it. That is, the order of open access ensures high internal competition, and - most importantly - it is much more adaptable to challenges, external changes than the order of closed access. In closed access orders, the government or some groups immediately begin to seize the source of rent, control it and try to keep anyone out of it. Sometimes they even try to organize a fair distribution, but in any case, for many years and decades, their task becomes the conservation of rent.

Oil is what else greatly distorted our trajectory. Were it not for oil, we would remain within the very immature, clientelist pluralism of the 1990s. Still, it would be a pretty competitive situation. But in the 2000s, due to rising oil prices, both the economic and political infrastructure of the country began to change. The first oil boom began in 2003 and ended in 2008, the second occurred in 2010-2015. And the current oil prices are not low, they are close to the average for the period since the 1970s, and back in 2005 we considered such prices to be very high.

Kremlin.Ru

What do we see? That if both oil prices and the Russian economy grew during the first boom, then after 2009 the prices are huge again, and the economy is not growing, we have moved on to protracted stagnation. Our GDP today is almost the same as the GDP of 2008, the economy has practically not grown. In numbers, the picture is even more frightening. In 1992-1998, during a deep transformational crisis, our exports amounted to $1 trillion, while the economy was falling by an average of 5% per year. In 2000-2008, exports amounted to twice as much - $ 2.2 trillion, and the economy grew by 7% annually. In 2009-2016, exports doubled again to $4.15 trillion, while the economy is growing at about 0.5% per year. That is, during the second oil boom, we got a very bad situation, when there is a lot of money, but the economy is not growing.

This means that economic agents that live on growth do not benefit, but those economic agents that live on the distribution of money coming into the country benefit. Money is distributed in two ways - through formal networks (this is the budget) and informal ones - this is rent, which in different ways settles in the hands of officials, firms and corporations associated with them. Such distribution networks create a powerful coalition, a private-state oligarchy, when you do not understand where the private ends and the state begins. Today, not a businessman, but the prosecutor's office and the Investigative Committee are the most important people, that's who drives super-expensive cars. And businessmen no longer look like a “white caste”, as it was in the 90s, they “get by”. The private-state oligarchy is the main beneficiary and the ruling elite of the country, managing and protecting this model.

Why does Russia still have a chance for a breakthrough

- However, we do not have and are not expected to have a systemic economic catastrophe, as in the 80s in the USSR or as it is now in Venezuela. We must try to turn Russia into Venezuela. At the same time, the people sitting at our top are tough, unkind, love themselves and money and don’t want to let anyone get close to money, but you can’t say that they are idiots. What to do?

A significant deterrent is demographics. We have an aging population: life expectancy is increasing, but the birth rate is low, there are few young people. And it would be nice to learn from China. In the late 70s, the Chinese elite was horrified, there was a clear realization that they could not feed such a number of terribly poor people. In the next 30 years, China experienced a paradox: it learned to sell its problem and make money on it. It was the huge and poor population that became the main competitive advantage of China and allowed it to make a huge breakthrough.

The demographic problem of Russia can also become a competitive advantage. Our bright feature: we have an incredibly large territory. The population density is 8 people per square kilometer, if you do not take into account areas unfavorable for life, no more than 25 people. If Russia were to attract 20-30 million people, this would make it possible to make an economic breakthrough, roughly similar to China's. This is 20-30 million additional consumers, an increase in the capacity of the domestic market. The influx of migrants is the most important condition for the start of Russia's development. So far, I must say, our government is on reasonable positions, realizing the critical importance of the influx of migrants for the economy. But migrants have obvious problems with registration due to the corruption of this area, and we have to compete with other countries to attract labor.

Russia has a lot of territory and few people. Our chance is to attract migrants Sergey Kovalev/Global Look Press

Another structural problem that needs and can be solved is federalism. We have a disproportion in the representation of territories in the political system of the country, in their influence on this system. Let's see how Russia chose State Duma deputies from party lists. Least of all percent "United Russia" received mainly in big cities. 47% of all voters live there, the turnout was approximately 38%, on average, United Russia received the same amount. AT national republics ah, 14% of all voters live, the turnout is somewhere around 75%, on average 78% voted for United Russia: there is a different political culture, no observers, what the authorities wrote down - that's it. As a result, 14% of voters give more than a third of all the votes received by United Russia, and we have what we have: the Russia of big cities is represented three times less than the Russia of national republics, and in parliament there is a political monopoly.

We need real federalism. Russia consists of territories that are located in different historical cycles. And it is important to come up with a federal structure that, on the one hand, will ensure consistent connectivity of the territories, and, on the other hand, will give these territories a significant autonomy of socio-economic models. So that, for example, Dagestan or Tuva do not transmit their social and political habits to Moscow, and vice versa, so that they coexist in one country, but at the same time develop in those traditions and modernization trajectories that are adequate and comfortable for them. Now everything is exactly the opposite.

The third key issue is economic growth. We have serious limitations - an aging population, huge state pension obligations, expensive labor, a large share of labor in GDP. On the other hand, we have a rather powerful culture of urban agglomerations, a large market and a well-educated population. Therefore, with the potential for growth, everything is not easy, but it is there. Moreover, the modern world provides opportunities to integrate into value chains and thus develop economic growth. It used to be like this: in order to ensure economic growth, it was necessary to build the entire industry. Today it is enough to enter the world production in very narrow segments and thus quickly break into the core of the world technological process. For example, some European countries cannot afford to create the same powerful universities as private universities in America, but they choose one or two narrow specializations, compete with the most advanced universities and research centers and move out of the periphery. That is, now a country with poor starting data can also claim economic leadership.

Zamir Usmanov/Russian Look

In general, in fact, everything is not so bad. True, with such regimes as ours, it happens that they themselves do something that greatly shakes them up. It is sometimes said that if Kudrin comes up with the right reform program, gives it to Putin, Putin accepts it and starts implementing it, then we will have good, self-sustaining economic growth. It's not, and it won't be. Reforms are usually not composed by some group of economists and are not introduced by presidential decree. They begin when there are groups of the population and elites who are interested in removing restrictions on economic growth in the form of inadequate institutions, including political ones. But what do we see? If in 1999 the turnover of the 60 largest companies was equal to 20% of GDP, in 2013 it was already more than 50%, today half of Russia's GDP is the turnover of only 50 companies. Gather 70 people in one hall - it will be 70% of GDP. Terrible concentration. In this system, it is difficult to expect anything other than a political monopoly that will maintain a monopoly in the economy.

The most important obstacle, as I have already said, is oil, the reserves of rent from which remain significant. Therefore, oil should "run out a little" and, probably, everything is going to this. Somewhere since 2003-2004, Gazprom and Rosneft assured us that shale oil is complete nonsense. However, the "shale revolution" has occurred, and irreversibly. The chances that the oil era is ending and today's price decline is not the limit are quite high. We see a powerful preparation of global corporations and governments: these are the developments and plans of the largest automobile companies to produce electric vehicles, legislation that prohibits the use of non-hybrid, and even gasoline engines after 2030. And when the players in the oil market realize that an irreversible or long-term reversal to low prices is possible, then the mechanism will turn on, the opposite of the logic that now prevails in OPEC - to sell less oil so that prices are higher. At a certain moment, the largest players realize that they will never sell their oil reserves at high prices and profitably sell as much as possible. more oil. There will be a dramatic drop in prices.

Finally, if we look at social skills, how networks are organized, civil organizations, how people are able to interact in some situations, we will see that our society is, in principle, much more ready for democracy than in the early 90s, when no one did not understand how to interact, negotiate, create civil associations, and so on. Private organizations, both in the economy and politics, still existed all these 25 years, and we have a certain capital, sooner or later it will show itself.

• Rogov K. Yu. 1987. On the eve of "Woe from Wit": (Traditional and non-traditional in the theory of "high" comedy) // Problems of historical poetics in the analysis of a literary work. Kemerovo: KGU. pp. 39–48.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1988. Chisinau idea about the Player // Boldin Readings: [Materialy, 1987]. Gorky: Volgo-Vyat. book. publishing house pp. 200–207.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1990. From materials to the biography and characterization of the views of A. A. Shakhovsky // Fifth Tynyanov Readings: Abstracts and mat. for discussion. Riga: Zinatne. pp. 69–90.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1990. Portraits and caricatures (About the comedy "Converted Slavophil") // Novobasmannaya, 19. M .: Fiction. pp. 153–180.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1992. The idea of ​​a "comedy of manners" in early XIX century in Russia: Diss. for the competition scientist step. cand. philol. Sciences. M.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1992. The idea of ​​a "comedy of manners" at the beginning of the 19th century in Russia. Abstract of the dissertation for the degree of candidate of philological sciences. M: Moscow State University. M. V. Lomonosov.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1992. Russian P. or Apology of one scientific quasi-tradition: (About the Sixth Tynyanov readings) // New literary review. No. 1, pp. 354–359.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1992. Ilyin N. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 2. G - K. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 413–415.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1992. Kashkin D. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 2. G - K. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 521–522.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1992. Knyaznin A. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 2. G - K. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 568–569.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1993. "Impossible word" and the idea of ​​style: [On the work of E. Kharitonov] // New Literary Review. No. 3, pp. 265–273.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1993. The history of the text - the history of the idea: I. P. Belkin from the point of view of stylistics and hermeneutics: [Rec. on the book: Schwartzband S. History of Belkin's Tales. Jerusalem] // New Literary Review. No. 4, pp. 324–328.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1994. Kokoshkin F. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 3. K - M. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 18–20.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1994. Markov A. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 3. K - M. M .: Sov. encycle. S. 524.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1995/1996. Gogol and the “lame devil” (On the creative history of “Evenings on a Farm near Dikanka”) // Seventh Tynyanov Readings. Tynyanovsky collection. Issue. 9. 1995/1996. Riga; M. S. 130–134.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1997. On the history of “Moscow romanticism”: a circle and society of S. E. Raich // Lotman collection 2. M .: OGI. pp. 523–576.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1997. Decembrists and "Germans" // New Literary Review. No. 26, pp. 105–126.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1998. <Ред.–сост.>Russia / Russia. Issue. 1: The seventies as a subject of the history of Russian culture. M.: OGI.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1998. Seventies: a chronicle of artistic life // Russia / Russia Issue. 1: The seventies as a subject of the history of Russian culture. M.: OGI, S. 29–76.<совм. с И. П. Уваровой>
• Rogov K. Yu. 1998. Erben und Gegner - Die Dekabristen // Deutsche und Deutschland aus russischer Sicht. 19. Jahrhundert. Von der Jahrhundertwende bis zu den Reformen Alexanders II. München. S. 181–208.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1998. Russische Patrioten deutscher Abstammung // Ibid. S. 551–603.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1999. Variations of the "Moscow Text": on the history of relations between F. I. Tyutchev and M. P. Pogodin // Tyutchev collection: 2. Tartu. pp. 68–106.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1999. Nevakhovich A. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 4. M - P. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 243–245.<совм. с А.Л. Зориным и А.И. Рейтблатом>
• Rogov K. Yu. 1999. Nevakhovich M. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 4. M - P. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 245–246.
• Rogov K. Yu. 1999. Pogodin M. // Russian writers. 1800–1917 Biographical Dictionary. T. 4. M - P. M .: Sov. encycle. pp. 661–672.
• Rogov K. Yu. 2001. <Подготовка текстов и комментарий, совм. с И. Ю. Виницким, Е. Е. Дмитриевой, Ю. М. Манном>Gogol N. V. Full. coll. op. and letters: In 23 vols. T. 1. M .: Heritage.
• Rogov K. Yu. 2001. From the history of the establishment of the "Moscow Bulletin" (to the problem of "Pushkin and Vyazemsky": autumn 1826) // Pushkin conference at Stanford, 1999: Materials and research. M.: OGI. pp. 106–132.
• Vinitsky I. Yu., Dmitrieva E. E., Mann Yu. V., Rogov K. Yu. 2003. Comment // Gogol N. V. Complete works and letters: in 23 vols. M .: Science; IMLI RAN, T. 1. S. 559-872.
• Rogov K. Yu. 2004. (Un)known epigram of Pushkin. To the creative history of the VII chapter of "Eugene Onegin" // Lotman collection: 3. M .: OGI. pp. 196–214.
• Rogov K. Yu. 2005. <Предисловие.>Evgeny Kharitonov. Under house arrest. Collection of works. M.: Verb.
• Rogov K. Yu. 2005. New notes to "Poems made from other people's words" (On the poetics and evolution of a small panegyric genre in the middle of the 18th century) // Rosehip: a historical and philological collection for the 60th anniversary of Roman Davidovich Timenchik. Moscow: Aquarius Publishers. pp. 372–381.
• Rogov K. Yu. 2006. Three epochs of Russian baroque // Tynyanovsky collection. Issue 12: X–XI–XII. Tynyanov readings. Research. Materials. Moscow: Aquarius Publishers. pp. 9–101.

Landscape with a family, a city on the Neva and a Russian forest

Having arisen in the fall of 2001, this collision at first seemed like a "fight of bulldogs under the carpet." Then it turned out that this was not a fight at all, but a PR action of one PR man. However, it seems to Kirill Rogov that everything is much more serious.

Kremlinintrigue(conspiracy theory)

One way or another, the struggle between the "Petersburg" and "Family" as the main Kremlin intrigue has become one of the basic pictures that define the idea of ​​the current political process the most informed and interested public. And if it is customary in the media to describe this conflict with hints and somewhat roundabout, then in the “kitchen” (restaurant) information space, interlocutors, as a rule, quickly switch to two simple terms and operate with them as key ones for describing current conflicts and events. The conflict, therefore, is presented in the poetics of “court intrigue” traditional for the Russian political post-totalitarian mentality with business background, in poetics - conspiracy theory. There are no ideologies, there are groups (teams) and their business interests.

Yeltsin's inner circle, who planned and carried out Operation Successor, seeks to continue to control (control) the new president, thus protecting and guaranteeing, first of all, their direct (and very extensive) economic interests. This is one side of the coin. The “Chekists”, who constitute Putin’s organic environment and his natural support, are gradually seizing key positions in the Kremlin, pushing aside the “family”, placing their people on financial flows and striving to concentrate maximum economic and political power in state institutions under their control. This is a view from the other side.

There is no doubt that conspiracy theory has significant interpretative potential. Simply put, close to the truth. If only because its conceptual structures are characteristic and organic not only for observers of events (remote and close), but also for their direct participants. And here you can not argue, it would seem. The issues of property and its redistribution are of interest to the public consciousness today most of all.

Family origin

Obviously, the weak point in this picture is, of course, the concept of "Family". What kind of Voloshin, Vanin or Surkov Yeltsin family? Even people with taste and understanding operate with this concept. Apparently, for want of a better one.

Meanwhile, the term "Family" was put into use by Gusinsky's political technologists and popularized through NTV with quite pragmatic goals: it was intended to become (and indeed became) one of the key concepts of information preparation for the presidential elections of 1999-2000. In a wide panorama of scandals with the cases of Mabetex, Aeroflot, Bony, Yeltsin's cards, etc., the term "Family" was supposed to become a conceptual code, integrating an ideologeme in asserting the idea of ​​the Kremlin in the late 90s as a mafia clan. The very word "Family" unequivocally projected these scandals on classic look Italian organized crime.

The effectiveness and persuasiveness of the concept of "Family" was determined not only and not so much by the fact that the Yeltsin administration was actually led by Tatyana Dyachenko and Valentin Yumashev. It never occurred to anyone to call the leadership of Gazprom or the Moscow authorities family, although the reasons for this were no less. The deep plausibility of the term was that the "inner circle" - the young parvenus of early Russian capitalism - turned out to be practically the only support of the sick Yeltsin, who had lost the support of almost all traditional economic and bureaucratic elites. It was this lack of rootedness, and not at all kinship, and the real volume of funds redistributed with the help of the power resource, that gave credibility to the picture of a comprador conspiracy against Russia with headquarters in the Kremlin.

clash of two oligarchies

By the electoral milestone of 1999-2000. in Russia, two management classes were formed with sufficient skills and resources to fight for power and the establishment of one or another economic and political order. Two types of oligarchy. The financial power and managerial efficiency of both of them relied on two corresponding - and fundamentally different - mechanisms of rent.

The first, traditionally referred to as "oligarchic", relied on the rent of raw materials - the export of oil, metal, etc. And on the management of "foreign" financial flows, primarily the flows of state infrastructure monopolies (MPS, SCC, etc.), which he "optimized » in relation to their goals and interests. The second - the municipal oligarchy - relied on the mechanisms of administrative-territorial rent, on the traditional administrative racket: doing business in the controlled territory is possible only with the participation of the local administrative-economic clan or sharing with it. The headquarters of the first was the Kremlin, the second was assembled under its banner by the Moscow mayor.

The outcome of the elections confirmed, it seems that the first principle turned out to be somewhat more high-tech. The difference was that the federal oligarchs used the administrative resource to seize the sources of rent - the actual resources or a monopoly (privileged) position in the market. Whereas the municipal oligarchs viewed administration itself as a permanent source of redistribution. In addition, the key to the success of the first group was that, unlike the municipal oligarchy, whose natural leader was the Moscow mayor, the Kremlin decided to nominate not his leader. Precisely because the sources of wealth of this oligarchy were less dependent on direct administration, they were privatized. While the municipal oligarchs, on the contrary, privatized the administrative and administrative functions themselves.

there is a city

Such an understanding of the events of 1998-2000. allows, it seems, to make some mental exercises with the word "Petersburg". Or, to put it differently, try to describe the socio-political nature of "Putin's party".

In essence, we are talking exactly about those who, for one reason or another, did not fit into the parties of the two oligarchies. And he was deprived of his share of the rent. That is why liberal managers and personnel Chekists (collectively referred to as "St. Petersburg") coexist in this not very well-formed conglomerate today, and in one vial with them - the hopes and aspirations of a simple Russian inhabitant, the so-called "electoral swamp". Both liberals dissatisfied with the results of the primary reforms, and professional “statesmen” from the authorities who were removed from power, and the townsfolk who are always late for the holiday of life equally perceived Colonel Putin as his man in the Kremlin .

The very mythology of St. Petersburg in the Russian history of the last century - the rejected capital, the enlightened city is not destiny - turned out to be in a certain sense adequate to the mythology of the "third way", rejecting oligarchic Moscow and the patrimonial, clumsy and inert capitalism of the provinces. In general, there is a city that is ready to assume full power. The city of intellectuals and Chekists. City of honest, decent people.

historical triangle

The clash between the St. Petersburg party and the party of oligarchic management, which has determined the face of the Kremlin in recent years, is thus by no means only an undercover Kremlin intrigue, but a reflection of a quite serious and meaningful political struggle. Quite a historical conflict. And the logic of this collision, in the final analysis, politically motivates all specific positional battles and clashes, in the immediate background of which, of course, lie more mundane managerial and financial interests.

At the same time, the Putin-Peter party appears in its two guises alternately, so to speak - in the images of a good and evil investigator. On the one hand, there are liberals with projects of systemic restrictions for both oligarchies, reducing their opportunities for administrative business. On the other hand, lawless law enforcers are always ready to come up with a project of direct redistribution of property (take it away and imprison it!). Accordingly, the ideas of these two groups about the new owner also differ - about the one who should replace the regional and federal oligarch as an alternative hero of the capitalist everyday life. From the point of view of the liberals, this is still the same long-sought middle class and mass owner, from the point of view of the second - a powerful and honest State with cold hands and a head.

As the reformist projects were covered with a touch of bureaucratic everyday life, the security forces increasingly captured public attention and the political platform. BUT recent months became the era of their almost triumph. The fight against the media oligarchs and the battle for Gazprom, like other forceful actions to “return property to the state”, frightened the metropolitan and liberal public, but in general the population was perceived rather as positive events. The fact is that the party of redistribution and the party of the legal capitalist order compete not only in the administrative team of President Putin, but also in those very “hopes and aspirations of the layman” that are the main personal political resource of the St. Petersburg president. As the second loses points, the first - goes to the forefront. Simply because the fight against the two oligarchies is a nationwide political mandate given to President Putin in the last election. Not by washing - so by skating. Such is the order of the bear.

It can be assumed that the conflict of relationships in the triangle "managers - liberals - security forces" is close to climax. If only because the election cycle starting in a year will fix a new alignment of forces and set (even under the same president) a new configuration of the ruling coalition. At least, this is how things turned out in the previous Russian elections. Democracy is democracy. Albeit a little woodsy.

The current presidential term will be the fifth for Vladimir Putin. Although he spent one of them as prime minister, no one doubts that since 2000 and for 18 years now, it is he who has been at the helm of Russian politics. Longer than Leonid Brezhnev. Although elections in Russia, as in other authoritarian countries, are not a mechanism for the change of power, but, on the contrary, legitimize its irremovability, they remain important milestones marking the beginning of a new political cycle. New project InLiberty and Kirill Rogov, the Expert Club presents expert opinions on the most important trends and forks in the fifth term and the new political cycle, which, for a number of reasons, promises to be no less dramatic for the country than the previous one.

Political economy

Continuity of power

Kirill Rogov

Independent political scientist

The most important influence on the nature of political cycles in Russia is exerted by the expectations of the population and elites regarding the prospects for the Russian economy. The new political cycle will unfold under the pressure of three unfavorable factors - the continued stagnation of the economy, the international isolation of Russia and the need to ensure the preservation of the regime after 2024. The growing depression in society and the relationship between the three groups of Putin's elite - the private-state oligarchy, the power bureaucracy and civil technocrats - will have a decisive influence on the political dynamics. Given the post-Soviet experience of “succession,” Putin’s voluntary departure in 2024 looks extremely unlikely. However, the problem of the new cycle is not only the continuity of the symbolic supreme power, but - to no lesser extent - the transfer of generations and assets of Putin's elite.

Four cycles

During his 18 years in power, Vladimir Putin himself, the ruling coalition associated with him, and Russian society have undergone significant evolution. Each of Putin's four terms had its own special profile and, as a rule, an unexpected, watershed ending.

The most important vector of the first term (2000–2003) can be defined as oligarchic modernization. Vladimir Putin was in close contact with the oligarchic elites who nominated him for the role of successor, who needed access to international financial markets and integration into the world economy, and therefore adhered to the course of “controlled modernization”. The Gref Program, which society perceived as liberal, was in fact carried out exactly to the extent that it contributed to the growth of the capitalization of large commodity holdings.

In parallel, Putin waged an attack on the political rights of the old oligarchy, resulting in his conflict with Russia's largest private company, Yukos. The task of "shortening" the oligarchy of the 90s looked quite rational, but the methods by which this war was waged - raider schemes for intercepting property - undermined the image of Vladimir Putin in the eyes of the market and led to a sharp redistribution of power within the ruling coalition - an increase in the influence of power elites and power politician. The government of "oligarchic modernization" Voloshin-Kasyanov was sent to the dump.

The next term (2004-2008) could be called triumphal, if we consider it in isolation from subsequent events. The rapid rise in oil prices was accompanied by a significant inflow of capital into Russia, as a result, the Russian economy grew by an average of 7% per year. The oil euphoria and the further strengthening of the power elites associated with Putin led to several consequences: 1) the formation of the concept of Russia as a self-sufficient energy superpower and the tightening of rhetoric against the West (“Munich speech”); 2) expansion of the state in the economy - drift towards palliative state capitalism (creation of state corporations); 3) further centralization of political power (the "vertical"), which manifested itself most clearly in the abolition of the election of governors and the creation of a "dominant party".

The paradox of this period was that it came to an unexpected end during the formal presidency of Dmitry Medvedev. In the autumn of 2008, oil prices collapsed, and the Russian economy experienced one of the deepest declines among the world's major economies (-7.8%), the largest Russian companies were on the verge of default. The crisis demonstrated the high dependence of the economy on external conditions and forced us to adjust both optimistic expectations about its future and the idea of ​​a strong relationship between Vladimir Putin's authoritarian course and economic growth. The elites and society formed a demand for a new socio-economic model, an alternative to Putin's "vertical"; this trend culminated in a wave of mass protests in late 2011 and early 2012.

The economic crisis of 2008-2009 made a strong impression on the elites and the population, but it turned out to be fleeting. In 2010, oil prices began to recover rapidly, and in 2011 they reached historical highs, where they held out until the fall of 2014 Despite this, the Russian economy was unable to return to the trajectory tall- growth slowed down sharply. At the same time, the state had the opportunity to seriously increase spending: they grew from 31 to 36% of GDP. The new private-state oligarchy, directly connected with Vladimir Putin, also increased its influence.

All this led to the formation of a fairly broad rent-oriented, redistributive coalition, the well-being of which was based on budgetary funds, political preferences and the power apparatus. The shock of the 2008 crisis was replaced by a new self-confidence, the banner of which once again became the idea of ​​self-sufficiency and national revenge. The political consolidation of the new coalition, the core of which was the private-state oligarchy and the power bureaucracy, was the main trend of the fourth term (2012-2018). The idea of ​​confrontation with the West has become a central element in the legitimation of the "new regime" and the driver of its authoritarian radicalization.

From this brief overview, one can see, in particular, that the main turns in domestic politics during Putin's 18 years were closely related not only to the current situation in the economy, but, perhaps even more so, to expectations about its prospects. These expectations changed in 2003-2004 due to the start of a sharp rise in oil prices, in 2008-2009 due to their sharp fall, in 2012-2013 due to a new oil boom, defining the turning points of political cycles.

Three calls

The new political cycle will unfold under the influence of three fundamental challenges:

Extremely low growth or stagnation of the Russian economy: the average GDP growth rate in the period 2009-2017 was about 0.7%;

Russia's international isolation as a result of its conflict with the West;

The need to solve the problem of 2024, after which Putin, under the current Constitution, cannot retain the presidency.

It should be noted that the effect of the first and second factors are beyond the influence of the Kremlin. The economic authorities have no idea of ​​politically acceptable ways to stimulate growth, but only hopes for its "natural" recovery. The crisis of 2014-2015 was taken by the elites as evidence that the fall in oil prices to historical averages ($50-60 per barrel) and the sharp decline in investment inflows are not critical to the stability of the regime. At the same time, the protracted economic recovery contributes to the growing social depression.

The conflict with the West, which Putin "ruled" in 2014-2015, also got out of his control. The West does not feel the need for its de-escalation and is much more ready than before for retaliatory actions. The Russian population, on the contrary, although loyal to “official patriotism”, shows signs of fatigue from foreign policy topics and the scandals provoked by it (in polls, citizens express the opinion that the authorities are too passionate about foreign policy and do not pay enough attention to domestic issues).

Finally, the problem of 2024 is structural in nature. The point is not so much in the personality of Vladimir Putin, but in the system of patronage, in which the interests of elite groups and clans can only be guaranteed on the basis of personal unions. The power of the new leader arises from the very fact of the abolition of previous guarantees and preferences and the distribution of new ones. The experience of post-Soviet "succession" basically demonstrates that the successor, while remaining loyal to the "godfather", will destroy the old clientele in order to create a new one. Even the experience with the “controlled successor” or “tandem” of 2008-2012 does not look good: according to the Kremlin, it created the threat of a split in the elites and a dangerous politicization of society.

The institutions of distributed power and broad coalitions in the format of the “ruling party” have also not been created (although certain steps have been taken in this direction) and are unlikely to be created in the remaining time. In general, in the world of authoritarianism in recent decades, the main trend is personalist regimes, while party authoritarianism is mutating, and their number is declining. The party model is also unpopular among the Russian population. Finally, external confrontation, which remains today a key element in legitimizing the regime, also requires the symbolic personalization of the “defender of the nation”.

All of these arguments work in favor of Vladimir Putin retaining formal political powers beyond his fifth term. And this means that even what the constitutional design of the Russian statehood will be by 2024 is not known today.

One way or another, the combination of the three identified challenges - stagnation, isolation and continuity problems - forms an unfavorable and extremely conflicting disposition of the cycle that has begun.

Generation and Asset Transfer

However, the main collision of the cycle that has begun is connected not only with the problem of succession and the transfer of supreme power, but also with the problem of the transfer of generations and assets of the elites of the Putin era.

Putin's system of power includes three key elements and three main "squads" of elites. This is a private-state oligarchy (Sechin, Rotenberg, Kovalchuk, Shamalov, Kostin, Usmanov, etc.), power corporations (FSB, FSO, etc.) and civil bureaucracy - technocrats-managers. The balance of influence and cooperation between these three pillars must ensure the sustainability of the regime.

In the last year and a half, Vladimir Putin has been busy building up the third group (new leadership of the administration, replacements in the governor's corps and government). Its representatives are recruited on the principle of loyalty to the first two, but acquire their own weight over time. This third group is most consistent with the ideals of "social lift", providing opportunities for entry into the elite of the regime, and limited meritocracy - a compromise of loyalty and efficiency. Here in the last two years there has been a forced change of generations. A vivid example of this process can be considered the replacement of the "liberal" Alexei Ulyukaev as Minister of Economy with the functional technocrat Maxim Oreshkin and a number of replacements in the governor's corps.

In contrast to the "performing" group of civil managers, for the other two groups, which are closely intertwined, the principle of "inheritance" is important. So, bright representative of the power bureaucracy and one of Putin's closest associates, Sergei Ivanov, was relieved of his post as head of the presidential administration in August 2016, and a few months later his 39-year-old son took over as chairman of the board of one of Russia's largest companies, the Alrosa diamond holding. By inheritance, a “place in the system”, a part of the power-administrative resource, is transmitted. This principle applies to other prominent representatives Putin's power corporation: the children of Security Council Secretary Patrushev, FSB Director Bortnikov, former head of the FSO Murov, and former Prime Minister and Director of the Foreign Intelligence Service Fradkov occupy key positions in large state-owned companies. Unlike their peers, technocrats-executors, they are mostly in the first positions, i.e. move up the ladder of people who make decisions and personify the leading unity of the power corporation and the governing oligarchy on the basis of hereditary loyalty.

The situation looks difficult in the sector of the "private" oligarchy - the largest private holdings and business conglomerates. The specification of property rights here looks increasingly blurred, and the ownership structure is extremely opaque. Meanwhile, a significant part of the top officials in the private sector are Putin's peers, born in the 1950s, and the approaching moment of their retirement is an almost inevitable factor in the political cycle that has begun, just like Putin's own aging. The large-scale conflict with the West further limited their ability to legalize and publicly protect property, which means it increased uncertainty and expanded the possibilities for redistribution by force.

Putin's system was formed not as a result of the implementation of some well-thought-out plan, but as a result of spontaneous reactions to changes in the situation and moods. Its main principle is a combination of power and market mechanisms, in which the latter play a subordinate, although significant role. The deterioration of the economic situation increases the imbalance of this mechanism and the costs of this imbalance. The critical moment for the system will be when the methods of force will be compromised in public opinion.

Economy

Steadily slow growing

Sergey Aleksashenko

Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (Washington)

The Russian economy has a large margin of political strength. Even after a significant drop in income over the past three years, Russians are living better today than they did 10 years ago. The economy of the next cycle will be slow growing, but stable. Vladimir Putin will not change the authoritarian and anti-Western principles on which he relied for the previous 18 years, which means he will not embark on deep reforms. Technocratic reforms, on the contrary, are very likely, but their effectiveness will be extremely low. Moderate easing of monetary policy could spur growth, but will not be supported by the economic authorities. The greatest risk is a serious recession in the global economy, but this scenario, like the scenario of a significant tightening of sanctions, looks unlikely.

Trends and Scenarios

After March 18, a new face of President Putin will inevitably await us, but in reality, there will hardly be changes in his policy that will turn it around 180 degrees. Vladimir Putin is distinguished by the stability of his views, principles and values. And in order to make forecasts, we must isolate the trends that determined the development of Russia during Putin's 18 years. For me, these trends are:

The growing military-political confrontation with the Western world, which led to the fact that Russia, in fact, has become a pariah country, which its neighbors perceive as a threat;

Consistent strengthening of the regime's authoritarianism and the consolidation of all power in the hands of a narrow circle of people who decide who will be a member of parliament and who will be a governor, how much money this or that region will get and what this money can be spent on;

Increasing the role of force methods in Russian politics and the final appropriation by the "secret police" - the FSB - of the role of "first violin" in this;

Restriction of basic constitutional rights and freedoms of citizens, including the right to elect and be elected, the right to freedom of speech, assembly and street rallies;

Consistent destruction of the system of protection of property rights, which led to reluctance Russian business invest in the development of the country.

The baseline forecast is that all these trends will continue to have their devastating impact. At the same time, by 2024, Vladimir Putin will have to answer the question: what, or rather, who is next? I see four basic scenarios.

The first is the preservation of Vladimir Putin as the only person who makes all the key decisions. The second is turning him into the Russian Deng Xiaoping, who, realizing the unviability of the political model, organizes a real round table with the participation of representatives of all political and social forces, at which the contours of the future system and the rules of the transition period will be worked out, which will allow Russia to enter a new political era in 2024.

The third and fourth options imply that Putin will follow the example of Boris Yeltsin and choose his successor. The difference between these scenarios lies in the personality of this successor: in the third option, we mean a more liberal politician, conditional "Medvedev", in the fourth - a more conservative, conditional "Rogozin".

The key issue will be the ability of this heir to retain power. Neither "Medvedev" nor "Rogozin" will be able to keep the existing system unchanged. This will upset the existing balance and lead to the infringement of the interests of influential groups that will start fighting to maintain their positions. On the other hand, it is not clear how "Medvedev" or "Rogozin" will build their relations with the FSB and whether they will be able to at least agree on the non-interference of the secret police in the political life of the country.

Sustainability factors

Even after a 10% drop in consumption in 2014-2016, Russians are living much better materially than 10 years ago. In addition, the Russian population is much more patient than many think. Impregnated with propaganda, they believe that Russia is threatened by the damned West, and are ready to endure for this. Moreover, nothing catastrophic is happening: enterprises do not close, the public sector (education, medicine) continues to work, transport continues to run.

At the very least, the economy will grow by 1-2% per year, which (in the medium term) will generate a weak inflow of new budget revenues and will allow plugging the most bottlenecks. A tight budget rule will allow the Treasury to double its liquid reserves this year to $100 billion, which is a good safety cushion. The economy will be slow growing but stable.

Threats

The main threat is a sharp downturn in the global economy and a drop in physical demand for raw materials, but this scenario is unlikely. Even a cyclical downturn in the US and Europe will not lead to a downturn in the entire global economy - these downturns are usually short and shallow, and China, India and Africa are the main engines of growth today.

In general, there are three potential external shocks that could greatly destabilize the situation in the Russian economy: 1) financial turmoil in China, whose banking system is overloaded with bad assets, but is trying to support economic growth with high credit activity; 2) a sharp decline in oil prices; 3) a sharp tightening of economic sanctions.

But here it is necessary to make a reservation that with the fall in oil prices in 2014–2015, the elasticity of the ruble exchange rate turned out to be so great that ruble budget revenues did not decrease much. After the transition to a floating exchange rate of the ruble, the economy has become much more flexible, it finds a new equilibrium faster and with less losses, albeit at the cost of falling household incomes and investments.

Forks in economic policy

An extraordinary step on Putin's part would be a sharp turn towards an independent judiciary, the rule of law. All this can enter into a scenario in which Putin leaves the first roles, turning into "wise Deng Xiaoping", but I estimate his probability as low.

Technocratic reforms are possible. Everything that Kudrin proposes and that will not affect the courts, political competition, democratic freedoms, limiting Putin's personal power, has a chance of being implemented. As a matter of fact, technocratic reforms went on throughout Putin's last presidential term. However, an important feature of technocratic reforms that adapt to authoritarian political institutions is their extremely low efficiency.

The Kremlin’s main tool for accelerating economic growth is easing budgetary policy (for example, raising the cut-off price for oil and gas revenues or raising the budget deficit ceiling to 2–2.5% of GDP; 1% of GDP is about a trillion rubles) and financing investment expenses at the expense of funds from this source both within the framework of federal programs and at the regional level.

In my opinion, given the extremely low level of public debt (15% of GDP), such a policy does not pose any potential threats. However, the Ministry of Finance categorically opposes this (without arguing its position). Therefore, the likelihood of weakening monetary or budgetary policy, in my opinion, is extremely small. Putin has a very high degree of confidence in Nabiullina-Siluanov, who (in his opinion) coped brilliantly with the 2014-2015 crisis.

Effect of sanctions

The effect of sanctions - isolation from Western financial markets - completely ceased to be felt in mid-2016. Since then, Russian banks and companies have been raising huge amounts of debt and equity capital. In addition, the Central Bank has created systems for maintaining foreign currency correspondent accounts of Russian banks that have fallen under sanctions, which will make it possible to avoid such a tough step (when and if it happens) as a ban on American and European banks from making settlements for sanctioned banks.

The most powerful effect of the sanctions is a virtual ban on the transfer of any new technologies to Russia. But its effect will accumulate slowly, and will be expressed in the growing lag behind the advanced countries. Which is a shame, but does not affect the stability of the system.

New sanctions are unlikely to destabilize the situation in Russia in any way. They will be personal, ie. it would be a visa ban plus an asset freeze in the United States. On the one hand, this does not affect the economic dynamics in any way. On the other hand, I don’t really understand why the Americans would suddenly impose sanctions on large-caliber business, conditionally, Potanin-Mikhelson-Lisin, etc. If they were deprived of their freedom of movement around the world, then this would be a strong step in bringing discord into the elites. But it won't. And the spread of sanctions on Prigozhin and Putin's massage therapist will change little in the political situation. On the third hand, the bulk of Russian billionaires receive their income from the sale of raw materials (or telephone frequencies, like Yevtushenkov), they do not know how to do anything else. An attempt to put pressure on Putin will result in a loss of business for them, and they are too greedy and pragmatic to butt heads with oak.

Reference

Backlog dynamics

Vladimir Putin reiterated the need to reach growth rates above the world, i.е. approximately 3.5% per year. Meanwhile, the achievement of this not too ambitious result, according to the almost unanimous opinion of experts, is an almost impossible task.

The authors of the January report of the World Bank (WB) believe that Russia's GDP will grow by 1.7% in 2018, and by 1.8% in 2019 and 2020. And it's not even that bad: the forecast for Russia was raised due to rising oil prices and improving external conditions (trade and investment) in the second half of last year. For comparison: the global economy as a whole at the same time will grow by about 3% per year.

Even with such a small increase, WB experts wrote in their November report on the Russian economy, the level of poverty in the baseline scenario will decrease: from 13.5% in 2016 to 12.6% and 12.2% in 2018 and 2019. Thanks to lower inflation and moderate economic growth in 2018-2019, real incomes of Russians will begin to grow.

Separately, the authors of the report stipulate possible reasons for the deviation from such a scenario - external risks (lower oil prices, slowdown in the growth rates of developed countries, the negative impact of sanctions unexpected for experts) and internal risks (problems in the banking sector, a growing gap in the growth of incomes and wages). For example, a 15% drop in oil prices could slow economic growth to 1.4% in 2018 and 1.5% in 2019.

Approximately the same as their colleagues from the WB, Russian experts assess the prospects for the Russian economy. Until 2024, the Russian economy will grow by 1.6-1.8% per year, showed a survey of 26 professional forecasters conducted in February by the Development Center of the Higher School of Economics. On the other hand, experts do not predict a sharp increase in inflation: until 2024 it will be around 4% (that is, at the level of the Central Bank's target).

GDP dynamics, Russia and the world, 2000–2025

%, 2000 = 100%

Russia World

Source: IMF, HSE Development Center,
InLiberty calculations

As can be seen from the graph, Russia's GDP grew rapidly in 2000-2008 and practically stagnated in the next nine Putin years. The professional forecaster's consensus forecast is for the economy to grow at a rate of just above 1.5% per annum, which would be a significant improvement over the previous period, when the average growth rate was 0.7%. However, the 1.5% growth of the economy in 2017, reported by Rosstat, cannot yet be considered entering this trajectory: for now, the economy is compensating for the fall in 2015-2016, and recovery growth does not require additional investment in fixed assets.

To avoid lagging behind in terms of living standards, Russia needs to carry out reforms, according to the OECD. Without them, in the next 12 years, GDP per capita at purchasing power parity will grow by only 0.7%. Growth is hindered by low labor productivity (in recent years it has not grown at all, and by 2030 it will grow by only 0.5%) and poor demographics: the share of the economically active population and employment are declining.

Russian working-age population, 2002–2029

Million people

Source: Rosstat

As the graph shows, in the period from 2015 to 2024, the most active reduction in the population of working age will occur, which will certainly have a negative impact on economic growth and significantly increase the burden on the budget. This scenario is pushing the Kremlin to force an increase in the retirement age. After the election, economists with the reputation of "liberals" may be invited to the government - they will have to "take on" the responsibility for this unpopular decision.

The fundamental fact is that in the last 10 years Russia has actually been in stagnation and, according to the unanimous opinion of experts, in the medium term it will remain a country of weak growth, which will not allow it not only to close the distance with the leaders, but even to maintain its share in the global economy.

Russia and the West

Mirrors of misunderstanding

Ivan Krastev

Chairman of the Board of the Center for Liberal Strategies (Sofia)

The most important problem in relations between Russia and the West is the radically different ideas of the parties about themselves and about each other. Russia presents itself as a resurgent power, while the West sees it as a weakening country, experiencing a temporary rise in strength. Russia's desire to oppose the United States dooms it to an alliance with China, in which it will play a clearly non-leading role. Russia sees Europe as a colossus plunged into crisis and will seek to use its internal difficulties to achieve its goals. On this path, Russia may find new friends, but even more enemies. In general, Russia's relations with the West in the next cycle will lose their structural significance for the rest of the world, giving way to the main stage of US-Chinese rivalry.

Conceit and representations

Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes once remarked that there are actually six "parts" involved in a relationship between two people: themselves, each person's idea of ​​himself and the other, and, finally, what each of them really is. Within the framework of this principle, in order to understand what is more or less likely to happen in relations between Russia and the West during the new term of President Putin (although, as you know, the ways of God are inscrutable), it is necessary to understand exactly how each other sees himself. friend of the West and Russia and how the rest of the world sees them.

In this sense, it is important to start the analysis with simple observations: Russia sees itself as a rising power operating in a post-American world; The Trump United States sees itself as a post-liberal force operating in an American-dominated world; while Europe, in turn, sees itself as the only force operating in a world in which both the liberal order and American dominance are under attack.

At the same time, from the point of view of the West (although the very fact of the existence of a united West at the moment looks extremely problematic), Russia is, on the whole, a fading power, experiencing a temporary rise in strength. This means that Russia will try to capitalize on its temporarily increased influence. And the fact that Putin remains as the sole decision maker in Russian foreign policy ensures that Russia will continue its aggressive attempts to secure its role as a global power. The task of countering America's influence in the world will remain the fundamental basis of all Russian foreign policy.

For these reasons, in particular, the West does not expect decisive progress under Putin in negotiations on the conflict in the Donbass, even if Moscow allows them to move forward a little. The West expects Russian military forces to remain active in Syria despite Putin's announcement of their partial withdrawal from the country. At the same time, the West believes that over time, the economic and political costs that Russia is forced to bear in order to remain an important player in the Middle East will increase. In addition, the West fears that Moscow will try to use the crisis in its relations with Turkey to demonstrate that this country remains a member of NATO only nominally.

Russia - USA: through Chinese glass

In this context, US-Russian relations are most likely to remain strained during Putin's next term. Domestic political factors in American politics make it almost impossible for President Trump to make any significant improvement in relations with Russia, even if he himself were inclined to do so.

The US also cannot hope to include Russia as an ally in its upcoming "superpower competition" with China. Recent events have shown that what the West has tended to regard as an unlikely alliance between Moscow and Beijing is increasingly becoming a reality. The Kremlin is ready to tie its economic future to China and is trying to maintain a certain balance of power in this partnership by investing in military technology and building its own active line on the global agenda. Russia appears to expect its relationship with China to be modeled on a Franco-German alliance in which it, like France, will play the role of a security-focused global power while China, like Germany, will play the role of an economic superpower, reluctant to get involved in military conflicts.

Putin clearly prefers to see China as a geopolitical ally rather than a competitor, and it is highly unlikely that this will change in his next term. Russia as a whole is clear about China's far-reaching ambitions, reflected in its Belt and Road Initiative, but does not seek to counteract it.

Thus, it is most likely that the confrontation between the United States and Russia will continue during the next term of President Putin, although it is quite possible to expect cases of cooperation on certain issues and more systematic dialogue on the problems of control of the nuclear arsenal, and possibly also on issues of cyber attacks aimed at infrastructure. .

Russia - Europe: in anticipation of a split

Europe's position towards Russia in the next six years will be primarily determined by the EU's internal crisis and growing tensions within the transatlantic alliance.

Some of the new political players in the EU are calling for a change in Russia policy. They see in it not so much a revisionist as primarily a Christian power. But at the same time, they consider Russia to a greater extent in a symbolic role. They praise Putin not because they have a clear idea of ​​what they want to achieve with him, but to indicate that they are not part of the old establishment and status quo. However, the chances that the EU as a whole will move towards a more friendly policy towards Russia are very small. The growth of nationalism in individual EU countries causes controversy within the Union, but this trend is also quite typical for the Baltic countries and Poland, for which a tough course towards Russia is part of the national tradition.

It is important to emphasize here that Russia sees the European Union as a colossus plunged into crisis, and for some in Moscow this crisis is somewhat reminiscent of the one that led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Therefore, it is most likely that Russia will bet on changes in Europe, supporting the Eurosceptic party that is on the rise. Hoping to lift at least some of the sanctions imposed in response to the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Moscow will focus its efforts on Europe, not the United States. Russia will continue to try to split the issue of sanctions between the US and the EU and between individual European countries. In seeking to become a domestic political factor in Europe, Russia may gain some friends, but it will also acquire new enemies. However, Russia's chances to achieve changes in the sanctions regime in 2018 should not be underestimated, especially if Moscow makes concessions in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

On the whole, despite all possible efforts and hype, it is hardly possible to imagine for the next presidential term of Vladimir Putin a scenario of some more constructive partnership in relations between Russia and Europe.

The truly new element of the coming era, rather, will be that relations between Russia and the West will cease to be so structurally significant for the world. The determining factors of world politics will rather be the dynamics of US-China relations, China's transformation into a world power and European politics.

In other words, when discussing the prospects for relations between Russia and the West, it is appropriate to recall the famous phrase of former US Vice President Dan Quayle: "Tomorrow the future will be better."

Political regime

Collective bureaucracy, transfer of power and new rents

Ekaterina Shulman

Associate Professor, Institute of Social Sciences, RANEPA

The main theme of the new political cycle is the transfer of power. Very soon, the "system" realizes that this power cannot be transferred to one person. Moreover, Putin no longer fully controls the pyramid of this power, on the periphery of which various proxy agents are actively operating. This core problem of the regime can be resolved either in a broad elite pact or in a war of all against all. An additional limitation is the need for new sources of rent, which can now only be the population of Russia itself. Strengthening fiscal oppression will provoke an increase in leftist sentiment and demand for equality. The "toxicity" of Russian assets will lead to the "locking up of the elite" inside Russia, which may paradoxically contribute to its political activation - an increase in demand for internal guarantees of the inviolability of life and property.

Modus vivendi of the collective bureaucracy

The difficult science of predicting the future is further complicated if we think of this future as being in someone's power and subject to someone's plan. In this case, instead of identifying objective factors that equally affect both the predictor and the object of predictions, we are busy guessing the “scenario”, drilling a hole in the cherished folder containing the plan for the future.

Living in conditions of non-democracy contributes to this kind of mental aberrations, since it creates the feeling that all reality is only the fruit of the activities of the authorities, and the activities of the authorities are a derivative of their intentions, explicit or secret. And who penetrated into the plans, he mastered the uncontested picture of the future. There are several logical errors in this chain of reasoning at once, and one can only wonder how the adherents of this faith simultaneously keep in mind the idea of ​​bossy omnipotence and inefficiency, strength and fragility, stability and crisis.

The researcher should ask himself not the question “what are they up to?” but the question “what will happen for objective reasons, regardless of who is up to what?”. Let me remind you of my own forecast addressed to the Liberal Mission Foundation in October 2015:

“The collective bureaucracy always does not what is required, but what it can: in any situation, it can operate only with the tools that it has. What can she do, and what will we see in the near future?

1. Do not wage war, but increase budget spending. The shrinking budget will be redistributed more and more decisively in favor of the power bureaucracy. But this can cover up a policy of exactly the opposite nature: the gradual curtailment of any military activity in the Ukrainian direction.

2. Do not pursue isolationist policies, but increase isolationist rhetoric. Anti-Western and especially anti-American propaganda will increase in tone and volume, but real political moves may be made in the opposite direction.

3. Do not build a repressive apparatus, but carry out pinpoint repressions. They will be directed to the public-political, civil and humanitarian spheres. These are areas where the state has power and resources and where there is little chance of organized resistance. At the same time, such repressions, at low cost, cause a huge resonance and serve the goal of the regime: to produce a paralyzing impression of “totalitarianism” at the lowest possible cost.

4. The system has less and less means to maintain the discipline of the bureaucracy, especially the power ones. Although it will make every effort to the last, but the further, the more the system will be forced to release individual detachments of the bureaucracy "for free bread." Under these conditions, the real prospect for us is not “unwinding the flywheel of repression”, but the growth of disorganized semi-legal violence on the part of those whom Belinsky still defined as “a corporation of service thieves and robbers”. Departmental and bureaucratic clans will make themselves louder and louder in the public space, intra-elite conflicts will be made public.”

Of course, all these predictions came true; the indicated tendencies are too obvious. They will also characterize the internal political dynamics of Russia in the nearest historical perspective. A number of other processes will be added to them and will interact with them, determined by three basic factors: the economic situation and the social reaction to it, the aging of the political machine and the foreign policy environment.

Transfer problem

For the political-administrative class, the main theme of the political cycle that has already begun is the transfer of power. After some time, the political system realizes that the full amount of power that the incumbent president had at his disposal cannot be transferred to any one person. Moreover, this amount is no longer in the hands of the president completely, but is distributed among the bureaucratic pyramid, which includes civil officials, the security forces, the military, and the heads of state corporations and state banks.

At the edges of this pyramid are proxy agents: mercenaries, hackers, pro-government propagandists, voluntary killers of "defectors" and "traitors", semi-state armed formations subordinate to the leaders of some national republics, and many others. From within, the system is undermined by the increasingly fierce competition of the security forces, from the outside - by the poorly controlled activity of those whom Professor Mark Galeotti called ad hoc agents.

These are the problems of the next political cycle that the system must solve for itself in order to survive.

The optimistic scenario here is the one that in political science is called "the awakening of dormant institutions" in combination with any form of intra-elite agreements along the lines of the Moncloa Pact or the Magna Carta. This will require awareness by the elites of the need for some other guarantees of the inviolability of life and property, in addition to hopes for the supreme guardian of the intra-elite balance. Pessimistic - a war of all against all with the involvement of non-state agents of violence by the warring parties - any variants of the paramilitaris, corporate and / or regional. A realistic scenario is a combination of the first and second, the destruction of those actors and interest groups that managed to turn everyone else against themselves, and agreements between the remaining ones.

"People are the new oil"

The inevitable reality of the next political cadence will be the implementation of the slogan "People are the new oil." Even with relatively stable prices for hydrocarbon raw materials, the search for new sustainable sources of financing for itself will occupy a system whose basic working mechanism is the extraction and distribution of rent. Only property and income of citizens can become such a source, and extraction methods can be taxes on real estate, land, utility tariffs, involving citizens in a credit loop, taxing “self-employed”, that is, any non-state employees, excise taxes and fines.

The limiter of these searches is the fear of organized protest. Taxes, confiscations, commercialization of public goods and protests against all this are the main social themes of the next few years. In the long term, this will strengthen the skills of civic self-organization, just as the Moscow protest against renovation multiplied the efforts and connections of district and housing activists and led to the victory of independent candidates in the 2017 municipal elections.

Judging by the data that we have, the dynamics of public opinion repeats the trajectory of 2008-2011, that is, the sequence "crisis - adaptation - discontent." The crisis, which affected the standard of living of people, began in the fall of 2014. An increase in the number of labor protests has been recorded since the same moment, with a peak in 2016 and a smoothing of growth dynamics (but not a fall!) in 2017. That is, only after adapting to a sagging standard of living do people have some time and resources to be dissatisfied and demonstrate this discontent.

At the next stage of political development, the generally left, social political agenda, the agenda of a fair distribution of public goods and equal access to them, will have an advantage.

"Locking" the elite

The foreign political conjuncture will influence the domestic political situation in Russia not as a stimulus for “crackdown” or militarization. All the twisting that the system was capable of, it demonstrated from 2012 to 2015; further, it was not repressiveness that grew, but the chaotic reactions and amateur activity of power clans and proxy agents. As for militarization, its peak, in terms of the parameters of federal budget expenditures, was passed in 2016, and only a gradual decrease is planned for the next three years.

The foreign policy toxicity of Russia and everything that is connected with it and comes from it - capital, people, information - leads to the systematic opening of Russian "cache" around the world: from "Panama papers" and Olympic test tubes to Argentinean cocaine and Syrian PMCs. What has been closed for decades has ceased to be acceptable and tolerable. In this respect, not even the politicized cases of Russian hackers or mercenaries are more characteristic, but the case of Senator Kerimov and the first freezing of funds on the accounts of the participants in the “Kremlin report”. The UK's reaction to the next poisoning of a former Russian agent on its territory will inevitably be a policy of confiscation of real estate and assets of "toxic owners", just like France as a result of the trial of Kerimov and his local enablers partially or completely confiscates the property acquired by him.

Such a development of events, in an optimistic version, can push the hoped-for “nationalization of the elites” and involuntarily lead large owners locked up within the borders of the Russian Federation to the idea of ​​the need for some kind of local guarantees for the inviolability of their lives and property, if the London court and the Stockholm arbitration became inaccessible. In the pessimistic scenario, this process will leave Russia with no other sources of access to rent, except for direct or indirect civil service. However, civil servants of any level are also not protected from forceful repressions, as are businessmen - even if they themselves are members of power groups and actors of law enforcement violence. Which reduces the described problem to the previous one.

Regions

External governance and decentralization pendulum

Nikolay Petrov

Professor of Political Science, Higher School of Economics

The political system began to move: the beginning of a change of elites reflects a change in the logic of the regime, and the arrival of new elites radicalizes changes in its character. In relations with the regions, the Kremlin continues to develop a military offensive against local elites, moving towards the ideal of “external control”. This situation will lead to a sharp increase in conflicts if the power of the center weakens for some reason at some point. In this case, power itself may again fall into the hands of the regions. The re-federalization and the return to the regional level of powers taken away in previous cycles are long overdue, and without them a way out of economic stagnation and a transition to development policy is hardly possible.

The Age of the Whip: Elites and Conflicts

The Russian political system began to move. It seems that in the coming years we expect: 1) the transformation of the political regime in order to prepare the transfer of power from Putin-president to Putin-leader, 2) the accumulated package of necessary economic measures to adapt the country to the new economic and foreign policy situation, including, in particular, pension and tax reforms, 3) repair and reconstruction of obsolete - morally and physically - political system, which has developed in the era of "fat" years and does not meet modern challenges.

In general, during the ended presidential term, we observed the beginning of the transition from the "epoch of gingerbread" to the "epoch of the stick." Serious changes in the political system are already underway, starting in 2014. And since the same 2014, there has been a radical renewal of the Russian political elites, which is more of a strategic than situational nature. That is, we are witnessing a process of interrelated changes - both the reorganization of the elites, reflecting the change in the logic of the regime, and the further evolution of the regime under the influence of the changing composition of political elites. It is important to understand that this is not just a renewal of personnel within the same system, but an attempt to change the system, including through a decisive renewal of personnel.

Apparently, the transformation of the political system will continue to develop not in accordance with some kind of master plan, but in the mode of reactive changes through a chain of crises. First of all, they should be expected in the management system - due to the degradation of managerial elites, the lack of system flexibility, the short planning horizon and the growing conflict in relations between the levels of the power vertical - federal, regional and local, between numerous power verticals, including power ones, between elite groups about the distribution of shrinking rents. These conflicts are now resolved manually, but their number and scale will increase.

The ideal of "external control"

In the end, inevitable in the perspective of these processes is the restructuring of the entire system of relations between the center and the regions.

In recent years, the system has worked on the principle of a zero-sum game: the interests of individual “Kremlin towers” ​​have been increasingly better represented in the regions, while the interests of the regions in the Kremlin have been getting worse and worse. The mass protests in Vladivostok and Kaliningrad in 2009-2010 showed what a situation can lead to when decisions of the federal government do not take regional interests into account. Since then, the system of taking into account regional interests in making federal decisions has not improved, and only due to the relative inaction of the government, nothing like this has been observed on the ground.

Instead of improving the institutional mechanisms for harmonizing the interests of the federation and the regions, the Kremlin launched a powerful campaign to attack the regional elites, culminating in the purge of the governors' corps (including through the arrests of several acting heads of regions). In 2017, almost a quarter of the governors were replaced, and this fully manifested the Kremlin's new approach to the problem of "the effectiveness of regional management."

The vast majority of new appointees are not even just "Varangians", but rather a Moscow landing force. Not only did they not previously have any relation to the regions to which they were assigned, but they were not “first persons”, subjects of independent decisions, but made a career moving up the official ladder. They view the region as a temporary stepping stone in their careers and are motivated to make the most of their governorship short term and... leave.

Estimating the costs and benefits of gubernatorial replacements looks different in the short and longer term. In the short one, there is a "honeymoon" effect, when accounts with the former unpopular regional authorities are reset to zero, and the new one has not compromised itself in any way. This period can last half a year and ends just with the presidential elections. Further, the costs associated with the very fact of a team change and with the awkward actions of “young technocrats” begin to increase sharply.

The offensive against the republican elites being undertaken today is a line towards their decoration and de-ethnization. Such a policy, as is known from our recent history, sharply increases the risks of national conflicts at a time when the "center" begins to weaken for some reason. The development of recent events around Tatarstan (Moscow's refusal to renew a bilateral agreement, a tough stance on the banking crisis in the republic, pressure on the issue of learning the Tatar language) and Dagestan (forceful dismantling of ethno-clan elites and the introduction of a kind of "external control") can be regarded either as evidence of a primitive movement towards maximum centralization, or as a desire to stake out a stronger position before a new decentralization. (Note that the actual alignment of the statuses of ethnic regions with the rest creates the prerequisites for the future development of federalism in its classical version, not burdened with elements of special ethnic statehood and ethno-federalism.)

pendulum reversal

In general, we can say that re-federalization with the transfer to the regional level of a large number of powers, primarily taken away in the era of centralization, is long overdue. Without it, the way out of economic stagnation and the implementation of development policy is hardly possible. The transition to the development paradigm presupposes the release of the regional initiative. However, one cannot count on the Kremlin to do this on its own initiative - in recent years the vector has been directed in the opposite direction. Therefore, the variant of reactive decentralization as a result of a chain of crises looks the most probable.

Power in such a scenario may at some point, roughly speaking, itself fall from the federal level into the hands of regional elites, as happened in the 1990s. The trouble is that today these elites have degraded and are unlikely to be able to effectively dispose of such power. Regional elites are decorated, driven by the psychology of temporary workers, semi-paralyzed as a result of repressions against them. The task of restoring a high-quality regional elite is far from being solved overnight.

The key factor in improving the quality of the regional elite, as well as the political development of the country as a whole, is the revival of the local self-government system. Without restoring what is called grass roots democracy, including primarily the direct election of mayors of regional centers, neither re-federalization nor normal political development is possible.

In the transition to a development policy, one can expect not only the continuation of the enlargement of regions, but also further experiments with a management grid that overlaps regional borders, as, for example, in the case of courts of appeal and projected agglomerations. The question will also arise about the future fate of the federal districts: either reform them, or abolish them altogether. However, the fate of the federal districts is secondary to the dilemma "unitarization - regionalization". And if the vector turns towards regionalization, then the place of today's districts, "launched from above", may return to the associations of regional cooperation and interaction that preceded them, growing from below.

Smart power is distinguished by the ability to adapt to objective patterns of development, such as the swing of the “center-regions” pendulum towards the regions, and to extract maximum benefits for itself in any situation. A less intelligent government tries to obstruct objective processes and, like a miser, pays twice, if only there is something to pay. And if not, it will be replaced by another power.

Opposition

Democracy, nationalism and justice

Grigory Golosov

Professor of Comparative Politics
European University at St. Petersburg

In the next political cycle, the Russian opposition will have to find a balance between the tasks of mobilizing a political asset and seeking mass support. The political and social conditions for such support are likely to be more favorable, but to seize the opportunity, the opposition will need to align its values ​​with the range of preferences and attitudes that are massive in Russia. Ultimately, the opposition's success will depend on its ability to integrate and reconcile the values ​​of democracy, nationalism and justice. The combination and competition of these ideologemes will structure the Russian political space.

The opposition's dilemma: who to contact?

By "Russian opposition" I mean the political groups that advocate regime change, that is, the transition from the current authoritarian order to democracy. This definition includes, first of all, the political movement associated with Alexei Navalny, some trends in officially registered parties, Yabloko and PARNAS, as well as individual prominent political and media figures whose leadership potential has not yet been realized in organizational forms. It is quite possible that this set will change significantly, and therefore, when discussing the ideological problems that the opposition will face in the coming years, it is advisable to digress from personalities and operate with a rather vague image of the opposition as a combination of such groups and individuals.

It should be clarified that this definition does not include groups and individuals who cooperate with the authorities, but are critical of individual politicians of the regime and therefore have the potential to be in opposition. Such groups and individuals will play a prominent role in democratization in a process known as "elite splitting". In most cases, however, a “split in the elites” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a transition to democracy: democratization occurs through the interaction of separate groups of the ruling class, changing their loyalty, with extra-systemic players like those outlined above. Without such interaction, the change of individual holders of power, even if it occurs, more often leads to a reformatting of authoritarianism than to democratization.

If for intra-systemic groups a clear ideological positioning is neither necessary nor even desirable, then for the opposition in the proper sense of the word it is a key condition for political survival and success.

Ideology is important to the opposition for two reasons. The first reason is that ideology serves as the main means for attracting and retaining a political asset. Political activity is a high-risk activity, and in authoritarian contexts, its costs are especially high. Therefore, the main role in the mobilization of a political asset is played by non-material collective incentives associated with identity and ideological self-determination. Ideology represents such incentives in the clearest possible way.

The second reason for the importance of ideology is that it serves as a means of mobilizing mass support. At the mass level, in contrast to the level of a political asset, ideology is predominantly a cognitive and explanatory tool. Ideology is not only such a tool in a democracy (for example, in a situation of electoral choice), but also forms attitudes in the conditions of any political regime dynamics observed by the masses, and authoritarian regimes are no exception. A key condition for democratization is the recognition by all participants in the process (authorities, elite groups and the opposition) of the fact that the ideas put forward by the opposition enjoy mass support. Therefore, such support is a key resource for the opposition.

The possible strategies of the opposition arising from these reasons are somewhat different from each other. The mobilization of a political asset requires that the opposition, with the utmost consistency, adhere to the ideas shared by the asset. These ideas must be articulated in a clear and acceptable (that is, fairly radical) form. When working with the masses, on the contrary, one must proceed from the fact that their value orientations are blurred due to the lack of a strong political interest, and are also subject to the propaganda influence of the authorities.

The main problem of the Russian opposition, in my opinion, is that it has insufficiently developed adequate means of influencing the mass consciousness. Let me emphasize that we are talking about ideological, not technical means. Of course, the authorities have on their side a huge advantage, which gives them a monopolization of the public media. However, this advantage is gradually being eroded as the masses become more connected to the Internet and its associated means of communication. Their use could be quite effective if these technical possibilities served to convey adequate ideological content.

Now the main addressee of the ideological message broadcast by the Russian opposition is its current and potential asset. He readily accepts the whole complex of ideologemes associated with the values ​​of democracy and human rights. I will not argue that these values ​​are completely alien to the masses of Russian citizens. However, for a broader perception of these ideas, it is necessary that they be correlated with the range of preferences that are of a mass nature in Russia, both due to the citizens' own experience and as a result of targeted propaganda efforts by the authorities. Below I will focus on three aspects, the consideration of which I find especially important.

Three pillars: democracy, nationalism and justice

I'll start with the problem of positioning the values ​​of democracy. In the political rhetoric of the Russian opposition, the main emphasis is on the importance of political competition and the turnover of power. Such an emphasis is fully consistent with the value orientations of a political activist, but I am not sure that these particular aspects are of priority interest at the mass level. On the one hand, the masses have an extremely negative historical experience associated with the dysfunctions of Russian electoral democracy in the 1990s. On the other hand, this experience is superimposed by the systematic propaganda efforts of the authorities aimed at discrediting political competition as a struggle of irresponsible and self-serving cliques, leading to chaos.

In fact, the anti-corruption activities of Alexei Navalny have created a significant reserve in order to solve this problem. Navalny's publications quite convincingly show that it is the current political regime that has created the ground for widespread corruption and self-serving behavior of the ruling class. Continuing this line, the main emphasis in mass propaganda work could be made on the fact that it is democracy that creates effective means of control to prevent such a situation.

However, for a more effective implementation of this approach, it is necessary, in my opinion, to raise issues of law and order more broadly. Public opinion polls show that citizens are not so much concerned about corruption as such, but about the lack of guarantees for personal safety and other aspects of public order. Many tend to view the current regime (primarily its law enforcement and judicial bodies) as incapable of ensuring order at a sufficient level. These critical attitudes of citizens have not yet been properly reflected in the ideology of the Russian opposition.

The second problem is much more complex. The point is that in order to gain mass support, the opposition needs to ideologically integrate the values ​​associated with nationalism. The complexity of the problem is determined primarily by the fact that these values ​​are alien to the majority of opposition activists, and the political currents representing them are traditionally perceived by them as hostile. This situation, quite understandable in the context of the Russian political development of recent decades, has now become a clear obstacle to the expansion of the mass influence of the Russian opposition. This obstacle is all the more serious because nationalism plays a central role in the propaganda efforts of the authorities, and to the extent that the authorities manage to attribute anti-national sentiments and actions to the opposition, this indoctrination should be considered quite successful.

Some steps in this direction were taken, as is known, by Navalny on early stage its own political activity However, his emphasis on the problem of migration has now largely lost its relevance, and there are no new themes that allow linking the struggle for democracy with the struggle for national interests. It is possible, however, that such themes will emerge in the coming years. I believe that the mass consciousness may resonate with the idea that the policy of the authorities is harmful to the national interests of Russia, since it undermines its investment potential, dooms it to technological backwardness and is accompanied by senseless squandering of funds on expensive foreign policy projects and military adventures. Vladimir Putin's speeches show that the authorities themselves are aware of the possible force of such an argument and are trying to anticipate it. It is all the more inexcusable that these arguments are not properly reflected in the opposition's rhetoric.

The third problem is related to issues of social justice. As in the previous case, these questions are not very important for the opposition political activist, but they are very important for the mass consciousness. Moreover, this is that part of the political agenda that the authorities simply cannot fully appropriate, since they can neither recognize the current situation as satisfactory nor relieve themselves of responsibility for it. I think the opposition needs to work to build in the mass consciousness the connection between political inequality and social injustice. Even the first steps in this direction have not yet been taken.

Synthesis or alternatives

Of course, the solution of the problems described above carries the risk of blurring the ideological identity of the opposition, and this would entail disastrous consequences for it, alienating an already small active. However, these risks should not be exaggerated. Since the main ideological identity of the opposition is associated with liberal values, it should be remembered that liberalism in itself is not antithetical to either nationalism or the idea of ​​social justice. In many European countries (for example, in Germany), liberalism was the leading idea of ​​nation-state building. The contribution made by political liberals both to the construction of a welfare state in Europe and to the movement for social reforms in the United States is well known. So there are no substantive obstacles to an ideological synthesis of this kind.

Of course, this does not mean that it is imperative to strive to achieve such a synthesis at the level of individual political organizations. Here, as the world experience of democratization suggests, different options are possible. On the one hand, some democratizations involved mass movements with a blurred ideological profile, in which liberal, nationalist, and socialist elements were present. Such was, of course, Solidarity in Poland. We should not forget that it was precisely such a movement, albeit far from Solidarity in scale, that led to the collapse of the communist regime in the early 1990s in the USSR. It seems very likely that the new democratization in Russia will follow this path.

On the other hand, it is also possible that forces belonging to different ideological camps participate in the movement for democracy. The fact that such a path is unlikely in Russia is mainly due to the extreme degradation of both the Russian left and the nationalists, who are now simply absent as organized political forces. However, from the point of view of the development of democracy, this path would be optimal, since at the time of the launch of political competition in the country there would already be a structured field of political alternatives. It is important to understand that for this path to democracy, the ideological synthesis of liberalism with other currents is still useful, since it creates the basis for a productive coalition policy in the opposition camp and does not allow the regime to turn its internal differences to its advantage.

Civil society

Distributed networks and local agendas

Sergei Parkhomenko

Co-founder of the Dissernet community, coordinator of the Last Address and Editorial Board projects.

In an aggressive environment of state persecution, civil projects are forced to find new forms of survival. The solution for many of them may be to exist outside of legal forms, which can significantly reduce their vulnerability to formal attacks by law enforcement agencies. Volunteer projects cease to be global, all-Russian, limiting the field of activity to the micro level of the city, microdistrict, home; Non-monetary forms of civic assistance are developing. In these trends, the real practice of the evolutionary development of civil society in today's and tomorrow's Russia manifests itself, the main vector of which is the transition from traditional "corporate" forms to distributed working relations.

The Logic of Survival

In forecasting the development of civil projects and movements in the fifth term of Putin’s rule, it would be easiest, of course, to limit ourselves to the prediction that “everything will be bombed, crushed, dispersed, cleaned out, burned out forever and covered with salt so that the grass does not grow for a hundred years.” But we will build our forecast differently. Imagine that the sphere social activity will still try to survive or even develop, suppose that in this situation there are people who have retained civic energy.

In the romantic plays of Rozov and Arbuzov of the early 1960s, this was somehow touchingly sugary: “make the world a little better”, “defend your right to a miracle.” Somewhat later, Vampilov, in Last Summer in Chulimsk, saw the same thing in simple scenes of provincial life: his Valentina endlessly corrects the front garden, in which “two boards are knocked out of the fence on one side, currant bushes are broken off, grass and flowers are dented”, people walk straight, break - she corrects, people again rod - she again corrects.

Suppose that the front garden of civic initiatives failed to be torn out and trampled down by the first post-election raid. What should be expected in this case? It seems to me interesting to consider not how the state will crush and break civil movements and projects, any civil activity. In the end, there is no doubt that there will be pressure and break (as well as “ruin”, deprive of the means of development and subsistence, which turns out to be the most effective tool of pressure) by all means, there are no restrictions - neither legislative nor judicial - here. It is much more interesting to consider how the civil society - in the relatively rudimentary forms we still have in Russia - will resist this destructive pressure.

In the evolution of civil activist movements, projects and programs of recent years, several important and interesting trends emerge.

Model "hang in the air"

The experience of life in the era of active application of the legislation on "foreign agents" and "undesirable organizations" has taught the creators of civilian projects that law enforcement agencies can bring down their cudgel on them at any moment and without any reason - regardless of the presence or absence of real reasons for applying punitive rules. If they want to come - they will come, if they want to accuse - they will accuse, if they want to destroy - they will destroy.

At the same time, it does not help at all, for example, the decision not to deal with any donors abroad or even with Russian companies and organizations that keep their money in foreign banks. There are cases when "foreign agents" were arbitrarily appointed organizations that do not have not only foreign funding, but funding in general - purely volunteer, working on a completely gratuitous basis and having an eternal zero in annual balance sheets.

In these circumstances, the solution for many types of civil communities may be the existence of no registration at all, in a “hanging position”. In this case, there is no organization - there is only a network of living people, a community built on horizontal connections, and not on hierarchical structural subordination.

This organization does not have a registered legal entity, formal address, office, bank account, safes, seals, forms, directors and accountants, computers and servers. Consequently, nothing from this community can be blocked, sealed, seized, confiscated, arrested. The main organizing principle here is the well-known slogan of the Dissernet community: "No head - nothing to tear off."

In addition to Dissernet, which exists and survives on such organizational basis over the course of five years, one can recall many more “hanging in the air” volunteer communities. Such was, for example, the “All to Court!” project, which worked in 2012-2013 on the creation of a “semi-automatic conveyor” for filing civil claims about election violations. This, if you remember, was the Blue Buckets movement at the earliest - and the brightest and most inspiring - stage of its existence. Such is today the program to support independent high-quality journalism in Russia “The Editorial Board Award”.

The most valuable property of such organizations is their significantly lower vulnerability to formal attacks from security forces of various sorts. It is not clear how to demand accountability from them, how to sue them, how to hold them accountable for various imaginary misconduct. You can't appoint them as foreign agents either. The threat, however, remains for the founders and organizers of such communities: they risk being subjected to repression in their personal capacity.

The most important drawback of this form is the almost complete impossibility of fundraising using modern civilized methods. A non-existent organization cannot apply for a grant, cannot correctly and transparently process and accept donor assistance, and cannot provide reporting that satisfies the donor. Nor can it become a party to a contract for the performance of work, a contract, or a civil law contract of any type in general. Only individuals can act on its behalf, which may not always suit a potential partner or donor.

Model "snuggle to the ground"

The focus of attention of civil communities and activist groups is gradually descending to the lowest, municipal and “sub-municipal” level. Volunteer projects and programs cease to be global, all-Russian, and consider only the city, microdistrict, quarter, house as the field of their activity.

It is this microlevel that is increasingly becoming the entry point into the sphere civic engagement for people who, much later, over time, may become interested in something more ambitious. The first activity for future civic leaders and powerful fundraisers is often the collection of contributions and signatures from neighbors under an application for the construction of automatic gates at the entrance to the yard, or agitation of acquaintances from the dog playground for a collective demand to lay a pipe with hot water bypassing the old square, and not directly through him. Having felt a taste for such work (or having received a “trauma” from an unsuccessful attempt once again to “fix the front garden”), they remain further in the reserve of civic activism.

The development of such a trend - "descent to the ground", to the local level of various forms of civic activity - is greatly facilitated by two factors. First, the purely psychological impression that working at the lowest level is “not scary”. There are fewer chances of being punished for this, it is “less annoying” to the authorities, because it is, as it were, “not politics”. Secondly, such work receives strong support from the newly elected municipal deputies. In this sense, the success of independent and democratic candidates in the 2017 municipal elections in Moscow looks like a colossal breakthrough. There is hope that this success will be repeated to some extent in municipal elections in other regions.

The "work by hand" model

As state pressure intensifies with the application of the legislation on “foreign agents” and the inevitable tightening of this legislation so that persecution can eventually be extended not only to organizations, but also to individuals, any financial relations between participants in civil projects, any monetary sponsorship or donation is beginning to be perceived as potentially dangerous, risky.

As a response, “non-monetary” forms of participation in civil projects are being developed. Those who wish are offered to help an important and necessary cause not only with money, but also with “hands”, “legs” or “head”, that is, direct participation in the common work. Such work may also involve some expenses of the participant, which he bears on his own, without transferring any money to anyone: for example, a participant in a campaign for the distribution of campaign materials prints them himself, at his own expense, or a participant in work related to information processing buys access to paid information resources, databases, etc., or a volunteer travels at his own expense to where his help is needed, buys equipment, supplies, products, etc.

This approach also contributes to the decentralization of the working structure, "smearing" it into a flat network, replacing hierarchical links with horizontal ones. The overall workflow begins to resemble an anthill, when each participant takes the right piece of wood somewhere, drags it to the right place, puts it into a common structure, and the result is a large common structure. The "anthill principle" makes the community of participants less vulnerable to pressure from outside, allows them to adapt to high "staff turnover", to the change or loss of part of the activists.

Model "do not carry money in vain"

Another aspect of the adaptation of civil initiatives under the conditions of forceful pressure associated with the use of “wrong” from the point of view of the state, and in essence - any money received from a source independent of the state, is a change in the financial “logistics” of various projects and communities. There is an understanding that the money raised both inside Russia and abroad, regardless of the type of donor (whether it be a private person, a friendly organization, a charitable foundation), is better not to take it in hand at all, and even more so carry from place to place.

The donor is invited to spend his charitable contribution himself, transferring it to the civil project in a materialized form: buy tickets and rent a room for a conference or seminar, pay for the printing of the necessary materials, directly pay lawyers, consultants participating in the civil project. He can take on the costs of creating, developing and maintaining the project website, paying for shared access to databases, subscribing to paid information resources, etc.

This is especially true for donor aid collected abroad. Such money is increasingly preferred "not to be transported to Russia, where it is nothing but trouble," but to be spent on the spot, where it is collected. At the same time, it often turns out to be easier to carry not money to the work and its performers, but the work itself and its performers to money, transferring those elements of the common work abroad that can be done remotely.

From corporations to distributed networks

The enumeration of such methods of activity in the aggressive environment of state persecution can be continued for a long time. All of them in one way or another fit into the general trend - the transition from traditional forms of civil organizations to network structures built not on the principle of a corporation, "institution", but on the basis of distributed working connections.

Such a structure has many inputs - points at which new participants, resources, new tools, and directions can join the general activity. But such a structure has no less exits - elements in which the result of common activity is formed: the results of a general collection of information or investigations are published, assistance is provided to those in need, and factors are counteracted that community members consider undesirable or harmful.

For six years, the Kremlin has been looking for ways to put new ways of spreading information across the global web under firm control. Looking at technology development through the prism of threats is a very Soviet way of reacting, leading to a chronic technological backlog. Chief curators technological development, from the Kremlin's point of view, should be the KGB and the revived military-industrial complex. At the same time, the revival of the military-industrial complex is intended not only to put the development of technologies under state control, but also to integrate a new educated class within the state and semi-state infrastructure. The nationalization of the Internet infrastructure and the communications industry is another step towards the Sovietization of the high-tech sector.

Subtotal

Vladimir Putin approaches the next presidential term with strange baggage. After the panic caused by the Moscow protests, six years have passed in an intensive search for a way to bring the Internet under control. A lot has been tried: forced registration of bloggers, blacklisting of websites, “landing” of global platforms in Russia, inciting pro-Kremlin volunteers to search for sedition on the Web, a knife switch that cuts off access to the global Web, Chinese firewall, the nationalization of some key nodes of the Internet infrastructure.

None of the above worked to the degree that the Kremlin had hoped for. Global platforms - Google, Facebook, Twitter - still remain outside the reach of Russian intelligence services and reserve the right to comply or not comply with the requirements of Russian censors. The Russian opposition continues to successfully exploit the power of social media, and the resounding success of the investigations Navalny the confirmation. In general, ways to quickly and effectively stop the dissemination of information that Russian authorities considered dangerous, never found.

There were many victims along the way: dozens of criminal cases against users of social networks, some of which led to real prison terms; closure of business by Internet providers across the country due to too high risks associated with insane Duma initiatives; social networks that have lost founders and management as a result of pressure from the Kremlin, and a generally worsening business climate amid intimidation and the gradual nationalization of communications. Over the past couple of years, it has become clear that the Kremlin considers this damage to be quite acceptable on the way to the goal.

Optics of Threats

Putin made it clear that this is the price he is willing to pay for stability by signing a new “Information Security Doctrine” in December 2016. Its “Threats” section explicitly warns: “The expansion of the areas of application of information technologies, being a factor in the development of the economy and improving the functioning of public and state institutions, simultaneously generates new information threats…”. Looking at the development of modern technologies through the prism of threats, not opportunities, is in fact a declaration of the main state principle: security is more important than modernization and development.

And this is a very Soviet principle. Actually, he ensured the technological backlog of the USSR in the field of communications. It looked like an anachronism even in the Soviet Union, where it was often physically impossible to separate communications and special services from each other: the head of the NKVD, Yagoda, for example, was in charge of both communications and repressions, and his office was located in the building of the Central Telegraph on Tverskaya, where he is now based Ministry of Communications. A few more sad examples of this approach are the first Soviet photocopier broken into pieces on the orders of the KGB and the shutdown of international automatic telephone communications on the instructions of the KGB after the Olympics-80, six months after it was established.

The very idea that Russian and international companies would bow to officers from the Lubyanka and ask permission to introduce new technologies looks absurd and harmful. But it is the Soviet methods of command and control that are the last available means for the Putin administration.

This is seen most clearly in the changed role of the special services. Gone are the rivalry between law enforcement agencies, turned into feudal fiefdoms by their leaders, and the medieval idea of ​​the Russian elite as a "new nobility." In 2017, Putin finally abandoned this postmodernist project and returned to the scheme that he and his colleagues remember well from their youth, the scheme of the late Soviet KGB. Now control is exercised through selective repressions, where the main role is again given to the FSB, and the governors, and ministers, and theatrical figures, and even the special services themselves have already become victims, because in such a scheme it is important that no one has the status of untouchable. This even affected Russian state Internet censors - a purge in Roskomnadzor led to house arrest of the department's press secretary.

Under the roof of the military-industrial complex

Return to Soviet methods management looks like a long and steady trend. The huge military-industrial complex of the USSR - the backbone of the Soviet mode of existence, which determined both the structure of the Soviet economy and the mentality of the Soviet technical intelligentsia - is on the rise again. The military-industrial complex money is scattered not only among the Soviet research institutes, created back in the 50s to develop this or that “product”, from a bomb to a rocket, - now this money is also being distributed to the information technology industry.

This has already led to two important implications. First, the fifty-sixty-year-old owners and managers of Internet companies created back in the 1990s, having received contracts from the military or special services, remembered that during their youth they were issued in the same package as belonging to the military-industrial complex. It was secrecy (the first departments, military acceptance, that's all). It is in this form that Soviet secrecy is being revived today, only now at enterprises of all forms of ownership.

Secondly, their 30-year-old colleagues, who created their companies in the 2000s, cheerfully followed their older comrades. After all, they were taught in the same technical universities, and after the collapse of the USSR, it never occurred to anyone to add courses in ethics to future engineers at MEPhI, Phystekh and Moscow Higher Technical School. Both the first and second generations were unobtrusively reminded that the reason and meaning of the presence of technical intelligentsia in the Soviet Union was to serve the military-industrial complex, and the condition was not to ask questions and to understand the need for secrecy and loyalty.

The Kremlin also remembered that the military-industrial complex provided security for the Soviet regime not only because it produced a lot of tanks. This was helped by the very structure of Soviet society, where a whole army of engineers worked for the defense industry in secret research institutes. The typical phrase of those days, “I am working on one ‘product’ in the mailbox,” was understandable to everyone and did not involve questions. It was in this way that the state co-opted Soviet citizens.

Judging by Putin's Address, the role of the military-industrial complex, and, consequently, the dependence of the information technology industry on the military-industrial complex, will only grow, and under the conditions of sanctions, this will be welcomed by many companies that only yesterday dreamed of opening at least a representative office in Silicon Valley.

Communications nationalization

The bet on isolation has become a defining trend and has every chance of remaining so for many years. The Kremlin deliberately adjusts the country's Internet infrastructure to this trend. Thus, in recent years, the Ministry of Communications has been actively engaged in the localization of Russian traffic. The declared goal is that by 2020, 99% of Russian Internet traffic should be transmitted within Russia (in 2014 this figure was 70%). Considering that the main Internet traffic today is not emails, as in the late 90s, but the content of global platforms, that is, YouTube and social networks whose servers are located outside the country, the feasibility of this goal is in doubt.

But on the way to it, key infrastructure segments are placed under the control of state and near-state structures, from traffic exchange points to providers and the Internet Technical Center. There is no doubt that the task of nationalizing the infrastructure will be accomplished, and it has almost been accomplished by now. The Kremlin's steps in this direction (combined with hysterical lawmaking) are already leading to the corresponding consequences. In the context of constant carpet bombardment by new legislative initiatives and inspections by Roskomnadzor, small and medium-sized Internet providers are leaving the business, freeing the field for Rostelecom and local Elektrosvyazyam and GTS (city telephone networks), as well as their derivatives.

In fact, this may lead to the fact that by the end of Putin's new term we will have a Soviet communications industry - with trunk lines operated by near-state operators, Internet in apartments from local telephone communications and a software market written by companies associated with the military-industrial complex. And, of course, it will be much worse than today's, still competitive environment.